Ronald Brownstein: "The Democrats' Age Divide Is Defining The 2020 Primary"

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   I might be able to talk myself into voting for Biden. Maybe even Sanders, who, for all his crackpot economic views, has made it pretty clear that he's not really down with the identity politics clown show. I'm not really concerned about e.g. "free" college, since I don't think it's going to happen. I'm a bit more concerned about single-payer health care...though I don't understand that debate well enough to deserve an opinion on it.
   Though...remember how I said that I reluctantly didn't oppose Obamacare...but that that was going to be it for big gub'mint programs for me for awhile? Well...behold, the progressive left. What was radical yesterday is inside the Overton window today, and obligatory tomorrow. The day after, you're getting kicked off of Twitter for criticizing it. Part of the reason I no longer count myself on the left is that I finally realized that there's never any end to it. At least as things stand now, it's one radical change after another. And they seem rarely to have been properly thought-out and tested. The probability that none of those radical changes will ever end up sinking us is either zero or damn close to it. One needn't be a conservative to oppose an endless series of radical lurches to the left.
   There is, of course, Biden's bizarro "white man's culture" remark. That makes me worry that he's soft on identity politics. Maybe it'll be an isolated utterance. He's not always firmly in control of his mouth. But maybe he actually is opposed to "English jurisprudential culture"...whatever the hell that means.

   I'm mostly trying to hold my nose and get through primary season. Though I'm not one of those people who thinks that we can ignore what's said during the primaries. Sometimes that's when candidates say what they really mean. Sometimes it's what they say during the general that's for show. I expect that people are generally bullshitting quite a bit in both cases, and the real them is somewhere in between.
   I've been a more-or-less reluctant blue team booster for my entire adult life. But it's going to be hard for me to stick with them unless they come out pretty clearly against the current madness on the left. Which, sadly, I don't expect any of them to do. Being soft on the extremist left means being soft on freedom of speech--among other things. And that's not on. Especially not when Trump--Donald freaking Trump--is defending freedom of speech.
   OTOH, the very fact that Biden and Bernie quickly and solidly clicked into the lead(s) is heartening. Since the pomo left shrieks down dissent, and since liberals (such as remain) are cowardly in the face of said shrieking, it's possible that the blue team really is still a lot more conservative/moderate/centrist than one might think. They're just afraid to say so, afraid to stand up to their extremist wing. Silently supporting relatively more centrist candidates is better than nothing...though I still can't really trust nor respect them until they speak up/out against their anti-liberal progressive wing. Passively opposing totalitarianism isn't enough to keep my vote.