What I find depressing about this Axios story describing the Biden administration’s hesitancy to mandate vaccination for certain groups and professions (see what I did there?) is that they seem more afraid of deluded and ignorant people who oppose vaccination than the large group of people who support it–and who disproportionately vote Democratic.
I realize attempting to appeal to people who won’t ever vote for you is incredibly on brand for New Democrats et alia, but it’s getting fucking tiresome–not to mention dangerous for the rest of us. And this might make the sane people really angry at you. Really angry.
Aside: The need to get all the legal issues squared away is understandable, but, for once, just do the fucking thing.
The intrigue: The internal conversation around a strict mandate for military personnel was more fraught.
The dominant internal view is that it’s better to wait for an official request from the Pentagon
Who is Comander-inChief of thu USA’s armed forces?
There is a good reason to fear loonies over sane people. The loonies might go through with something that a sane person would refrain from. And these days, the loonies are well-funded.
This is the second time — the first was after Trump’s 2016 victory — that the Democratic leadership has for a while learned its lesson, only to revert to form some time later. (They still haven’t completely reverted yet, as far as I can tell.) Unfortunately, a network of consultants, media figures, lobbyists, activists, and persons in the Democratic establishment itself have their attention more than anyone like yourself and Duncan Black. (They don’t read or hear you, literally.)
The question: what can some of us do about them? What do we do to persuade them that they have to attract a second crowd of swing voters — ones who might vote third-party or not at all. Of course, this doesn’t apply to the fifth-columnists who want corporationists to win more than Democrats.