to be honest it would make me a lot more comfortable if you guys would show a little concern about trump running for president again. Do not inbox me and say you don’t like joe biden omg i already know. but can we show a little concern. about donald trump. being the republican candidate for president. for the third election in a row.
parentheticalaside
Also maybe you can focus a little more on how Trump won't stop fucking running and a little less on the incumbent president running for reelection once, which is the natural path that is not at all weird. Like, the fact that it's these same two guys again is Trump's fault, not Biden's. What Biden
is doing is normal. What Trump is doing is very much not.
theroguefeminist
Going to come out here and say this: if you do not vote for Biden, you are voting for Trump. | literally do not care what horde of leftists with the memory span of a goldfish come for me for saying this. A third party vote is no vote. No vote is a vote for Trump. If you care at all about saving democracy in this country long enough to elect someone better than Biden, vote for Biden. Not voting for Biden is a vote for a dictator and a vote for the end of democracy. As bad as things are, we saw they can get so much worse. And | do not want to hear the same people saying not to vote for Biden crying when shit hits the fan if Trump wins.
If you care about trans people's rights. If you care about abortion rights. If you care about immigrants’ rights. If you care about global warming. Literally any issue under the sun, will be made worse by Trump in every conceivable way imaginable.
| have a hard time fathoming how people are
still saying Trump and Biden are the same after everything that has happened. A quick Google
on Biden's policies on every progressive issue vs Trump will tell you the opposite. Yeah, Biden is a shitty moderate liberal who supports Israel. So
is literally every single other US president that has ever fucking existed. Voting for a third party candidate will not help Palestine. It will literally only escalate things and make them even worse if Trump wins. In every conceivable way imaginable.
If you aren't going to vote, then at least have the decency to stop pretending like what you are doing has any remotely positive impact. It does not. There is nothing virtuous or admirable about abstaining (and a third party vote is abstaining). We went through this in 2016. | thought people would have learned by now. But here we are again in 2024. If Trump wins, blood is on your hands and you didn't do even the one easiest thing you could do to stop it from happening.
synnefa-kyria
The DNC was never going to nominate another primary candidate over the incumbent, the sitting president, who is in charge of the entire Democratic party.
| don't think the sun shines out of Biden's ass, guys, but please look at the bigger picture here.
Our presidential election is not ranked choice and is not won by a majority of over 50%. It is a two party system that is won by plurality; whoever gets the biggest slice of votes, even if it's under 50%, is the winner and they take all. First the district, then the state, then the Electoral College. This is why third parties have little influence. This is why voting for them or not at all benefits the opposition. This is why Trump won in 2016.
A 2024 Trump victory is an not something we as a nation can bear - it's bad for us, and it is unseeakabl bad for Palestine because Trump's a far-right lunatic lacking morals and human compassion.
Not voting for Biden, third party or abstaining, will split the vote and cause a spoiler in favor
of Trump. See the 2000 Georee W Bush vs Al Gore election for reference. Take a long look at those razor thin mareins. Al Gore lost Florida
by 0.009%. Hell, walk down memory lane to the 2016 election. States where Trump won
by a margin of 3% or less - Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin - would have won Hillary the Electoral College, 316 to 224,
We cannot fore et Russia's war on Ukraine either. Do you honestly think Trump will want to continue US aid to Ukraine? Really? The
guy who's all buddy-buddy with Putin and has Russia-supporting followers? He's been vocal about his lack of enthusiasm for supporting Ukraine, and has threatened to hamstring NATO - Ukraine's principal ally - should the situation escalate further.
Russia is angling towards a return of the Soviet Union's former territory - look at Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia (the country). Appeasement is not an option - that's a proven failure. A possible return to the Cold War status quo is horrifying, and there's every reason to believe they won't stop there, setting off a multitude of geopolitical tinder boxes. God above forbid any one of the parties involved sets off a nuclear bomb, tactical or ICBM.
Climate change is the single overriding issue for me. We are beyond out of time to avert damaging levels of warming, and even Biden's climate policies -- by far the most sweeping in the history of the country -- are barely adequate to begin steering us away from the absolute worst. If Trump gets in, and eviscerates federal climate policy, and stacks the EPA with oil lobbyists (again), and fills federal courts with science-denying assholes, and sabotages state and local efforts to decarbonize, and destroys all chance of global cooperation on this issue, and (most importantly) dismantles democracy so that it is effectively impossible to vote for a progressive ever again absent a second civil war, then we will be consigning the entire planet to "nightmare hellscape" levels of climate change with no viable pathway out. A second Trump term would add four billion tons of carbon emissions over the next six years. It would "negate – twice over – all of the savings from deploying wind, solar and other clean technologies around the world over the past five years". And that analysis doesn't account for increased emissions from Trump policies, just a reversal of what Biden has accomplished. Allowing Trump to win again would not just be national, but global suicide.
dismantles democracy so that it is effectively impossible to vote for a progressive ever again absent a second civil war, then we will be consigning the entire planet to "nightmare hellscape" levels of climate change with no viable pathway out.
Silly friend, you just mentioned the viable pathway out.
The real path forward to fixing voting in the US is going to be a long one. People need to find or form grassroots organizations to replace as many local and state positions as possible with actual candidates. Essentially a takeover of the Democrats starting at the lowest levels and moving up from there.
Some might be demoralized by how long this will take. Others realize that this actually isn't that hard with teams of motivated people.
On the Republican side: look at Brandon Herrera and his battle with Tony Gonzales. A youtuber nearly beat the incumbent (lost by 407 votes). The man tapped into people's anger and very nearly got it.
Where are lefties on this? Nothing out of the unions? People want change, help them get it.
2 Choices in 2024
#1 The man who is killing student debt, building infrastructure, going after medical debt, and so many more thing to help average Americans.
#2 The man who advised us to consume bleach and shine a light inside our bodies to KILL covid, which he said was not not coming here because China shut it down. Also convicted for business fraud, and many other things.
I think a lot of posts saying they are equal or call Biden Genocide Joe are Russian trolls aiming to influence the election. And if they're not, they might as well be.
In a system, where there is only one winner, everyone else are losers. Systems like that always tend to strongly favor a two party system like the us has and unless you can realistically bet on being able to mobilise more than half of the voters, your best bet will always be voting for one of the established parties, if you want your vote to count towards anything. For smaller party votes to count you need a system more akin to those of many European countries, where the government is split proportionally by the amount of votes per party. Then voting for smaller parties can actually have a significant impact.
You absolutely can vote for anyone you want, that is your right...but two of the options make you a complete utter moron and one shows you understand the game we are all playing, but you go vote 3rd party and if I hear you removed about Trump turning the united states into a Christo fascist country I will pat you on the back saying you did this good job you dumbass
No one despises the Democrats more than those of us who saw Bernie get steamrolled by them when he stated drawing crowds and winning primaries. But many of us older millennials also see the writing on the wall: We can't change a fucking thing about the current system voting GOP, green, or abstaining.
Being progressive, to me, means voting for the candidate that moves the needle toward the world I want to see. We cannot ever change the voting method and fundamental structure of our capitalistic hellscape by holding out for the perfect candidate. They do not exist.
They want us fighting like this, convincing others to not vote, or attacking a system that cannot and will not change by choice. We cannot effect change from a prison cell. Anything other than a vote for Biden will end all other hopeful prospects any progressive voter would have. The GOP literally has a manifesto, like a fucking school shooter would plan out, to turn the US into a Christian Iran.
The path to abolishing the electoral college and going to anything else will only happen when enough states push for the change at the local level. It's why there's such strong attacks at the state level to ban the use of ranked-choice voting. It's why the GOP is ignoring successful, or outright restricting, ballot initiatives to prevent the people from pushing for their own change.
Bottom line, Congress will never change the voting method in this country because those with the power to change it stand to lose the most by doing so. It's only by voting in the best candidates available at the time, within the confines of the system as it stands, that we can hope to enact any meaningful change.
Normally, I'd never tell someone how to vote, but after 4 years of both men, we know how they govern. Now, moreso than in 2016, is not the time to protest vote or refuse to vote on a single issue. We cannot afford, as a country or world, to let the orange menace have another term.
Cold war with a guy who can't control his emotions and goes online to let the world know about it no matter the time of the day...
Do you know how many times I've heard about your president tweeting this or that, in the last four years? Never. Not a single time. What a blessing that was.
My state has voted Republican every election since 1968, with a true majority all but twice. So I can actually vote for whoever I like and it won't make a lick of difference.
Minor correction - Trump didn't win CO in 2016. Not overly important in the grand scheme of things, I'm just from there and I'd have been ashamed if he had.
The rest of it still stands. I'm involved in local politics and I consistently vote for more progressive candidates, and we've had some victories. In a recent example, a homophobic asshat of a city council member gave up his seat to run for mayor. Not only did he lose that race, the woman who won his former seat is a progressive lesbian.
But you know who I almost never see at council meetings or at events for state level positions? The kind of terminally online leftists who constantly complain about the Democrats being too conservative. Apparently it's more important to put other people's rights and lives at risk to make some kind of stand than it is to try to make any real difference in the ways we can. Maybe someday we'll have an electoral system that allows for more than 2 parties, but we sure as shit won't if people can't be bothered to pay attention to anything but the presidential race.
I'm also from CO, and I also felt compelled to point out that Trump never won here. I remember thinking on election night back in 2016, "Well, whatever happens, at least it won't be our fault."
But you know who I almost never see at council meetings or at events for state level positions? The kind of terminally online leftists who constantly complain about the Democrats being too conservative.
Oh, I'm there, but it's nice to know I'm masking well
Someday I'd like to hear a rational explanation about why the worse the Republican is, the more conservative and uncharismatic the Dem has to be.
Like, if all that matters is stopping Republicans...
Why aren't we running someone that people like?
A Bill Clinton or Barack Obama type that actively went after the youth vote, opened a dialog with voters, and took feedback to make their campaigns more appealing?
Historically speaking, that's a slam dunk.
We can keep trying to berate the youth into voting, but the thing about 18 year olds is, there's always 18 year olds. Convince this batch to hold their nose, and we got to convince the next one again. Plus re-convirnce the old batch again. Someone that's 30 right now has spent almost half their life being told that they have no say in who they vote for, they just have to vote against trump.
How are people surprised they feel disenfranchised?
Why can't we try listening to the youth, and trust that as the future party moves further to the left, they stay with the party?
If only there was a post that explained pretty passionately and coherently how Trump wanting to end Democracy and kill a bunch of Palestinians and Ukrainians and Americans, and God knows who else, is objectively more important than all of that
I'm not trying to be an asshole or dismissive or anything, but you are commenting directly under a pretty clear explanation of why not electing Trump is literal life and death, by saying literally the exact type of "but I don't feeeeeeeelllll like it, isn't that important, too" that this person is pretty pointedly discrediting
Maybe be mad at the party who keeps putting forward shitty candidates rather than the people who are fed up with the shitty candidates? You can't have it both ways, saying every vote matters, and then also say but you have to vote for our old ghoul or you get someone worse. That's the establishment propaganda that thankfully some people have grown out of. I'm not even American but by God reading all this fucking biden apologist discourse has me feeling so fucking sorry for your country. Yeah trump is bad bit at least he owns who he is. Voting biden at this point would feel like a fucking moral failing. I'd probably still do it bit I'd never stop complaining about it and fuck all of you who expect people not to complain. Your system is blatantly screwing you over and you're just like "thank you more please. Please not the trump again"
Where do you think 'the party' comes from, the people who make these bad decisions? Are you active in local politics? Do you educate yourself and vote in local elections? Most people act like the only election there is, is the presidential election, and wonder why they feel disconnected from the choices. Well there are a million small choices going into who that pool of bad choices is winnowed from, and who is making backroom decisions playing into it, and most people are clueless how any of it works, uninterested to learn, and completely checked out. Well that's how we end up here.
Where do you think ‘the party’ comes from, the people who make these bad decisions?
Well, the current leader of the DNC was appointed by Joe Biden in 2021...
The selection of Mr. Harrison, on the heels of Mr. Biden’s victories in Arizona and Georgia in November, reflects the president-elect’s longstanding determination for Democrats to compete in once-red states, a recognition that the party will never sustain an enduring congressional majority without making inroads across the Sun Belt.
Mr. Biden’s top advisers are also planning to appoint a small group of elected Democrats as vice chairs to reward their support in the campaign and offer them the opportunity to be high-profile surrogates. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Representative Filemon Vela of Texas and Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta will serve in the roles.
Technically the DNC could vote against the president, but they didn't even do that to Obama. For details in who the ~477 people are and how it happens:
Are we now to the point where we’re deifying Clinton? He had sex with a subordinate (likely more than one). His policies resulted in incarceration of minorities, and a decline in life standards for people at the bottom of the income distribution. You are NOT the first person who had to hold his nose while voting for the lesser evil, and frankly in his day the GOP candidate looked much better than it does now.
There is a persistent mythology among a certain type of Lemmy user (the type who also doesn't want to vote for Biden) that Clinton was a super-great progressive president and the Democrats moved to the right since then.
I had one just recently who was telling me about how they and all their progressive friends were super happy about how he balanced the budget
It's funny because even leaving Biden out of it, I remember the Carter -> Clinton -> Obama arc, and what progressive and activist people in the mid to late 90s were feeling about it, a little bit differently than that
I don’t understand this political strategy in the long-run. If the left always unflinchingly votes for the leftmost candidate then the optimal strategy for the DNC is always to choose someone just 1% to the left of whoever the Republicans are running.
The trumpers aren’t strong because they always vote. They’re strong because everyone knows that, if Trump isn’t on the ballot, they won’t turn out to vote nearly as strongly.
Combine this with the fact that basically every business interest wants right-wing politics and you get the perpetual rightwards slide of the Democratic Party.
I've had some luck explaining it by asking folks why multiple gas stations are at the same intersection, or asking why Lowes and Home Depot are always right next to each other.
I've said a lot of the same for years. You don't get a progressive president by voting for them first. You vote in television unsexy stuff, city council races, congressional primaries, county commissioners. Those people learn the system and move up. Bug surprise, like progressive ideas, you build up fom the bottom.
Any attempt to use logic, reasoning, common sense, and nuance with people that think that by NOT doing something, you can bring about the change you want in the world…
Oh, I believe in boycotts. Now let me ask you a question:
Do you know that someone will get elect with or without your vote? Not voting doesn’t cancel an election. You’re either getting a “genocide supporter” or a GENOCIDE SUPPORTER.
Because Trump has said that he intends to give Israel everthing they need to win the war:
“The approach of the United States would be that Israel needs to win this war, it was attacked brutally,” Trump’s ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, describing how Trump would act.”
If you’ve been paying attention, Biden has been trying to negotiate a cease-fire. Granted he’s not trying hard enough- he’s no genocide supporter like the bad actors among you accuse him of.
Your little grassroots movement to boycott an entirely election is going to cause more suffering in Palestine than you cold imagine.
The argument won't convince them, because their moral stance is simply a justification for laziness. They have no morals, they just don't want to do shit.
The one issue where Biden is an asshole would be identical under The Idiot, because Netanyahu has already demonstrated he can get anything he wants out of The Idiot.
Vote for less evil. The alternative is more evil. Why the fuck would you want more evil?
The thing that is annoying is there is NO nuance to this. First primary isn't over. So I can vote something to pull Biden more left. Second I live in a state with no chance of Biden losing. Remember this isn't a one person one vote thing this is who wins the popular vote in each state for president gets all that states votes unless you are in Nebraska or Maine. So if I live in Delaware then voting 3rd party won't hurt Biden he will win but maybe a movement will realize he doesn't have as much support so maybe he will court progressive independents versus Republicans.
It won't hurt. That being said do vote blue down ballot and primary all the people who are fake Democrats or shitty ones. Maybe if you find a hole and find you have massive support get a green party in but you would know if that race is close if you are local.
These posts are annoying to tell people to fall in line and I agree the other posts of I hate Biden is trying to divide the line in closer races.
I like it better when they tell me their politics with their chests. Chests that happen to have big sloppy wobbling milkers. One of my favorite ig follows is a woman with absolutely enormous honkers who talks about the right to contraception and I have decided this is how I prefer my politics
The reason I think this misses the mark is because it presumes these people don't know damn well what they're doing at this point.
They're already trying to pivot to accelerationist discourse. IE the discourse of white kids who are betting hard that they're far enough up the kill list to wait out the collapse into fascism and following revolution, said revolution not being guaranteed by anything.
They are cynically broadcasting that they refuse to not be the glorious party chairmen of the anti-fascism efforts, and that they will knowingly let everyone else burn until they "learn their lesson" and stop trying to achieve their own agenda instead of just shutting up and falling in line with what the white leftist college fund kids want.
I mean, a lot of them will openly say they're for America's destruction so any points about saving american democracy or whatever are moot. Same thing with Ukraine
It always amuses me how many of the people who espouse this viewpoint freely admit to not living in the US. And then continue to act like their opinion matters even though they will not be meaningfully affected regardless of who wins come November.
That's exactly why I can't take authoritarians seriously. The way they talk about violent revolution makes it clear they don't care about the people that get hurt, because it has never been and will never be themselves in danger.
Watch out for the propaganda. The red and blue party will always try to stay in power and push the narrative that not voting for them is a wasted vote. If you actually want anything to change at all stop supporting them.
What’s propaganda, is people suggesting that other not vote out of protest.
Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows how anti-democrat this act is. And there are only a handful of types of people America knows to be anti-democracy….
The system isn't fair but the only way yo change that is through the system. If you want to have a say go vote in a primary.
If you want to support Palestine and fight the establishment (aipac, Hillary, ...) support Jamaal Bowman.
The system isn’t fair but the only way yo change that is through the system.
Point one time in history where a change through the system actually worked. But yea, you can try to vote red and blue out that will do something for sure.
Wind dat same shit I always post in these threads back selecta!
If you’re reading this and you don’t want to vote for biden or trump, consider party for socialism and liberation. They’re running Claudia de la Cruz for president this year on a platform of Palestinian statehood and ending arms shipments to Israel.
Idk, there’s a good argument that the only way to get to a future where the democrats are pushed left or a new party takes over their position in the two party dichotomy is by showing exactly what votes in what districts the two major parties are leaving on the table.
Of course voting isn’t the only thing needed to create either of those outcomes, but if a person were working towards one of them I think voting third party is the right choice.
Wow this screenshot of four people with the same opinion talking to each other in an echo chamber has really changed my mind. Thanks, internet!
When I was a teen protesting the Iraq war (which Biden supported, btw) we couldn’t imagine anyone worse than Dubya. Now we have Trump. Still probably not responsible for as many dead as Bush, but one could argue he’s worse on the domestic front. Now Bush hangs out with Ellen and we all laugh at his paintings like he’s a harmless old man.
So, join me in a thought experiment. Ten years from now someone comes along who’s worse than Trump. Are you going to be telling me I have to vote for Trump because this other person is so much worse? Democrats scream about how great the economy is, but for whom? Not for me or anyone I know. Biden enacts these limp-dick half-measures that satisfy neither the right nor the left. He’s a bad politician. Period. His one job is to convince constituents to re-elect him. He can’t even accomplish that. But since his opponent is awful I have to vote for him. Fuck that.
Who was president when abortion was stripped of federal protection. Who was president when we started funding not one but two proxy wars overseas? Inflation. Shrinkflation. Student loans. You can bandy about all the google searches you want, the proof is in Americans’ day-to-day lives. Page one of the Dems playbook is to say, “Oh dear we wish we could help, but those pesky Republicans…!” And yet when they had control of the Exec and the Legislative branches in Obama’s first term, what leftist utopia did they create?
Read the transcript of Biden’s most recent Time interview. The whole thing. The man doesn’t complete a single thought. And we on the left love to shit on Trump (rightfully so) for talking like an incoherent hospice patient.
Palestine is merely the latest in a long long litany of disappointments, blunders, and outright betrayals (see the railworkers union-busting). If Biden was my employee I’d fire him. If he was my boss I’d quit. But he’s just my president so I’m not voting for him.
Who was president when abortion was stripped of federal protection?
You mean a decision that was made by supreme court justices appointed by the previous administration? The president does not control every policy decision that gets made in America, believe it or not. Almost like there are three branches of government or something.
Who was president when we started funding not one but two proxy wars overseas?
Ukraine is only getting ancient military surplus that we couldn't use anywhere else anyway. I agree that his support for Israel sucks but unlike Trump we can (and are) talking him out of it. Also will you quit removed and moaning about the strain on our tax dollars. You sound like a Republican.
Inflation. Shrinkflation.
I think this is more due to corporate greed than fiscal policy at any level, judging by how many mega corporations turned record profits this year.
You forgot to mention that gas was very cheap, that the world economy was booming, and that Russia was too scared to invade Ukraine during trump's presidency.
It’s honestly easy to forgot how bad things were when Biden took office. A big fraction of the country was still living on Covid assistance; unemployment had’t come back anywhere near non emergency levels. The US is the only country that managed to recover as if all that shit hadn’t happened. And, the news is so good at twisting things that most people say they trust Trump more on the economy although Biden has whatever good intentions that they like instead etc etc.