I think the real upsetting thing isn’t Biden’s performance, or having Biden as president for four more years. He achieved quite a bit after all. The real upsetting thing is the DNC being such cunts that they even pushed for this debate, hoping that Biden could win, only to deny and ignore Biden’s abhorrent performance immediately after. That Bernie got shafted twice by them, that is the really upsetting part.
I am a tankie and voting for Biden lmao. The Prolitariat must be protected till enough class conciousness is achieved for Socialism to succeed.
I’d vote for ToS era Pike over Trump. I’d vote for a candidate who only communicates via ouija board over Trump. I’d vote to not have a president for 4 years before I’d vote for Trump.
It’s crazy that Trump can get convicted of fraud, be found liable for sexual assault, promise to abuse presidential power to get revenge against those who cross him, actively undermine both national and global security, promise to round up millions and put them into camps, attempt to overthrow the election and refuse to not try it again, and so on, and his side is still so loyal they’ll wear solidarity diapers for him.
I’m voting Brandon but let’s not pretend he didn’t shit the bed. It was fucking awful. Brandon should fuck off, but I’d vote for a corpse over any republican, and that will probably be true for the rest of my life.
Technically I’m voting for Biden, in reality I’m voting against Trump. I really wish I had a better option…
Just because you are still voting Biden, doesn’t mean you don’t care.
It just means you still don’t want the raving malignant narcissist Trump.
Any somewhat normal person would be the obvious choice over Trump. Any person who is not clearly a traitor to USA and Democracy would be preferable to Trump.What I’ve seen so many people not understand with the situation we are in right now, is that we can’t fix our current situation in one election. Everything is far to tucked up for that, so the best that can be done is vote for the least fucked up option and work to improve things. People refusing to participate or vote for the candidate who is unfortunately our best option currently (biden) are doing more damage than the people voting for the fascist party. The perfect candidate/option does not exist and never will (obviously not saying everything biden has done has been good).
Forget a perfect candidate. Just go back and watch the 2012 debate and both Obama and Mitt Romney were infinitely better than Joe Biden or Trump.
But they never told me which of them was the better golfer.
God it feels stupid to write that and it being an actual argument during a presidential debate.
People do understand that concept, but it’s literally what Democrats have been doing for the past 40 years and it has put us right here where we are right now. The “lesser of two evils” thing just has no propellant left, no one is buying that line anymore. Neoliberalism needs to go before Democrats can start winning again.
You need to understand that people have been saying “just put the neolibs in power again and we’ll work to improve things” every election cycle, and now we are closer to fascism than we’ve literally ever been. You at least understand why people see that strategy as a failure, right? Like, you understand why no one believes it anymore?
A vote for neoliberals is a vote to not have fascism for four more years. America’s voting system doesn’t allow the never-have-fascism votes to be pooled with the delay-fascism votes, so unless there’s a decent chance for a mass swing of voters from delay-fascism to never-have-fascism, trying to encourage a small-scale swing only makes immediate fascism more likely by weakening the only thing with a chance to delay it.
If the plan is to try and encourage the Democrats to have primaries that actually have the power to move the party left, now is not the time to withhold a vote in protest as there’s a good chance that even if it did convince them, there’d never be another election that wasn’t rigged so they’d lose it no matter how popular they were.
A vote for neoliberals is a vote to not have fascism for four more years.
That’s an extremely hard case to make at this point though when the “not” fascist guy is funding a genocide and refusing to entertain the measures we’d need to take to actually take the fight to the fascists (ex. Championing an effort to pack the supreme court). Neoliberals are not truly acting like democracy is on the line, they say it a lot but it’s not what their actions communicate, which makes it difficult to believe they’d ever stop obstructing progress.
Neoliberals don’t stop or stall fascists by getting into power – they just soft sell it and give the general public time to acclimate to the slipping of the Overton window. They do this in service of corporate interests rather than theocracy the way the far-right does but it ends us up in the same place.
If the plan is to try and encourage the Democrats to have primaries that actually have the power to move the party left, now is not the time to withhold a vote in protest as there’s a good chance that even if it did convince them, there’d never be another election that wasn’t rigged so they’d lose it no matter how popular they were.
Now is the time that the Democratic establishment chooses to try to strong arm the left into voting for them, they do this every election; claim the sky is falling and that we must vote for them or else. So I guess my view is, if they have assessed that they can risk playing a game of chicken, so can voters.
I understand Project 2025 and its seriousness, but that problem is going to be there every election from here until such a time that the GOP dissolves. I’m skeptical that 4 years will allow them to achieve everything they want to without sweeping the house and senate too. The president cannot legally be crowned king, and if they try to do that perhaps that is what it will take to actually radicalize the self-sedated upper middle-class liberals and political fence-sitters.
I’m sick of defensive leadership, and any offensive needs to start with attacking the Democratic structure that’s making the party so ineffectual and complicit. More time is not enough in my opinion, people were talking about GOP plans to capture the supreme court as far back as Bush Jr. and giving Democrats wins achieved nothing. They need to be forced to take it seriously and I just don’t see that happening without some pain (for them and, unfortunately, us).
I mean all the concerned people could take to the streets right now.
The DNC wants you to believe that all you can do is cast your vote for something every other year and just take the options presented. In that sense they are worse than the Reps who encourage their base to be active for more than just the ballots and it is working.
Especially now the Dems give me huge 1984 vibes in how the individual should handle politics relative to the party.
so the best that can be done is vote for the least fucked up option and work to improve things.
Democrats were good at the first part, but not the second. I remember lots of Dems saying “Vote for Biden, and then we’ll hold his feet to the fire!” Well, there was no “holding his feet to the fire”, because that’s seen as enabling Trump.
The perfect candidate/option does not exist and never will
Yes, but there are candidates who are better, such as Jill Stein and Cornel West. You can’t vote for a perfect candidate, but you can vote for the best candidate.
You might as well vote for Barney the dinosaur for all the good it will do.
A vote for a candidate who cannot win is wasted.
No candidate can win, unless you vote for them. That’s the entire point of voting.
You need to also vote for someone who actually has a chance to win. Voting for a better candidate who realistically can’t win in elections like this were someone like Trump could win is basically handing Trump the win. His base doesn’t think for themselves, and would vote for him if he killed their family in front of them. I wish to God we had Bernie instead of Biden, but Bernie wouldn’t have won.
I live in a blue state, so using that logic, I shouldn’t vote at all. Voting for Trump or Biden is a waste of time, because the state will go blue regardless.
His base doesn’t think for themselves, and would vote for him if he killed their family in front of them.
If Biden killed your family in front of you, would you still vote for him?
I wish to God we had Bernie instead of Biden, but Bernie wouldn’t have won.
What convinced you of this?
we can’t fix our current situation in one election.
We can never fix the current situation in one election. Fixing the American system, within the parameters set forth by that system, requires a dedicated voting bloc that lasts multiple elections refusing to vote for the Dems until they shift far enough left to appease that bloc. As long as you are focused on the next election, your prescription for fixing American politics is just as unrealistic as a random Twitter tankie declaring a general strike.
If Project 2025 is successful, we won’t ever have another democratic election. Our election is going to work like Russia’s does after that point, and we will have a dictator of some kind that pretends to hold elections.
So, unfortunately, this is not the way.
Our election is going to work like Russia’s does
We already have sham elections, ours just pretends to have two democratic parties instead of one.
You are very right, and I feel your pain. I’m not judging you for feeling that way, at all.
I just don’t think that abstaining from voting is going to work in favor of fixing this issue. If anything we need to keep voting to keep the country as left as it can be for now, until we can shift the two parties we are forced to pick from farther to the left.
As I said in another comment, this mode of thought is completely defeatist. If you rule out the possibility of a violent uprising and look at how to change our system from within the system itself, the ONLY way to push the country left is for a dedicated bloc of people to refuse to vote for centrist Democrats for multiple elections in a row until the party center aligns with that bloc. That’s the reason why every one of the last few elections has been “the most important election in history” and all the other crap.
Why you gotta smoke the UAW president, Shawn Fain?
This is naiive accelerationist nonsense.
You do not fix systems by ignoring them and letting badgers tear them apart for years in your absence.
The vast majority of the time, actual change comes from people engaging with the system and slowly pushing it in the right direction.
If every single incentive structure rewards the Democrats for shifting to the right, please tell me how on earth they are under any pressure at all to shift back to the left. The answer is that they’re not, and the people who believe that they’re engaging in the system and pushing it in the right direction are simply fooling themselves as they take part in the system’s unstoppable rightward movement.
Perfect! Don’t vote for the dems for several elections. I’m certain this plan will usher in a new era of progressive politics. Well done. You idiot.
To push the Dems left you can either a) reward them for moving left or b) punish them for moving right. Continuing to vote for them year after year as they continually move to the right accomplishes neither of these things.
you can either a) reward them for moving left or b) punish them for moving right
You’re talking about the political will of a nation as you would training a puppy. It’s incredibly reductive and simply not how the overton window works.
If the republicans win the next several elections the democrats will move further to the right to try to steal votes off them. The republicans will have to move further to the right to differentiate themselves from the democrats.
Not surprisingly, the more republicans win elections the further right everything moves.
Your position is exactly where the conservatives would have you. They can’t win your vote so their best outcome is to convince you not to vote.
Not having enough time and voting for the least fucked candidate is old and tired. How long do we vote for the Turd over the Douche instead of voting for someone that we actually believe in?
Also, I can’t justify genocide.
Biden is simply not our best option.
What exactly makes a geriatric 81 year old the most fit person for the job?
There is plenty of time to get a new candidate.
People refusing to participate or vote for the candidate who is unfortunately our best option currently (biden) are doing more damage than the people voting for the fascist party.
Incredible take. “Say what you will about fascists, at least they support the two party system.”
They don’t support a two party system. The are stuck in one same as us.
This is some weird ass propaganda.
The best thing that Biden ever did was just to not be Trump.
Why are these memes so weirdly die-hard in the support of a man that is visibly unfit for the 4 years of presidency?
No one is actually excited about old Joe. It’s just that he’s simply not Trump.
It would be best if he steps down so that we can get a person in office that actually excites people for more than just not being the other guy.
Why don’t they seal the deal with anyone younger ? Surely there’s one better young person in the USA ?
The US political system has some issues. That’s why. Ask the DNC.
The DNC replied that you are just a secret Trump fan. The party knows what is best and you should not expect primaries and having a say. Also we have always been at war with East-Asia.
Hey, at least you got a reply. 🤣
It’s first past the post plus old people wanting to vote for super old people because “they’re just like them”.
Surely there’s one better young person in the USA ?
None of them ran. Biden’s admin and his fund raising base held enormous sway over the party at-large. As soon as he corralled the support of this tiny monied elite, everyone else had to either get in line or get marked as party pariahs and ousted for their disloyalty.
The pastiche of democracy is predicated on a primary system that can produce and sustain rival candidates. But when leadership in the party are terrified of “Russian bots” and “Leftist Antifa Agitators” undermining the general election, they circle the wagons around their incumbents and bow down to their mega-donors out of cowardice.
No rival candidates means no real primary means no one actually challenges Biden on his merits.
The primary system is obviously corrupted. The incumbent managed to shut out everyone else. This happened on both sides of this inept stupid system. Two candidates who it is painfully obvious are unfit for the job. Geriatrics clogging up the political machine stopping even retirees from having a go.
The youth backlash will eventually upend everything, since not only they are denied a voice, but they will also be made the servants of the boomers for much of the next 20 years.
I’m sure that herding behind a senile will give the Democratic Party the incentive to reconsider their corporate-oriented outlook /s
Really, if the Dems brought in someone who was like… 50 (and probably not Newsom owing to prolonged hateboner for Cali) they’d gain 10 points in the polls immediately. Whether true or not, the narrative that Biden is old and doddering is there and that debate performance did nothing to dissuade it.
He had a cold, okay. /s
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“I just don’t get why people would like ‘not’ being set on fire. Like, it’s just a little fire, what are you, combustible fats wrapped in flammable organic fabrics? I guess it’s simply that it’s not being set on fire that they like. It’s so weird and frustrating.”
The best thing that Biden ever did was just to not be Trump.
The economy is booming.
It’s just that he’s simply not Trump.
I’m not sure you realize just how big of a single issue this is.
Trump is a psychopathic cult leader running a campaign of lies, defamation, and retribution. He aspires to be the US’s first authoritarian leader, and wants to turn the nation into a nuclear armed Switzerland. He wants to keep inflation high so that corporate America can continue to enrich the few at the expense of the many. He is literally telling business prices will continue to rise, while simultaneously promising the public that he will bring “Biden’s” high prices down. It’s utter madness.
Because he is “not Trump” could not be a deeper reason to vote for Biden. Especially when not voting or voting for a third party candidate effectively empowers Trump’s campaign and the many more on the right who will always vote for their team no matter what.
The economy is booming
For who? The American people are struggling. Meanwhile the wealth gap is wider than it’s literally ever been and Biden is too busy bombing brown children to give a shit
The perception is not quite the same as the reality.
Nevertheless, Trump is doing a better job of fueling this view and promising change, even if it’s all lip service - he doesn’t care because his followers believe everything he says.
The reality is things are better now than in 2020 for most Americans. Unemployment is very low, and wages are up. Relative to the richest of course things are only getting more distant but again, you want Trump to bring equality? Good luck with that, lol.
Well, in the current economy, the statistical indicators that economists rely on are booming. GDP, etc. What folks on the left like us are saying is that those indicators are easily measurable but do not paint an accurate picture of what most Americans are experiencing. It doesn’t feel like a boom out here because, well, it ain’t.
It’s not like we’re sipping champagne, kicking it at the beach, and complaining that the guy next door has a nicer beach. We work just as hard as other generations and get a lot less to show for it.
Acknowledging that is important, but corporate politicians in either party seem like they just don’t want to anything about it.
Still voting for Biden, but yeah, not enthusiastically.
Okay, yeah nah I’m with you. I like to think that’s what I was getting at, but you said it better.
If I could vote for Biden I too, would do so without enthusiasm. Let’s hope he steps down though. I swear anyone else has a better chance at this point.
The only outcome that might suck even more is if Biden did step down, Kamala steps up, and she still loses. Cuz then it’s like… oh so we’re just gonna be misogynistic as a voter base now, great, thanks fellow Americans. Like, we were ready to vote for a shambling shell of an old man but not a lady with Hillary Clinton energy, okay. 🤦
Hah, I didn’t want to say “except Kamala Harris” but that may be the truth after all.
On the other hand, it could be racism rather than misogyny. I have a feeling Taylor Swift would have no trouble winning. 🤣
No I want both of them to unalive, preferably as violently as possible. Unemployment is a vastly flawed metric that doesn’t account for underemployment or discouraged workers, and real wages would be significantly down if the government was accurately measuring inflation, which they’re intentionally not doing so they can continue to pretend that everything’s fine.
Nobody is saying things are fine. They’re just not as bad as they could be, or as bad as might feel to a lot of middle class folks. It’s still very shit for baby though don’t get me wrong.
Not going to wish violence on Biden - he’s only improved things relative to where they were at the end of Trump’s term. But I do want him to walk off into the sunset away from the presidency.
Trump on the other hand I agree is living excrement so I’d be quite happy for him to be flushed. I don’t care about revenge though. I just want his stink gone from the world.
You only say things are fine bc it doesn’t affect you personally that much. Also please stop claiming that Biden has improved anything other than AIPAC’s grip on our tax dollars.
I’m sorry if you’re having a hard time, but the statistics and the Bills Biden has passed are improvements for many, even if they don’t help you personally.
Anyway, hopefully we agree we both want Trump gone, and Biden too. Given how terrible Biden was at the debate there’s a good chance now, and that will mean a better chance the democrats defeat Trump.
Then, the work begins to achieve something even better than what the Democrats have to offer. But it isn’t coming from the right-wing, that’s for sure.
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Yay, Biden isn’t at risk of losing your vote. Unfortunately, this isn’t at all remarkable. He is, however, at risk of losing independents who are/were leaning towards him.
This isn’t a big deal in places like Indiana or Maryland, but it’s a huge fucking deal in the handful of battleground states where the undecided voters will decide it for all of us.
The Vote Blue No Matter Who strategy is literally the dumbest shit and a losing one. It only targets people who are considering a protest vote, and not people who are genuinely trying to figure out who to vote for. It assumes that everyone sees the situation as clearly as you do, and that the only thing preventing a victory is if enough people don’t “fall in line”.
I will always maintain that blaming the electorate in an election for getting a bad result is like saying that the fans lost the ball game.
The only thing I will say for “blue no matter who” is that the alternative - threatening to withold your vote - only works if the campaign is aftaid of losing. They aren’t. They clearly don’t care. They don’t want to govern, they want to present only a token resistance to encroaching fascism and corporate domination.
The benefit of voting the nominally-left-of-extreme-right party in is that it forces them to disappoint their base and that radicalises those people against US empire. Letting Trump win won’t accelerate that process, it will just force people to radicalise in an atmosphere of extreme oppression.
What’s wrong with Trump, again? Cheap groceries? Cheap gas? How terrible!
Assuming this isn’t an attempt at trolling, Trump ran up the deficit nearly double that of Biden. Given that the argument is generally government spending leads to inflation, how exactly would that not indicate who is more responsible for inflationary costs?
Have you seen what the supreme Court justices that he appointed have been doing?
They make a big stink about old supreme courts overreaching, but seem to go out of their way to grab power for themselves and their buddies 🤔
Are you talking about the Chevron decision?
That and snyder.
And of course, no conflict of interest there at all
Lol.
Have you read Trump’s plan for his next turn? The fucker wants to go through with hefty important taxes on EVERYTHING (that’s essentially putting sanctions on the US lol). Cheap groceries aren’t a good prediction for a Trump term. I’d suggest listening to what he’s saying. There’s more that makes me think that cheap things aren’t around the corner, the fucker has many things he wants to spend for, without any plans for increasing the budget.
Trump is a liar, moron, idiot who can only appoint corrupt corporate stooges? His “NAFTA renegotiation” was a boondogle. He’s stupid enough to think a 100 billion dollar wall will keep people with 30 dollar ladders from crossing one of the largest borders in the world. But hey at least contractors will get paid.
Not enough? The current out of control housing prices are almost certainly the result of the trump tax cuts for the rich leading to investment firms like vanguard becoming bloated extra money and buying up housing.
His completely corrupt supreme court picks are dismantling laws that prevent chemical and oil companies as well as heir clients from poisoning the public by dumping chemicals in rivers’
Trump was an unmitigated disaster of a president. He is responsible for something like 3 trillion in debt increases that went almost solely to corporations. A vote for trump is simply a vote install a moron actor who played a business man for president so he can let international corporations strip this country for spare parts.
How did Biden affect the prices in other countries?
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I’m voting against Trump. Not thrilled to have a president who might have to have his Oval Office relocated to a nursing home.
I don’t expect either to last 4 more years. Especially Trump.
If Trump does win and dies while destroying the world, imagine what younger dictator would follow…
I’m more afraid of a smarter asshole. Trump’s the starting gun.
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I’m voting for the man with one foot in the coffin that is not trump, but it doesn’t matter because I don’t live in a swing state.
it doesn’t matter because I don’t live in a swing state.
Not true. It absolutely does matter.
+1 TO BIDEN POPULAR VOTES = +1 TO TRUMP TEARS 💦
Share if you believe! 🙏
I don’t, I firmly disbelieve. Trump will only care if you’re in a purple state that he tracks the metrics on. He is too dumb to see or care about other stats.
Yeah you’re right, unfortunately.
This is embarrassing
It is if you take it seriously rather than as a parody of the modern version of FWD:FWD:Re:FWD:.
Yeah, some ppl don’t get that you don’t have to like Biden, to vote against trump. 🤷♂️
You mean you don’t have to like Kamala? I’m voting Kamala.
Not fond of her, but she’ll do better than Trump by leagues and miles and make history while not rocking the boat or affecting any meaningful change. Libs will love her, she’ll be a democrat party darling. I bet she gets a second term.
Yeah, I feel like people are freaking out and ignoring that Biden (and Trump) are largely the people they surround themselves with, and the policies they push.
They’ve both been president for years.
This is what Germany in 1929 was - without social media.
But NOOOOO both sides both sides lalalaa can’t hear you both sides lalalaa /s