Can you go into detail? What’s the criticism that you think is being deflected?
EDIT: nah, I’m just going to stick with my initial assertion. Comparing two candidates for a position is not a logical fallacy. Do you agree?
If that was the conversation then yes. But when the conversation is about party A fucking up then bringing party B into it is whataboutism. It’s the literal definition of a whataboutism.
The meme is about Jimmy Carter running as a candidate for election… The conversation is clearly about an election in which we are comparing candidates for an election.
This isn’t “Joe Biden makes a goddamn awful margarita.”, in which “Well putin makes a worse one” would be a whataboutism, this is “Joe Biden is too old to run as a candidate in the election”. And in an election, you compare candidates, which is not a logical fallacy.