Kbin/Mbin (and possibly others?) definitely have the edge here since those platforms make votes public (only admins can see them on Lemmy). So, if you want to confirm what I’m saying here, go view some of these posts from Kbin/Mbin.
Every time one of the “usual suspects” says stuff like this in the comments, there will later be posts detailing how Biden is doing (or at least earnestly trying to do) exactly the things they’re saying he needs to be doing (oR ElSe i WiLl noT voTE anD NEithER ShoULD yoU!!!11!!). 100% of the time, those posts are downvoted by these same “usual suspect” accounts.
What gives? They have very strong opinions about how he should run his administration, so you’d think they’d appreciate him doing what they’ve been so helpfully suggesting. Unless…it was never about the issues at all.
That thin veneer of concern they’re hiding behind is not as thick as they think it is and is quite easy to see through. Now you know where to look.
Edit: Please don’t name and shame any specific users. That may violate the community or LW rules. We all know who most of the “usual suspects” are.
Although I’m not a huge fan of old guard centrists like Biden, I will admit that he’s been a decent president. While not enacting the kind of transformative change we need, he has been effective at making improvements to the law and advancing the interests of the people, in spite of pre-Civil War levels of partinsanship and fighting.
Internationally, he has handled the Ukrainian War pretty well by making the entire endeavor a joint NATO action from the very beginning. He’s positioned the US as a member of a powerful alliance, rather than a bully that tries to dictate everything. He should have lifted restrictions on military aide earlier, etc., but mistakes are always going to be made in complex situations. His weakest point is Israel, but looking back I’m not sure what he could have done to stop the war. Netanyahu sees this war as the vehicle for his political survival and refuses to listen to reason. He’s advanced a reasonable peace process multiple times and has even gotten Hamas on board (with a lot of help from Egypt, Qatar, and others, of course). In the end, he can’t force Netanyahu to do the right thing.
And of course, it has to be said that the alternative is worse across the board on every single issue. We still have a need for the president that Obama looked like he was going to be before taking office, but it just isn’t going to happen this time. Please just vote for Biden, especially if you live in a swing state. It’s what’s best for the country.
You’re going to explode the fediverse with a take this grounded in reality
Lemmy isn’t that bad outside of the two ml instances. With certain exceptions. Seeing someone describe Haitian gangs as ‘angry revolutionaries’ is certainly bizarre.
His weakest point is Israel, but looking back I’m not sure what he could have done to stop the war.
Are you kidding?
He could have not used his veto power to prevent the United Nations from intervening in the war, and he could have not given Israel munitions and billions of dollars of war funding.
Netanyahu has consistently said that the war on Hamas would continue even if Israel has to do it alone. I don’t agree with continuing to arm Israel, but it’s not like they don’t already have more weapons and ammunition than they need to continue to wage war in Gaza.
Netanyahu doesn’t even seem to care about the Israeli hostages. The war keeps him in power, so the war will continue. Biden can’t force him to make a different decision.
Prior to 1993, Canadian politics was dominated by two parties: The Liberals, and the Progressive Conservatives.
In the federal election of 1993, the government of the Progressive Conservatives (who had been in power for 9 years) was so unpopular that their vote collapsed and they won only 2 seats in parliament. The Progressive Conservatives were never again a political force in Canada.
In the same election, the votes for minor parties like the Bloc Quebecois and the Reform Alliance surged, with the Bloc Quebecois becoming the new official opposition party with 54 seats in parliament.
Is it wrong for me to hope something similar will happen in the US elections?
It’s not at all unreasonable to hope for it, but you need to see sufficiently low support for the party in question. That does not look even slightly plausible in the upcoming US election. It might happen in the upcoming UK one, and you can see clearly the difference in polling and reporting
No, but it is foolish to think that it begins at the Presidency. Historically, new parties have emerged from grassroots movements, beginning with local offices like school boards and city councils. Otherwise, they have been splintered from existing parties.
So do those things down-ballot instead.
Yeah, people talking about proportional representation seem to turn a blind and eye to the Senate, which has had principled socialists and libertarians in its seats. It’s not a healthy state of affairs, but if you wanted to send a message to the Democrats theres a proven way to do it in house and Senate races, trying to make big swings at the presidential level is just idiotic and betrays bad faith.
Yeah we can limp along with a major party and a minor party for a couple decades. We have before.
There will never be more than 2 for more than 1 election cycle. Ross Perot couldn’t do it. Pat Buchanan couldn’t do it. George Wallace couldn’t do it.
Teddy Big Brass Balls Roosevelt couldn’t do it with with his Bull Moose Party as a two term ex president. If he couldn’t do it, nobody can.
Wrong? No. But I would warn, as a fellow Canadian myself, that it didn’t totally fix the problem.
Pierre Polievre (current right wing leader who walked with the Trucker convoy) is probably going to win at least a minority, and the more right wing parts of my family can’t hide their hope he “finally helps the majority, rather then all these minorities getting help.”
If he wins a minority he has to partner with another party to form government.
He’s been shit talking them all so they probably are going to tell him to fuck his hat.
If he wins a minority he has to partner with another party to form government.
No, that’s not how it works in Canada. By convention, whichever party has the most seats in parliament forms government, even they don’t have a majority.
In theory, the other parties could form a coalition (giving them a majority of seats), but Canada has no tradition of that and the last time a group of parties proposed doing that, it led to a constitutional crisis.
Or the liberals will join up with him and they’ll just make sure no one hurts the corporations they were paid by.
US parties are much less locally run than Canadian parties are.
In the US you’re basically just voting for a face on your preferred platform, and that platform is homogeneous across state lines.
The only place in the US that even has different parties is Puerto Rico and that’s more about their specific debate about their status within the US.
I get what you’re saying, but the Reform Party was a far-right Christian nationalist party that was against gay marriage, any immigration that would alter the “ethnic makeup” of Canada, and had a problem of attracting openly racist supporters. Not the greatest example of a small party seeing a surge in support!
Yea. Sorry, the conditions are MASSIVELY different. In every conceivable way. Populations, demographics, broken government systems, corruption, info wars being waged by forgien interests, literal trillions of dollars at stake.
Canada is awesome… but it’s a Podunk backwater with barely the population of a single state and a much much much more homogeneous population (especially in the 90s)
Everyone (large governments) on the planet is fighting over control of America. If Trump wins, the global fascist agenda kicks off and the whole planet goes with it. This is a historical inflection point.
The PCs loosing just meant they created new parties and came back a few years later. They all stayed rich and white.
and a much much much more homogeneous population
I wouldn’t say that. There’s a pretty big linguistic and cultural split in Canada that doesn’t exist in the USA. French Canada and English Canada sometimes feel like different worlds.
It doesn’t feel homogeneous at all.
(especially in the 90s)
Just FYI, Canada came very close to splitting into two different countries in 1995. The vote was 50.58% to 49.42%.
It was a national crisis and the culmination of decades of national tensions.
Also, even if he’s not, are you really stupid enough that he’ll be exactly as harmful to those causes as Donald “My Draft Platform is Literally ‘Droppin’ the Pretense we Doin’ Fascism Now!'” Trump?
There are only two ways you could genuinely believe that, conspicuous use of the lense of privilege, and just being the most politically unaware moron this side of a YouTube comment section.
There’s two ways to end up with an authoritarian regime. And they both stem from a lack of accountability. One is the state being unable to hold people accountable and the other is the people not holding politicians accountable.
If you are blindly supportive of war crimes then the opposition will be no better. Democrats aren’t an altruistic organization. Their goal is to control the government. They just support doing it legally for now.
Thing is you accuse supporters of being blindly supportive of anything. That’s where you’re wrong, both about the blindness and the support.
It doesn’t matter how much noise you make if you reliably pull the lever for them. That action is the blind support. And that support was justified before Democrats decided genocide was okay. If genocide isn’t a deal breaker then we’re already over the cliff and in free fall.
the opposition will be no better
You people are still trying the “both sides” thing? It’s getting old.
Any criticism of democrats is magically dispelled by calling “both sides” huh? This may be shocking to you, but democrats and republicans i.e. “both sides” are actually the same on a number of issues, including many major ones like undying support for the genocidal ethnostate known as israel. You can’t just dismiss this with the magical “both sides” accusation. You’re mistaking “both sides are exactly the same in all ways” with “both sides are bad in certain ways”.
I have not been so sure in my vote in any prior election. 2020 I had no doubts, but then trump launched a coup and Biden turned out to actually have a few progressive bones in his body. Biden has straight up impressed me with his accomplishments with the inflation reduction act, chips act, infrastructure bill, and various other accomplishments.
Trump is scarier now than he was in the last 2 elections. He has a roadmap to dismantle our democracy and leave us rocking from crisis to crisis like Argentina or Brazil. I think there would still be elections, but the corruption would blow off the charts and millions will suffer needlessly.
Biden has straight up impressed me with his accomplishments with the inflation reduction act, chips act, infrastructure bill, and various other accomplishments.
Really?
It seemed to me that the general reaction to all of those was a bit… muted.
Yes really. Obama promised hope and change, and with a few notable exceptions, he delivered not fucking things up for 8 years.
Biden promised to clean up Trump’s mess. He’s done this, and taken massive action on decarbonization, and kick started American Industry, and revitilised the Labor movement, and added protections trans people and women’s healthcare. Obama’s admin delived one major legislative accomplishment a year for 2 years and then putzed around with executive orders. Biden slammed the exactive order button the first month and then kept pounding it, while passing major legislative wins. He got Ukraine aid through a hostile Congress for God’s sake and that war is turning around. Biden has done more good in 4 years than Obama managed in 8.
I voted for Bernie. I’m still sore that he lost that primary, but Biden has legit impressed me both with how progressive he has gone and how adroitly he manuved through the legislative process.
Alrighty.
But, as president, his job isn’t to pass legislation. That’s congress’s job.
Their goal is to be loud and waste time and energy.
