77 points

If he’s such an existential threat (and he is), why the fuck are they not forcing the geriatric incompetent running on their ticket to drop out? They’re sleepwalking into fascism and it’s terrifying.

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14 points
*

If he’s such an existential threat (and he is), why the fuck are they not forcing the geriatric incompetent running on their ticket to drop out?

Because their rank-and-file voters who voted in the primary voted for him. This primary and last primary. And if you want people to leave your party in a big exodus, invalidating their primary vote is how you do that. They learned that in Bernie’s race. I voted for Biden, he wasn’t the only person to run in the primary, I’ll be damned if the “party elite” select some other candidate anyways, why even vote in the primaries at that point? May as well register for the R primary since they at least had more candidates and (so far) appear to respect their primary process so my vote would actually mean something.

One thing you’ll notice is that the venn diagram for people who complain about only having “two choices” and the people who don’t participate in primaries is nearly a perfect circle. You get an overwhelming amount of choices if you vote in every primary and every election.If you only vote once every 2 or 4 years and skip the primaries, yeah, you get two choices.

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15 points

No one considers this primary a real vote, or that a vote from four years ago indicates current preferences. If it did, 50% of Democrats who watched the debate wouldn’t want him to step aside.

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7 points
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50% of people who watched the debate didn’t participate in the primaries. Most people don’t vote, and of those who do vote, most don’t participate in primaries. Nobody of consequence ran. Literally anybody could have run. They didn’t. It’s not the fault of “DNC leadership” that nobody stepped up to the plate to run.

FWIW some people did run, Biden wasn’t literally the only candidate. I had more than one candidate on my primary ballot and I voted for Biden because he had the best chance of winning the general. In fact, Biden lost the primary in American Samoa. If you swap Biden for somebody else, you’ve invalidated my primary vote. That’s just as much a threat to democracy as anything else.

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8 points
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I’ve voted in every primary and local election since the year 2000 and had a Kucinich for President bumper sticker and I still complain about the choices because my preferred candidate has never won. Ever.

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82 points

My semi-secret conspiracy theory adjacent theory is it’s intentional. That not all, but many, of the Democratic national party is in bed with the same big businesses paying off Republicans, and they’re prepared to pull a Hindenburg and install the very fascists they claim to resist once they can no longer hide their betrayal.

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13 points

I also do think it’s primarily a money issue. Some of it might be those donors wanting the two parties to do different things, by basically leading the democrats into their graves.

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7 points

Because the most popular alternative is Kamala Harris, but there is no evidence she would do better against Trump.

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17 points
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I stand that Kamala’s best chance is to hold the ship steady as is, and then ask Biden to resign in December or January.

There’s a lot of racists out there. I feel like if she’s at the top of the ticket, she’s gonna get dragged down. Biden truly is serving as an effective shield for her. Either way, Kamala is the implicit vote if anything wrong happens to Biden (which I admit is increasingly likely given his age).

It makes no sense for Kamala to rush to the top of the ticket given her position.

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9 points

Wasn’t this always the angle, even when people called his age out last election? The argument was that Kamala Harris would step up, and that Biden didn’t want a second term.

Given Harris’ recent comments in the press regarding stuff she’d fix “if given power”, I wonder if she’s even on the VP card this time around? IMO, AOC might be a smarter choice for VP, since the left love her and the right loathe her. She’d bring a lot of younger disenfranchised people back around, and that might be enough.

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3 points

There’s a lot of racists out there. I feel like if she’s at the top of the ticket, she’s gonna get dragged down.

This is just preemptive cope to avoid having to reflect on whether the Democratic leadership and its preferred candidates are actually the thing that needs change, and she’s not even an actual candidate yet. Kamala’s biggest problem is not that she isn’t white. Obama was a Black man, but he had heaps of charisma. Kamala has all the charisma of a plate of lutefisk,and people flat out do not like her. She is also irrevocably tied to Biden and his legacy, likely to her detriment amongst the crowds you would most worry about not voting for her because of her not being white.

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5 points
*

Most polls put her on par with Biden. Dataforprogress.org has her leading when “fitness” and “strength” are brought into question, but that’s the only poll I’ve seen where she has any lead at all.

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3 points

Polls of 1000 people are stupid.

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5 points
*

It’s on purpose. Democrats whole platform is “other side is evil and you’ll go along with anything we do.” If you mention this on Lemmy, people put their tin foil hats on and call you a Trump supporter. Now we have two fascist parties that we “have” to vote for.

But thank God those people who call me a Trump supporter are also trolling users (of most likely Asian descent) about how evil China is and they should like Biden better than whatever Winnie the Pooh’s real name is.

Edit: I just reliazed that Winnie the Pooh reference is more than about the shape of his face. I’m sorry I just reliazed that ,I never put two and two together till just now. I am very sorry about using that.

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5 points
*

The Winnie the Pooh reference was because of his overall shape, not just his face. Specifically it was about a picture of him and Obama where the proportions of both leaders were fairly similar to a picture of Pooh and Tigger walking together.

The dictator’s real name is Xi Xinping

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5 points
*

Winnie the Pooh is also Xi Xinping’s nickname on Chinese bloggers. It was a way to avoid Chinese Censors and still talk about him without explicitly getting disappeared by the Chinese secret police. It worked for a while, but the jig is up and everyone knows that Pooh is codeword for Xi now.

Its a nickname embraced by Chinese specifically. Its not racist at all but instead its us Americans trolling Xi Xinping by taking an codeword/insult used by the internal Chinese dissenters.

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3 points

@dragontamer@lemmy.world

That’s very funny. As I brushed my teeth before heading to the office for a few hours, a thought hit’s me, “has this meme been racist this whole time?” Thank you both for the explanation. I was over thinking this.

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-21 points

Sure, just watch the debate and see whose cognitive function is still intact. Clearly, it’s not Biden. That was the most embarrassing debate I’ve ever seen.

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3 points
*

Biden gave answers that made sense, Trump lied and said we abort already-born babies. Jesus fucking christ, you must be braindead.

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0 points

Solid, sensible answers such as

making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the with the Covid, excuse me, with, um, dealing with everything we have to do with, uh, look, if…we finally beat Medicare.

and

Look, there’s so many young women who have been, including a young woman who just murdered and he went to the funeral. And the idea that she was murdered by a by by an immigrant coming in to. They talk about that.

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24 points

I don’t know how anyone can hear a single sentence out of Trump’s mouth and think he’s cognitively in tact.

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-16 points
*

Biden can’t even put together a single sentence and this is the guy you want running as president? Bro can’t debate past 9PM.

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3 points

And everyone around him is doing a great job and not bringing about a christofascist dictatorship ruled by an atheist narcissist compulsive liar real estate millionare…so yeah, the best of two options. I don’t care if the face-man is old, I am voting against project 2025.

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4 points

Want? You seem to be confused. If I had a choice between a cold soggy grilled cheese and Trump, I’d take the grilled cheese.

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9 points

Name checks out.

Trump hasn’t been able to debate past 2004. Every single sentence out of his mouth since before his first 2016 campaign has been either gibberish or lies. I’ll take a doddering old man over a pathological liar every time if those are my two options. Not to even mention Trump’s extremely obvious dementia and extremely obvious fascist tendencies, racism, sexism, 34 felonies, convicted sex offender, on tape saying he’d like to fuck his daughter, on tape partying with Epstein, on tape committing voter fraud, can’t stay awake at his own criminal trial, moans and complains and cries at every little thing that hurts his widdle feewings…

And this is the guy you want running for president?

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3 points

Trump doesn’t have to be cogent to win his supporters over, he just has to be violent.

Just like how Biden doesn’t have to be lucid to keep the loyalty of his supporters, he just has to not be Trump.

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41 points

Treating an existential threat as existential requires the one thing that the Democratic coalition has increasingly struggled to do: prioritization. It means putting aside personal feelings, individual ambition, and subjective preferences in favor of a single goal: success. Otherwise, it’s just empty rhetoric.

As New York Timescolumnist Ezra Klein, who has been pushing the possibility of an open convention to replace Biden, said on his podcast after Thursday’s debate: “If the fate of American democracy is hinging on this election — as Democrats are always telling me it is and as I think there is a chance that it is — then you should do everything you can to win it.” That a strategy, any strategy, might make people or groups uncomfortable cannot be a reason not to pursue it in the face of an existential threat. Not if you believe what you’re saying.

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0 points
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Over a dozen paragraphs and no name brought up to replace Biden if he leaves. (Kamala? Kamala is team Biden)

Glad to see that the prioritization is to attack Biden before you even have a replacement lined up. Good job media, you’re whipping the dumbasses into a frenzy and taking unnecessary risks.

Lets just say Biden is out. Start listing names. Serious contenders. If Kamala (effectively on Biden’s team anyway) is your best shot, then it doesn’t matter if she’s VP or Top of the Ticket, if the plan is for Biden to resign after November anyway.

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-2 points

Joe can do it!

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