There are two things that will lose the election for Democrats if they don’t get them under control.
- Infighting and arguing over who the candidate should be.
- The “All is lost” attitude.
If people don’t stop fighting and trying to convince themselves that it’s not worth it to go to the polls then this is game over.
I feel as if not enough people are saying this.
Infighting is a bane. Back when I was on Reddit I got fucking downvoted into oblivion multiple times for pointing out that the Left’s biggest problem, both now and historically, is how we can never agree on anything. That whatever faults the Right has, they will come together just to shit on someone else. If us on the Left stood up in unity we would be a literal human tsunami flooding the bullshit that is the Republican habitual diatribe. Second, and louder, is apathy, as you said.
Starting to wonder if throwing League of Legends level of insults at people might get them angry enough to vote just to show me what’s what.
It’s because the Democratic party is a coalition. The Democratic party ISN’T LEFT. It’s a party made up of moderates (right wingers) and liberals.
It’s essentially two different political philosophies trying to operate within one party.
Which is why ranked choice voting allows people to better represent their candidate preferences. All the variety of political opinion can’t be represented in two parties.
The other problem with Democrats is they have terrible fucking strategy. Then they get this bright fucking idea to take a page out of Biden’s handbook. In what conceivable world was it a good idea to run an 81-year-old who all but promised to be a bridge candidate to a younger generation?
Yeah, guys, let’s “rally” blindly around the guy for whom 75% of the fucking electorate find is not cognitively fit to run for a 2nd term. Real genius strategy. It’s like they completely forget about low-info undecided swing voters.
It’s like they ALWAYS employ the wrong strategy 2 cycles too fucking late.
Isn’t it kind of the nature of the left to bicker with itself though? At some level, conservatism seeks to preserve an existing system, or at the extreme end, bring back a system recently removed. There’s some room for infighting between the most and least extreme there, but for the most part, it’s a goal that is easy to unite for. But the left, at it’s most basic level, seeks to change things. And changing things is not a goal that inspires unity quite so well, because to change things, one needs an idea of what things should be changed to, and what you think things should be may not be what someone else thinks things should be, even if you both want change. If it so happens that what someone else wants to achieve is in your view even worse than the status quo, then you can’t afford to unite with that person, because there is the risk that your efforts will further a goal you find even less tolerable than what you get by doing nothing, even though what you both want is change.
This isn’t aimed specifically at you. I’m very likely guilty of this myself.
What you’ve said here highlights what I feel is the fundamental issue of unity for those on the left: We are all so damned certain we’re the smartest in the room, to some extent anyway. We can box up and ship our opinions largely through the use of actual vocabulary. We can do real research. Many more of us have degrees, or are otherwise interested in some more academic form of hobbies, careers, and lend our strengths towards artistic approaches. Now this isn’t universal and there are gigantic nodes of people who stand outside this generalization and yet still consider themselves not Republican, if not clearly left-leaning. There is at least a grain of truth for the majority.
It isn’t that we bicker. We are so divided that each of the groups we belong to must, in their own way, be correct, or be offended. Just look at Biden: The majority on the Left call for equality and justice for individuals with barriers/disabilities. We yap on and on about their strengths and capacity to be incredible in so many ways. Then the instant Biden verbally fucks up we wholly ignore all the immense good he has done in favor of “Old man can’t word properly!” and immediately draw lines.
What the fuck.
Yeah, that’s a radical example and somewhat incorrectly used in the context of this discussion, and yet it does highlight why we get so fucked over so often. I’ve backed up and seen the whole forest for what it is and would really appreciate it if everyone else stopped attempting to cram their oversized heads into the nearest tree, all the while yelling about how their tree is somehow both wholly different and also the best tree. We’re all in a fucking forest and Hexxus is torching the place. The problem is even those of us choosing the forest FOR the trees are at risk of being burned. All because the intelligent fools can’t hear us yelling while their heads are shoved up an Ent’s ass, blind in their false wisdom.
Gah, so angry.
The thing I’d like to see more of is people (outside of here) admitting they’re voting for Biden even tho he’s not ideal. We all know who trump is, and Biden gets a lot of flack, and I think it’s going to persuade a lot of people from going out and voting.
People need to know that it’s acceptable, encouraged even, to vote for the guy who isn’t as bad, even if you don’t like him. Just because you don’t agree with everything he says or does, you agree with him more than the other guy.
Im in some groups with some trumpers, and I’ll throw out memes making fun of trump, then they just say stupid incomprehensible things about Biden and I say “lol good one” and they don’t know what the fuck to do
Infighting and arguing over who the candidate should be.
Agreed.
I don’t care if its Biden, Harris, or anyone else you put up. But yall need to pick fucking somebody and stick with the pick.
I’m sticking with Biden and Harris in that order until someone gives me a better option. And after weeks following the last debate, no one has given me a seriously better option.
This choice is a problem. You have become a single issue voter. For, or against Trump. That’s it. The whole system is awful but the fact they won’t put anyone up who’s better than Biden is disgusting
And no blame to Republicans who elected Trump?
Its fine. I’m Republican and am pissed at my own party (voted for Nikki). Its a two party system. If you don’t like Trump the one to blame is the party who is putting Trump in power, sorry to say. Self flagellating over Biden is counter-productive.
If you don’t demonstrate loyalty to your party, then you can’t obtain political power. Its just a basic rule of politics.
Infighting and arguing over who the candidate should be. The “All is lost” attitude.
“Democrats must fall in love; Conservatives must fall in line.”
The hand-wringing is normal: it’s a characteristic, core to the democratic party but almost completely absent from the Republicans where it’s replaced by loyalty.
The funny thing about the “fall in love, fall in line” bit is that the GOP obviously doesn’t like Trump and would rather have a more predictable, controllable candidate, but there are too many cultists “in love” with Trump specifically for them to ditch him.
The GOP absolutely loves Trump. They say they don’t like him but often parrot and amplify his talking points.
The two things are the same thing. If you hadn’t worked it out it’s a general lack of faith in the democrats ability to accomplish anything.
They’ve had a whole term to do anything and what they did was a load of nothing except political grandstanding.
Whole they did that the supreme court wiped out decades of precedent and women’s rights.
Their response was “go vote”. But we already did that and the Dems did nothing. Their whole plan so far has been “well shit, vote harder I guess”.
But there’s worse.
He’s ideologically toxic.
Biden is backing a genocide. Trump would too, we know that, but I don’t want to vote for abyone backing a genocide.
There is no anti-genocide option, and moral grandstanding will just mean ANOTHER one at home. Surely, if youre so passionate about genocide being a bad thing, youd want to mitigate if you can when thats the only option available
If the only options are large genocide and larger genocide. I’m sorry, they don’t have my vote.
Unless they can arrange a new primary to replace Biden as the candidate before the convention, then the course of future history has already been set.
They could easily find a winning candidate, but will not because the party leadership would rather see Biden lose than to lose the campaign funding provided by capitalist PACs. Therefore “all is lost” is a realistic attitude.
The time to start thinking about what you’ll do in a post-Democracy USA was almost 10 years ago when we were put on this path by a DNC who needed to ensure Hillary could have “Her Turn” at the presidency and sponsored Trump as they imagined him to be an easy opponent.
Those who are still in Denial, please proceed to Anger.
This is pure delusion. A rushed primary now does not in any way guarantee a win. The process will be chaotic and uncertain. The army of shitty oped writers will go to work asking “what do we really know about ____”. They’ll dig up innocuous shit from their past that make good headlines. After all of that the favourable a and hypothetical polls will not count for much. Acting like Biden stepping down is a sure way to win had no basis in reality.
Should he have announced he wasn’t going to run a year ago ? Yes. But we’re past that now.
This is pure delusion. A rushed primary now does not in any way guarantee a win.
Failing to run a primary doesn’t guarantee a win either. All it guarantees is that the incumbent gets less screen time before the election.
The process will be chaotic and uncertain.
I don’t pretend to foresee specific details, but the general arc of history is as apparent as it has been for the last 8 years.
The army of shitty oped writers will go to work asking “what do we really know about ____”. They’ll dig up innocuous shit from their past that make good headlines. After all of that the favourable a and hypothetical polls will not count for much.
Op-eds and headlines are bullshit. Watch the DNC chairperson to see where the party is headed: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/dnc-chair-claims-biden-put-on-a-masterclass-during-error-laden-press-conference/ar-BB1pRTxA
Acting like Biden stepping down is a sure way to win had no basis in reality.
Likewise, keeping your head in the sand and pretending that Biden could still win in November.
Should he have announced he wasn’t going to run a year ago ? Yes. But we’re past that now.
No we aren’t, the convention isn’t until September. The DNC could announce a different candidate today if they wanted, but they don’t want to.
It should not be this hard to beat Trump. I’m so tired of sub-standard candidates.
The minority party being allowed so much influence is the problem. We need more voting laws to stop this ASAP.
It should not be this hard to beat Trump. I’m so tired of sub-standard candidates.
I’m pretty sure reasonable people everywhere have said that about populist candidates in general. And yet you have to ask, if they are so easy to beat why would any reasonable person either vote for them or not vote at all, even if the alternative sucks. Knowing the stakes, WHY?
Voter apathy in the Democratic Party is what will kill it. There are far more liberals than there are conservatives, but about half of liberals just don’t vote. It’s ridiculous and incomprehensible.
It’s completely comprehensible. Since 2000, the impression has been that if you’re not in a swing state, your vote doesn’t matter. This impression, whether factual or not, has been helped along by candidates and the media. Factor in that we have two conservative parties, one that is dashing towards fascism, and the other sometimes wears a rainbow sticker while casually strolling towards fascism, and it’s completely understandable why many on the left don’t vote. It’s not a helpful mentality, but depression rarely is helpful.
I 100% voting for Biden now. I hate this voting system.
The worst part is cognitive decline is real. We’re seeing it.
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Trump and Biden are only 3 years apart.
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3 years.
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The difference is, Joe surrounds himself with competence. He picked a VP who wouldn’t make a terrible President. He also doesn’t have shitty impulses to play with big government military toys at baseline that he’s falling back on right now.
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Can we say the same for Trump? What does his less competent more impulsive at baseline ass do in full cognitive decline?
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And yet we’re sitting in this geriatric hole. With a China-Russia-Korea alliance looming, plus whatever the fuck is happening on the daily in the Middle East. Our neighbors are cool, thankfully, but conflict doesn’t need to be neighbor based or on the same continent these days. Yea, we have shit in our own house and it stinks, but the rest of the globe isn’t going to stop existing while we fight it out.
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Complacency and inertia are scary. And that’s what’s been running the DNC for years.
Biden is being selfish period. If it is about the team, then why Biden. Biden gets on television saying only he can do it. That he is the only one that can beat Trump. If he is the CEO of the Democrats, then they can change the CEO and keep the same employees.
You’re not wrong.
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This is what complacency and inertia gets us, this horror show where we all need a good scream and cry. RBG was a Queen right up until she banked on waiting for Hillary before retirement. I get it, wanting the first female President to a point her replacement, but she fucked up, miscalculated. Even the best of us fucks up, and Joe isn’t firing on all cylinders any more. Expecting him to think as well as either of us, going forward, would be a mistake.
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Jon Stewart podcast it was brought up that white male establishment guys like Joe probably arent capable of just handing power to a black woman. I mean, historically in America, how often have we seen that, if ever? Again, inertia rules the day.
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A lot of things should happen, but inertia rules people. Some people go their entire lives and then die without ever really moving outside of the inertial force of their own little existence. DNC has exponential momentum gathered on its inertia, its like, oh shit, I just had an image of The Boys pop into my head, the scene where Hughie’s GF is killed by A-Train. Can the DNC stop? They’ve been running on this lazy momentum for a while now.
Jon Stewart podcast it was brought up that white male establishment guys like Joe probably arent capable of just handing power to a black woman.
He was vp to a Black President, what kind of idiocy is this?
Biden said that 50 other democrats could beat trump. I believe him and i don’t even know who he is talking about.
He already did it once. And he’s done a pretty good job as president, though the media doesn’t really cover this fact. I think he can do it again.
He’s done okay for someone who has compromised with Republicans to give them concessions in order to get legislation passed. His stance on Israel has been detrimental to his campaign. He’s taken on some easy wins like marijuana reclassification. There is a lot of issues with current legislation that hurts middle-class workers still that he hasn’t done anything about. People face these issues regularly in the workforce, which doesn’t build trust. He hasn’t done enough to ensure a win against Trump, and the polls show that.
I’ll say it to I’m blue in the face:
Either party can guarantee victory by running literally anyone except Biden or trump.
*Obviously not Hillary tho
If Biden steps down, trump is toast if he stays.
If trump steps down, there goes Biden’s entire campaign.
Who are they going to vote for? If Trump isn’t the Republican candidate, you think they would vote for a Democrat?
The pro-trump crazies aren’t the majority of the Republican party anymore.
One of them literally just shot him a couple days ago in case you haven’t heard…
The pro-trump crazies aren’t the majority of the Republican party anymore.
this is an underappreciated truth, but they quite clearly control the party. the dems need to give a reason for a solid majority of people to get off their asses and vote - apparently the threat of a literal fucking fascist takeover isnt quite enough.
“I’m not trump!” is typical dem fantasy BS at this point. the maga crazies taste blood and are about to frenzy feed.
Why are you so certain that people would instantly vote for a new candidate more than the incumbent president? I have only seen polls saying the exact opposite.
Regardless, time is ticking out. If a new candidate is gonna have time to build any sort of support or momentum, they need to get started yesterday and hit the ground running, the election is just getting closer.
I have only seen polls saying the exact opposite
An incumbent with what? A 34% approval rating?
Biden isn’t a normal incumbent he’s literally a historically unpopular incumbent…
And for months now polls have been showing a smaller gap between almost anyone else and trump.
Like, do you not understand this is Biden with the campaign and DNC behind him versus people who can’t even say they’re thinking about running yet?
You don’t think that would give them even a 5% boost?
I’ve seen polling that says that Michelle Obama wins by like 20 points, but I’m not stupid enough to believe that polling.
There’s so much “not Trump” feeling in this country, but running a doddering octogenarian against him decreases those people willing to vote for “not Trump”. I’m absolutely voting for the Dem candidate, but I have some very real concerns about it.
There’s four months to go, that’s a long time to campaign. We’ve gotten used to these super campaigns but countries routinely hold them inside a couple months.
While the US campaign cycle is more extended than other countries’, even then the people who are going to be the main candidate for their respective parties (party leaders for example) are usually known well in advance and have managed to build up a reputation with their constituents before they even start campaigning. In this situation, you’d have to start way further back.
I’m not saying it’s the wrong way to go, but everyone should be aware that changing candidate to someone completely new this close to the election absolutely won’t be a cakewalk.
Hillary with Joe as VP, then in 2028 they’ll say it has to be Hillary again because for some reason no one under 70 has enough experience…
I just like reminding myself that it can always be worse.
Then name a name.
Who has that kind of charisma and name recognition, with no baggage, that they can storm in like the Koolaid man and take this election?
No? Yeah, I didn’t think so. You have been shitting on Biden every thread, even non-Biden related posts, for this entire election year and have never offered an alternative.
You’d have to be blind not to see the news articles dropping names for the past few weeks.
Whitmer
Newsom
Shapiro
Walz
Buttigieg
Generic Democrat
Even Harris polls better than Biden
Whitmer, Shaprio, Walz, Buttigieg all don’t have the nationwide name recognition needed to hit the ground running with so little time before elections.
Newsom only has name recognition because the Right has been demonizing him for years because they recognized him as a threat. We’d just have a repeat of Hillary.
I’m not saying that these wouldn’t make decent candidates in a normal Primary time frame. But it would spell disaster to pivot to any of these candidates this late in the race.
I know Michelle Obama doesn’t want to run, but like, please Michelle? Would you think about it? Things are getting pretty desperate here. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/07/03/michelle-obama-would-beat-trump/74289680007/
If you really don’t want to do it, you could just win handily and then resign the first day and hand it off to someone else.
I’m also surprised at how much worse some Biden alternates do in the polling given people’s reported desire for a switch, but maybe in time they’d have a higher support ceiling than Biden as people get more familiar with them.
What a lot of news doesn’t report is the Undecided/Don’t Know category grows in lockstep with the drop in existing support for these other names. Trump’s support stays locked on at ~40-44 percent. So what’s really happening is a name brand gap. Some people just don’t know these other candidates and that’s easily solvable with four months and the DNC’s entire war chest.
That could certainly be the case, I was trying to get at that with the second part of the comment. I’ll link the poll below directly for people where that can be seen easier. I wish we had some more people who already could poll better though. I was also hoping that Trump’s support might drop some with some of the other choices though, with some moving to the not sure category when a different democrat was proposed. Unfortunately it was looking like the “not sure” people are mostly coming from the previously Biden category, with Trump staying locked in at 40 like he is with Biden, or even higher for some of them. Michelle Obama was the only to get that to drop, and only to 39%.
The “wouldn’t vote category” also dropped by a percent or 2 for some of them, so a few voters at least might be pulled of the sideline with a new candidate if they can manage to keep all the Biden voters. It was pretty impressive for Michelle Obama again, lowering from 8% to 4% not voting for the poll-takers in the case of Michelle Obama. She seems to pull her extra support over Biden from the current “won’t vote” and third party voters. Some of the other potentials also peeled off a percent or two from the third party voters too into the not sure category. These are the people that really need to be convinced if we’re going to beat Trump, and some of them at least seem to at least think about it when a new democrat is proposed.
https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/only-michelle-obama-bests-trump-alternative-biden-2024
