I’m going to vote, and vote for Biden, but realistically, the democrats have already fumbled this big time.
The debate: honest to fuck, Trump looked composed and almost presidential next to Joe in that debate. I facepalmed in the first thirty seconds and never stopped. Jesus Christ, that was a massacre, and I don’t know how anyone can pretend otherwise.
Biden himself: The debate kind of unsealed the can of questions about Joe’s well being, and you’re just not getting the snakes back in. Every time he goes to prove he’s still Joe from 2020 or 2012, we get Joe from 2024, or even a flash of Joe from the debates. His audio is always fucked because he’s speaking so soft that they have to turn the gain all the way up to pick him up, which means they also grab all kinds of artifact. He walks like an old man refusing to use the walker that his doctor is begging him to use. He keeps having pretty serious gaffes that kind of go beyond what we’ve come to expect from Joe. This just isn’t going away, especially because every attempt to clean it up makes it worse. So, they’re going to rely on the HRC 16 strategy of just yelling “Just shut the fuck up and vote, or we’re going to get Hitler!”
Only: Now they’re afraid to use the one trick this donkey seems to know anymore. The democrats got lazy, being able to use the threat of fascism as a fundraising and outreach tool. The problem is that we’re talking about armed Americans here, and you convince the right ones that the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and, well… [Gestures]. So, now, the democrats have spent eight years telling us how Trump is Hitler (and make no mistake about it, he is a fascist) and building their platform around being the not fascists, and now that whole rug has gotten yanked out from under them because if they keep using that rhetoric, it’s going to get someone killed. So, which is it? Trump is a serious threat of fascism and must be stopped to save the Republic, or it’s not actually that bad and it’s okay as long as Joe feels he tried his best?
Oh, and the assassination attempt gave Trump a couple of big Ws. First, that fucking picture. Show me a picture of Joe that’s that cool that isn’t just a meme; you can’t. Second, instead of hustling away immediately, shit ass decided to have a moment of showmanship and pump his fist and yell “fight!” I hate that Donald is a good showman, but he is, and denying it won’t change it.
So let’s review, shall we?
Joe has: a really very just okay first time if you forgive the little genocide detail. And probably Parkinson’s or sundowner’s or something. He also has no real strategy left now that pointing out that the fascists are fascist leads to an unacceptable risk of political violence.
Trump has: a terrible awful first term that was a whole COVID ago, a badass picture, a badass moment, the ability to mostly kinda sorta speak in full sentences at a good volume, not bad reaction time tbh, and a bunch of newly sympathetic news coverage, donors, and people ready to join up with the fascists supporting him.
You might read all this and say “fuckin Trump supporter”, and, I mean, good for you, I guess. I’m going to vote for Biden or whoever isn’t Trump on November, but I’m also trying to be realistic about the situation we’re in. The democrat establishment have bunglefucked the situation bad, and I have grave concerns about their ability to get their shit in gear by November. May they prove me wrong, I am not excited about Christian fascism.
I hate how people vote based on who has a cooler picture rather than their agenda.
I fucking hate politics.
People didn’t vote for Biden because they supported his agenda. He was the fifth least-popular candidate in 2020, barely ahead of “Mike” Bloomberg.
The DNC promised favors to the other candidates in exchange for dropping out and endorsing Biden, because in their minds it was better to have a brain-dead candidate than risk nominating a socialist.
And now fascism’s here.
Ok I get all that, like yeah we made all the wrong decisions as far as stopping fascism but have you considered wall street?
Why does no one care about the poor poor ultra wealthy wall street people!? Yeah sure we’re about to see what happens when the world’s largest military is run by Hitler #2, but at least Democrats protected wall street interests!
I actually hoped Bernie would run last time Trumpler won again Hillary. In my eyes, he is competent, intelligent, and has some good ideas. Of course, he was old, and is even older now, and maybe out of touch with the younger gens, but at least better than Biden, and has a nice following.
Also memes.
At this point the US is just a failed state, doing failed state things, because it’s a failed state. The writing’s been on the wall for decades, but even though I expected the dictatorship within my lifetime since I was a teenager, I never expected it to be so god damned stupid. I expected it to be someone cunning and competent. Not a total fucking moron.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how the assassination attempt will effect Bidens chances at victory. I read one take that I agree with, the basic idea is that it won’t effect polling data that much. That’s with the belief that there are no real undecided voters in this election. The key issue is voter turnout per party. And the biggest effect is that this will cause Trump supporters to have high turnout rates. Biden will never do well in that enthusiasm gap, which is a major reason why it would have been best to stick to a single term, can’t undue that though.
There is a unique opportunity at DNC. Assuming Trump will do nothing to “turn down the tempture” Biden can step down as the nominee, claiming his family convinced him to, fearing an assassination attempt. That will flip the entire narrative. There should be an open primary as well. 1 debate with x number of Dems, don’t just nominate Harris, again, democrats need enthusiasm to have a high turnout. That debate will be a huge television event and it will be about the issues, Democrats will win, down ballot even, when they all say tax the rich over and over again.
That’s just me writing a script for this shit. But at this point, fuck it, replace Biden with George Clooney. He’s just as qualified as Trump was in 2016.
And the biggest effect is that this will cause Trump supporters to have high turnout rates.
Could you explain how? Flip it around: if a registered Dem took a shot at Biden would that help his turnout? I’m not so sure.
It depends on how it was handled. Trump got an excellent PR photo, and the dems have been tripping over each other in their rush to support him and civility. This is a massive win for Trump in the eyes of his voterbase. In non-Trump voter eyes, it won’t make any difference, but it doesn’t need to. This election will be won or lost not by policy, but by voter engagement, and Biden has been doing very poorly recently with that regard.
Your mistake is using the usual logic. That flip only works to identify breaks in a logical way of thinking and serves to highlight how something might not make sense in reverse. Except instead of If A then B and if B maybe not A, we have:
If not fascist, vote Biden
vs
Trump.
He is the equation. No if-then statements, no maybes, nothing. Just the equation of Trump.
He is their god-king. If he says drink cyanide, a shocking percentage would do so. Because of the assassination attempt the timeline has shifted. It is no longer a race of one terrible choice and one middle-of-the-road choice, now especially it is about image and the charisma to represent a figure to the people who need to vote. Allow me to lay a short timeline:
Joe announces a second term. This was his chance to tell all of us that if he can’t do it he will step down, for the good of all of us. This creates trust in a leader that understands what is important.
Trump confirms he will run. GOP immediately behind him while playing smoke and mirrors.
Fast forward through mostly normal months if you put aside all the court meetings with Trump at the head.
Joe challenges Trump to a debate. ALL OF US expect Trump to get destroyed. Despite his intelligence, old age is showing and Biden fumbles the ball. Honestly not badly in any other year, he just fumbled it next to one of the biggest imbeciles in recent history and because expectations were high, the fall went further.
However, this is a chance for Joe to recover. Apologize for his performance. Go full Dark Brandon. Explode out onto the news and talk shows. Hire Wendy’s PR team and have then run his social media accounts. Admit he fucked up and then step up strongly and precisely. This is how you turn these situations around in your favor.
He continues to fumble and honestly? It isn’t truly even his fault, until he admits that he is staying in to “do his best”. Now the responsibility is 100% on his shoulders for everything, period. Before this he may have had wiggle room. Unfortunately, that is a statement of ownership. It was not popular.
Then Trump gets shot. Since it happened, best case was him not getting hit at all. Second best was the shooter finding success. Worst case scenario, well…see Trump holding a pose, blood running down the side of his face. Before this moment, Biden was unpopular, though still Biden. There remained ways to regain a foothold. Now even I, who supported him staying in, cannot find a reason for him to do so. He’s lost the image game. A single bullet shifted the scale.
To win now it’s on us to be the leaders. We all need to come out in numbers never before seen. Without our own figurehead, and there are people whose image could easily challenge and outstrip Trump’s, we can now only rely on our collective desire to stop this evil. The problem is the people who can beat him don’t want the job.
They would be heroes.
I just don’t feel they’ll step up.
The saf thing is, Democrats are no longer allowed to call fascists fascist, or say that Trump is dangerous as that is now considered “Violent”
Bro lol this is the comment section for AOC calling out other dems for “resigning to fascism”. She literally did that.
I find myself agreeing with everything you just said.
The fact the political system in the US is effectively captured by two parties that act the same “purple party” on many major issues (genocide for instance) isn’t giving people much choice.
Going into this election where the choices have are Biden vs Trump when quite a lot of people would prefer ANYONE else, but the party system refusing to give them any other options (even primaries) speaks to how poorly this system is representing people
Replacing Biden was always a good idea, and the opposition always had the argument of “Biden is unfit for the presidency yet is still being pushed by his party, therefore the Democratic party is dumb”; but now prominent Democrats have (correctly in my opinion) called for Biden to be replaced. So there’s no going back now. If they don’t, the oppisition now has an even stronger argument: “Biden is unfit for the presidency, members of his own party have called for his replacement, yet he hasn’t been replaced, therefore the Democratic party is really dumb”.
Finding a candidate that energizes voters and creates a big turnout is hard, but not impossible, the 2020 primaries have minted several candidates and raised their profile.
Funnily enough, AOC turns 35 this October, she’s too young by like a few months if i get this right?
She would be 35 by January and that’s what would count in this very hypothetical situation
Just wait to the shit show of the the the August 19th Democratic Convention in Chicago. Pro Israeli and Pro Palestinian groups will be marching. An alphabet soup of causes will also be on the march. It will only add the confusion surrounding the Democratic’s policies, and turn people off voting.
Trump looked composed and almost presidential next to Joe in that debate.
That has nothing to do with Trump and everything to do with CNN allowing the sack of shit to lie his ample ass off for 90 minutes without any kind of pushback from the “moderators”.
Ranked Choice voting will Introduce much needed competition into the electoral process. We should all be pressing our state representatives about making plans to switch away from First-past-the-post voting.
This is a really good summary. The one thing that might help Biden from the assassination is that it could reduce Trump’s campaign schedule. Which is good, because Biden has no defense for the campaign abilities of Trump. There is still almost definitely going to be a point in September/October, where Trump makes more appearances and talks to the press more than Biden has in his term, but it’s probably going to be over about a month or so instead of 2-3 weeks.
Yes. Which is part of why I’m frankly pretty concerned about the possibility that there’s no real path to victory for the democrats here. That debate should have been an easy W for anyone, instead Joe got up on stage, said “heads up, chucklefuck”, and blew his own leg off on national TV.
instead Joe got up on stage, said “heads up, chucklefuck”, and blew his own leg off on national TV.
I feel like that would’ve been more impressive actually if he did that. “I’m joe biden, and this is jackass” style thing. I’ve been saying one single kickflip or backflip outta this guy could save the country or whatever.
Um…yes? Every “oh I’m gonna vote for the Dem” person here somehow either absolves Trump of things OR they even play it up - “he looked presidential.”
That’s just pure garbage and should be called out as such. I’m not the only person thinking there are a few people nervous but a hell of a lot on here that are just muddying the waters as trolls or paid influencers.
Especially when you look at how the media has approached it too. Somehow everything is on Biden but no one calls out obvious lies of Trump, no one talks about his 34 felony convictions, his being a rapist, his hiding and refusal of giving back classified docs which were surely shown to a hell of a lot of people who shouldn’t see them, etc.
But yeah- Biden was bad in one debate and that’s all we’re gonna focus on…
Not to mention the stark difference in actual accomplishments or failures in their admins. What a joke. And if you are serious- you’re doing everyone a disservice by focusing on performative bullshit like they want you to instead of actual competence while in the job.
The debate: honest to fuck, Trump looked composed and almost presidential next to Joe in that debate.
I swear that my wife practically wanted to divorce me for saying this right after. I wouldn’t vote for him with a gun to my head but watching that debate, the Trump on stage that night was the President I’d want other world powers to wrangle with.
So you would want the president of the US to make up obvious lies and name call like a child when dealing with other world powers? Just go up there and sniff his own farts at the UN meeting or whatever?
I know Biden did poorly, but that doesn’t mean we have to act like Trump did well. Any compent politician would have have made him look stupid in that debate, and the same would happen on the world stage.
With no outside context, using just the performances of the two candidates in that debate, one looked less senile than the other. That’s all they’re saying. Doesn’t make the Toupee a good choice, just the less worse one (again, based only on the performance in that debate and ignoring everything else).
This is written by someone completely out of touch with reality.
and now that whole rug has gotten yanked out from under them because if they keep using that rhetoric, it’s going to get someone killed.
It’s not the rhetoric that will get someone killed it’s the very real abuse of the system that goes on right under our noses. What is more convincing that Trump is the next Hitler? Joe, the guy you said is losing his composure, saying that trump is hitler or 6 supreme court justices giving the president absolute immunity from things like, “assisanating political rivals.”
It’s the latter you fool, the rhetoric is on point.
Hey, acting mean and superior is a poor crutch for a bad argument.
If you’d read my post, you’d understand that what I’m saying is that the Democrats are using the fact that they’re not the fascists as their primary outreach and fundraising platform. The problem is that there’s no soft way to deliver that message; you can’t say “hey, these guys are actual Nazis, but it’s like totally cool, don’t shoot them” without undermining your entire messaging. So, now that the democrats have decided to stop saying mean things about the fascists for fear that the fash will get the bash, the messaging has gone from “shut up and vote or we’ll get Hitler” to “shut up and vote”. Forgive me if I don’t find that to be a particularly powerful rallying cry, but I have some concerns about the ability of “just shut up and vote” to get people to the ballot box.
The problem is that there’s no soft way to deliver that message; you can’t say “hey, these guys are actual Nazis, but it’s like totally cool, don’t shoot them” without undermining your entire messagin
As if the only reason to not shoot someone is ideology.
It’s not a rallying cry it’s the reality.
Mean? superior? No, you have no legs. You are just pissing in the pot.
If you will, address my main assertion. That the Supreme Court has exposed the GOP as fasict. I know you can’t because that isn’t why you’re here with your defeatism.
I don’t know what debate you watched, but trump was terrible. Honestly, they both were. But Biden at least stayed on topic and talked about policy. Trump just ranted about random shit the entire time. Biden came out better IMO.
That’s fair, everything was about immigration this, immigration that, and it was upsetting, particularly because he was practically on stage by himself. It was upsetting that Joe couldn’t ever seem to get his head on straight. Even when he did “come alive”, it just felt like “confused old man yells at Wal-Mart employee” more than it reminded me of 2020 Joe.
“senior Democrats” would rather Trump than a progressive. At least Trump is good for their stocks.
These fuckers insider trade and make money no matter which way the market goes. This isn’t it, they just know that no matter who wins the rich will continue to run the country so it doesn’t really matter to them. The only threat to the wealthy ruling class is the left (not liberals, the actual left)
There are several HUGE ‘left’ spaces on Lemmy.
None of them have any advice, none of them are ‘leading the charge’ of reforming the USA.
the only thing I’ve seen them bring to the table is an elevated nose, blind judgement based on delusion, and calls for more violence. Those aren’t the traits of a movement I can support
Are there Liberal spaces on Lemmy where liberals accomplish anything? That shit happens in the real world dawg.
Organize in your local community like leftists in the real world do
I actually did try to run for a local election and have tried to organize unions before.
Neither went very well and for the local office position I actually tried to work with a “progressive” election fund who never wanted to talk politics but just money. Literally told me I was too poor to run and that my dollars would be better spent with them finding better candidates.
It’s a sham not exactly possible to break through without a lot of luck and momentum. They have said age makes you more conservative but it seems to actually just be money and wealth and accumulation of things makes you so.
I think the reason you don’t see more is the “left” is mostly just people poor and tired. The social left liberals above us just like to use our backing while supporting an easier to work with marginalized group that looks better and is easier than solving wealth inequality flavor of the month.
It’s tiring you know?
He is. They own the same stocks in the same companies.
Democrats like immigrants the same reason the Republicans do they just don’t have to pretend to hate them for their base they are replacing the labor with. And will also accept cheap slaves if they can get them.
Democrats are even some of the largest receivers of donations from weapons manufacturers they just more carefully call it “Defense Funds”.
Do not fail to see the upper party member apathy as anything other than acceptable oligarchy capitalism with anger that they will have to try harder on social pandering.
“This kind of leadership is functionally useless to the American people.”
It’s been that way for a long time now. Frankly, I can’t think of a single agenda the Democratic party has rallied behind in recent memory that isn’t not being a Republican. The Democratic leadership is useless, that’s just been better than the malicious alternative.
Edit: I’m getting responses referencing Biden policies or those that are advocated for by a few outspoken Dems. These are not what I’m referring to. The Democratic party as a whole has no message, no mission, no agenda seemingly other than “patch up the damage that the Republicans leave”. No wonder Democratic voters aren’t motivated, we’re not being represented we’re just voting to slow the inevitable decay.
We don’t have universal health care.
The school loan forgiveness was exceedingly niche, and since Biden could have forgiven all student loans unilaterally, I’m not willing to pretend it was a major achievement. The man just rearranged deck chairs on the Titanic.
Yes. But why don’t we have universal healthcare or student loan forgiveness? Could there be another party blocking everything?
Dem: here is a comprehensive student loan forgiveness plan. Vote to help your constituents.
Reps: No.
Leftists:why are the parties the same, LIBERAL?
You’re right, they’re not perfect so they’re complete shit not worth mentioning.
Those are valiant causes, and I am a democrat. But did the party rally behind them? The GOP frequently votes unanimously to gut social spending, strengthen the military, etc, but I wish the democrats did the opposite, unanimously, and voted for every social good we should pass
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/01/senate-repeals-bidens-student-debt-relief-00099682
https://www.newsweek.com/two-democrats-vote-end-bidens-student-loan-cancellation-1803948
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/policy-2020/medicare-for-all/
Promised for day one, never delivered. We need meaningful action, and we need it 4 years ago.
Oh yeah, I remember when we got that health care. Good times. Thanks Obama?
What health care?
Obamacare only covers you if you can afford to be price gouged.
Universal healthcare is not a priority for the Democratic party as a whole despite their voters’ pleas for it. Still only a few outliers in the party seem to advocate for it. Biden himself has been reluctant to embrace it.
And I don’t remember student loan forgiveness being an especially popular platform before Biden took office. Sure it’s helped a lot of people but it feels very much like a, “we’ll take what we can get” policy versus something we’ve been asking for over decades.
You can’t have truly public healthcare without public clinics and hospitals. How many public hospitals have Democrats built or bought lately?
Edit: I’ll see you all at the next thread where you’re complaining about health-related bankruptcy after you downvote me for this post. You morons deserve what you got.
Most recent they passed the Inflation Reduction Act in '21, which gets me 30%* off my solar panels among a bunch of good moves for the country re: medication costs and the world re: global warming, and was voted against by every Republican.
Because of the level of polarization we have today, Republicans that vote with Dems worry about being primaried out of their seat, so the Republicans are against everything the Dems do anyway. It’s impossible not to be defined by the phrase “not that guy” when “that guy” does the opposite of what you do on purpose.
Edit: bump from 20-> 30% Thanks Dempf!
They do realize that they would be the first to go in a fascist coup? The kind Trump’s Project 2025 openly threatens? Right?
In a full blown military coup they would but that’s not the kind of coup Project 2025 threatens. They’ll be one of the last to go. They’ll constantly ask us to donate and vote while doing absolutely nothing to stop it. Controlled opposition.
This is correct. They’ll just be voted out one by one as the polls get more and more corrupt. It will seem like democracy until the bitter end.
Trump says he’ll be a dictator Day 1: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PRpfNJMpHcc
https://youtu.be/eadlfYxElW8?si=pndC5habsI70h9JI
They actually cut off what he said. Watch the first 40 seconds of this video. He said ‘We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator’. He was making a joke.
Fucking vote
