You Lemmy.ml people asked Biden to step down because he’s old. What did you expect? He stepped down because he’s old just like you wanted, and even endorsed a candidate who doesn’t have any dementia at all. Who did you expect him to endorse, Mao’s zombie?
His age was a known issue 4 years ago, it would have been extra democratic if he had stepped down before the primaries so we could really vote on a candidate.
Democrats def tried to hide his dementia from the public. One of my biggest problems with them. It was only after the debates, when they found out everyone was onto them, that they finally decided to switch him out.
I wanted him to step down primarily because of his support for genocide. Biden was obviously unfit and unacceptable for a ton of reasons, just because his successor doesn’t share one of those problems doesn’t make her automatically acceptable. Its arguable that it would better if the president is mentally unfit, if they’re pursuing an agenda that is fundamentally wrong.
There are third party candidates who support ending the Palestinian genocide by stopping arms shipments, but neither major candidate does.
I have no knowledge regarding a genocide in Crimea or how it could be best addressed, and I believe questioning or examining evidence for any claim of genocide is against .world rules, so I suppose I’ll have to give you the benefit of the doubt, but said claim doesn’t really factor into my calculations.
I don’t consider either question all that relevant.
It’s relevant because those third party candidates are literally, mathematically incapable of reaching 270 electoral votes.
If you vote for one of them, you are not voting. Those two actions will be equivalent this election. And if you don’t vote, and Donald Trump wins, you’re gonna find out real quick what genocide can look like.
I already know what genocide looks like. Are you denying that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians right now?
As I said in another comment, my vote has no influence over the outcome anyway because I don’t live in a swing state, so your argument is moot. Unless you’re trying to tell me that Illinois will be the pivotal state that decides the election.
I have no expectations whatsoever that a third party is going to win this election, obviously. But the idea that it’s impossible for a third party to win is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Given the absolute necessity of unseating the genocidal bourgeois parties, and the fact that nothing is lost by doing it, I can see no reason whatsoever why I wouldn’t vote for a third party over the Democrats.
I’m still proudly voting third party though. I’m not going to fall for the Duopoly pressure. People are finally getting sick of both parties. Now they are starting to do something about it.
Who? The few thousand protest voters? They will never win in our electoral college, it’s quite literally impossible unless a third party completely takes over one of the two major parties (which is not happening this election, so all these protest voters will just elect Trump by default). It’s not pressure, it’s common sense.
Anytime someone claims to be American but mentions third party candidate when voting, I highly doubt their citizenship or whether they are fit to vote at all.
A third party candidate hasn’t won the presidency EVER. A vote for 3rd party is not only a wasted vote, but more often than not it siphons enough votes from the majority candidate to allow the minority candidate to win.
It doesn’t “siphon” votes from the “majority” candidate. You’re assuming that the 3rd party voters would vote for the Dem candidate if the 3rd party candidate didn’t exist but most likely those people just wouldn’t vote at all if that was the case.
I am not fit to vote and neither are you but it doesn’t matter because there is no voter fitness test and instituting one would be anti-democratic what are you a republican?
A third party candidate hasn’t won the presidency EVER. A vote for 3rd party is not only a wasted vote, but more often than not it siphons enough votes from the majority candidate to allow the minority candidate to win.
Lincoln. Lincoln wasn’t on the ballot across the South and won.
Anytime someone claims to be American but mentions third party candidate when voting, I highly doubt their citizenship or whether they are fit to vote at all.
“Anytime someone doesn’t vote how I want, they shouldn’t be able to vote.” Damn we’re really busting out the “If you don’t vote for who I want, you’re a communist!” playbook from Fox News?
My vote is wasted regardless because I don’t live in a swing state. There’s a better chance that my vote will help get a third party on the map next time than than that it will affect the outcome. Unless you forsee an outcome where Illinois goes red and that’s the pivotal state. That fantasy is far more disconnected from reality than anything I believe or aim to achieve.
You can question my citizenship all you want. I regard the US government with hostility and distrust, and I didn’t chose to be born here. I’d rather aim to be a citizen of the world. I watched both parties gleefully participate in the mass slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan while most people didn’t give a shit because it was out of sight and out of mind, and it was “ok” because the Democrats were slaughtering people “the right way.” I remember when they promised to protect whistleblowers and end mass surveillance and then continued it and they hunted Snowden to the ends of the earth for revealing their crimes. I realized back then that the ideology of lesser evilism was complete bullshit and would keep us trapped with the same policies forever.
You Lemmy.ml people asked Biden to step down because he’s old.
I asked him to step down because for the last 50 years he’s been an incredily bad democrat and never did deserve any of our support. His support of the far right murderous fascist zionist splinter group. His consistent racist “gaffes”. His lack of support for reproductive rights that he blamed on his catholicism. His stupid lawmaking about the drug wars, 3 strikes, and civil asset forfeiture. His 3 attempts to cut social security. His fascist-light policing viewpoints. His willingness to wade into peoples lives about gay rights when he should have just left everyone the hell alone and shut his piehole. His support and backing of a grifter lobbyist son. His lack of support for ending the filibuster, which just enables the GOP to hold the government hostage every few months. His lack of support for expanding the supreme court. His tired embrace of the worst of the GOP members. His outrageous increasing of police funding in response to Defund&Reallocate. His backstabbing Obama on negotiations he should have kept out of. His consistent lack of support for health care reform and a public option. His utter shafting of Anita Hill in the Clarence Thomas confirmation trials, which should have been a layup for anyone competent, which gave us one of the worst Supreme court justices in our countrys history. In the last 50 years look at every wrong turn this country has taken, and You’ll find Bidens ugly mug leading the charge. The man is always wrong about nearly everything, and he never misses a chance to make a bad deal or sell out his party. He’s an idiot’s idiot and he never deserved any of our support and breaks everything he touches, including our party and now the entire western world order.
“Never underestimate Joe Biden’s ability to fuck everything up”.
–Barack Obama
Obama also urged Biden in 2016 and again in 2020 not to run.
This is the guy we’re getting all sentimental about? You really think Joe Biden is the best the dems had to offer? That just tells me that many people dont actually read the news, miss their deceased grandpa and will vote for a huckster on personality vibes alone. Biden was about to lose to Donald Trump. Think about that for a minute. How bad do you have to lose the faith and support of your own party’s voters to lose to a man like that. Biden could only have possibly competed against someone as bad as Trump, and Trump could only have competed with someone as bad as Biden.
Drag didn’t care how bad Biden is as long as he’s not Trump. Drag is glad Kamala is running instead, because she’s better than him. But drag would have been happy to elect Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man as president.
You’re alright Drag.
:-). And thank you for letting me vent so excessively and not calling me on it. I needed that. I’m a lifelong Dem straight ticket voter who cant stand Biden. Or Harris.
And I hate how we are trapped in both parties fielding bad candidates with no end in site anytime soon. Harris will try to run twice and after that they are queuing up bloody-hands mealy-mouthed Blinken.
Drag is trying to avoid venting about Harris until after the election. Preventing the fourth reich is more important than all of drag’s concerns about the Harris campaign. Drag doesn’t like it, but drag doesn’t like protesting under the hot sun or arguing with transphobes either, and drag does those. This is one more sacrifice for the cause.
Drag thinks if Trump loses badly enough, the GOP could collapse. It could schism and maybe neither side will be able to stand up to the Democrats. When the GOP isn’t a threat anymore, we can either vote Greens or split the Democrats in two to make a left party. We can pass electoral college reform and ranked choice voting. We can make a democracy. And we can gather weapons and organise all the while and try to achieve a revolution. But all of that requires Trump to be gone.
We need to help Harris so we can move beyond her. She’s a stepping stone on the path to the future. We’re gonna stomp on her head and get one step closer to having someone like AOC in the white house.
I’m somewhat baffled by him stepping down from running, but remaining president for the entire year. It seems like whoever is running for president, Kamala should have already taken over. It also feels weird having her just get inserted at the end of the process like that’s a normal thing, but I can’t really complain as I voted no preference anyways.
Once you recognize the last century of US foreign policy will you get something else to talk about?
Is this suddenly a new topic for you? Any reason? Why is it that I never heard you during Reagan or gwb’s term? Any reason why this shit was quiet during obama’s two terms and what were you doing during trump’s admin?
You want to make this of all things a make or break for Harris why?
I’m aware of and participated in those protests. The difference was that no one called democrats genocidal when republicans lied their way into a war.
Yet now the democrats are being called genocidal for basically being in power after decades of policy and foreign relations were already set. Very different from lying about yellow cake. It’s almost like there’s a nuance being lost in your bullshit rhetoric.
I’m glad people are interested in what’s happening in Gaza. Fucking finally. But I’d prefer actual empathy to this false bullshit being pushed by nefarious (sometimes state) actors to sow doubt among Democratic voters with the clear goal of electing the guy who will let Netanyahu turn it to dust and start WW3.
He stepped down because he saw that America took his gaffes at the debate more seriously than he thought they should, not because he feels he’s not up to the job. Honestly, our way of selecting Presidents sucks. An objective look at this admin versus the last admin would make that decision easy – Biden has set himself up for success by hiring competent underlings rather than yes-men, and he managed to reverse killer inflation and handle a global pandemic, while fighting against one tyrant. He’s not perfect. Nobody is. He is open to criticism over his handling of Palestine and Israel and we sure can criticise his unwillingness to hold Netanyahu as accountable as he wants to handle Putin. But the other guy set up Biden for the last 4 years of bullshit with his utter mismanagement of the country, and plans on making things ten times worse. Biden looked at the polling, at the bullshit settling down on his administration and on him personally, and said he’d step back so Harris could run.
As for why Harris got the nod? There was less than a month until the General Election, virtually all of the Primaries had already been had, and despite all the bullshit being peddled about him, he won the Primary. Harris was on his ticket. They wanted to transition easily into the General without a bajillion crazy little questions about the Biden/Harris campaign, its warchest, and avoid a bloodbath between various Democratic Party factions all screaming for their guy/gal just in time for Trump to trounce the weakened candidate in the general, they leveraged the same process that would have happened had that nutbar that shot at Trump taken a shot at Biden and didn’t miss – the VP becomes POTUS. And this allows Harris to not have to jump through hoops for ballot access nor start from scratch with campaign finances, which unfortunately are STILL important for getting into the White House.
Sadly, the bullshit shifted to Harris and we’re back where we were before. Does the hard-left WANT Trump in office, because it sure fucking looks like they do.
Maybe he also realized he was too close to it. All his speeches were in contrast to the other party’s candidate, and I still support that he’s much fitter to lead than the other party’s candidate. But if you step back from just the one on one contest, it’s a completely different story ……
Got proof of this? I mean, only once in my lifetime has a third party cracked 10% of the vote share. Easily 90% of the votes given have gone to a guy or gal with an -R or -D after their name for President.
I didn’t say anything about third party, but you’re right that maybe my attempt at not degenerating into political name calling made it unclear.
To be more blunt:
Biden is clearly more fit to be president than Trump and likely will be until the day he dies, and several weeks later
for myself, I focused on this. In the competition between the two, Biden is clearly the better choice and the most fit to be president.
Historically, sitting presidents have had a strong advantage in an election. Biden is not only a sitting president but has been elected over Trump
This makes Biden a clear choice …. But all the noise about his age did make me sit back and reconsider whether that was true in general or in the context of this competition. If there was not so much on the line and not so much recent toxic history, I would agree that I prefer someone else, someone younger and more energetic. I thought Biden was perfect in the centrist position attempt to bring this country back together, and he did as much as anyone could.
But Harris came out swinging, showing energy, youth, life, and even strayed toward progressive (I don’t know if that’s still true). If I can step back from the competition between two old men, take a larger picture, ignore all the toxic blather, I can see that she is indeed a candidate I would prefer.
The guy’s not dumb, maybe he sees it too. It must have been the toughest part of his term, always battling for reality over toxic stunts, blatant lies so it’s all too easy staying in the trenches, focusing on slugging it out, when he’s the only sane person in the room. Maybe Biden stepped back and said, yeah, I’m tired of this and there actually are other choices.
Fair point. I did misread ‘one on one’ to mean Democrat vs Republican with ‘stepping back’ to mean viewing Third Parties.
I totally agree with your reasoning, as it was my reasoning. The guy is old, not a debate. He’s a gaffe machine, too. Some people pushed the meme he was losing a step, but while I saw him as old, I didn’t see him as washed up or senile. The guy just doesn’t know how to NOT put his foot in his mouth (I share a lot in common with him on that regard!!!), and there were an awful lot of bad-faith actors saying that he wasn’t just old, but senile as well. They’re still around, saying he’s too old and senile to run the show now, and he should resign.
I think how Harris is being treated by various people on and offline should be a key indicator that Biden’s resignation wasn’t the end of the bullshit factories. They each have their own desires for their choice of President, and they can’t even agree with each other who that choice is. Some will scream for Sanders. Others will scream for Stein. Some particularly pigeon-holed ones will argue for Fruit, despite her being mathematically eliminated from 270 before the first vote is cast. And lets get real. There are all to many of them who will tell you “IMMA FOR JILL” or some other tiny Third Party candidate while actually wanting Trump. Some think that a Trump presidency will lead them to the Progressive Promised Land. Others…are here to ensure we’re so busy infighting that we can’t put a unified resistance up, so they can get the Handmaiden’s Tale they desparately want.
If Biden gave up because America is dumb, I don’t blame him. In 2016, I tried hard to get out and get to Canada or New Zealand. But now Canada and New Zealand are overrun or about to be overrun by dumb people too. :|
No, the hard left doesn’t want Trump. Drag is hard left and wants Kamala in office. lemmy.ml users aren’t hard left, they’re leninists, which is moderate left. About the same amount of left as social democrats.
Leninists are not hard left wing. And fascist / project 2025 are not hard right wing. The thing to understand with authoritarians. Is that they are only hard authoritarian. Nothing more nothing less. Anything outside of that can be changed at a snap of the fingers.
Need proof? Look at any government based around the concepts of marxist Leninism. Brutally socially oppressive. Creating heavily stratified classes and an inescapable Nation. Things pretty much counter to every actual left-wing ideology. Or look at any Western capitalist nation. Every single one currently fending off populist fascists. Who want to oppress minority groups and use the government to rigidly stratify Society under the boot of an inescapable nation. Pretty much counter to all the talk of Liberty and freedom of right wing ideologies . All because their actual hard right liberal governments refuse to compromise and Budge left in any fashion to address the needs of the people.
Fascism is the dictionary definition of far-right politics. You’d be hard pressed to name a similarly prominent political ideology that is even father to the right than fascism. Likewise, Leninism’s revolutionary ideals place the ideology in the far left, despite its implementations not achieving those ideals. An ideology being authoritarian doesn’t make it moderate on the left-right scale. Instead, the more authoritarian governments tend to be hard left/right instead of moderate left/right.
I have to disagree about right-wing ideology being about “liberty and freedom”. That’s the realm of libertarianism, not right-wing politics. Libertarians in the U.S. tend to be right-wing, but libertarianism and right-wing politics are distinct ideologies. Right-wing politics emphasize traditional values, nationalism, and hierarchial social structures.
Drag thinks he’s still got the same legislation skills as always, it’s just the campaigning skills that went because his speech disorder from childhood came back. So they picked someone without dementia to do the campaigning, and he’ll be out of office before the dementia hits his prefrontal cortex like it has with Trump. It’s a sensible decision.
Instead of “incumbent endorses someone new”, some were hoping for more of a “primary process to select a candidate” type deal, in the American tradition.
They expected daddy Putin to not send them to the front lines. They were never going to go “oh cool we got what we wanted we’ll shut up now” because it was never about Biden’s age at all, it’s about hurting Democrats. Same thing with Gaza. They don’t give a fuck about Palestinians. They just want to hurt Democrats.
They don’t give a fuck about Palestinians. They just want to hurt Democrats.
Where did you get that fantasy take from? Got anything at all to back that up?
I can tell you how I see it. I have never, and would never vote for any republican. They are not serious people and they are to be countered, ostracized, not associated with, ridiculed. But bad dems threaten everything as well, and also might lead us to being locked in the current bad voting selections pattern we keep being fed by monied interests in our party. The dumbing down and dilluting of the party platform under milktoast idiot centrists like Biden and Harris may also effectively disolve our party. Thats worth fighting. And its worth withholding support as well, if only to try to shake the party back on some sort of track. If you dont see the logic in that, its fine. I dont need your permisison on how I will vote, or what I beleive in. No one does. Do your own thing, but maybe dont namecall people who are probably your allies and just going about it in a different way than you. Theres nothing down that road but an even worse off party than the shitshow we have going right now because of centrist incompetence.
Your last 19 posts are about Trump vs Harris, and you are going to say people are bullying people in the comments? You are clearly encouraging it and trying to get people to see things the way you want them to… bullying others about how they vote one might say?
I don’t write the articles, I just post articles I find interesting. I believe people should vote for who they want to vote for. I’m not influencing anyone’s vote. The articles I post are readily available on news sites.
You’re right, the bar was set so low that only James Cameron could find it, but the Dems did clear the bar. And that’s why the lesser fascist will be getting my vote this November.
But we also want the party to be better. Real policies that might just make a difference in our lifetimes, not compromising with the party of greater fascism, and a minor token gesture towards not using taxpayer money to fund genocide, as a treat.
I mean, downvote all you want but they’re right. No one picked Harris except for Joe Biden. The primary was half assed at best, and there was no democratic process to select the Democratic party nominee. You’re insane if you don’t think that Biden’s dementia wouldn’t have surface during an actual primary process. We could have easily avoided this Trump apocalypse if the Democratic establishment let us have a real primary.
(pssst, the downvotes mean the community largely disagrees with you. If we were discussing anything lighter than politics you could just scoff and disagree and claim someone is correct, but that doesn’t stand up to the scrutiny of the people you share the world with. Sorry to tell you, you’re wrong and your childish political stance and the subsequent tantrum your ilk throws when called out on it isn’t helping you gain comrades or appear to be any less lost in the sauce. Get better.)
The dnc occurred, the reps voted en masse for Kamala.
The reps were nominated by the same process that has happened for over a century. The timeline was different but the process still occurred and you’re lying about it.
The reps that voted for Kamala were nominated in the same fashion as every US election you’ve ever been alive for. It was a televised event where everyone in the party voted and agreed. Stop this bullshit.
Were Biden to have been incapacitated, Kamala Harris would step in for him. We made this choice back in November 2020, and it’ll hold true until January 2025.
Do you expect the Dems to have a contested Primary with less than one month to go until the General? How nice. Everyone will be tearing themselves apart in order to appeal to the various different factions that make up the Democratic Party, weakening each other until the final canidate emerges with a depleted warchest and a whole bunch of bitter people whose favoured candidate DIDN’T win? And assuming Harris, the VP and assumed successor for Biden, doesn’t win this contested primary, has to return the warchest Biden built up?
And Trump will be waiting in the wings, with a building warchest and backers setting up GOTV. Again. Does the far-left WANT Trump to win, because man, that’s what it looks like to me!
Because your phrasing is disingenuous. You imply nefariousness where none exists. He ran thinking he was the best choice, until he flubbed the debate, and … get this…he got the majority of delegates. 14 million people voted for him. And he won the Primary. Are you saying you and your ilk are more important than the 14.5 million people who cast their ballots for him (you couldn’t manage 2 million votes between your three alternatives to Biden…), and the 3.9k delegates he won? That their expressions of preference should be thrown out so you can have a bruising 4 week primary in August while Trump just uses your various attacks against each of the candidates and racks up hundreds of millions of campaign contributions that he doesn’t have to spend until September? And at best, we just use up Biden’s campaign warchest trying to fend your candidates off, and at worst, we have to start over with some relative unknown with a depleted warchest, and no access to the Biden/Harris warchest? And go through the whole rigamarole of qualifying for state ballots so close to election day? Not to mention the extra costs of running a second set of primaries because you couldn’t accept the fact that you lost?
We had a primary. Biden won that primary. There’s no nefarious plan to install Harris. And the only reason that Harris has to run at all is because you lot showed up here and shat all over Biden over and over and over and over and *four hours later * over again. You lot being sore loser hard-leftists, Greenies pissed that they don’t have more of a say in government, paid actors and disinformation peddlers hired by Republicans and Russians to fragment the Left coalition like has happened time and time again (stupid ‘fall in love’ party), and of course those same Russians and Republicans who directly inject BS into our political discussion. And just to be clear, I’m not speculating on which you are, just pointing out that’s what your coalition is, and that’s why we’re here where we are right now.
I’m just using the language our press uses for enemy nations, like calling it the Biden regime, because it’s what I do when warmongers are president, it’s what I did for Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and here we are now.
casual xenophobia
I’m not speculating on which you are, just pointing out that’s what your coalition is, and that’s why we’re here where we are right now
Like I’ll cop to being Russian but you need to understand it’s getting really insulting how often liberals go on about ‘the Russians’ like we’re some hive mind
You know the cold war is over, you guys won, plenty of Russians left when the economy went to shit and in the end Putin is the result of your foreign policy goals. I have a deep hatred for both, because of how they have impacted me personally, and it really makes me resent when people act like anyone naysaying the current regime is just doing it because they’re Russian and hypnotized by Putin.
Biden quit the race because he had no path to victory. He was 100% going to lose. The betting odds have shifted against Harris and now Trump has a 55% chance of winning. Why? Because she comes across as a cop. Because she supports a genocide. Because she cant give a beleiveable speech that makes her seem relatable. Because she stupidly brags about owning a gun. Because she has drifted right and probably will continue to, looking to get votes that dont exist while she loses the left. This is another case of the dem establishment shitting the bed, same as they always do, and losing to a clear nutcase. Why is the Democratic party engaged in supporting a far right wing war? Its for some $$$, right? So hows that truning out? Not good? THEN WHY DID SHE TAKE THE MONEY? Why is our party so stupid.
It’s especially dumb because democratic primary votes overwhelmingly chose Clinton. It was never really a race at all, pretty much from start to finish she crushed Sanders. So this idea that the dnc picked her and everyone was forced to vote for her is just hogwash.
I could quibble about Clinton overwhelmingly defeating Sanders, but I really don’t have to. The actual numbers were 55.2% Hillary Clinton, 43.1% Bernie Sanders. Clinton won a straight majority of votes – not a plurality, a majority. And I say this as a Bernie Sanders voter who caucused (not voted in a primary, caucused, as in went to a school and stood in a classroom to be counted) for Bernie Sanders. Sanders came in second place because more Democratic Primary voters picked Clinton than Sanders. It wasn’t stolen. Clinton won that fair and square. Contrary to all the various little voices that crept out of the woodwork, and I say this, again, as a voter who caucused for Sanders, more Americans wanted a moderate candidate than risk a Progressive that could honestly be tarred as a Socialist.
That said, I would have LOVED to see Crony Capitalism vs. Euro-Socialism as an election in the USA. Too bad, it was Fascism vs. Crony Capitalism…
Wow, The comments here are an absolute shitshow.
Be as upset as you want with Obama or Biden. But remember, neither of them are on the table for this next election cycle.
Fortunately their hand-picked successor is on the ballot!
You Lemmy.ml people asked Biden to step down because he’s old. What did you expect? He stepped down because he’s old just like you wanted, and even endorsed a candidate who doesn’t have any dementia at all. Who did you expect him to endorse, Mao’s zombie?
His age was a known issue 4 years ago, it would have been extra democratic if he had stepped down before the primaries so we could really vote on a candidate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u585Lq47Gmg
No, my entire point is that it is not hindsight, as we knew it 4 years ago.
Democrats def tried to hide his dementia from the public. One of my biggest problems with them. It was only after the debates, when they found out everyone was onto them, that they finally decided to switch him out.
I wanted him to step down primarily because of his support for genocide. Biden was obviously unfit and unacceptable for a ton of reasons, just because his successor doesn’t share one of those problems doesn’t make her automatically acceptable. Its arguable that it would better if the president is mentally unfit, if they’re pursuing an agenda that is fundamentally wrong.
Do you believe there is a candidate for president who will end the genocide in Palestine? And also end the genocide of Ukrainians in Crimea?
There are third party candidates who support ending the Palestinian genocide by stopping arms shipments, but neither major candidate does.
I have no knowledge regarding a genocide in Crimea or how it could be best addressed, and I believe questioning or examining evidence for any claim of genocide is against .world rules, so I suppose I’ll have to give you the benefit of the doubt, but said claim doesn’t really factor into my calculations.
I don’t consider either question all that relevant.
It’s relevant because those third party candidates are literally, mathematically incapable of reaching 270 electoral votes.
If you vote for one of them, you are not voting. Those two actions will be equivalent this election. And if you don’t vote, and Donald Trump wins, you’re gonna find out real quick what genocide can look like.
I already know what genocide looks like. Are you denying that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians right now?
As I said in another comment, my vote has no influence over the outcome anyway because I don’t live in a swing state, so your argument is moot. Unless you’re trying to tell me that Illinois will be the pivotal state that decides the election.
I have no expectations whatsoever that a third party is going to win this election, obviously. But the idea that it’s impossible for a third party to win is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Given the absolute necessity of unseating the genocidal bourgeois parties, and the fact that nothing is lost by doing it, I can see no reason whatsoever why I wouldn’t vote for a third party over the Democrats.
Why do I even engage. Have fun.
I’m still proudly voting third party though. I’m not going to fall for the Duopoly pressure. People are finally getting sick of both parties. Now they are starting to do something about it.
Who? The few thousand protest voters? They will never win in our electoral college, it’s quite literally impossible unless a third party completely takes over one of the two major parties (which is not happening this election, so all these protest voters will just elect Trump by default). It’s not pressure, it’s common sense.
Anytime someone claims to be American but mentions third party candidate when voting, I highly doubt their citizenship or whether they are fit to vote at all.
A third party candidate hasn’t won the presidency EVER. A vote for 3rd party is not only a wasted vote, but more often than not it siphons enough votes from the majority candidate to allow the minority candidate to win.
It doesn’t “siphon” votes from the “majority” candidate. You’re assuming that the 3rd party voters would vote for the Dem candidate if the 3rd party candidate didn’t exist but most likely those people just wouldn’t vote at all if that was the case.
I am not fit to vote and neither are you but it doesn’t matter because there is no voter fitness test and instituting one would be anti-democratic what are you a republican?
Lincoln. Lincoln wasn’t on the ballot across the South and won.
“Anytime someone doesn’t vote how I want, they shouldn’t be able to vote.” Damn we’re really busting out the “If you don’t vote for who I want, you’re a communist!” playbook from Fox News?
My vote is wasted regardless because I don’t live in a swing state. There’s a better chance that my vote will help get a third party on the map next time than than that it will affect the outcome. Unless you forsee an outcome where Illinois goes red and that’s the pivotal state. That fantasy is far more disconnected from reality than anything I believe or aim to achieve.
You can question my citizenship all you want. I regard the US government with hostility and distrust, and I didn’t chose to be born here. I’d rather aim to be a citizen of the world. I watched both parties gleefully participate in the mass slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan while most people didn’t give a shit because it was out of sight and out of mind, and it was “ok” because the Democrats were slaughtering people “the right way.” I remember when they promised to protect whistleblowers and end mass surveillance and then continued it and they hunted Snowden to the ends of the earth for revealing their crimes. I realized back then that the ideology of lesser evilism was complete bullshit and would keep us trapped with the same policies forever.
Leave then.
Fucking quiet part out loud rofl
Even tho most of Lemmy hates third parties, I love your comment. I’m a third party supporter! Thank you!
Fair point!
I asked him to step down because for the last 50 years he’s been an incredily bad democrat and never did deserve any of our support. His support of the far right murderous fascist zionist splinter group. His consistent racist “gaffes”. His lack of support for reproductive rights that he blamed on his catholicism. His stupid lawmaking about the drug wars, 3 strikes, and civil asset forfeiture. His 3 attempts to cut social security. His fascist-light policing viewpoints. His willingness to wade into peoples lives about gay rights when he should have just left everyone the hell alone and shut his piehole. His support and backing of a grifter lobbyist son. His lack of support for ending the filibuster, which just enables the GOP to hold the government hostage every few months. His lack of support for expanding the supreme court. His tired embrace of the worst of the GOP members. His outrageous increasing of police funding in response to Defund&Reallocate. His backstabbing Obama on negotiations he should have kept out of. His consistent lack of support for health care reform and a public option. His utter shafting of Anita Hill in the Clarence Thomas confirmation trials, which should have been a layup for anyone competent, which gave us one of the worst Supreme court justices in our countrys history. In the last 50 years look at every wrong turn this country has taken, and You’ll find Bidens ugly mug leading the charge. The man is always wrong about nearly everything, and he never misses a chance to make a bad deal or sell out his party. He’s an idiot’s idiot and he never deserved any of our support and breaks everything he touches, including our party and now the entire western world order.
“Never underestimate Joe Biden’s ability to fuck everything up”. –Barack Obama
Obama also urged Biden in 2016 and again in 2020 not to run.
Anyone remember this BS from our lord and savior Joe Biden?
https://theintercept.com/2023/05/23/biden-debt-ceiling-harry-reid-mitch-mcconnell/
This is the guy we’re getting all sentimental about? You really think Joe Biden is the best the dems had to offer? That just tells me that many people dont actually read the news, miss their deceased grandpa and will vote for a huckster on personality vibes alone. Biden was about to lose to Donald Trump. Think about that for a minute. How bad do you have to lose the faith and support of your own party’s voters to lose to a man like that. Biden could only have possibly competed against someone as bad as Trump, and Trump could only have competed with someone as bad as Biden.
Drag didn’t care how bad Biden is as long as he’s not Trump. Drag is glad Kamala is running instead, because she’s better than him. But drag would have been happy to elect Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man as president.
You’re alright Drag. :-). And thank you for letting me vent so excessively and not calling me on it. I needed that. I’m a lifelong Dem straight ticket voter who cant stand Biden. Or Harris.
And I hate how we are trapped in both parties fielding bad candidates with no end in site anytime soon. Harris will try to run twice and after that they are queuing up bloody-hands mealy-mouthed Blinken.
Drag is trying to avoid venting about Harris until after the election. Preventing the fourth reich is more important than all of drag’s concerns about the Harris campaign. Drag doesn’t like it, but drag doesn’t like protesting under the hot sun or arguing with transphobes either, and drag does those. This is one more sacrifice for the cause.
Drag thinks if Trump loses badly enough, the GOP could collapse. It could schism and maybe neither side will be able to stand up to the Democrats. When the GOP isn’t a threat anymore, we can either vote Greens or split the Democrats in two to make a left party. We can pass electoral college reform and ranked choice voting. We can make a democracy. And we can gather weapons and organise all the while and try to achieve a revolution. But all of that requires Trump to be gone.
We need to help Harris so we can move beyond her. She’s a stepping stone on the path to the future. We’re gonna stomp on her head and get one step closer to having someone like AOC in the white house.
I’m somewhat baffled by him stepping down from running, but remaining president for the entire year. It seems like whoever is running for president, Kamala should have already taken over. It also feels weird having her just get inserted at the end of the process like that’s a normal thing, but I can’t really complain as I voted no preference anyways.
Your “baffling” has nothing to do with Biden and everything to do with you…
Once it’s the Harris regime responsible for airstriking refugee tents are you going to at least have fun at brunch?
Once you recognize the last century of US foreign policy will you get something else to talk about?
Is this suddenly a new topic for you? Any reason? Why is it that I never heard you during Reagan or gwb’s term? Any reason why this shit was quiet during obama’s two terms and what were you doing during trump’s admin?
You want to make this of all things a make or break for Harris why?
bruh i’m talking about shit going on right now, and I was out in the streets getting gassed by cops in 2020 what the fuck are you talking about?
There were insane protests against the Iraq war, if you’re really that ignorant of them you were probably just doing what you are now, then.
I’m aware of and participated in those protests. The difference was that no one called democrats genocidal when republicans lied their way into a war.
Yet now the democrats are being called genocidal for basically being in power after decades of policy and foreign relations were already set. Very different from lying about yellow cake. It’s almost like there’s a nuance being lost in your bullshit rhetoric.
We all know why.
I’m glad people are interested in what’s happening in Gaza. Fucking finally. But I’d prefer actual empathy to this false bullshit being pushed by nefarious (sometimes state) actors to sow doubt among Democratic voters with the clear goal of electing the guy who will let Netanyahu turn it to dust and start WW3.
He stepped down because he saw that America took his gaffes at the debate more seriously than he thought they should, not because he feels he’s not up to the job. Honestly, our way of selecting Presidents sucks. An objective look at this admin versus the last admin would make that decision easy – Biden has set himself up for success by hiring competent underlings rather than yes-men, and he managed to reverse killer inflation and handle a global pandemic, while fighting against one tyrant. He’s not perfect. Nobody is. He is open to criticism over his handling of Palestine and Israel and we sure can criticise his unwillingness to hold Netanyahu as accountable as he wants to handle Putin. But the other guy set up Biden for the last 4 years of bullshit with his utter mismanagement of the country, and plans on making things ten times worse. Biden looked at the polling, at the bullshit settling down on his administration and on him personally, and said he’d step back so Harris could run.
As for why Harris got the nod? There was less than a month until the General Election, virtually all of the Primaries had already been had, and despite all the bullshit being peddled about him, he won the Primary. Harris was on his ticket. They wanted to transition easily into the General without a bajillion crazy little questions about the Biden/Harris campaign, its warchest, and avoid a bloodbath between various Democratic Party factions all screaming for their guy/gal just in time for Trump to trounce the weakened candidate in the general, they leveraged the same process that would have happened had that nutbar that shot at Trump taken a shot at Biden and didn’t miss – the VP becomes POTUS. And this allows Harris to not have to jump through hoops for ballot access nor start from scratch with campaign finances, which unfortunately are STILL important for getting into the White House.
Sadly, the bullshit shifted to Harris and we’re back where we were before. Does the hard-left WANT Trump in office, because it sure fucking looks like they do.
Maybe he also realized he was too close to it. All his speeches were in contrast to the other party’s candidate, and I still support that he’s much fitter to lead than the other party’s candidate. But if you step back from just the one on one contest, it’s a completely different story ……
Got proof of this? I mean, only once in my lifetime has a third party cracked 10% of the vote share. Easily 90% of the votes given have gone to a guy or gal with an -R or -D after their name for President.
I didn’t say anything about third party, but you’re right that maybe my attempt at not degenerating into political name calling made it unclear.
To be more blunt:
This makes Biden a clear choice …. But all the noise about his age did make me sit back and reconsider whether that was true in general or in the context of this competition. If there was not so much on the line and not so much recent toxic history, I would agree that I prefer someone else, someone younger and more energetic. I thought Biden was perfect in the centrist position attempt to bring this country back together, and he did as much as anyone could.
But Harris came out swinging, showing energy, youth, life, and even strayed toward progressive (I don’t know if that’s still true). If I can step back from the competition between two old men, take a larger picture, ignore all the toxic blather, I can see that she is indeed a candidate I would prefer.
The guy’s not dumb, maybe he sees it too. It must have been the toughest part of his term, always battling for reality over toxic stunts, blatant lies so it’s all too easy staying in the trenches, focusing on slugging it out, when he’s the only sane person in the room. Maybe Biden stepped back and said, yeah, I’m tired of this and there actually are other choices.
Fair point. I did misread ‘one on one’ to mean Democrat vs Republican with ‘stepping back’ to mean viewing Third Parties.
I totally agree with your reasoning, as it was my reasoning. The guy is old, not a debate. He’s a gaffe machine, too. Some people pushed the meme he was losing a step, but while I saw him as old, I didn’t see him as washed up or senile. The guy just doesn’t know how to NOT put his foot in his mouth (I share a lot in common with him on that regard!!!), and there were an awful lot of bad-faith actors saying that he wasn’t just old, but senile as well. They’re still around, saying he’s too old and senile to run the show now, and he should resign.
I think how Harris is being treated by various people on and offline should be a key indicator that Biden’s resignation wasn’t the end of the bullshit factories. They each have their own desires for their choice of President, and they can’t even agree with each other who that choice is. Some will scream for Sanders. Others will scream for Stein. Some particularly pigeon-holed ones will argue for Fruit, despite her being mathematically eliminated from 270 before the first vote is cast. And lets get real. There are all to many of them who will tell you “IMMA FOR JILL” or some other tiny Third Party candidate while actually wanting Trump. Some think that a Trump presidency will lead them to the Progressive Promised Land. Others…are here to ensure we’re so busy infighting that we can’t put a unified resistance up, so they can get the Handmaiden’s Tale they desparately want.
If Biden gave up because America is dumb, I don’t blame him. In 2016, I tried hard to get out and get to Canada or New Zealand. But now Canada and New Zealand are overrun or about to be overrun by dumb people too. :|
No, the hard left doesn’t want Trump. Drag is hard left and wants Kamala in office. lemmy.ml users aren’t hard left, they’re leninists, which is moderate left. About the same amount of left as social democrats.
Relative to what, Maoists? Ultraleftists? Leftcoms?
Anarchists.
Is Anarchism when one supports the US government?
Calling Leninism “moderate left” is like calling Project 2025 “moderate right”.
Drag apologises. Drag will follow your advice and call Leninism far right.
Leninists are not hard left wing. And fascist / project 2025 are not hard right wing. The thing to understand with authoritarians. Is that they are only hard authoritarian. Nothing more nothing less. Anything outside of that can be changed at a snap of the fingers.
Need proof? Look at any government based around the concepts of marxist Leninism. Brutally socially oppressive. Creating heavily stratified classes and an inescapable Nation. Things pretty much counter to every actual left-wing ideology. Or look at any Western capitalist nation. Every single one currently fending off populist fascists. Who want to oppress minority groups and use the government to rigidly stratify Society under the boot of an inescapable nation. Pretty much counter to all the talk of Liberty and freedom of right wing ideologies . All because their actual hard right liberal governments refuse to compromise and Budge left in any fashion to address the needs of the people.
Fascism is the dictionary definition of far-right politics. You’d be hard pressed to name a similarly prominent political ideology that is even father to the right than fascism. Likewise, Leninism’s revolutionary ideals place the ideology in the far left, despite its implementations not achieving those ideals. An ideology being authoritarian doesn’t make it moderate on the left-right scale. Instead, the more authoritarian governments tend to be hard left/right instead of moderate left/right.
I have to disagree about right-wing ideology being about “liberty and freedom”. That’s the realm of libertarianism, not right-wing politics. Libertarians in the U.S. tend to be right-wing, but libertarianism and right-wing politics are distinct ideologies. Right-wing politics emphasize traditional values, nationalism, and hierarchial social structures.
Drag thinks he’s still got the same legislation skills as always, it’s just the campaigning skills that went because his speech disorder from childhood came back. So they picked someone without dementia to do the campaigning, and he’ll be out of office before the dementia hits his prefrontal cortex like it has with Trump. It’s a sensible decision.
You seem to have a better window inside Biden than I do
Instead of “incumbent endorses someone new”, some were hoping for more of a “primary process to select a candidate” type deal, in the American tradition.
Only been a tradition for 50 years. Relatively young compared to the age of many political dealmakers.
They expected daddy Putin to not send them to the front lines. They were never going to go “oh cool we got what we wanted we’ll shut up now” because it was never about Biden’s age at all, it’s about hurting Democrats. Same thing with Gaza. They don’t give a fuck about Palestinians. They just want to hurt Democrats.
Where did you get that fantasy take from? Got anything at all to back that up?
I can tell you how I see it. I have never, and would never vote for any republican. They are not serious people and they are to be countered, ostracized, not associated with, ridiculed. But bad dems threaten everything as well, and also might lead us to being locked in the current bad voting selections pattern we keep being fed by monied interests in our party. The dumbing down and dilluting of the party platform under milktoast idiot centrists like Biden and Harris may also effectively disolve our party. Thats worth fighting. And its worth withholding support as well, if only to try to shake the party back on some sort of track. If you dont see the logic in that, its fine. I dont need your permisison on how I will vote, or what I beleive in. No one does. Do your own thing, but maybe dont namecall people who are probably your allies and just going about it in a different way than you. Theres nothing down that road but an even worse off party than the shitshow we have going right now because of centrist incompetence.
Great post, friend! Glad there are more people standing up to people who try to bully others about how they vote. Stay strong!
Your last 19 posts are about Trump vs Harris, and you are going to say people are bullying people in the comments? You are clearly encouraging it and trying to get people to see things the way you want them to… bullying others about how they vote one might say?
I don’t write the articles, I just post articles I find interesting. I believe people should vote for who they want to vote for. I’m not influencing anyone’s vote. The articles I post are readily available on news sites.
That’s like saying news channels don’t influence anyone’s vote by broadcasting what information they choose. It is all influence.
You’re right, the bar was set so low that only James Cameron could find it, but the Dems did clear the bar. And that’s why the lesser fascist will be getting my vote this November.
But we also want the party to be better. Real policies that might just make a difference in our lifetimes, not compromising with the party of greater fascism, and a minor token gesture towards not using taxpayer money to fund genocide, as a treat.
I mean, downvote all you want but they’re right. No one picked Harris except for Joe Biden. The primary was half assed at best, and there was no democratic process to select the Democratic party nominee. You’re insane if you don’t think that Biden’s dementia wouldn’t have surface during an actual primary process. We could have easily avoided this Trump apocalypse if the Democratic establishment let us have a real primary.
(pssst, the downvotes mean the community largely disagrees with you. If we were discussing anything lighter than politics you could just scoff and disagree and claim someone is correct, but that doesn’t stand up to the scrutiny of the people you share the world with. Sorry to tell you, you’re wrong and your childish political stance and the subsequent tantrum your ilk throws when called out on it isn’t helping you gain comrades or appear to be any less lost in the sauce. Get better.)
They’re not and you’re lying.
The dnc occurred, the reps voted en masse for Kamala.
The reps were nominated by the same process that has happened for over a century. The timeline was different but the process still occurred and you’re lying about it.
The reps that voted for Kamala were nominated in the same fashion as every US election you’ve ever been alive for. It was a televised event where everyone in the party voted and agreed. Stop this bullshit.
Can you help me find kamala on my primary ballot from this year? ( I voted no preference)
Kamala Harris is Joe Biden’s running mate.
Were Biden to have been incapacitated, Kamala Harris would step in for him. We made this choice back in November 2020, and it’ll hold true until January 2025.
Do you expect the Dems to have a contested Primary with less than one month to go until the General? How nice. Everyone will be tearing themselves apart in order to appeal to the various different factions that make up the Democratic Party, weakening each other until the final canidate emerges with a depleted warchest and a whole bunch of bitter people whose favoured candidate DIDN’T win? And assuming Harris, the VP and assumed successor for Biden, doesn’t win this contested primary, has to return the warchest Biden built up?
And Trump will be waiting in the wings, with a building warchest and backers setting up GOTV. Again. Does the far-left WANT Trump to win, because man, that’s what it looks like to me!
Yes I know.
Hand picked successor. Why is everyone so mad that I’m calling it what it is?
If you’re so uninformed you didn’t know who Biden’s running mate was when you voted, that’s your own damn fault.
Because your phrasing is disingenuous. You imply nefariousness where none exists. He ran thinking he was the best choice, until he flubbed the debate, and … get this…he got the majority of delegates. 14 million people voted for him. And he won the Primary. Are you saying you and your ilk are more important than the 14.5 million people who cast their ballots for him (you couldn’t manage 2 million votes between your three alternatives to Biden…), and the 3.9k delegates he won? That their expressions of preference should be thrown out so you can have a bruising 4 week primary in August while Trump just uses your various attacks against each of the candidates and racks up hundreds of millions of campaign contributions that he doesn’t have to spend until September? And at best, we just use up Biden’s campaign warchest trying to fend your candidates off, and at worst, we have to start over with some relative unknown with a depleted warchest, and no access to the Biden/Harris warchest? And go through the whole rigamarole of qualifying for state ballots so close to election day? Not to mention the extra costs of running a second set of primaries because you couldn’t accept the fact that you lost?
We had a primary. Biden won that primary. There’s no nefarious plan to install Harris. And the only reason that Harris has to run at all is because you lot showed up here and shat all over Biden over and over and over and over and *four hours later * over again. You lot being sore loser hard-leftists, Greenies pissed that they don’t have more of a say in government, paid actors and disinformation peddlers hired by Republicans and Russians to fragment the Left coalition like has happened time and time again (stupid ‘fall in love’ party), and of course those same Russians and Republicans who directly inject BS into our political discussion. And just to be clear, I’m not speculating on which you are, just pointing out that’s what your coalition is, and that’s why we’re here where we are right now.
I’m just using the language our press uses for enemy nations, like calling it the Biden regime, because it’s what I do when warmongers are president, it’s what I did for Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and here we are now.
Like I’ll cop to being Russian but you need to understand it’s getting really insulting how often liberals go on about ‘the Russians’ like we’re some hive mind
You know the cold war is over, you guys won, plenty of Russians left when the economy went to shit and in the end Putin is the result of your foreign policy goals. I have a deep hatred for both, because of how they have impacted me personally, and it really makes me resent when people act like anyone naysaying the current regime is just doing it because they’re Russian and hypnotized by Putin.
Biden quit the race because he had no path to victory. He was 100% going to lose. The betting odds have shifted against Harris and now Trump has a 55% chance of winning. Why? Because she comes across as a cop. Because she supports a genocide. Because she cant give a beleiveable speech that makes her seem relatable. Because she stupidly brags about owning a gun. Because she has drifted right and probably will continue to, looking to get votes that dont exist while she loses the left. This is another case of the dem establishment shitting the bed, same as they always do, and losing to a clear nutcase. Why is the Democratic party engaged in supporting a far right wing war? Its for some $$$, right? So hows that truning out? Not good? THEN WHY DID SHE TAKE THE MONEY? Why is our party so stupid.
Good for you! Pointing out inconsistencies as if they were national truths!
You almost look like you’re pointing out a conspiracy BUT oh I’m so sorry, there is none!
Point to the dnc! Not a png!
Edit: to mention you didn’t vote you just now complained in a way to convince others to not vote. Thats scummy.
What? I voted
Kamala is Bidens hand-picked successor. How is that untrue?
Simple she was nominated by the DNC. She was not coronated and Biden didn’t step out and say “Kamala” magically creating the bullshit you describe.
Votes were cast by a variety of reps nominated by the same process that has existed throughout your whole lifetime.
What part of that confounds your brain?
It’s the same thing that brought on the first Trump presidency! The DNC tells you who you will vote for and you will like it!!
DNC supporters have Stockholm syndrome!
Man I’d hate to jump to conclusions but that’s a lot of divisive comments from a 24 day old account.
It’s especially dumb because democratic primary votes overwhelmingly chose Clinton. It was never really a race at all, pretty much from start to finish she crushed Sanders. So this idea that the dnc picked her and everyone was forced to vote for her is just hogwash.
I could quibble about Clinton overwhelmingly defeating Sanders, but I really don’t have to. The actual numbers were 55.2% Hillary Clinton, 43.1% Bernie Sanders. Clinton won a straight majority of votes – not a plurality, a majority. And I say this as a Bernie Sanders voter who caucused (not voted in a primary, caucused, as in went to a school and stood in a classroom to be counted) for Bernie Sanders. Sanders came in second place because more Democratic Primary voters picked Clinton than Sanders. It wasn’t stolen. Clinton won that fair and square. Contrary to all the various little voices that crept out of the woodwork, and I say this, again, as a voter who caucused for Sanders, more Americans wanted a moderate candidate than risk a Progressive that could honestly be tarred as a Socialist.
That said, I would have LOVED to see Crony Capitalism vs. Euro-Socialism as an election in the USA. Too bad, it was Fascism vs. Crony Capitalism…
Welcome to Lemmy! How has your first few weeks been?
It’s great! I can speak my mind and vent my frustrations without getting banned by snowflake mods for not sharing the ideas of the hive-mind!
Look at the guy who submitted the article. It was 100% a call to arms for tankies, accelerationists, and other bad actors.
But NPR is the one who actually wrote the article. So wouldn’t the blame be on them? OP didn’t write it, he just posted it.
Now you’re using this line for posts that aren’t even yours? This is one tired line.
What I said was accurate. Thanks!