Gretchen Whitmer responds to calls by some Democrats to vote ‘uncommitted’ in Michigan’s primary on Tuesday
Gretchen Whitmer, the Michigan governor, pushed back on calls to not vote for Joe Biden over his handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict, saying on Sunday that could help Trump get re-elected.
“It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that any vote that’s not cast for Joe Biden supports a second Trump term,” she said on Sunday during an interview on CNN’s State of the Union. “A second Trump term would be devastating. Not just on fundamental rights, not just on our democracy here at home, but also when it comes to foreign policy. This was a man who promoted a Muslim ban.”
Whitmer, who is a co-chair of Biden’s 2024 campaign, also said she wasn’t sure what to expect when it came to the protest vote.
Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat who is the only Palestinian-American serving in Congress, urged Democrats last week to vote “uncommitted” in Michigan’s 27 February primary.
Gonna cut her some slack since the last time trump was president his sycophants almost kidnapped and executed her.
Maybe vote uncommitted in primary for pressure since that has literally no effect on the main election?
On the one hand, this is true, you gotta vote for the lesser of two evils.
But also, there are only two candidates.
So now it’s this shitty situation where US voters just have to vote Biden no matter what, he can do anything and there will never be consequences electorally. And i really feel like there hsould be consequences for supporting a genocide.
I don’t like our current system but I don’t believe she is wrong. We have a two party system. Either the GOP or the DNC candidate will take the electoral college.
I hate that we are still voting against something. The Democrats need to run a candidate that we WANT to vote for (like Obama was imo) but we aren’t there in this election so we can either protest and vote 3rd party, vote for Trump, or vote for Biden.
You all think the Democratic voters are much smarter than their counterparts? Thats are All products of the same sale broken education system.
Americans need to demand a preferential voting system
Vote blue: destroying Palestine.
Vote red: destroying Ukraine.
Republicans are not going to help Palestine in any way. Much less than Democrats.
Vote red: destroying Ukraine.
And Palestine.
*Vote red: destroying Ukraine AND Palestine
Yeah, good point.
She couldn’t be more wrong. Not voting for Biden will show him what he could lose in the General. Primaries are the more important than the general in this way.
No. Here we go again. White people created Trump, let them fix it. Stop undermining and pinning this on muslim voters. They are still a minority. Their votes didn’t stop Trump from getting elected in 2016 and it won’t stop him now. And asking them to vote for Genocide Joe is the evil thing here. There are 30.000 corpses out there that can’t and won’t be ignored.
Then stop bombing children, it’s that fucking simple you fucking ghouls.
Now, if the Democrats had picked someone who actually supported popular Democratic positions, there wouldn’t now be a massive chasm between him and their base on various burning issues they now have to bridge during what may, ironically, in fact be one of the more important elections of our lifetimes.
Support for Palestinians is not even close to being a majority opinion among Demcratic voters. Most Dems that are gen X and boomers tend to (broadly) support Israel, while support for Palestinians is strongest amongst zoomers and younger millennials.
Do you understand that, in regards to a general election, this is a problem?
There’s not any position that he could take that doesn’t have huge potential drawbacks for his core voters, while Trump’s supporters overwhelmingly support Israel’s war against Palestinians.
He could simply not unilaterally and proactively send them more weapons. He could not veto UN resolutions. While I think we should be taking a moral stance on genocide, I’ll take simply not being actively complicit.
…Which costs him independents and Republican-leaning voters, and hence the election.
Whether I like the system we have right now or not, politics is strategic. Right now, it’s not good strategy. If he was just starting his 2nd term, then he could–and should–absolutely to just that. But right now he doesn’t have sufficient political capital to cut off funding to Israel and win an election.
Independents also oppose Israel’s actions. You didn’t even need to open the links, I highlighted that for you. Holy fuck skittish liberals, stop fucking abandoning everything for imagined Republican crossovers.
Democrats don’t pick their candidates, the wealthy donors and senior members do. Which is why we always end up with a centrist and empty promises. Money in politics is a cancer.
No, we always end up with a centrist because a vast majority of voters are nowhere near as left-wing as the people who flock to Reddit and Lemmy. The American public is electing who they support and believe in, and it sounds to Lemmy leftists like the rest of America is robbing something from them because they never meaningfully interact with people on other parts of the ideological spectrum. Whether you realize it or not, a sizeable majority of American voters do not think or vote like you do.
Which is why I’ve given up on actually being happy with my government: I’m a weirdo and most Americans actually like this shit.
A majority of Americans have been unhappy with their government almost every single year since Nixon was President. So no, most Americans don’t actually like this shit. It’s just that given the problems we’re currently facing and the fact that most Americans don’t like this shit, a huge majority of them either blithely disagree with people who think like you, or actively and violently oppose people who think like you. A majority of America simply has different priorities, even if they ostensibly like progressive ideas, and that’s the reality we’re stuck with until public opinion shifts in a different direction or on-the-ground conditions change.
And I’m not gonna live long enough to see that.
A lot of black people died before the Civil Rights Movement. A lot of LGBTQ+ people died before gay marriage was legalized. A lot of women died before their full integration into the workforce. A lot of political outsiders died before the first nationally-binding primary system was implemented in 1972. All of those people died either hopeful that change would come or resigned to the fact that it never would, yet here we are.
Public opinion can and does change. It takes time, and progress is intermixed with periods of backsliding, but change is certainly possible. I think the American experiment will eventually collapse by popular vote, but I hope I can see a few cultural, economic, environmental, and philosophical victories notched between now and then, just as I’ve witnessed a few big ones since I was born.
Cool take, see you after the flopped election when you’re back here screaming that leftists single handedly tanked the election for Biden. 🤷
I will eat this thread printed out on a sheet of paper after elections in November if Biden loses
Not my take, I brought sources. Feel free to read them if you want to get outside of your bubble for a bit.
People really will argue there are no left leaning voters and also leftists are why Democrats can’t win elections because the non existent voters don’t vote.
Shocking that aiming at the apathetic middle fence sitters doesn’t seem to work when clearly that the argument is that it does. In which case it doesn’t matter that Biden isn’t liked by leftists cause he will win in a landslide for getting all those centrists and centrist conservatives right?
I’m with you dude. I don’t get how there can be this argument that Democrats don’t need leftists and shouldn’t try to even bother getting their votes but also are being ruined by greedy lefties not voting. It’s a fucking paradox which means they need to actually give a shit and aim for the left.
And their democracy is at stake. Just shut up and vote D like a good peon and leave them to make their billions.
Those are who the Democratic Party represents. They are the Party. If you want to pay membership dues and show up to meeting locals, that’s fun and cute and all, but the donors and senior members make all the important decisions above the local level, and local power brokers generally have Party locals all sewn up, too.
Just ignoring that small donors exist and add up…
The DNC doesn’t like them tho. Large entities giving huge amounts of money involves, dinners, fancy fundraisers, trips, and all types of situations the money spreads around where it shouldn’t.
Small donors just want common sense politicians who are actually going to try and help Americans. Large donors want corporations to pay less taxes if were lucky. AIPAC wants billions a year and unquestioed support.
So large so ors and small donors want opposite things, and since large donors are more likely to personally enrich the people running the party, the people running the party decided that’s who they go with.
Even if it means Dems are less likely to win elections.
It costs more money to get ten million $1 donations than it does to get one $10,000,000 donation. You have to advertise, put up a website, collect donations, and possibly pay service fees for the charges. One giant novelty check from a billionaire means more of that money goes into their coffers.
It’s the same reason websites have advertising rather than memberships: Ad dollars are cheaper to get.
It costs more money to get the $10M donation, but it’s paid for by taxpayers rather than the candidate.
Lol
You think thos 20k a plate fundraisers cost zero?
The difference is the in person schmoozing with all those donors. The people running the party want to be paid to attend shit like that and having wealthy people suck up to them
I think getting $19,000 out of $20,000 is better than getting $0.90 out of a $1 donation, yes. It’s called cost-of-revenue.
But you’re right about the schmoozing. The donors love that shit. But there’s also massive armies of political operatives whose livelihood depends on getting paid a ton of money to repeat facts back at the candidates.
Advertisers, analysts, pundits, news orgs, and a ton of other people rely on elections being both as expensive and as frustrating as possible. That way they get a ton of money, and sell a ton of eyeballs.
Sure, if you’re making up random numbers anything can be justified…
But talking to someone who does that isnt something a lot of people are going to want to do bud.
Right, exactly. Sure, the Dems have a bunch of formal structure, and yes, you can participate in it, and if you persuade the decision makers inside the party (who are industry tools more often than not), then yes, you can have an influence. But if you want to challenge them on something genuinely democratic, like calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, which 76% of the Democratic base is in support of, then all of a sudden the elitist liberalism comes out and we all have to get in line behind our august statespeople, who know infinitely better than us measly citizens…
It’s what Bernie has been saying for decades.
The first step is replacing neoliberals with progressives. We can’t fix anything while they’re in power, because they’re the problem
Which is why the DNC fights harder against progressives than republicans. Losing to republicans just isn’t a big deal to them, they know in 4-8 years they’ll be in power again, and they’ll be a shit ton of donations to Dems because of it.
If they lose to progressives…
That could be the end of the gravy train forever.
The more people understand that, the sooner it happens.
That’s why the neoliberals demand absolutely loyalty to Biden.
The DNC has the state infrastructure and most federal and state-level campaigns tied so deeply into their infrastructure there’s no real hope of replacing them.
Local politics are a tiny bit more open-ended, but again, the stakes are lower and local governments are explicity subordinate to states. Cities and counties can’t do much if the state doesn’t like it.
I have no idea how you fix this situation up, but as I see it, whatever the solution is has to look like making the DNC and its infrastructure obsolete. I don’t see this happening inside the Democratic Party.
The DNC has the state infrastructure
…
The DNC is not the state parties…
The state parties exist independent of the DNC, but due to how funding is supposed to trickle down, the state parties do kind of have to listen to them.
And while the state parties are in charge of their primary votes, the DNC can choose to ignore them.
Which is what happened when NH Dems refused to break NH state law so that Biden wouldn’t have to lose the first primary after NH picked progressive over party favorite in 2016 and 2020.
It’s confusing, but please try to learn more about our poltical system.
I’m noticing lots of Bidens supporters are incredibly opinionated, they just don’t know what they’re talking about about. When they do, they finally start understanding how fucked up we are and that if we dont act soon it’s too late.
It’s hard enough when one party is antidemocratic, if both are…
Americans probably believe that if more Germans voted for Hindenburg in 1932 that WW2 wouldn’t have happened. Look, if you really believe that you are voting to stop fascism with this election it is too late, Fascism is created by material conditions not elections. The United States has the material conditions to be a fascist state and it will come no matter what you do. If you have elections, eventually like 1933 they will simply be ignored. You can’t vote to change the material conditions that lead to fascism you must destroy that political system and start over.
Voting uncommitted is a fine thing to do during the primary. It shows the party that people are displeased with how the government is handling the Gaza situation.
Sitting out an election in Michigan is a bad idea. If you’re in a safe state, go wild. Just not Michigan.
Objectively correct take.
You can validly hate Biden for the handling of Gaza. But not voting for him is just helping the Fascists win.
Swallow your pride. Do your duty at the ballot and then make the real changes by organising and protests.
More objectively correct take:
Thanks to the political-parties highjacking governing-the-country,
they can commit any crime or abomination, whatsoever, and you only can choose between them, because the rigged-system won’t permit anyone to have any alternative to what the incumbent political-parties offer.
There: fixed it for you.
You know 3rd parties run all the time right? We even have multiple senators right now that are independents
Okay, so then, do your duty, vote for biden, then work to support ranked choice voting?
Why do you think the neoliberals running the DNC will let ranked choice happen?
FPTP is the only reason neoliberals and Republicans can get elected, while they control both parties, we’ll never get rid of it.
To get ranked choice, progressives first have to replace neoliberals, and then win so many elections it doesn’t matter what Republicans want.
RCC isn’t the cure, it’s what we do after we win. Because it’s not going to happen until after we win.
For anyone confused or refuting this in their mind, look up the DNC’s history on ranked choice and the efforts they’ve used to stop it. The only effective legislation passed in a few states was done by citizens with outside state help.
Any reason it can’t be done by referendums brought forward by the voters. Just need so rich Hollywood types to put up money and support.
It’s complicated and I could go into details about every nuanced situation for a few hours. A few highlights,
There are 24 states that do not provide for statewide citizen-initiated ballot measures (link)
Alaska for some reason is my favorite example
Ballot Measure 2 supporters spent nearly $7 million and campaigned for a year and a half ahead of the election (outside state support). Brett Huber, campaign manager of the leading vote-no group, said his team “had a short amount of time and a lot less money, and we tried our best” (opponents to RCV). Ballot Measure 2 has received the support of 50.55% of Alaska’s voters (link)
So its slightly possible, with millions of dollars from outside state support, years to campaign, and catching the main political parties unaware of your movements.
No. It’s not on the voters to show up no matter what. It’s on the politicians to be someone we want to vote for. We already did “vote blue no matter who and pressure them for change later.” And now we’re funding a genocide. That’s over. Now it’s pressure time.
Absolutely correct. “Vote blue no matter who” got us here. The idea failed.
Zionism can be equated to fascism. Biden has stated multiple times that he is a Zionist. Neo-liberal fascists are already in power and they are destroying the left. you are saying do your duty at the ballot by saying vote this way or you are wasting a vote (that doesn’t actually count anyway because the pop vote doesn’t decide the presidency). I will do my duty by not partaking in sham elections for a two party state that I don’t have any faith in whatsoever to deliver anything they promise. Because they have no obligation to fulfill anything they say they will do to get into office.
They aren’t destroying the left, there just has never been a meaningful left in America.
Sure that’s why FDR never won in an absolute landslide.
It’s why none of the last successful Democrat presidency runs over the last 2+ decades have been based on progressive reform and no Democrat would run with a slogan like “Change we can believe in” with only one outlier being the most recent election based on a distinct aversion to fascism.
America has never created national parks, new deals for farmers, or held up a man who was against war during the Cold war.
Nah. Left just doesn’t exist.
national parks that still rob native peoples of their land? is that progressive to you? new deals for farmers, on stolen land? don’t act like america is anything to be proud of, even the leftest leaning presidents still upheld the empire.
Better than drilling on it. You can’t go back and undo history. It’s happened. It’s a shit take to just show it was someone else’s land. It always is. We are all living in someone else’s house and something else’s environment, so I’m and so forth.
Yes we can be better in the future and should aim for that but just screaming that it’s all crap is really derivative of every history of everything.
Its a shit response to say that everybody has had land stolen. Especially when those peoples are still alive. So if we are to be better, then we need to acknowledge that there is still justice undone. And again these native peoples are still here, they aren’t gone. Native Hawaiians are actively being poisoned due to the US military’s ignorance and neglect of their own infrastructure. Democrats aren’t talking about that are they? Hawaii was illegally annexed but I’m sure Democrats vacation there just as much as Republicans. They are still fighting for rights to their land and anyone in Congress or the White House would say they can go fuck themselves.
Yes I’m actually fully in agreement that native Hawaiians are being pushed into extinction but that’s part of the now that needs to be fixed. Actions have to be taken for the current issues and there may and very usually is history to navigate within because it does matter but you can’t just ask for history to change we need to figure out solutions for now.
And yeah rich people of all parties aren’t going to be particularly interested and it’s obvious our government doesn’t work right. Your original point that national parks aren’t progressive is bad because even though stolen they are protected wild lands for hundreds of years. The new deal was a huge help to failing farms that are literally needed to feed people. We are facing inequality of massive magnitudes and climate change that is going to cause farming issues of the future, and climate refugees and economic refugees. We have to work with that now, looking at what the future we see from our choices with enough remembrance of the past but not clinging to it.
Unless you just want to be angry.
Edit: also my point is that eventually no matter what someone else will take your land whether they are your progeny or your replacement. It’s never your land or your stuff. It’s just temporary.
As if this isn’t happening across the globe. American politics is not the only domain infested with the neolibs
You’ll just be forfeiting your vote. The same reasoning can be heard in any country come election time, but in truth you’re only making a gesture and its effects are contained in your mind. If you don’t vote, even though all you said is true, this election system is a sham, etc. you’re still helping Trump in the short term and the harm he will do to women, foreigners, anybody who’s not rich, and the american society at large. Gestures, symbols and statements are good, but not at this price. I live across the world but if I could vote in the american elections, I would, and I’m not even part of any of these endangered demographics. I suppose you aren’t either ?
And furthermore, it is not just a gesture. Or at least its as much of a gesture as voting. Its effects are demonstrably not just “contained in my mind” because it is having an obvious effect on you and judging by the 16 upvotes on the comment, perhaps I have inspired or emboldened people to be just as critical as I am being. But you will say we are stupid or foolish or whatever you need to say. I say the fool is the one that continues to perform the same behaviour with no results and then tries to convince people to not do anything different. Look how worried they are of losing their power that they have to tell people that if you don’t vote for us, its back to the trump. what a lovely threat from the people that supposedly care about us more than trump. i know they don’t, i know trump doesn’t care. they don’t answer to us and you know it.
I am an intersection of multiple demographics you mentioned and if you were any of them, you would know that biden and the democratic party has not done anything meaningful for any of them. Roe could’ve been codified, but he didn’t. biden could’ve expand the court and add new justices, but he didn’t. biden could’ve already secured a cease fire, but he hasn’t. biden spat on the rail workers asking for one week sick pay. said nope, fuck you. he also has done practically nothing about amazons union busting. biden didn’t give a shit about east palestine. flint michigan still doesn’t have clean water. he could be creating legislation to protect trans kids and adults, but doesn’t care. so what exactly is your argument about the oppressed demographics having better lives under democrats?
Think of it this way: Vote for Biden. Not because you support any war, because you support being able to harass the man for another four years. Don’t let him leaving office leave you with regrets!
I refuse to vote for someone who supports genocide. I’m conflicted about it because it helps Trump, but I simply cannot vote for Biden. Gaza is part of it, but he’s broken his promises.
He said he would halt the border wall construction and instead expanded it and had a photo-shoot at the border. He used the same exact loopholes Trump did to deny and turn away asylum seekers at the border.
He said he would make the Saudis a pariah state for chopping up a journalist and then he signs billion dollar arms deals.
He makes a big deal out of Russian war crimes when 3x more civilians have died in a few months in Gaza than the entire 2 years since the war started in Ukraine.
He went and pretended like Navanly was a hero. He met with Navanly’s family. The guy who organized and marched with neonazis in Moscow and referred to Muslims as “cockroaches” that needed to be exterminated.
It’s such a ridiculous level of hypocrisy I cannot tolerate.
If Biden, who we know is better than Trump and whom the current also genocidal RNC cower behind, loses, what will your opinion of Trump be in four years? This is a big picture situation and I’d rather the chance to fix things with Biden in a second term. He has kept many promises and we have been able to pressure him into certain positions. Vote for Biden now in order to have a chance to fix things later. That or the RNC takes over and the U.S. heavily steps into tyranny and fascism. That’s the writing on the wall.
One leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
The other potentially stains your hands.
I do understand your position. I just feel it’s a righteous stance at the wrong time.
i grew up as an illegal immigrant from latin america. trump’s comments against latinos (murderers, rapists, etc) and the whole xenophobic border wall thing basically caused me to write him off from the beginning
i will never vote for trump because i can’t support a guy who pushes this type of rhetoric (and like you said, that eventually becomes policy. look at roe v wade)
but i also cannot justify voting for biden. if we’re being honest, i still haven’t 100% decided what i’m gonna do but i’m thinking probably 3rd party unless something dramatically changes between now and november
Voting for Biden because forcing him to be president is elder abuse, and he deserves it
This is the best take I’ve ever heard tbh
he a little confused but he got the spirit
Biden is definitely confused, but he doesn’t have the spirit.
He keeps ranting about how he wishes republicans we’re more like Nixon, Reagan, and HW Bush…
I know you don’t have 50 years of Senate experience, but you understand they weren’t great guys with integrity…
Right? You get that right?
Please tell me people under 70 don’t think those three were fine now.
I know the Overton window keeps getting dragged right by neoliberals, but have they really convinced people those three had integrity and everything was fine back then?
They weren’t calling Biden confused, they were calling the commenter confused.
Biden may be old but he is clearly perfectly capable of doing the job and will most likely be just as capable again.
Saying Biden is “perfectly capable”…
Have you watched him speak?
Like, he doesn’t do it often, and for good reason, but the only way someone can say what you just said without intentionally lying, is if they’re ignoring their eyes and ears and believing his staff that as soon as a camera isn’t pointed at him, Biden suddenly becomes half his age.
If I link any recent video of Biden acting confused, you’re going to claim it’s a one time thing. No matter how many videos I link, you’ll keep claiming it only happens in every video I link.
So how about this?
Why don’t you help me and everyone else feel comfortable with Biden?
Link a single video of him as president speaking for more than 3 minutes without fucking something up?
He’s the freaking US President, if you can’t find a video 3 minutes long of him not getting confused, maybe that means he is confused all the time, the admin is hiding him, and all their claims of what he’s like is bullshit.
Now keep in mind you’re not just saying he’s “good enough” at 81, you’re saying he’ll stay “perfectly capable” until 85.
Have you watched him speak?
I have, yeah. He has a speech impediment. He’s had it his entire life. That’s not confusion.
As someone with an actual speech impediment I’ve just started blocking people who say a childhood stutter can reappear 60 years later and cause you to mix up names and just go blank, but never actually stutter.
I just can’t believe anyone used logic to get there.
This comment has a better shot of anything else to get me to vote for him instead of abstaining the presidential and just voting down ballot. And before anyone flips their shit, I don’t live in swing state. My vote literally can not matter less.
