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Don't take it for granted. Hilary lost because of this. Get out and vote.
Hillary lost because she couldn't read the writing on the wall and told everyone she deserved to win because it was her time. She was the worst person on the planet to go against Trump. The GOP spent 30 years demonizing her and she played right into their hands. Biden should have been the candidate then but that is hindsight.
Biden had just lost his son and didn't want the job. He later said he regretted that decision.
It's not just that, also remember that Biden had made a minor career out of losing the Democratic Presidential Nomination before Obama asked him to be VP. Much of the reason for that is that he had the tendency to say dumb shit. Remember all those "Gaffes"?
I don't think Biden could have ever become President before Trump, because we used to have higher standards for what was "Presidential". But once Trump became President, now all the dumb gaffes Biden makes are no longer a liability.
I admit I have been more impressed with Biden then I thought I would. I think a big issue is he is a much better President than he is a candidate for President.
All those "dumb gaffes" are because he has a stutter. It's actually way more impressive how well he's trained himself out of doing it constantly.
They're not all due to his stutter. He didn't stutter when he said this about Obama:
The entire nation regrets that decision.
She absolutely was. And with the pied piper strategy, she basically said who she thought the worst candidate was in the opposition's field, then lost to him.
Yeah, that electoral college really snuck up on her. Just popped out of the blue in 1789, giving her no time to prepare.
EDIT: Ok., that was harsh. I should go easy on her. After all, she just lost her dear friend Henry Kissinger.
That year was probably when we would've gotten "peak" or near-peak Biden, but that was around the time when his other son Beau Biden had died, which I thought was the reason he sat out the Primaries, which might've made them a bit more interesting, but would've had the same effect of shutting Sanders out. The way I remembered it, Biden essentially saved the 2012 Obama campaign against Romney, as Obama had been having a shitty campaign and debate performance up until Biden went up against Paul Ryan and dominated. After that debate, things seemed to turn around and I thought he was a shoe-in for 2016.
Moderates are really really motivated to only be just slightly better than Republicans.
They want to be as corporation/billionaire friendly as possible, so they get as many donations as possible.
It's why Hillary spent money, time, and effort boosting trump and Ben Carson in 2016. There wasn't much difference between her and Jeb Bush, so she didn't think she had a chance at beating him.
The obvious risk was Hillary was/is a horrible candidate and might not have even been able to win against them, which she wasn't.
It's like if the pitcher in a MLB game bet for his team to win, but by less than the spread. He still wants to win, but he keeps throwing softballs over the plate if he starts to win too much.
But that's just a game, this is literally playing with people's lives.
Welcome to US politics.
I could be wrong, but I think this impression comes because they are skewing more towards the mean or average, whereas on social media we are quite far left. So to us, they appear similar to republicans, because we as online users on Lemmy are quite far left. However, in reality Dems are quite left of Repubs.. just not left enough from our point of view because they appeal to the mean American. Am I making sense? I don't think I did a good job of explaining myself.
From what I've heard and seen, a lot of younger voters are disillusioned by the Democrats' stance on genocide. I've heard the comment many are repeating that they are single issue voters when the issue is genocide.
From what I've heard and seen, there's a massive astroturfing effort to discredit Biden over the actions of an allied nation. It's as if a massive propaganda machine is at work that completely ignores the fact that Republicans would have an even worse stance than Biden on this issue.
Charles Manson would make a better US president than Hitler...
Doesn't mean people are going to get hype to go vote for Charles Manson.
And telling people those are the only options will depress turnout.
And when turnout is depressed, republicans win.
So how about we try running someone who actually cares about genocide and will at least stop trying to get the perpetrators even more money while telling their own citizens we're the only first world country that can't afford universal healthcare?
Like, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that would get more votes.
But the people running the Dem party aren't going to just turn down those AIPAC kickbacks if they can get away with "at least we're not republicans, so shut up and vote for another genocide supporter".
They'll always aim for "barely better than a Republican". So let's fucking replace them with people willing to do more than the absolute bare minimum
This is an unpopular opinion and unpopular opinions lose you elections
The real world isn't lemmy.
There are absolutely very important reasons to still vote for Biden, but you can't rely on millions of people to all do the right thing just because it's logical. The person who's running for office ultimately has the responsibility to ensure people want to vote for them. It's just not really useful to blame millions of people when you know that there are statistically for sure going to be disaffected people out of those who need to be motivated. It doesn't even matter whether most voters who would vote for Biden turn out to vote for him - they almost certainly will - because this fight is at the margins, and to win, you have to capture the irresponsible and unreliable people too.
The "but it could be much worse" argument doesn't carry much weight for many people on this issue.
Which is still an ignorant take, because we've only got two realistic options. Bad and worse.
Any complaints otherwise are ignorant at best, if not maliciously deceptive.
The solution isn't "shut up and be grateful we're not worse". It's actually running someone that's good.
We've tried the "shut up you don't have a choice" strategy and that just keeps ending up with republicans in office.
Why not just run good candidates that want to help America if they get in office?
You push the Democratic Party candidate to the left. Supporting Republicans (which is what you're doing if you don't vote for Joe Biden, full stop) isn't going to help anyone and won't get you better candidates in the future. It will literally have the opposite effect. There's a great batch of possible candidates for 2028 (Witmer, Shapiro, Newsome, etc). Sure I'd prefer them over Biden for 2024 but they're not running.
"Vote red no matter who, because Dems are worse" is how trump became the face of the Republican party...
If the Dem party's only standard is "there's a D next to their name" we'll gonna keep getting shitty candidates that lose half the elections to republicans. And even when they do win, nothing gets fixed.
Normally I'd push for primary participation and then begrudgingly voting for the winner of the primary.
But we don't even get a primary because a private organization controls that, and they decided we don't get one.
Will I still vote for Joe?
Sure, I've voted for every single shitty D candidate in the general since I turned 18. But telling people to just shut up and stop complaining about how fucked it is won't fix anything. Hasn't for decades.
And pretending that shitty milk toast candidates don't depress turnout and give Republicans a chance, is like asking why poor people don't just make more money. But you're not going to reach that 1/3 of eligible voters on a political sub on a fringe social media website
The absolute easiest way to get them to vote, is run a good candidate.
So how about you spend your effort communicating that to the Democratic party? That might actually accomplish something....
Although, they're probably just say "shut up and vote for me, at least I'm not a Republican".
Because that doesn't make nearly as much ~~money~~ donations as "Look at how awful the Republicans are."
If the D's ran a real candidate that actually cared about the country, they'd get blasted in fund raising...People like Booker would go broke overnight if we got universal healthcare. Pelosi would lose her ass if we outlawed congressional trading.
We're fucked...irrevocably completely and utterly fucked.
Not really, Bernie and even trump made enough off "small" donations to run effective campaigns.
The difference is small donations from voters don't come with all the perks and kickbacks as the same amount from a single PAC/billionaire/organization.
And as long as the bare minimum is having a D next to your name, grifters are going to run with the D, and get those huge donations because the people making them expect a return.
So yeah...
Those are two great examples of politicians that need to be replaced, and why our standards need to be more than a single letter.
Has anyone tried explaining that if you allow in the people literally trying to take their rights away, they won't get another chance to vote in a politician against genocide?
Like the genocide is awful but it shouldn't make people forget they have very close to home issues currently happening right now.
I hear that excuse every single election and have always found it lacking.
If we always have to wait until after the next election to demand better of the Democrats then we'll never see any change. "Lesser evilism" will only allow the Democrats to continue sliding the overton window to the right.
Even if you're already planning to vote a straight Democrat ticket, don't tell them that. Make them think you're a swing voter they need to pander to.
How are you hearing it every single election? The main issues didn't start popping up (or at least blatantly enough to change voter turnout) until the 2016 election.
Like that's not nearly enough elections in between to hear the excuse every election.
With my ears, of course. Trump isn't the only threat to the Democrat party, just the most recent one.
I don't particularly care about the democratic party threat, I care about the uptick in voting issues, the supreme court, and...you know...that the opposing party is trying to vote in someone who attempted to not give up the office
So you know, the recent ones that a lot of people started voting in about.
If you truly believe that's nothing new, i'll just consider you to be part of that astroturfing described above and ask you to stop wasting my time. Seriously.....
I'm not going to compromise my principles out of fear. I'd rather write in "none of the above" than hitch my wagon to a party that gets campaign donations from corporate bombmakers like Raytheon.
If the Democrats want my vote, they should start acting like it. They need to stop pretending they can coast to victory on "lesser evilism" before they end up repeating all their mistakes from 2016, and the threat of withholding my vote is the only leverage I have.
Stop bullshitting. You'll sit on your morals while a dictator takes over, just being happy you didn't "compromise your morals."
Which ultimately just means doing nothing while the dictator takes over.
Am I bullshitting, or am I applying the only leverage I have over the party?
We can't afford politicians, so the threat of withholding our votes is our only tool for influencing the party.
I advise you to stop being a "safe" voter that will always and forever vote blue no matter who. Even if you're going to vote for Dems anyway, make them think that they need to work for it.
You're bullshitting
I feel like you've had plenty of years to see how that "leverage" is going, and choosing now specifically to try to enforce it is really suspicious.
"Now specifically"? This has been my political messaging strategy since I reached voting age. Feel free to continue lambasting folks for wanting the party to suck less, that seems really effective too. XD
And it's working so well, huh. Just keep doing it! Doesn't matter how many rights your fellow Americans lose (but not you of course, you're not trans or a woman or anything like that)
While implying that Trump, a literal white nationalist authoritarian fascist, somehow doesn't support the genocide of brown people
A lot of people are clueless that Trump is going to be the GOP candidate.
The issue with that is that Republicans hold an even worse position on genocide in multiple ways and would have been gunning for not only Israel killing all Palestinians, but ejecting all Muslims from the US as well. Which they will also totally do if they win the election.
Two fascist parties?
Time to stay home on election day. I refuse to be complicit in the crimes of the State.
If the Democrats want my vote, they can start pandering to me instead of AIPAC.