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The only voters that matter in this election are the moderates. We will decide the winner in November. The Hard Left and Right will vote for their party's candidate, but neither can ensure the Oval Office without moderate support. I look forward to the debate, mainly to see how Biden handles himself without a teleprompter. I already know Trump is going to spew word salad.
Maybe someday (in my wet dreams) I'll have a ranked-choice vote. Then I won't have to base my vote on the lesser of two evils. That's unfortunately the way things are in our two party dominated political system. It's another election where I have to vote to keep the worst contender from winning.
Tell me who the "hard left" is.
I'm curious.
He means people who can hear ''the US is a democracy'' without shitting their pants.
I don't need you putting words into their mouth.
I asked OP.
Not you.
OP doesn't seem to care to answer this question, so other people are trying to fill in answers as best they can.
I like mozz's answer. The Hard Left is an amorphous concept that depends on the individual and their opinion in general. For some of us, they are the most progressive end of the left-right axis, motivated by working to protect the most disadvantaged in society. Many of these look at Project 2025 and the Trump administration of 2017 through 2020 and come to the conclusion that their priorities are best served with Biden in office and Trump on the sidelines, but quite a few get blinded by the Gaza situation and think that somehow letting Trump burn it all down will help them politically. Unfortunately, with how divided American society is, it won't take many people voting third party or staying home, especially in Swing States, to swing the election Trump's way.
Of course, there are people who think that the Hard Left is anyone left of Atilla the Hun, or at least anyone left of the individual in question. OP peaced out so we're left speculating on them, but I suspect from their wording, the Hard Left is anyone left of themselves. And thus, the OP is being clued in that the Hard Left is NOT blindly voting like Biden like the Hard Right is blindly voting for Trump. Maybe it'll be an eye-opening experience. Sorry, I can't wave a magic wand and make OP answer this, though. That would be nice.
Serious question: do you not already see that trump is a calamity, possibly causing the fall of the Republic? Biden sucks (I’m voting for him), but these two candidates are incomparable. How have you not disqualified trump already?
You don't live in a rural area, do you? Yeah, Trump is a trainwreck. I won't vote for anyone so antithetical to what is right. Biden is currently the lesser of two evils. My point is that I'm voting -against- Trump. I'm actually hoping Biden does terrible in the debate, allowing another candidate to become a contender. I'd rather vote for someone I actually want to be president.
Biden is borderline senile. He's like a well-meaning but incompetent father. His party stands for many things I totally disagree with. I can't buy gas-powered tools to maintain my orchard because of Democrat "one-size-fits-all" regulations. Instead, I'm paying thousands for electric tools that need multiple batteries. They do the work slower, and that means more man-hours of labor. You see that as higher produce prices.
Every year I torch thousands of pounds of wood from the 3 acres of forest that I'm required to manage. I could use it to heat my home, but CARB (controlled by Democrats) won't let me have an outdoor boiler. Instead I use electricity that comes from non-renewable resources and burn the wood in a big pile every spring, creating 10 times the pollution of that boiler and consuming 3 days of my time. The only other option for us rural folk is to haul it to the dump and pay $300 a truckload. And Democrats are holding up the biomass power project in my town over pollution concerns. That facility would give us a place to take green waste, reduce our fire danger, and probably lower our electric utility rate.
The fire danger here is directly a result of Democrat-led forest management - or lack thereof. Their anti-lumber industry policies caused the town's mill to close 15 years ago. Without thinning, the forest was primed for the destructive fires that have swept the area. That has made fire insurance unaffordable. Mine was $800 just 5 years ago. Today it's $6500. Others in my area are paying a lot more. One neighbor got a renewal letter for $85,000.
Sorry for the lengthy post. I wanted to show that I have legitimate reasons for not wanting a president from a party that is making my life more difficult. But vote for Trump? Not happening.
Edit: typo
These are all small and petty things to worry about. Your orchard maintenance is your biggest problem? Talking about CARB indicates that you're in CA. You want more people to have wood burning boilers, even though your state has massive annual wildfires? Are you even listening to yourself?
All of your complaints revolve around burning things. I know people who work for CAL FIRE. You are wrong about forest fires. Small trees planted for lumber burn more easily than mature trees with thick bark.
https://www.nationalforests.org/our-forests/light-and-seed-magazine/how-trees-survive-and-thrive-after-a-fire
And I'm sure if you ever need to use the terrible big government services you dislike (possibly because of a fire), you won't hesitate to ask for a handout.
The only thing that stopped the last big fire from burning down my home was a clear-cut patchwork left over from the last logging operation 15 years ago. It allowed CalFire to establish a firebreak. In areas that had not been logged in 50 years, folks lost their homes. I'm a member of my community's Fire Safe Council. We have retired CalFire chiefs on our board. They were the ones who told me that California's opposition to logging has resulted in major fuel loads with no firebreaks and a rapidly degrading network of logging roads that are used to fight fires. You can quote articles by tree huggers like the NFF. I see the thousands of acres of dead burned "mature" trees with "thick bark" just up the road.
You say my complaints are petty. People are losing their homes because of the out of control increases in fire insurance. People are worried about what they'll use to power their homes during our frequent outages when CARB outlaws gas generators. California Democrats want us to go all electric. I'm all electric. My utility bill last month was $500. I'm expecting $700 for this month.
Know what starts big fires here? The electric company. My utility company deferred essential maintenance for over 50 years with the blessing of the California Public Utilities Commission. Camp Fire, LNU Complex Fire, Mosquito Fire, Dixie Fire - those were all major wildfires caused by PG&E. Now they want to play catch up by undergrounding power lines and hike our rates even more to pay for it - again with the approval of the CPUC.
If you believe that outdoor boilers are a fire hazard, you have never seen one. Burning wood waste is carbon neutral, yet the EPA and CARB restrict the use of a method of combustion that's over three times as efficient and clean compared to a fireplace. They're one of the safest ways to burn biomass. Safer than a fireplace and much safer than an open fire, which is how most folks in my area dispose of green waste. We had 4 fires this year in my county due to people burning green waste. How many fires nationwide were due to outdoor boilers?
HWHAT‽ Biden does not have the hard left. Most of the (hard) Left think Democrats are Republican-lite or less crazy Republicans. Capitalists with some decent social stances.
Please stay away from Fox/OAN/Newsmax talking points.
Who is your parties candidate?
You miss DAMunzy's point.
Every day we get hard lefties saying they'd rather vote third party, stay home, or even vote Trump because Biden didn't get them the shiny golden alicorn that farts rainbows that they swear they were promised. All it would take is for enough of them to vote Jill Stein or RFJ Jr. (who isn't very leftie when you look closely at him) and Team Pepe can steal the election. Biden has to appeal to both the moderates AND the hard left, an impossible proposition, while trying to make the point that both moderates and hard-lefties lose and lose hard if Team Nazi Frog gets into office.
"Hard left" lol. You're not a moderate, you're well to the right. I'm with you on ranked choice or a different sane system, tho.
Nope. I'm a RINO. For LGBTQ+ and women's reproductive rights. For gender equality. For religious freedom without interference from the government. For supporting our kids' education and well-being. For reasonable gun control measures that involve training and background checks if that cost is borne by the state. Against banning of weapons or special taxes on guns/ammo. For involuntary psychiatric treatment (commitments). I want single-payer healthcare. I want a vetted method of entry for immigrants that doesn't take years to complete. I want non-violent convicted criminals to have the option to be surgically "tagged", then allowed to continue their lives knowing that they're being monitored. Maybe then they can repay their victims. I want to abolish the death penalty. I want to set fines as a percentage of a person's wealth. I want all non-lethal drugs to be legalized, including prescription drugs. I want the government to provide an interest-free home loan for anyone who can show they can afford the property, currently owns no other property, and will use it as their primary residence. I want a free path to a self-study college degree, but I oppose paying for others to obtain degrees without some form of payback.