Get a Grip, Democrats. You Can Still Win This. Biden's not far behind, the economic conditions remain excellent, and a vile assassination attempt in July doesn't determine November's outcome.
Infighting is a bane. Back when I was on Reddit I got fucking downvoted into oblivion multiple times for pointing out that the Left's biggest problem, both now and historically, is how we can never agree on anything. That whatever faults the Right has, they will come together just to shit on someone else. If us on the Left stood up in unity we would be a literal human tsunami flooding the bullshit that is the Republican habitual diatribe. Second, and louder, is apathy, as you said.
Starting to wonder if throwing League of Legends level of insults at people might get them angry enough to vote just to show me what's what.
The other problem with Democrats is they have terrible fucking strategy. Then they get this bright fucking idea to take a page out of Biden's handbook. In what conceivable world was it a good idea to run an 81-year-old who all but promised to be a bridge candidate to a younger generation?
Yeah, guys, let's "rally" blindly around the guy for whom 75% of the fucking electorate find is not cognitively fit to run for a 2nd term. Real genius strategy. It's like they completely forget about low-info undecided swing voters.
It's like they ALWAYS employ the wrong strategy 2 cycles too fucking late.
Isn't it kind of the nature of the left to bicker with itself though? At some level, conservatism seeks to preserve an existing system, or at the extreme end, bring back a system recently removed. There's some room for infighting between the most and least extreme there, but for the most part, it's a goal that is easy to unite for. But the left, at it's most basic level, seeks to change things. And changing things is not a goal that inspires unity quite so well, because to change things, one needs an idea of what things should be changed to, and what you think things should be may not be what someone else thinks things should be, even if you both want change. If it so happens that what someone else wants to achieve is in your view even worse than the status quo, then you can't afford to unite with that person, because there is the risk that your efforts will further a goal you find even less tolerable than what you get by doing nothing, even though what you both want is change.
The thing I'd like to see more of is people (outside of here) admitting they're voting for Biden even tho he's not ideal. We all know who trump is, and Biden gets a lot of flack, and I think it's going to persuade a lot of people from going out and voting.
People need to know that it's acceptable, encouraged even, to vote for the guy who isn't as bad, even if you don't like him. Just because you don't agree with everything he says or does, you agree with him more than the other guy.
Im in some groups with some trumpers, and I'll throw out memes making fun of trump, then they just say stupid incomprehensible things about Biden and I say "lol good one" and they don't know what the fuck to do
Infighting and arguing over who the candidate should be.
Agreed.
I don't care if its Biden, Harris, or anyone else you put up. But yall need to pick fucking somebody and stick with the pick.
I'm sticking with Biden and Harris in that order until someone gives me a better option. And after weeks following the last debate, no one has given me a seriously better option.
This choice is a problem. You have become a single issue voter. For, or against Trump. That's it. The whole system is awful but the fact they won't put anyone up who's better than Biden is disgusting
Infighting and arguing over who the candidate should be.
The “All is lost” attitude.
"Democrats must fall in love; Conservatives must fall in line."
The hand-wringing is normal: it's a characteristic, core to the democratic party but almost completely absent from the Republicans where it's replaced by loyalty.
The funny thing about the "fall in love, fall in line" bit is that the GOP obviously doesn't like Trump and would rather have a more predictable, controllable candidate, but there are too many cultists "in love" with Trump specifically for them to ditch him.
There is no anti-genocide option, and moral grandstanding will just mean ANOTHER one at home. Surely, if youre so passionate about genocide being a bad thing, youd want to mitigate if you can when thats the only option available
Unless they can arrange a new primary to replace Biden as the candidate before the convention, then the course of future history has already been set.
They could easily find a winning candidate, but will not because the party leadership would rather see Biden lose than to lose the campaign funding provided by capitalist PACs. Therefore "all is lost" is a realistic attitude.
The time to start thinking about what you'll do in a post-Democracy USA was almost 10 years ago when we were put on this path by a DNC who needed to ensure Hillary could have "Her Turn" at the presidency and sponsored Trump as they imagined him to be an easy opponent.
Those who are still in Denial, please proceed to Anger.
This is pure delusion. A rushed primary now does not in any way guarantee a win. The process will be chaotic and uncertain. The army of shitty oped writers will go to work asking "what do we really know about ____". They'll dig up innocuous shit from their past that make good headlines. After all of that the favourable a and hypothetical polls will not count for much. Acting like Biden stepping down is a sure way to win had no basis in reality.
Should he have announced he wasn't going to run a year ago ? Yes. But we're past that now.
Ranked choice works well in my city (San Francisco). Just wish it could realistically --- given the political uphill battle --- be applied to federal elections.
It should not be this hard to beat Trump. I’m so tired of sub-standard candidates.
I'm pretty sure reasonable people everywhere have said that about populist candidates in general. And yet you have to ask, if they are so easy to beat why would any reasonable person either vote for them or not vote at all, even if the alternative sucks. Knowing the stakes, WHY?
Voter apathy in the Democratic Party is what will kill it. There are far more liberals than there are conservatives, but about half of liberals just don’t vote. It’s ridiculous and incomprehensible.
The worst part is cognitive decline is real. We’re seeing it.
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Trump and Biden are only 3 years apart.
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3 years.
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The difference is, Joe surrounds himself with competence. He picked a VP who wouldn’t make a terrible President. He also doesn’t have shitty impulses to play with big government military toys at baseline that he’s falling back on right now.
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Can we say the same for Trump? What does his less competent more impulsive at baseline ass do in full cognitive decline?
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And yet we’re sitting in this geriatric hole. With a China-Russia-Korea alliance looming, plus whatever the fuck is happening on the daily in the Middle East. Our neighbors are cool, thankfully, but conflict doesn’t need to be neighbor based or on the same continent these days. Yea, we have shit in our own house and it stinks, but the rest of the globe isn’t going to stop existing while we fight it out.
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Complacency and inertia are scary. And that’s what’s been running the DNC for years.
Biden is being selfish period. If it is about the team, then why Biden. Biden gets on television saying only he can do it. That he is the only one that can beat Trump. If he is the CEO of the Democrats, then they can change the CEO and keep the same employees.
This is what complacency and inertia gets us, this horror show where we all need a good scream and cry. RBG was a Queen right up until she banked on waiting for Hillary before retirement. I get it, wanting the first female President to a point her replacement, but she fucked up, miscalculated. Even the best of us fucks up, and Joe isn’t firing on all cylinders any more. Expecting him to think as well as either of us, going forward, would be a mistake.
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Jon Stewart podcast it was brought up that white male establishment guys like Joe probably arent capable of just handing power to a black woman. I mean, historically in America, how often have we seen that, if ever? Again, inertia rules the day.
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A lot of things should happen, but inertia rules people. Some people go their entire lives and then die without ever really moving outside of the inertial force of their own little existence. DNC has exponential momentum gathered on its inertia, its like, oh shit, I just had an image of The Boys pop into my head, the scene where Hughie’s GF is killed by A-Train. Can the DNC stop? They’ve been running on this lazy momentum for a while now.
Why are you so certain that people would instantly vote for a new candidate more than the incumbent president? I have only seen polls saying the exact opposite.
Regardless, time is ticking out. If a new candidate is gonna have time to build any sort of support or momentum, they need to get started yesterday and hit the ground running, the election is just getting closer.
I've seen polling that says that Michelle Obama wins by like 20 points, but I'm not stupid enough to believe that polling.
There's so much "not Trump" feeling in this country, but running a doddering octogenarian against him decreases those people willing to vote for "not Trump". I'm absolutely voting for the Dem candidate, but I have some very real concerns about it.
There's four months to go, that's a long time to campaign. We've gotten used to these super campaigns but countries routinely hold them inside a couple months.
If you really don't want to do it, you could just win handily and then resign the first day and hand it off to someone else.
I'm also surprised at how much worse some Biden alternates do in the polling given people's reported desire for a switch, but maybe in time they'd have a higher support ceiling than Biden as people get more familiar with them.
What a lot of news doesn't report is the Undecided/Don't Know category grows in lockstep with the drop in existing support for these other names. Trump's support stays locked on at ~40-44 percent. So what's really happening is a name brand gap. Some people just don't know these other candidates and that's easily solvable with four months and the DNC's entire war chest.
I'm now imagining a debate where the republican candidate is red faced screaming and the democrat candidate is turning blue due to screaming and forgetting to breathe.
Who has that kind of charisma and name recognition, with no baggage, that they can storm in like the Koolaid man and take this election?
No? Yeah, I didn't think so. You have been shitting on Biden every thread, even non-Biden related posts, for this entire election year and have never offered an alternative.
Biden should have dropped out in ‘23 and allowed for a real primary contest. Instead he and his neoliberal ilk shouted down anyone talking sense, and now his ego will cost America everything. Congrats Joe, you’ll go down in history after all.
Blame the left for everything. Swing so far right that we implement project 2025 before Trump even takes office. Win over all right wing voters. Biden wins again gg no re.
I mean I'm not going to not vote. Maybe I'm unusual, but I learned how to juggle being a nihilist without any hope with still doing the right thing a long time ago.
The case may be that no news development can dramatically change the race’s trajectory because the partisan bases for the two candidates are broad and firm, and the “double haters” in the middle will continue to double their hate.
If the contours of the race remained fixed, its outcome may hinge upon the quality of their two parties’ get-out-the-vote operations
The idea that “who doesn’t like Biden” is uncorrelated with “who answers the phone to random numbers”, or that who does answer the phone and answer the questions that suddenly emerge from the other side is perfectly correlated with who will show up and vote in November, both seem unproven to me
I see polls are unreliable again. Until someone says Biden should step down, then you have polling on alternate candidates that is the word of God Almighty.
Exactly. "Who doesn't like Biden" also isn't the same as "who won't vote for Biden." I think Joe is an incredibly weak candidate and wish he would step aside, but I'll still vote for him in a heartbeat for the good of the republic.