- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
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Most people engaged in politics have likely made up their mind, and anyone sufficiently disengaged will vote for the incumbent and be done with it. Biden is the incumbent, and they’re not going to put forth a progressive.
Yeah
The race is not people deciding between Biden and Trump, but people on both sides who have made up their minds deciding whether or not to vote
Coincidentally, there is an enormous effort to paint voting as not worthwhile, and Biden as not good enough to be worthwhile bothering to vote for, aimed at left wing voters
Actual left-winger here. We’ve been saying the USA deserves better than Biden since before the 2020 election. Don’t lump us in with the centrists, liberals, and moderates who’ve only just pulled their heads out of the sand long enough to notice that the incumbent is expected to lose.
There’s no point in starting to panic now, all this has been inevitable since the DNC won the right to rig their own primary after the disaster that was the “Her Turn” campaign in 2016. Either y’all start calling your reps and demanding a better option on the ballot, or start making preparations for the fascism and civil unrest in our future.
Highly infuriated with the Dems over Biden in 2020 BUT he has turned out remarkably better than I ever thought. He now has a decent track record that makes him a good choice for another 4 years. On the other hand, we could go all dictator/fascist and lose all democracy. It comes down to Joe Biden who is now the one hope to save democracy.
Take the bus that gets you closest to your destination folks. In the meantime, get progressives into offices at local and state levels so they can move up to congressional levels.Its good to know progressives will hold our country hostage rather than take baby steps to a progressive country.
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I’m not a “Progressive”. American Progressives are called “Moderates” in most other countries, and their Progressives would probably call me a Communist or an Anarchist without bothering to distinguish between the two.
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The people holding this country hostage are the ones who ran the only primary challenger out of the party rather than admit that the incumbent is expected to lose re-election.
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America has to excise the fascist rot at its core before it can become a “Progressive” country. Voting alone cannot accomplish this, it would require a massive perspective shift across the general public on the scale of China’s cultural revolution. After Covid failed to induce anything but a shift to more work-from-home, I don’t see that happening.
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The first baby step I’m focused on accomplishing is trying to convince liberals that if democracy is really at stake, then they can’t run the risk of trying to play it safe like they did in 2016.
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My man he is not a progressive
Zero progressives I know IRL have any kind of idea like that Biden is mediocre implies it’s okay if Trump comes to power and takes a flamethrower to all progressive causes with impacts that will last as long as you or I are alive. It’s purely a thing I see online from self described leftists.
I wonder if I look back in their history, I will see lots of advocacy for marijuana reform or criminal justice or better foreign policy in Central / South America… or anything other than left wing causes that can be tied directly in immediate and lazy fashion back to Biden (economy, immigration, Gaza)
My man he is not a progressive
Correct. Your idea of a “progressive” is my idea of a “moderate centrist”.
Zero progressives I know IRL have any kind of idea like that Biden is mediocre implies it’s okay if Trump comes to power
I don’t think it’s “okay”, I think it’s inevitable. The DNC would rather lose to the Republicans than lose their campaign financiers (who also sponsor Republicans).
I wonder if I look back in their history, I will see lots of advocacy for marijuana reform or criminal justice or better foreign policy in Central / South America… or anything other than left wing causes that can be tied directly in immediate and lazy fashion back to Biden (economy, immigration, Gaza)
Not sure what kind of point youre trying to make here, all of the above are important issues and I’ve talked about them extensively on this and prior social media accounts. I’d have to dig into my dead Twitter account for receipts but I predicted the lack of enthusiasm for the “safe” incumbent Democrat causing Trump to win this year’s election all the way back in 2015 when the DNC decided that knocking Bernie off the ballot was more important than holding a democratic primary that was actually democratic. That the Dems would have to switch if they wanted to win has been as obvious as the fact that the incumbent won’t stand down unless forced to, an extremely unlikely proposition.
I predicted the lack of enthusiasm for the “safe” incumbent Democrat causing Trump to win this year’s election
You are in good company. Professor Allan Lichtman has a fascinating scientific approach for presidential elections. (it’s long but the first ten minutes will give you the idea).
Democrats look at the tiniest flaws rather than Biden’s popular policies.Yep, only wonks care about policy. To the average American, the election amounts to little more than a popularity contest.
They do that because the voters do that
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Yes. Enormous efforts. “Genocide Joe” (the name) is part of that effort.
There is one in this comments section
Just one? Are they a faux-commie?
There are a lot more now; it started out as one
I was more worried about it until I realized Lemmy is the only place I’d heard anyone say Genocide Joe.
This is how effective psyops works.
Joe Biden is on track to win this election. Democrats are hell bent on snatching defeat from the mouth of victory.
Most people are just now waking up and paying attention while Biden’s numbers are beginning to climb, in spite of his own party trying to sabotage him.
Anyone sufficiently disengaged with Biden might just NOT vote. And then Trump wins. Heres a better framing of the question. Could anyone generate more voter disengagement than Biden?
This is my worry too. They’re not going to switch to trump, they’ll either skip it or vote 3rd party.
Vote blue no matter who died quickly I guess.
Those people are still voting blue. The issue is getting everyone else on board. “Vote blue no matter who” can’t carry the election entirely on its own and never could. 2020 was won on razor margins.
We need to get rid of the electoral college.
Biden beat Trump by 7 million votes. That it was “razor thin” is because of the electoral college.
Hillary lost to Trump despite winning the popular vote by 3 million because of the electoral college.
Gore lost because of Florida’s electoral college (and all the fuckery there) despite winning the popular vote by 0.5million.
Small correction: after numerous recounts, it was proven decidedly that Gore had won in FL. However, the corrupt Supreme Court decided that since the media (Fox News) had already called the election for Dubya, that it would pose too much risk to our democratic process to overturn the results to the correct outcome.
This is most amusing given the context of Jan 6 and the corrupt court’s opinions on that matter, but here we are.
I strongly agree with you but that’s not going to change the fact that we still have to contend with the EC this election cycle.
Edit: also gore didn’t lose by either metric he just didn’t stick it out for the recount
It would be enough to make an amendment so that the shape of electoral districts must be convex. This would make gerrymandering impossible.
How do you actually fit together exclusively convex shapes?
they’re not going to put forth a progressive.
The corporate media would shred a real progressive but Biden is a lot more progressive leaning than I ever thought he would be.
Yeah, that’s part of why I’m so suspicious of this massive “Biden needs to be replaced” push. We’re not getting better policy out of it, and I seriously doubt it’ll hurt Trump’s odds at re-election, so why is everyone so keen on it at this stage? The time to replace him was months ago.
Exactly!
A travesty then, considering polling consistently shows progressives would wallop Trump, and the Dems claim that democracy is on the line this election. We could do so much better, but absolutely will not at the peril of capital.
We have narrow margins these days. Elections are decided by the undecided.
Who are these undecided voters? I haven’t met one single undecided voter in the past 8 or more years. Maybe that’s geography, but, jeez…
I feel that turnout is a far bigger factor.
some of them are people like me who was forced to accept inescapable student loan debt (created by biden in 2005) due to don’t ask don’t tell blocking gays from getting the gi bill (supported by biden in 1993); couldn’t sponsor their life partner to allow them to stay in this country because biden et al. voted for doma in 1996; denied jobs because because biden advocated for the same thing executive order 10450 did until 2012; will lose a new job because of biden’s support for banning tiktok in january of 2025; and can’t get a new gig job because biden is blocking truly affordable EV’s from this country for the foreseeable future.
it’s got nothing to do with project 2025 nor trump being a giant douchebag; it’s about trying to convince myself to vote for someone with a conservative history that has and will fuck up my life and then pretending that he’s the most progressive president ever just to get votes while simultaneously enabling genocide’s, apartheid’s and segregationists as biden has done several times over in the last 51 years.
i need a reason to vote for him because; no matter how shitty trump or how badly he wants to steamroll over minorities (which biden has already done), he’s never fucked with my life to anywhere near the extent that biden has and i survived most of those 51 years at a time when both parties, plus moderates, plus family wanted to lock people like me up and throw away the key, so project 2025 doesn’t scare me and trump doesn’t have enough time to screw with my life to the same extent that biden did to people like me in one more term.
If you’re gay as you imply and you are thinking of voting trump you are basically bringing it down on yourself. Please switch on your brain
Fuck Trump
It’s pretty likely that a lot of those disengaged will not vote for Biden because they know he’s too old
Biden is cooked. But there is so much fear/exhaustion/disgust with Trump we are still in the margin of error.
Imagine if the Democrats ran somebody that anybody was actually positively excited about.
But that is not how the DNC works.
In 2024, who would that be? Who would you be excited about?
Literally anyone under 50 years old
How about, oh I don’t know, 62 as your ceiling. 50 is young as heck in that environment.
I’d rather vote for Bernie or Newsom, personally.
The DNC ran the person primary voters nominated
Funny, my ballot only had one name you could pick.
Yep, and I didn’t even vote for him then. Wish more people had done the same to show the party how unenthusiastic we were about it.
I did “uncommitted” back on Super Tuesday, and I would vote that way again if the primary was held again in my state today.
I will still go vote for whoever is “not Trump” in November.
No prominent Democrat would dare challenge Biden before he drops out for fear of party retaliation. The two party system is the real issue here. Until we abolish it our best hope is things don’t get worse because they won’t get better.
Money, nepotism, and other corrupting things are pretty big factors in politics
We weren’t allowed to nominate anyone else. Did you miss that part?
I’m absolutely sick of mainstream media trying to hose the democratic candidate by suggesting the guaranteed-suicidal act of switching out the incumbent. They know it’s failed every time. They still bring that up as news.
Find something else controversial to pin your ad revenue onto.
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Every other time was different. Trumps the guaranteed winner unless something changes.
- They are polling dead even; even if the polls are garbage that’s some sort of indication that “guaranteed winner” is false no matter how hard people keep repeating it
- That said, I get what you’re getting at. It’s really too bad there’s that big stasis rift in reality that means nothing can possibly change except replacing Biden with some other candidate, and that that action and that action alone is guaranteed to produce a good result, no matter how we do it.
Fucking rift
The only suicide pact is riding a senile candidate into the sunset while there’s still a chance to get off the ride.
Are we talking about Trump now? Man I wish I could keep track of senile old bastards. Because my senile old bastards are yelling incoherent crap and not actually in the conversation.
As a matter of fact, we are talking about Trump. Any halfway decent 45-57 year old candidate will easily show Trump’s advanced age and cognitive decline. But we don’t get to run that race, because our candidate sounds like Grandpa did, the year before we put him in a nursing home.
This fucking narrative of bringing up trump every time someone questions Biden as a candidate is so fucking obnoxious.
We all know trump is senile and fucking insane. His voters are insane. We’re talking about wether or not Biden is the best candidate to defeat him. Not everyone agrees with the narrative that swapping candidates right now is a bad idea.
You’re obnoxious with not accepting that both things can exist simultaneously.
Unfortunately no. I wish. But all the wishing in the world doesn’t change the position.
So what’s the play, if Republicans aren’t sane enough to remove their geriatric, why should we guarantee his victory by forcing out ours without his consent.
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It’s entirely likely Biden is trailing in polls because of the Democrats or others with ulterior motives reiterating that Biden should step aside that he is suffering in the polls.
Anyone who realizes the danger of Trump and project 2025 should be more than willing to say “I wish Biden would choose to step aside, but given the alternative I would vote for Biden’s bloated corpse if I had to over Trump.”
How about we listen to Bernie, or think a little harder, and show a little bit of solidarity for the only other current option. It’s not about defending Biden despite his failings, it’s about not holding him to standards his opponent doesn’t have to adhere to.
If we need a candidate that isn’t slowly losing their mental acuity to old age, Democrats AND Republicans need to come together and ask their respective geriatrics to resign together. Mutual adherence to the same standard, for the sake of the country.
The Republican geriatric is leading the Democrat in the polls. Why would they show him the door? If Democrats continue this Biden route Trump will just win.
Oh, I just thought we’d treat them the same. Ya know, instead of this classic Democrat ploy of attempting to ensure a defeat.
Why is it always Democrats that have to hold their politicians to a higher bar than Republicans. How about we have some solidarity for the best chance we have at not living in a fascist shithole for once?
Demcrats don’t have morals or standards they’re running a guy complicit in Genocide. What do you even mean dude??
The answer is Bernie Sanders in 2020 and in 2016. Now? Probably nobody.
Bernie would still win. Just has to publicly recognize his old age while also showing that he’s not senile like the other 2, agree to one term, pick a good young progressive VP, and start hammering away at progressive messaging. Probably outright tell the center Dems it’s THEIR turn to hold their noses… Unless they want Trump to win.
Sanders is only one year older than Biden
But decades younger when it comes to soundness of mind
This would be a dream come true!
Harris is actually polling better than Biden against Trump. I know the Internet never forgets but the people do.
Honestly, we’re basically just voting for Kamala when we vote for Biden.
Jill then Kamala
This is what I’ve been thinking too. Cognitive decline isn’t necessarily fatal. Nancy Reagan used astrologers because she was lost and trying to keep up appearances.
Dunno what Jill/Joe will do. But if he was inclined to step down, I don’t see home doing it for a few years.
If it’s Parkinson’s as alleged then there’s no real reason to freak out, moreso because the cabinet does a substantial amount of the leg work anyway. Realistically so long as other leaders respect and understand him everything is fine and this is just more media doom fabrication.
The Parkinson’s thing was made up.
Yes, a Parkinson’s team visited the White House medical center, but not for Biden - the New York Post just published that out of all the people who work in the White House, it must have been Biden they were there to see, and the New York Times then republished the story because they are equivalent to the Post now apparently.
Who, other than Biden, would a Parkinson’s team go to the White House to see, rather than the affected person going to see them?
ESPECIALLY given what they had to know was suspicious optics of the team going there. What sort of emergency would a random person at the white house have to have for a team to show up there despite the questions it would bring?
There’s only a handful of people who would be at the white house, unfeasible to leave, and has their movements in public tracked at all times. Biden is on that short list.
I assumed, I’m just saying even if their claim is correct it’s not that huge of a deal.
Yeah, makes sense. Just aiming to correct the record that yes, the claim is not just incorrect but New York Post-level propaganda, as far as I’m aware (which is an informative thing to keep in mind whenever you see someone repeating it).
i wish that was a guarantee; i would vote for biden in that case and i wouldn’t have to hold my nose as tightly to do so.
If we split the votes between third party and democrat again, we’re done for. We’ve already lost this race. Hard stuck democrats won’t be convinced to vote third party. There won’t be enough votes to win. Unfortunately, this is a democrat or fascist dictatorship vote.
The Democrats have had YEARS to endorse anyone who was born after the Battle of the Bulge. With the election less than 4 months away, it is WAY too late to pick Biden’s successor.
They need to come with a campaign message that shows ordinary people why Biden is a better choice than Trump, which should be the easiest g*ddamn thing in the world.
The Democrat “voters” haven’t had a choice. It’s the Democrat party that has pushed for Biden so hard and not allowed any opportunity for voters to choice someone else before now.
The democratic party wants Biden as president.
I suspect the majority of Democrat voters do not want him to run again.
“Democrat voters” “Democrat party”
I asked about this curious phrasing in this comment - what’s your take on it? Why do you think there might be a notable overlap between the users who are so fed up with the Democratic Party that they’re against Biden, and the users who even though they are obviously left wing people, use a traditionally conservative turn of phrase?
I happen to be in this thread due to bouncing around, so I’ll explain anytime I use Democrat/Democratic/Republican:
I’ve had various liberals tell me Democrat was a form of dog whistle or sign I’m a right winger. One person started to dig into my mutual aid info trying to figure out if I was a Russian bot because I said “Democrat” instead of Democratic. I’ve tried to Democratic as a noun, and it felt grammatically incorrect. “I’m running as a Democatic.” “The current majority in the house is with the Democratics.”
Personally I think “Democrat” works for both candidate, party, and voter. “Biden is the Democrat’s Nominee” vs “Biden is the Democratic nominee”.
I have no idea if one is better than the other, but I tend to use one over the other when needed.
I’ve tried to Democratic as a noun, and it felt grammatically incorrect. “I’m running as a Democatic.” "The current majority in the house is with the Democratics.”
Well that sure is a totally normal human explanation.
Am I missing something here? I’ve had people say that I had to use that word otherwise I’m somehow on the payroll for the Republicans.
I do acknowledge that “Democrat” has been a form of… for lack of a better word, slur from Republican weirdos.
Serious explanation: “Democrat” as a noun is normal. “I’m running as a Democrat.” “The current majority in the house in with the Democrats.”
“Democratic” as an adjective is normal. “Democratic Party.”
“Democrat” as an adjective is super weird. I think it was originally intended as a slur, but to me it just sounds weird, like bad grammar. “Democrat Party.” Almost no one uses it that way except conservatives, because no one who doesn’t consume conservative media would even run across it.
I found your explanation very bizarre because something like “I’m running as a Democratic” is something I’ve never heard in my life. If someone actually did tell you that “Democrat” is a bad thing even as a noun, there was some severe miscommunication on someone’s part.
Apologies for being sarcastic about it
Edit: Welp, I looked over the history for the user I was talking to, and now I feel silly for thinking maybe they were actually confused somehow, and trying to help them. They’re just trying to obfuscate the original issue by introducing this nonsensical straw man of “I’m running as a Democratic,” I think, and I’m naive enough that I bought into it enough to give them a straight answer on it.
It doesn’t help I’m running short on sleep, autistic, and just not in a good mood today before the assassination attempt.
But yeah, I personally go “Democratic Party” for the party but a member of Congress is a Democrat. I’m registered Democratic Party, I am a Democrat, yadda yadda.
I found your explanation very bizarre because something like “I’m running as a Democratic” is something I’ve never heard in my life. If someone actually did tell you that “Democrat” is a bad thing even as a noun, there was some severe miscommunication on someone’s part.
Maybe, I just recall them claiming I was a fake American for doing it, and then saying my Polish friend was a form of Russian agent because he was born and lives in Poland. I can try to find the post but that was months ago.
Thank you for taking the time to explain it, Mozz.
Almost like… now hear me out… they don’t want to win…
The establishment has been keeping his mental decline as secret as possible for quite some time now. They had the time and squandered it. Now the narrative of is he fit for the presidency is going to dominate any other factor to the election. If I’m being honest with myself, he’s done. We’re just currently salvaging as much as we can and push the never-trump narrative hard and pray.
It’s annoying that most everyone can understand this, but the media keeps pretending like it’s an open question.
Because they are pushing a narrative. They aren’t being honest that no one is prepared to take over, no one else has been campaigning. Even if people wanted a replacement, there isn’t one ready to take on the mantle.
They are intentionally sowing discord.
Considering the competition… I’d be willing to vote for Biden’s dog.
Secret Service are cops, Commander bites them, therefore Commander says ACAB.
Commander 2024.
I thought it was Major? Does he have 2 dogs that bite people?
And yes. It’s not totally logical, but I kind of liked that Biden’s dog was biting people. I tend to assume that a lot of people who work in the White House are bad people, and if someone’s dog is going in and biting them then I’m gonna assume without evidence that it had a good reason.
Yeah, it’s Major. From Biden worries the Secret Service may be loyal to Trump, according to a new book:
According to a new book offering an inside look at President Joe Biden’s White House, Biden actively distrusts the Secret Service to the point that he does not speak freely in front of his agents and he believed that the agency lied about an incident where Biden’s German shepherd Major bit an agent.
In The Fight of His Life, out January 17, author Chris Whipple details how Biden was showing a friend around the White House and pointed to the spot where Major allegedly bit a member of Biden’s security team. “Look, the Secret Service are never up here. It didn’t happen,” said Biden.
Cops framing people, cops killing dogs. I’m surprised they’re not part of the official screening process along with the “you must score under this IQ level to be good at this job” filter.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68366306
He literally has two dogs that love biting cops.
Or who cops love lying about being bit by.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68366306
Major was removed from the White House because it was apparently too stressful for a rescue. Commander is a puppy they raised in the WH but he apparently just loves the taste of bacon.
That or the agents getting bitten were abusing him to get him to bite. It’s pretty unlikely that a puppy with a series of trainers wouldn’t stop biting pigs.
This shit is getting so fucking old.
This shit is just because they’re scared. They know Biden is going to curbstomp him come November. The racist rapist with 34 felonies is further up the ladder on mental decline anyways. I would vote for a steaming pile of Bidens dogs shit before I’d vote for anyone from the GOP.
That’s not what we’re seeing. Every time Biden tries to prove he can still think and shift the focus to Trump it fails and his polls get worse. He’s behind by 6 points in PA now. The single state we really need to win.
his polls get worse
Citation needed
Like a primary source, not just a news story claiming that this is happening or you doubling down about how it’s definitely happening
Okay. And here’s a PA specific trend line. And just so you don’t think I’m cherry picking, here’s NYT and The Hill.
Polling isn’t great for minutia but these trend lines are consistent with modern losses. The only thing I’m aware of that could drastically change this now is some focus groups saying they would stay home and not vote for Trump; or vote for RFK instead if Trump is sentenced to prison. That was supposed to be a known factor now but it got pushed to after the convention and after the ballots are locked. Are we really going to hang this election on one judge doing the right thing? or are we going to do what we have to in order to actually fight?
Yeah, polling is garbage in general but using it to see relative change is actually like the one thing that it’s good for.
So, your assertion is that Biden is slipping lower and lower and lower in the polls the more he does. You picked the one state where he’s slipped the most, to make that point. If I did the opposite, I could pick North Carolina, and say that gaining 1.7 points since before he did his press conference means he’s killing it, and that press conference restored the confidence of the voters.
Probably a fairly accurate metric – since you’re going to ignore, for reasons which will be obvious to anyone who knows what the national polls show, the national polls – could be to add up all the swing states and see how things have changed.
In the last week, Biden’s gained an average of 0.56 points in all the swing states. If you saying him losing 0.4 points in PA since the press conference means he’s losing ground, then I have demonstrated that zooming out to a non-cherry-picked-to-the-single-worst-state view shows the exact opposite happening.
Similarly, in the last month, Biden’s lost an average of 0.8 percentage points in all the swing states averaged together. You could write an article about how even in the face of an objectively catastrophic debate performance, less than 1% of the voters abandoned him, pointing to the resilience of his support because most of the voters (unlike the media) are smart enough to realize that one bad debate doesn’t all of a sudden mean that etc etc you get the idea. Oh, also, that means he’s been gaining ground back since the debate, after dipping lower than 0.8 points initially, which kind of makes sense since the debate was such a horrifying fuck-up.
See? Primary sources are fun. That’s all based on the Nate Silver chart of all swing states that you sent me.
I chose PA because it’s the one state we really need to win. Without PA we basically need everything on offer and a tough pick up like GA. And the national polling is a great topline, but it doesn’t predict the Electoral college very well.
And this isn’t just about the press conference. It’s about the debate, the spin afterwards, and the press conference. None of that has managed to bring his numbers back. And Nate Silver’s actual prediction, (which I’m not sure if the page will show without a subscription) is bad for democrats. If you want to go with his analysis we should already have switched to Harris.
If you want to go with his analysis we should already have switched to Harris.
Oh! If you’re saying that switching to Harris would be a good idea, that would be a totally logical and honestly not really that crazy thing that we could have talked about.
Some guy was coming in here talking about how every time Biden opens his mouth, his poll numbers get worse, and just kind of emphasizing this wild counterfactual in service of creating a narrative that didn’t exist. I was talking with that guy. If you see him, tell him I looked at the polls you sent me and he’s wrong.
Polls mean less than nothing. At this point they’re just being manipulated to fit an agenda. Nobody voting red is going to vote blue, obviously even though he’s a racist rapist with 34 felonies and caused an insurrection. Nobody voting blue would vote for him no matter how bad Biden is. It’s turned into do you want a dictator or would you like to continue as a democracy. Come November when the left shows up to vote, (which they will, it’s a very important election) Biden will win and the loser will lose again and hopefully be forgotten in a jail cell somewhere where he belongs.
Vote, volunteer to give rides for people that need them to be able to cast their vote!
You think there’s some kind of conspiracy across multiple universities, research organizations and news organizations? The military can’t keep a private from telling their Chinese AI girlfriend about the secret mission they’re going on but you think independent professionals and professors are somehow all in on something?
The left has been very vocal about not liking Biden and the middle doesn’t think he can even do the job. The only people showing up to vote are Biden’s base and they aren’t enough.
Come talk to me in November.
You think there’s some kind of conspiracy across multiple universities, research organizations and news organizations?
No. In fact the universities and research organizations have generally been publishing polls showing basically no change in Biden’s numbers. You would know that, if you’d citationed.
In media, yes, although it’s more a case of groupthink, laziness, and vulnerability to manipulation than it is any grand conspiracy.
Check my response to your other post for links. It takes a little time to get them together because I’m not that organized of a person.
Biden has the best chance of NOT beating Trump (I fear). He cannot change and as a known commodity will not generate new enthusiasm. Trump has generated all the outrage and rejection he is going to get. No new information is going to change that.
Someone else is an unknown. What happens if we switch is unknown. It may lose. But we are losing now.
But it could grab a LOT of press attention, generate enthusiasm, and break up the logjam of conservatism that runs national politics.
The whole point is that this is not a “dicey” or desperate thing to do when we are fighting for democracy and freedom. It is the ONLY thing to do when you are sure your current course loses.
We have to win.
enthusiasm
It’s an interesting day when you get to identify a new talking point
Enthusiasm in this case would be turn out, actually getting butts out of seats to vote.
The existential threat that Trump poses no longer seems enough to motivate people to vote specfically against him. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the reduction in turn out by people who are not energized by Biden and aren’t afraid of Trump has been a thing this whole time, it’s not new.
Like literally the campaigns are targeting people to tell them not to vote at all, right? The fact that Biden is visibly spiralling gives those campaigns a lot of very effective ammunition imo.
Then again you got that x-ray shill vision.
the reduction in turn out by people who are not energized by Biden and aren’t afraid of Trump has been a thing this whole time, it’s not new.
Do you have numbers for this?
Like voter turnout numbers for Biden vs Trump or vs Democrats in earlier elections? All the numbers I have seen are in the opposite direction, which is understandable, because the voters unlike the media understand how catastrophically high the stakes are.
You see it referenced all the time as a bit of democratic dogma. There was even a meme about it that hit the top of all/active like a few days ago on Lemmy. I like how this article from April puts it:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/2024-turnout-apathy-biden-trump.html
It’s not necessarily true, let me be clear, but it’s an active assumption. Higher turnout benefits Democrats. A reduction in turnout due to voter apathy will directly effect the Democrats more than the Republicans. The current propoganda campaign are targeting Democratic voters apathy rather than trying to switch a “swing voter.”
This election will probably be at least as high as 2016, and like I think you are referencing, every election since 2016 had basically had record turnout over the last.
Imo this election comes down to the number of voters who are motivated by abortion and worries about the supreme Court, which is middle aged to older people, high percentage women, reliable voters.
He’s an interesting one that talks about the enthusiasm vs apathy of voters but doesn’t specifically turnout, which is against my interpretation. I struggle to understand the relevance of it in this context:
You see it referenced all the time as a bit of democratic dogma. There was even a meme about it that hit the top of all/active like a few days ago on Lemmy. I like how this article
Imma stop you right there
Yes, I am aware that it is a popular narrative in the media and on Lemmy. My question was, do you have numbers for it?
Because my assertion that it isn’t actually true, and people are saying it anyway, and that the discrepancy and the reasons for the discrepancy is an important fact.
Yeah I referenced two articles talking about it in multiple ways.
You acting like it’s a new thing that’s never been discussed was what I was referring too. It’s absolutely a thing! That’s a bit of goal post moving on your part to go from “wow I’ve never heard of this before!” To “I don’t think that’s status statically true.”
https://lemmy.world/comment/11132168
Like correct me if I’m wrong, this is you right? Are you also going senile?
Mozz sees anti-liberal conspiracies everywhere he looks.
Readily available for repubes to start yelling “democrats in disarray” “both sides are the same”. Hell, repubes don’t even have to do it. The mainstream media is already doing their bidding.
It’s crazy to see the difference in tone CNN and other major new outlets have adopted when talking about Biden, vs. how they talk about Trump.
With Biden it’s “What a national embarrassment, no way this man can lead in his current state, voting for him is nearly elder abuse and you should be ashamed of yourself.”
With Trump it’s “jeez get a load of this guy lol. He’s just so silly with the things he says, who would take him seriously about the crazy stuff? Might be worth a vote?”
The press is stupid
Political people, mostly on the conservative side, figured out long ago that if you just pushed hard a particular framing and narrative, the majority of the American political press would just kind of go with it as opposed to upset the herd by presenting a different framing. Once you’ve set the boulder rolling in one direction, you can just kind of let it go and it’ll follow the same path on its own. And they practiced the technique until they got really good at it.
A fun exercise to see it is to read an article, but flip the party and subject of the article to the opposite side. Like some gaffe that Biden made, say that Trump made it, or vice versa. The tone will seem wildly off kilter in this really unusual way.
They are pushing hard with a heavy sprinkling of whataboutism and fearmongering 24 hours a day, which they learned from the successful fascists. It is an approach that works well with for profit news, even the ones they don’t own.
Trying to push just as hard for something positive wouldn’t be as successful.
It’s because if they challenge the narrative at all, they get cut out of coverage in the future. Then the other for-profit media outlets have coverage they won’t have access to and they’ll lose viewership.
It’s why something like the BBC can push candidates like they can, because if you cut out the BBC then you’ve cut out any televised national coverage in the UK. Here if ABC decides to really go after a narrative then Republicans still have Fox, NBC, CBS, etc
That’s all I’m saying. That’s all anyone is saying.
Take ego and hubris out of the equation. Who has the absolute best chance of beating the fascists?
That’s it. That’s the only question that really matters right now in the context of this upcoming election, if we want to stop Trump.
yeah except democrats were so sure it was shillary, and then REFUSED the far better candidate in Bernie Sanders. Even if they came out tomorrow with someone, told everybody it was a lock, and the entire DNC fell in behind them, I still wouldn’t trust them to get it right.
But would you vote for them? No names, just generic Democrat.
course I would. But I’m uniquely aware of how catastrophically dangerous a second drumpf term would be. The average american may believe that we could survive a second term, much like we did the first, but that ignores the very real plans being enacted by drumpfs handlers. The US pulling out of NATO, or stopping aid to the Ukraine (which would 100% happen under drumpf) would mean WWIII, which is precisely what these right wing think tanks want. They see the expansion of US power after WWII as something worth repeating, even if it means having to go through a third world war. The rich and powerful always think they’ll be insulated from the war, which is why they aren’t as scared for it. They look at it much like the stock market, they’re trying to destroy the corporation of America so that they can buy up for cheap what’s left over.
Well good news. You’re not the only one. Generic Democrat beats Trump by something like 8 points in polling versus Biden losing to Trump.
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Yeah but if we let perfect be the enemy of the good then we’re going to ride this thing into the dirt.
I’m so sick of these articles and headlines about how Biden should step down.
DNC had years to figure this shit out and back another candidate, but instead we had seemingly rushed primaries with no real challengers. At this point with less than four months until the actual election, who the hell do they expect will be a better choice? Because nobody has stepped up to the plate, and for all the talk of how Biden should step down, there’s been no discussion of who should step up in his place.
Just fucking back the man, unify, and rally to convince people to get out and vote. Best case scenario, we get a functional Biden, who is known for his work ethic and general attitude of doing the job without platitudes or bullshit. Alternative not so good cases are we get a diminished Biden who isn’t effective at the job, but also isn’t a fucking fascist, or Biden dies of natural causes at some point and we get a partial term of Harris as president.
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I did read it. But I’m not referring to just this article, but the dozens I’ve seen in just the past week. If the dems are convinced there’s a better candidate, actually convinced, we’d have a name by now. Literally anyone. But there’s been nothing. Just the step down discussion, with no discourse on who should be taking his place.
100% agree
The idea that some other strategy besides Biden might be better, as nutty as that sounds this late in the campaign, has quite a bit of merit. The idea that him resigning should come first, and figuring out and solidifying that strategy should come second, is clinically insane. Which is why outlets hostile to the Democrats are pushing it, which is why Democrats who have gotten confused into starting to back it themselves should be ashamed of themselves. Pretty sure that is the exact thesis of the article that dude is rudely insisting that you need to be reading.
There’s been no names because they were giving Biden a chance to clear the scandal and watching to see the polls. This was never something that would resolve right away and now it’s around the time we’d expect to see someone being put forward.
Also, this is very clearly a party leader putting Harris’ name forward.
The.article.doesn’t.matter since it’s always been a losing strategy to pivot to a new candidate. I’m thinking less Bernie/Clinton, and more Johnson/Humphries.
It’s still a binary choice: Biden or fascism. Frilly articles about what-if and “but his stammer” mean nothing when it resolves down to the same binary choice.
right wingers and the corporate media absolute hate that Biden is one of the most pro worker, pro union, and pro labor presidents in recent history and will do anything to try and get back trump
I think that’s a lot of the underlying reason
Like yes, we may get an open fascist who literally will destroy the country, and that won’t be good for our profits either. But fuck you, that’s why. You raise corporate tax, we’re gonna start some shit with you; that’s where it begins and ends.
And since no laws actually apply to the billionaire class, they have no existential fear of a Trump administration. Anti immigrant fervor? LGBTQ persecution? Oppression of women? Violent racism? “They won’t affect ME, or anybody I care about, but higher taxes and labor laws might mean I can only buy a thousand foot yacht every month, rather than the 1100 foot one I deserve.”
Yeah. And that is a foolish delusion, because it will, of course, affect them. They may get lucky and be able to turn the chaos into becoming absurdly wealthy (more so than they are) some way. But more likely is that they’ll have to scramble to stay safe and profitable, and they are already soft and slow to react after years and years of soft living in this safe society, so they might find it pretty hard. The fall and privatization of the U.S.S.R. might not be a bad example to look at for a similar example to how things might play out in a Trump unleashed chaos world.
They have the money to just fuck off somewhere better tho
Oh sure, “now” they have to ask it but a year ago everything was hunky dory. Get fucked
I’m not at all American and I honestly don’t understand the American voting system but I will say this: basically anyone would do the job instead of Biden, it’s shocking that someone in his state is allowed to run for presidency again.
Old people are easier for lobbyists to manipulate. The US has a lot of old politicians for the same reason scammers target the elderly.
That may be a factor, but most of the old farts in office have been there for decades. They weren’t 70+ years old when they first got elected.
In the boomers case and older, even when they were young, they were easier to manipulate than the young people of the present. We not only know more now, everything we’ve learned is information literally at our fingertips on the internet.
Dunno why you’re getting downvoted, you’re right
The fear of Trump has cause many to overlook and burry all negative stories in general because people assume acknowledging faults is going to lead to Trump and overlooking it will somehow help Biden.
Yeah cause it’s a great idea to change candidates 4 fucking months before the election.
There have been plenty of presidential elections where the candidate wasn’t known until the nominating convention in August. This whole “12 month election cycle” bullshit is a pretty new phenomenon.
Anyway, the absolute media shitstorm that will ensue if Biden is dropped from the ticket will more than make up for the late start to a new candidate’s campaign — the new DNC nominee will dominate the news cycle for weeks without having to spend a dime.
This whole “12 month election cycle” bullshit is a pretty new phenomenon.
That exactly the point. We’re in the age of the 24 hour news cycle were attentions spans have been grounded into dust. For a campaign to win there needs to be nonstop engagement. Half of lemmy forgot all the actual good stuff Biden has done in his 4 years. Even the stuff they wanted and legitimately benefitted from. The fuck is a new candidate going to do in 3 or 4 months?
Considering that Biden has done fuck-all to evangelize the good things his administration has done, anything a new candidate does to campaign in the next few months would be an improvement.
It’s not the president’s job to evangelize his accomplishments. It’s his job to run the fucking country, and at that he did great.
It’s the media’s job to report the reality of what’s going on in government so people can make good decisions, by connecting the job performance to the public perception. At that, they have done an openly corrupt, dishonest, lazy, etc etc you get the idea they shit the bed way worse than Biden did at the debate, and they do it every day.
There is a reality of campaigning, and a legitimate sense in which the DNC and Democratic consultant driven campaign apparatus is awful and the GOP’s is pretty skilled. Honestly, their masterful corruption of the media is how we got to the state we’re in.
But hitting the fastest runner in the competition in the legs with a bat, and then saying it’s his job to win the race, after all, is kind of missing the point. Like yes you are right but there is an additional factor you are neglecting.
The media is actively hostile, an opponent, because trump means clicks and money. So it does fall on the campaign to…campaign, even more. A new candidate can only be an improvement on that front
Because attention spans are short, we should need even less time to position a candidate. Voters aren’t going to remember 4 months ago in November, right?
Normally I’d agree, but this ain’t your average election. A Dem candidate younger than Biden could be out there pounding the campaign trail day after day, generating enthusiasm in a way that Biden now seems physically incapable of doing.
Plus, a large number of voters hate both candidates. A shiny new candidate would be exciting and unprecedented, and would get boatloads of attention. They could easily close the gap with Trump, despite what the polls say.
This only works if Kamala declines the nomination at the convention. Otherwise leapfrogging her to get someone shiny and new would anger too many voters.
A shiny new candidate would split the Democrat vote guaranteeing Trump the win.
A new candidate will be mince meat from Republican attacks. Right now, there’s limits on what they can say that Biden will do during his term. “He will take away all guns!” But Biden was already president and didn’t do that, “he’s going to force everyone to buy EV cars!” Again, he’s already president and didn’t do that already, etc. A new candidate will get accused of wanting to do all these things, and Republicans/independents will be more likely to believe them than those attacks being attributed to Biden.
4 months is a massive amount of time. Other counties have their entire election cycle in half the time. America’s 1-2 year long presidential election cycle is so weird.
It’s a bad idea not to when it’d be a guaranteed loss
well its a great idea for your opponent to push forward.
Isn’t super Tuesday when it usually becomes pretty clear in March, but the convention is where it’s known. So best case scenario a few months ago. Worst case the convention. 12 months is absurd and not possible, unless, your party has decided who will win the primaries before anyone even votes… and they totally don’t do that… ever…
People that are loud about it now are loud because they have been screaming about it for the last 5 years and suddenly the DNC is all surprised like they didn’t already know. We know we’re fucked. But they fucked it. A sentient human will talk a lot of people that are disgusted with the two options to maybe show up and vote. A lot of people just want to watch it burn.
We can’t change candidates because no one has voted on shit. It would split the party (which I am ok with other than the Trump/end of democracy problem). The DNC did this.
All because they were afraid that we would actually get Bernie. They basically begged Biden to run, because no one else would have beaten Bernie in the primary.
nearly all elections were like this until 2016; nobody was sure who the candidate was until the convention.
