If you live in Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, or Florida (really any of the fifty states, but these are the most critical), AND you don’t want to see Donald Trump elected for a second term, you must vote for Joe Biden in November. Yes Biden is a doddering old man who is experiencing rapid cognitive decline, and yes it is totally unacceptable that these are our choices, but disengaging does not solve the problem, it only makes it worse.
Believe me, I completely understand the inclination to just say to hell with it and check out, but we can’t do that. I have been as guilty of it as anyone but I now fully recognize it was a mistake. But it’s not too late to make it right. Voting is not only a right, it is a responsibility. If we, the people, want to rule, we must be vigilant and responsible.
Right now, our priority is damage control and harm reduction. I know, it has been that way for far too long, and that is extremely frustrating, but it is nonetheless the reality of the situation. We must vote for Biden this year, and then we MUST stay engaged so that we can work toward nominating the best possible candidate in 2028. We must stay informed and vote, diligently, in every state, local, and primary election.
It’s more than just damage control. Everything you said should be enough to get people to vote, but the sad reality is reducing it to that may not be enough. If you’re reading this and considering whether or not to vote, OP is 100% correct. You need to do it. Make no excuse, get it done. But try to feel good about it too. You’re not just voting for one person, you’re voting for an entire administration, and Biden has proven himself in that regard. Under a Biden administration you’re going to have competent people working at all levels of the federal government, which is a big deal. Biden’s administration has done a lot of good as well that is easy to gloss over in favor of focusing on his negative attributes:
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-opinion-biden-accomplishment-data/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/therecord/
You also need to be at the polls to vote for your down-ballot candidates. Do not underestimate the importance or closeness of those races.
No candidate is ever going to be perfect for you. Personally I wish we were finishing the 8th year of a Bernie Sanders presidency. But that doesn’t mean that because I didn’t get it perfectly the way I want it I’m going to take my ball and just go home. I hate the democrat strategy right now, but please don’t let yourself be told that Biden has been a bad president. He’s done some things you can be happy about and some things you can wish were different. If you want to see those differences, the best way you can do that is to be politically active and work for that change. Not participating means you forfeit that right.
Decisions are made by those who show up; it really just comes down to that.
And if the other side is better at getting people to show the fuck up…. You need to make an effort to do the same. Even if it is a far from ideal choice.
Everything you said should be enough to get people to vote, but the sad reality is reducing it to that may not be enough.
I understand why it isn’t enough for a lot of people. I think the biggest reason people don’t vote is they don’t feel their vote matters all that much, and/or they see a certain futility in the whole thing. I understand why, in the face of that apparent futility, many people feel powerless and thus choose to disengage. But, yes, as you’ve said, disengagement does nothing and the only way to take back power is greater engagement. The powerful want us to feel powerless, they want us to be disengaged and they want us to be misinformed, thus we gain power by being informed and engaged, which will lead to us feeling empowered, which promotes even greater engagement.
Personally, I vote in every election. I’m a very well educated, very well informed voter. I know the issues, I know the candidates, I know their track record. Basically, you couldn’t find a more ideal voter. But, I only have one vote.
And so does every illiterate, uninformed, uninterested person who might stumble into a voting booth by accident.
The only thing I CAN do is show up, and hope an idiot with a different view stays home. And even if they vote as well, I’ll at least have the satisfaction of knowing I negated their vote.
I might not always get what I want, but I’ll damn sure show up just in case more of my guys do. Voting is a team effort and I’m doing my part.
I wonder if it would help him to frame his campaign more along those lines “you’re not just voting for me, you’re voting for my entire administration.”
Really needs to highlight the key players in his cabinet. Dudes like a master bench carpenter.
Any President who encourages a genocide is by definition a bad President I’m sorry to say. The ethnic cleansing campaign is already almost complete, all on his watch with his defending Israel and giving them weapons and cover in the UN and in public. Hell, he even lied about the reason on the debate (the one thing he lied about and Trump told the truth about lol). People should still feel free to vote for him, especially if you live in a swing state, but we shouldn’t minimize that millions of Gazans are currently refugees. I hope he fucking shapes up on this issue by November. I don’t want him to take all these votes for him as an endorsement of his pro genocide policies.
I wish you weren’t being downvoted just because people disagree with you, but I do think there are a couple of things wrong with your statement. For one, there has been some sort of genocide level event happening somewhere in the world pretty much continuously for decades. How much, exactly, do you want the USA to be the World Police? Most of us would say we want to be less involved in foreign affairs, not more. Now, many people will say, “sure, Biden’s policy with regard to Israel isn’t great, but can you imagine how much worse Trump’s would be?” I’ve never liked that argument, because just because one candidate’s policies are worse doesn’t mean that we should capitulate to the other guy’s bad ideas. Surely we can find a way to do better, right? But, I think a lot of people will read your comment like you’re making the election a single-issue choice, and that doesn’t tend to read well.
For the life of me, I can’t understand why Biden is taking this stance. He surely knows it’s unpopular with a big chunk of his voters. So why then? I’m sure he isn’t acting alone, he is listening to foreign policy, national security, military advisors. Maybe he’s listening too much to the military industrial complex, and we have every right to be pissed about that. OTOH, we can acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization. We can also recognize that Netanyahu was democratically elected. What would you have Biden do, send teams in to forcibly remove him and install our own leader? Maybe we’d just like to stop sending Israel munitions. Seems like a pretty low bar, why don’t we do it? I have no idea. I hate it. I can’t sit here and pretend to be a foreign policy expert however. Maybe by sending the weapons, we keep a seat at the table over how they are used. Maybe without our bargaining chip, Netanyahu tells us to eat shit and carpet bombs the entire Palestinian state into glass. Maybe it really is just the American M/I complex making sure we keep that gravy train flowing. That’s the most depressing, most frustrating possibility, but I’d really like to think it is more nuanced than that.
I hope he fucking shapes up on this issue by November. I don’t want him to take all these votes for him as an endorsement of his pro genocide policies.
I agree with you on that, 100%. At the very least, we deserve an honest explanation.
doddering old man who is experiencing rapid cognitive decline
Only in the media. Also, according to the media, the orange 34 count felon is completely fine, A-okay, in fact.
Get a grip America. Biden’s policies are popular with Democrats AND Republicans
I did. But I also watched a number of his speeches before and after. He over prepared and tripped over his own feet. Reagan likely was in decline for over half his years but they celebrate him now.
Biden did horrible, but he seemed unnaturally prepped to me. I don’t care what the practiced Biden does, I’m more concerned with what he’s like over a cup of coffee or an ice cream cone.
Didn’t watch the debate, huh? Its all true.
Now do more than watch the debate. Listen to Biden speak on every other recent occasion. Would you like to be judged for your worst performance or your average?
If you want to be more strategic, if you can convince right wingers to not vote that also can make a difference. Feed your red-hat uncle’s ideas about how voting is rigged so he shouldn’t bother. Tell your maga neighbor you’ll drive him to the polls and then don’t.
This is an existential crisis. Don’t think the right wing won’t do anything they can to win.
This is such a great strategy, also mention how tRump passed the Unconstitutional bump stock ban and doesnt give a damn about the 2nd amendment.
The problem is, the people who are swayed by this argument were already going to vote Blue no matter who.
To win the election, you need to convince voters who are still doubting between Trump and Biden. And they have definitely heard this argument before, so a different argument is needed.
No, the point of the argument is to convince the people who are not planning to vote at all to show up.
The last presidential election had ~60% turnout. That’s one of the highest turnouts EVER. People sitting at home are indeed the problem.
Ohio used to be a swing state, too, right? Not sure of it still is or if it isn’t, how that turned around. But maybe they should be in the list?
We went for Obama twice and trump twice. It’s complicated. We’re mostly just extremely gerrymandered and divided. Columbus is extremely liberal, rural Ohio is frequently terrifyingly conservative
We did do the right thing in most of the special elections these last twelve months, though
If you want to be more strategic, if you can convince right wingers to not vote that also can make a difference. Feed your red-hat uncle’s ideas about how voting is rigged so he shouldn’t bother. Tell your maga neighbor you’ll drive him to the polls and then don’t.
This is an existential crisis. Don’t think the right wing won’t do anything they can to win.
It would be nice if Biden or the Dems or really anyone had a plan to protect us or to somehow stop what we’re seeing happen before our eyes, but it just seems that there’s no end and the second a republican gets in power it’s all over for us
I so want nothing to do with this election, I feel so defeated and disgusted by all of it BUT I keep reminding myself that if I don’t vote then I essentially voted for whoever ends up winning. And that could easily be Trump. And in my view he’s not just an awful candidate, he’s an existential threat eat to democracy. So I will vote. But damn, literally almost anyone else could beat Trump, why this is our choice is so insane.
you must vote for Joe Biden
The problem with the Handmaid’s Tale was that people just didn’t vote hard enough.
I’ve never read the Handmaid’s Tale, I really don’t know much about it. I don’t know how analogous that story is to our current situation, if it is at all. But I do know that there is a real danger posed by Trump and the Republican party. Is the Democratic party completely harmless? Absolutely not, but I don’t think they are as great a threat to democracy as the Republicans. We should vote for Biden as a harm reduction measure. Yes, just like in 2020. I know people get tired of hearing that, I know people are fed up with the constant hounding to vote for the lesser of two evils, but that is the situation we are in.
That being said, voting for Biden in this general election lIs iterally the bare minimum that we must do to defend democracy, and if that is all we do, no, it absolutely will not be enough. I think a lot of us, myself very much included, dropped the ball over the last four years and didn’t do nearly enough to try and push for more meaningful changes. That has to change, and, again, I’m including myself in that. I need to do more, most of us do. We need to do everything we possibly can to ensure that by February 2029 we will have a better president in the White House, a better Congress, and a better supreme court, as well as better governors and better state legislatures in as many states as possible.