How can people who would vote Dem, but don’t really like Biden go TRUMP? That make no sense. But then again 'Merica
They don’t vote trump, they just don’t vote. The Democrats continue to push candidates who are so old and out of touch that younger voters don’t see them as in any way preferable to literal Nazis. Think about that for a minute, there is a group of voters who see the level of disconnect the Democratic party has with its voters as an equal evil to actual Nazis. Given that our left wing is actually a right wing central sort of party, and both parties are suckling at the teet of big business, giving tax breaks to billionaires while younger generations can’t afford apartments… I see how they have gotten to this conclusion.
Think about that for a minute, there is a group of voters who see the level of disconnect the Democratic party has with its voters as an equal evil to actual Nazis.
I honestly can’t see how this is an indictment on Democrats. If someone believes the disconnect that Democrats have with young people is an evil equivalent to Nazis, that’s very telling of that person. There is no misunderstanding or poor communication in history that could be on the same level of evil as Nazis.
I agree, but Republicans aren’t literal Nazis. Stop overusing the term, just adds confusion when real Nazis come up.
They’re getting pretty fucking close to literally being Nazis. They condem social welfare, call opponents pedophiles, lie and cheat, are actively trying to disenfranchise voters and dismantle democracy. The GOP has put business interests above human interests at every turn, they use antisemitic dog whistles, use physical violence to attack political opponents, they’re anti intellectual on every level, anti immigration, anti ethnic minority. I really don’t know where you come off thinking they’re not Fascists, but maybe you’d care to elaborate?
I remember the GOP used to be the party of family values and fiscal responsibility. Now they’re just obstructionist. What meaningful legislation has GOP introduced that would benefit anyone but their own business interests?
I will when they stop trying to systematically erase minorities and LGBT people
Hi. Your side literally shared a meme of a stolen cartoon frog wearing Trump’s hair and dressed in a Nazi SS Uniform, lining up politicians on our side to be sent to a very obvious gas chamber.
Piss off with that nonsense. Any Republican who isn’t a literal Nazi is no longer a Republican at this point.
That’s the neat part, they don’t most of the time. But people get this idea that “well if they are not voting Biden then they are voting trump” then go shock pikachu when the numbers of those who don’t vote come out. We ignore it or blame it on the youth for being stupid and then we repeat the mistakes. Because that’s easier then dealing with the cognitive dissonance
And even if not voting and making it easier for the greater evil to win IS stupid, that’s not an excuse! Stupid people are a core Republican constituency, but they do the work to trigger them to go vote.
So sure, let’s say young people are stupid. What are you going to do about it? Because complaining about how they didn’t be not-stupid isn’t getting any more votes.
Because they figure if the fan the flames they firefighters might come sooner.
Honeslty that is what drives a considerable amount of the Trump base, they want ‘the end’ to come sooner than later and they know voting in Trump will make it happen. A consider amount of people seriously fantasize about society collapsing because it makes them feel like they are empowered/especial/superior to the ‘sheep’. Like preppers.
I myself felt this urge during 2016. I was so pissed off at the Democrats I seriously considered voting for Trump as an F you to the democrats for their shitty status quo policy making and their inability to have a charismatic leader who actually gets shit done instead of making excuses like Obama did for 8 years.
Say what you want about Republicans being evil or whatever, but they get shit done. They get their legislation passed, and their judges appointed.
Which is a weird sentiment because the only natural outcome for the accelerationist views is either a fascist takeover or a popular revolution. We can all imagine how and what happens with the former. With a revolution you have groups of people with at least 2 very different ideas of what the country should be post-revolution. You have the far right Trump supporters who hate government and want a collapse; who will all almost certainly die or as Huffman put it “become slaves”. Then you have the far left who want to reform government to be actually democratic and fair (some of those probably want actual communism as well, which is it’s own schism).
So unsure how accelerationists who want a revolution figure this out. Even if a popular revolution worked, it would immediately break down into partisan fighting.
Say what you want about Republicans being evil or whatever, but they get shit done. They get their legislation passed, and their judges appointed.
Trump and McConnell had a house supermajority and yet couldn’t even abolish Obamacare. The fact that you believe that they get things done is actually you believing carefully crafted propaganda.
ITT bunch of bots and dishonest kids trying to convince you to vote independent and third party if you don’t vote rep which means throwing away votes in american voting system
Yep. I get the desire to want something different, I do. But it’s essentially impossible until the system changes. And the only way the system changes is through the Democratic party while Republicans are voted out.
Anyone pushing to not vote or vote third party is either politically ignorant or intentionally trying to do this to give Rs an edge.
Heh, how naive. Why would “democrats” do it? They’re quite happy with how it works, especially now that republicans’ voters are dying of old age. Everyone should vote a 3rd party, until then you guys are fucked. You basically have two right-wing parties.
This has been proven wrong in the past. The Dems don’t have any intention to have anything else than a 2 party system, and they wouldn’t touch legislation that would enable it.
Dems aren’t going to fix it and reps want to destroy it and aren’t going to vote for someone who isn’t a rep so let’s just kill the democratic party in the name of “something new” - oh look we’re a full on fascist nation now because dipshits like you convinced stupid people that going full fasc is better than small incremental progress.
Like I get it, Dems suck they really do. But if you think destroying that party before republicans is going to result in improvment? Well let me make sure I stay far away from whatever you’re smoking cause it’s got you fucked up. Now go on, call me a centrist for being practical and not wanting to throw the country away, I you know you want to.
Lawrence O’Donnell:
If you don’t show them you’re capable of not voting for them they don’t have to listen to you. I promise you that. I worked within the Democratic Party. I didn’t listen or have to listen to anything on the left while I was working in the Democratic Party - because the left had nowhere to go.
What is the flaw in that reasoning? If I want Medicare for All and a neolib like Mayo Pete or Joe Brandon is the candidate and they don’t want Medicare for All, how does guaranteeing them my vote anyway get me Medicare for All? How do I punish them or otherwise push them my way other than refusing to vote for them?
Maybe the “moderate” Democrats that are indifferent or opposed to Medicare for All (I’m just using it as an example issue) should keep in mind that if they don’t support a progressive candidate progressives aren’t going to show up to vote and they’ll lose?
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Unfortunately I feel like we’re reduced to harm-reduction for many votes. Liberal voters may take your hypothetical approach of “if the Democratic presidential candidate doesn’t support Medicare for All then I won’t vote for them”, but that just helps a Republican candidate that will push for much worse policies ON TOP OF not supporting Medicare for All.
Republican voters (seem to) vote on single issues: guns, God, and/or abortion. Liberal voters seem to expect a much wider array of policy positions from their candidate and such candidates rarely exist.
2016 - “eh, Hillary doesn’t support Medicare for All so I won’t vote”. So we instead got the shit show we have today.
Well, I think O Donnell is an idiot. How much longer does he plan on not voting for them to get them to listen to him?
Which of these sounds more threatening to you – a consistent voter threatening to withhold their vote from a candidate in a primary, or a never voter threatening to withhold their vote in the general election?
It’s not the second person. I mean, I’d love their vote, but I’ve never gotten their vote before, and they’re threatening that I won’t get their vote again. There’s no change. If the first person changes though, I’m down a vote. In the primary especially, I want dedicated voters to support me. You have no leverage if you’ve never bothered getting leverage.
If voting was done once and never again, you would be correct. However, there is voting every two years, if people voted in a blocked and the Dems lost, they would be forced to change their policy to attract back lost voters. They have no incentive to change if you openly admit you will always vote blue.
Of course, this also requires that the messaging is clear, last time the Dems lost they blamed it on Russians and deplorables rather than the fact that they have totally sold out the working class.
It’s difficult to pull off no doubt, but it would actually work at reforming the system.
This doesn’t work when the party you allow to win will take away your vote and weaponize the justice department to a never before seen level. Just like how respect and norms don’t work at restraining fascists, neither does withholding your vote when fascists are so popular. If history has shown us anything, the dems are more likely to slide further right if better policies don’t win them more votes. Rich educated neolibs who want poor people to die, but not the gays, are a more consistent voting base then young people. If dems think they can steal more of those assholes from Republicans than bring out left wing dems, they’ll slide to the right.
Voting blocks are very successful at getting what they want, but they can only do that if their threat to not vote for the party in question is taken seriously. The NRA doesn’t get what it wants because it commits to always vote Republican no matter what.
I get your point of view, and my argument is overly idealized and difficult to implement, but I genuinely don’t see it working without the ability to use your vote to negotiate. Besides money, it is the only thing they care about. I’m not American, but from Canada, and I can tell you from an outsider’s perspective your two-party system looks completely dysfunctional. We basically have a three/four-party system for our federal gov and I’d take that any day over a two-party system. Granted America controls the reserve currency and the world army, so it was bound to consume itself at some point, maybe it doesn’t matter how it is set up.
Option 1. The party eating horse dewormer
Option 2. The party that if it fixes anything in under a decade it felt like it was being too radical.
Is that really the fault of Biden though? His first two years were held hostage by Manchin and Sinema and now he no longer has a majority in the house. The president can only sign bills into law not make them out of thin air. I am not a huge Biden fan as I think he is too old to lead but I think he has done ok under the conditions he has.
It’s not his fault, but it explains why people don’t think voting will help.
That attitude is why Rowe v. Wade is gone now. The Parties are NOT the same!!!
I know several people like this. It’s so hard to explain to them that a vote for the status quo is better than letting things get even worse. If we don’t halt the degeneration we can’t ever turn things around. You can’t push something up without first stopping its fall.
Instead of spending 4 years saying we can’t do anything, maybe he should have taken a page out of trumps book and churned out so many executive orders the Republicans couldn’t keep up with trying to fight them all.
Maybe he could have used his influence to empower local political efforts where impact can be more powerful.
There’s plenty of things that could be done, but we excuse inaction.
You realize Biden broke Trump’s record for executive orders and appointments, right?
He did a ton of work, most of which was reversing Trump’s damage to Federal agencies like the EPA.
He also gave out stimulus. Student loan forgiveness was struck down by the Court, but they are putting together a secondary option. They’ve started to look into re-scheduling marijuana.
I don’t love everything he’s done. I could point to the railworker strike or foreign policy in the middle east as things I don’t like. But he has far exceeded my expectations for both accomplishing goals and for those goals being further left than I expected. He’s only done “nothing” if you decide to conveniently ignore all that he’s done.
Trump honestly barely got anything done during his presidency, most of his executive orders were struck down. What he did get done (Supreme Court justices and tax cuts) was just what literally any Republican with a majority in Congress would have done. Biden has gotten more actual legislation passed than Trump did, and his attempt to legislate by executive order (student loan forgiveness) was as ineffective as Trump’s attempts.
You are so right. So let’s vote for the party that treats women as an incubator instead of a person.
Similar to the other comment, “fault” doesn’t have a ton to do with it. Things needed to get done, and didn’t, so they still need to be done, and they (Biden and the Dems) aren’t capable of making it happen. That doesn’t really leave any good options but it’s not going to stop people from looking for one. This one is going to be the bad kind of exciting again.
Voting for the GOP will make things happen but in the wrong direction. Driving off a cliff while still moving is not very desirable in my book.
His first two years were held hostage by Manchin and Sinema
Yeah, but during the Georgia runoffs, Biden and party leaders kept encouraging people across the country to donate by saying “50 is enough to pass the party platform”.
So either they had no idea Sinema or Manchin would obstruct, or they knew it and lied to voters.
So trying to blame those two now makes the party look inept at best
I’m pretty sure blaming Manchin must be electoral strategy. He’s much more conservative than the average Democrat, but he’s still by far the most liberal senator that’s ever going to get elected in West Virginia, and the blame lets him campaign in a deep red state about how he owned the libs.
Do you support what he did to remove the railroad unions right to negotiate?
If he gets supermajority in senate and majority in house pretty sure you’ll get student loan relief, increased taxes for wealthy, expansion of ACA/Medicaid, and increased minimum wage. Otherwise, nothing will happen due to filibuster.
Most of the country is pretty strongly brainwashed against anything that helps reduce wealth inequality as socialism/communism/librul. If you want to improve your QOL your generation will have to vote as a uniform block and take what you deserve.
Let’s say they get a super majority and those policies still aren’t pushed through. What would you say we all do then?
Your personal desire for QOL improvements is not on the top of my priority list. Until United v Citizens is overturned and we get ranked voting, nothing will ever change. Even then, the US is the only country in the world that had to have a Civil War to decide if slavery was bad. And 30% of the country still refers to that conflict as a “lost cause” and the “war of northern aggression”. There are plenty of societies elsewhere that have more empathy for fellow citizens. If you’re looking for personal QOL improvements without having to take them for yourself, I don’t think this is the best environment for you.
Nice try Mitt Romney. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/debunking-the-myth-obamas_b_1929869
And yet Republicans have never ever held a supermajority in the past 106 years since cloture was added to Senate rules.
If he gets supermajority in senate and majority in house pretty sure you’ll get student loan relief, increased taxes for wealthy, expansion of ACA/Medicaid, and increased minimum wage. Otherwise, nothing will happen due to filibuster.
Lol no he won’t. Democrats will do what they always do and find just enough no votes. They could have abolished the filibuster and accomplished everything they wanted last session. But that would require them to vote as a uniform bloc, and that’s just what Democrats demand of their voters, not their elected.
He’s done a few things that have helped a lot of people and tried to do more but Republicans and their pet SCOTUS have prevented some.
But a bigger question when voting has always been “who will hurt me less?”. And I know a LOT of people who suffered under Trump and who are currently suffering under DeSantis and many of his like-minded bigoted cronies in other states. So for me, there’s no consideration for not voting. I know what happens if the worse party/person wins so even voting for someone that sucks is better than helping an intolerable choice succeed by apathy.
Exactly. There’s basically two parties right now: the one running around setting things on fire, and the one beholden to corporate interests that won’t let them use a fire extinguisher or a water hose.
Is starting fires worse than letting an already started fire continue to burn? Yes. Are the currently burning fires going to be extinguished either way? No.
It’s not very well summed up lol. It’s totally ignorant of how the American government functions, at a basic constitutional level.
How exactly are democrats supposed to pass these sweeping reforms?
If he’s the DNC nominee, I’ll still vote for him in the general election, but holy fuck am I tired of voting for the candidate that I hate less.
Primary voting makes me feel a bit better. But that just changes it to fuck am I tired of my candidate losing the primary election. But unless you like somebody in the top two the most strategic option is always going to be voting for the candidate you hate the least. First past the post is just a garbage voting system that discourages voting because the most effective voting strategies feel bad.
It’s especially infuriating because the Dems don’t have to do anything to earn votes. All they have to do is be slightly less crazy and anyone who doesn’t want outright facism has no choice but to vote for them, whether they accomplish anything or not.
ETA: ok, “slightly” in this context is doing a lot of heavy lifting lol, Dems are a lot less crazy!
All they have to do is be slightly less crazy and anyone who doesn’t want outright facism has no choice but to vote for them, whether they accomplish anything or not.
And what’s worse, they know it. What’s even worse than that is they only have to lose once and are still playing the “well, the other guy is worse you have to vote for us” game. It’s unconscionably dangerous.
I support this. While the GOP base continues to shrink and die off, the Dems are doing no favors but continuing to make a vast swath of voters feel unrepresented. I was 18 when Obama came around in his first run and I felt represented then. I don’t think I’ve felt represented personally since then.
This is not an endorsement of the GOP. Just an echoing of the general feeling of invisibility.
I voted for him twice, but I have come to believe Obama did far more damage than good. And, his shameless narcissism and unwillingness to do anything of consequence, except kneecap the left, in his post-presidency have really turned me off.
I don’t know why any millennial would have any faith in the Democratic Party to substantively improve their futures, after having been bamboozled by Obama.
Because we don’t have any other choice in a first past the post system
I mean, I still don’t have any faith in the current Democratic party as a whole, but I think our best hope is primarying as much corruption out as we can and just using the party as a vehicle for decent leaders
Glad you know added that last sentence, but I know manny young liberals who tell me they will vote for Trump or DeSantis because Biden hasn’t gotten enough done. Republican obstructionism works and it’s scary.
You know a lot of young republicans who say their liberal so they don’t get ostracized by their friends, who are looking for any and every excuse to vote how they really want.
Let’s be honest here.
Yes. All he has to do is tie federal aid to states and cities/towns to density/zoning requirements.
My state passed a law two years ago that citys/towns that have public transit stops must have minimum density requirements around those transit stops… or they get zero state aid for their budgets anymore. The law was pushed by the governor primarily.
Guess what happened? every city/town that has those stops (except like two super wealthy ones who are suing the state over the law, because they don’t want the horrible ‘poors’ who only make 100k/yr moving there) is building 100s to 1000s of new units of housing.
It is really that simple.
The sad thing is the USA is full of brilliant people who can fix our country and make it great. We know what the policy solutions are and that they work. We simply lack the political will make those changes because our politicians are lazy, stupid, and cowardly, and so our most of our voters.
All he has to do is tie federal aid to states and cities/towns to density/zoning requirements
lol, what a joke, you think he even has the authority to do that? and do you realize the absolute shitshow of a right wing wave we’d have if he tried?
If it comes down to Trump vs Biden again, I will begrudgingly but without hesitation choose Biden.
That’s why articles like this are a waste of time. Young voters can be pissed all they want, but they won’t vote Republican, so it doesn’t matter.
There’s a Center that voted for Obama, then Trump, then Biden. They’re the only ones worth convincing because they’re the only ones that will go either way.
Trump vs Biden would likely result in a Biden landslide, given the scandals, impeachments and catalog of criminal charges now placed against him.
I’d be more worried about DeSantis getting the Republican nomination.
I haven’t tried listening to Biden lately so I’ll withhold judgment on that but do want to point out that Trump was never capable of putting together a coherent sentence, so that alone clearly doesn’t disqualify anyone. That said I would strongly prefer a candidate who is significantly younger and significantly more liberal.
WTF are you on about. This is from yesterday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lcupq5cg__4. His speech & coherence are better than most Americans.
Years ago I heard a joke, I am pretty sure it was on Royal Canadian Air Farce (the chicken cannon was the best part). The joke went “Canadians don’t vote for who they want, they vote against who they don’t want.”
You are living up to that joke.
