Archived at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/MEbuN?wr=true
And yet people keep telling me that Biden needs to lose so that Democrats can be “taught a lesson.”
Or they’re accelerationists who think a dictatorship will wind up in a civil war, and the “true” society, whatever their concept is, will be able to rise from the ashes.
“First Hitler, then our turn”
Actual slogan of the German Communists under Thalman
Fuck Trump, but tbf people shouldn’t be allowed to be in office if they could die tomorrow from old age.
It’s hard to understand for a non American, how it can be a Race between these two and only these two. This two party system seems so absurdly stubid. Not that we have it figured out anywhere else much better, but still.
I mean, any president can die in office to be fair, regardless of age, hence we have a vice president to take over in such a case
Isn’t Trump only like 3 years younger? By yhe end of his term he’d be older than Biden would be at the start of his.
Ah yes! Enlightened Centrist and Libertarians. They will always vote GOP no matter how horrible the candidate is with some shit reason to not vote Democrat. OR they will vote for some numbnuts third party candidate with an equally shitty reason.
The common talking points these days are either, “DeMoCrAtS aRe FaScIsTs, ToO!” or, “DeMoCrAtS nEeD tO eArN mY vOtE!”
And I’m sure the next generation will thank them for taking an ideological stand right as Fascism is trying to take over. /s
Too many Democrats are to be sure. But not all democrats. Sanders and others have shown the way to fix this. The biggest issue is that we need younger people involved and running. In my state many Republicans run unopposed for several offices. As bad as it sounds. I would reflexively vote for any Democrat over a republican knowing nothing about either of the two.
We act like Democrats actually doing something to earn votes is impossible.
Don’t vote Democrat, vote third party I hear! Me, I’m like well with first past the post voting this is impractical and could help empower fascists to take over, but let’s see what options we got.
/opens box of third party candidates, before gently closing it and walking away
Yeah no, Biden still best option, these guys are nutters. It makes sense though, a sensible candidate would run in the democratic primaries, rather than hurting their own purported causes by running in the general in a first past the post election. It’s why you saw Bernie Sanders, an independent, running in the democratic primary, and not out there helping to siphon votes to fascists by running as a third party in the general against Biden.
Anyways, let’s focus on continuing to empower politicians that want to improve our voting system (usually has been democrats, though with an exception in Alaska). This starts at the local level, but we’re getting more and more federal offices now with ranked choice voting. Once you have that, then better quality third party candidates will follow, knowing they can fairly safely run without harming their own causes.
Unfortunately, there are few leftists that push the same narrative, too. And all because Biden (or Obama, or Hillary) are not the pretty pony they think they were promised or something.
Point of fact: Clinton’s centrists were so upset that they didn’t get their very first choice in 2008 that they formed a PAC to try to get McCain/Palin elected. And they’ve been screaming “no matter who” ever since.
I do worry that Biden will lose though. He was far from a popular candidate to begin with and his support of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians has made him even less so. In many ways the best outcome might be for him to die in office prior to the election or for him to lose the primary. It would hurt the Democrats to have a non-incumbent running, but possibly less than running Biden. The real wildcard though is if Trump will even end up on the ballot considering his legal issues.
I do worry that Biden will lose though.
Good. Everybody should think this. Thinking Trump can’t possibly win is how he won in 2016.
We need to behave as if it’s a real possibility, even if you feel optimistic about next year.
We need to behave as if it’s a real possibility, even if you feel optimistic about next year.
Party leadership should also be doing this and doing what they can to win voters. Instead, the only message I’m hearing is “if you breathe so much as a word of discontent, it’s because you’re a Russian troll who wants Trump to be dictator for life.”
It would hurt the Democrats to have a non-incumbent
If Biden were not on the ballot next year, the Democratic candidate would be Kamala Harris. No mainstream Democrat would challenge her in 2024, the optics would be horrible.
Mmm, I doubt it, even other dems don’t like her very much right now
I’d want Gretchen Whitmer to go for it,
The way that talking point gets pushed unusually hard by an unusually dedicated few using the same stupid arguments looks an awful lot like the kind of psyops campaigns I’d see when I was on Reddit during the Trump presidency.
The real long term solution is changing how we vote. Star Voting or some form of Ranked Choice. That’s how I respond along with https://fairvote.org so, in case some impressionable soul happens along, they aren’t taken in by such silliness. I encourage others to consider doing something similar.
My Roman Empire is remembering how the shitheads screamed and yelled denying responsibility on the day Dobbs came down.
Was grocery shopping with my grammy and had to pull the most hemmeroid passingly determined poker face in history to not break out into cursing them and their obvious waste of what privileges they live with to be in the position of treating this like it’s teaching the DNC a lesson.
Fucking Priv Shit Vote Karens, every last one of them, “Take me to the party’s manager right now or I’ll let the fascists take away even more of your rights!”
Because the party isn’t going to defy the incumbent president. This should be obvious.
It’s not obvious, please explain why not. He’s worse for their chance of winning.
They all ran before the 2020 election, people mainly liked Biden. (I voted Bernie). The time to get a better candidate than Biden was then, changing things up would be a huge risk for Democrats and would help Trump (R’s can’t easily say Biden is insane and take their away their rights, unlike a new candidate which they can say is the bogeyman). This is the exact same reason Trump ran basically unopposed for his 2nd term, its generally the best idea in the US’s system vs picking another candidate. If you care about how “bad” Biden is, then vote in the next general and help out the best candidate.
Depends how cynical you feel today.
IMO it’s either:
-
The DNC believes anyone too progressive will get stomped in the general election
-
Don’t forget, Dems would be conservatives in most other countries. As much as I hate to say it, I’m not convinced most of them aren’t just as beholden to corporate interests as R is.
OR
Probably a little of both of those actually. Also, maybe a dash of - boomers are going to control our politics until a bunch more boomer voters and boomer politicians die of old age.
it’s because of people defending biden’s atrocities. like, there’s more than one person you can run, and most of the options could poll better vs. trump.
Biden needs to deliver on at least one campaign promise - be a 1 term President, and drop out of the race now, so we don’t risk the election.
His ego, nor the desires of his donors, are not worth sacrificing democracy.
Wait, you not only want him to be a one-term president, you don’t even want him to finish his term? We get President Harris until 2024?
Your ability to fly has come at the cost of your reading comprehension I see.
Polls a year out are meaningless. Obama was also “losing” at this point before his re-election.
Nationally, Democrats have been beating polls by 9+ points at the ballot box since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Reminder of what an absolute shit-bird Robert Kagan is.
‘No rational person would believe a word Robert Kagan says about anything. He has been spewing out one falsehood after the next for the last four years in order to blind Americans about the real state of affairs concerning the invasion which he and his comrade and writing partner Bill Kristol did as much as anyone else to sell to the American public.’ - Glenn Greenwald, Salon.
Kagan is one of the shitheads that got us to this point. He’s now concern-trolling us about how we shouldn’t bother opposing Trump.
I completely agree but I would just like to point out that Glenn Greenwald is also a massive shithead.
EXACTLY. I’m getting tired of these doom and gloom articles from journalists who know better.
Either the media wants a horse race or they absolutely don’t know how to poll post Roe v. Wade.
Probably both.
Nationally, Democrats have been beating polls by 9+ points at the ballot box since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
It’s really surprised to me how quickly this dropped from political discourse and analysis. We’ve had several off year elections and the midterms now where Republicans have underperformed. Polls have largely seemed to miss this trend.
There’s a lot of reasons to be hopeful right now. Republicans can’t control their messaging on abortion, and it’s very clear voters are unhappy about bans. Yet, Republicans in the House are only barely aware of it, and in the Senate you’d think they hadn’t seen any results at all. Tuberville’s continued hold for abortion reasons, while voters have made it clear anti abortion advocates can go fuck themselves, is remarkably visible. I don’t think it’s a mistake that Republicans are signaling they’ll bypass him if he doesn’t budge. Elections a month ago make it clear it’s a millstone around their necks.
We have an advantage to capitalize on, but it only matters if we press the advantage. We have to show up en masse to the election.
Moreover, the Democrats need to get their messaging together. Hammer in that THESE ARE THE PEOPLE who overturned Roe, who are currently cratering Florida and Texas, who allowed COVID to run rampant. Hammer in Tuberville blocking military promotions, hammer in Johnson and McConnell both effectively refusing to do any of their jobs, hammer in Trump nearly getting us into a shooting war with Iran (remember that assassination we carried out during a peace conference?) Remind the voters who exactly Trump is, what exactly he’s done, and what exactly he’s stated he’s going to do.
Just because he’s a neocon piece of shit doesn’t mean he can’t be right. Also, dude, Glen Greenwald is no fucking saint either. That guy is a certified scumbag. At least with Kagan there’s a chance that he actually believes his bullshit, whereas with Greenwald, we know he’s an intellectually dishonest grifter.
Obama was also “losing” at this point before his re-election
Obama was about 46% and trending upwards at this point, Biden is 37% and trending downward. This is a pretty nice visualization of historical presidential approval ratings plotted with Biden’s. Takeway is while other presidents have tanked way harder (Nixon, Dubya, HW), Trump and Biden are basically tied for historical unpopularity on a consistent basis. Biden did hit mid 50s as he came in to office where most presidents get a bump, Trump didn’t even reach 50.
Same paper that just ran the “Women should stop shunning Trump supporters in their dating pool” article. I guess that’s so they’ll be less likely to abused under the pending dictatorship?
Really wish people would stop posting / up voting garbage opinion pieces here. I want facts, not hot takes.
Big, solid, nuanced take against the 11 page opinion piece.
Maybe tell the other folks reading the same online conversation platform as you are what you thought made this specific link you decided to comment on “garbage”.
Good point and probably not, but I’m too lazy to look right now.
Edited to add: Presumably same editorial team, so the seeming dissonance between the two articles isn’t lessened much by having different authors.
It really depends a lot. If it’s something by the editorial board itself, then it’s a very jarring difference. But you can have writers with polar opposite viewpoints in editorials. It used to be nice from a reader perspective to get that variety, but then the right went wacko.
That said, I do think it’s weird the section editor would approve something like “women need to date more conservatives”. Maybe they take the approach of not being responsible for what their authors say, but that crosses enough lines that it’s odd they didn’t step in.
Neither of these were written by the WaPo’s editorial board. They are both op-eds meaning they’re written by contributors and in the old print format would be placed opposite from the editorial page, hence the name “op-ed.”
Your comment shows a deep misunderstanding of how these things work and what function newspapers are trying to fulfill with them, but it’s probably not your fault since media literacy tends to be pretty abysmal in the US.
Non English speaker: inevitable means it will happen no matter what. They way i see it, its used wrong here correct? It should maybe have been ‘increasingly realistic’ or maybe ‘increasingly plausible’ but inevitable assumes that voting for someone else won’t stop it from happening
The title is a bit clickbaity, but the subtext is that if he is elected, dictatorship is increasingly inevitable.
And the ‘increasingly’ modifier further shows it’s only a potential outcome.
Technically, I’d say “increasingly inevitable” is a meaningless phrase. “Inevitable” is an absolute - an outcome either is, or is not, inevitable. Like they say, “you can’t be a little bit pregnant”, outcomes cannot be a little bit inevitable, or somewhat inevitable, or mostly inevitable, so the degree of inevitability cannot be increasing.
However, I think most native English speakers would not think twice about it, and would read it as something like: “a Trump dictatorship is approaching inevitability.” That’s how I read it, at least.
This is just the usual polarising fear mongering bullshit. Even “increasingly plausible” is a stretch.
Maybe the democratic party should focus more energy trying to understand what is that that makes so many people even considering trump.
When people turn the other side into a one dimensional caricature they just ignore the real world problems that make them lose elections.
It’s only inevitable if we do nothing
