Everytime I read these kind of takes, I think to myself ‘Where the fuck is Russia getting all this money to mess with the USA election?’
Naomi Klein is a real person with a real history of political opinions not controlled by shadowy Russian masterminds. Maybe, just maybe, you’re hearing this criticism all over the place because it’s actually a real issue and “must be Russians” is a comfortable mental shutoff to avoid thinking about how the ego of the most powerful person in the country could be leading us into political danger.
Maybe the answer is that Russia isn’t doing what you think they’re doing. Blaming the failures of our electoral system on Russia is so 2016.
Eh, I mean they did mess around, but they were mainly just exacerbating existing issues and fault lines.
That’s exactly how it works. Find the fault lines and apply pressure. If you do it right, it doesn’t even cost much.
Anybody else feel like Lemmy is like 60% Russian trolls lately?
Maybe someone here could refresh my memory. I could have sworn that during 2020 campaigning, Biden indicated he would be a one term president that would willingly let a younger Democrat run for 2024. I haven’t seen anyone really rake him through the coals over that, so maybe it was some misinformation that was spread to make him more attractive, but I feel like it was a really key reason I felt comfortable supporting him.
They haven’t put anyone else up. No one has come up to challenge him. The Dems absolutely suck at presenting new leadership.
Probably because the last time someone saw the DNC running us all collectively off a cliff (Bernie in 2016), the DNC actively crushed their campaign, and then blamed them for the as-predicted DNC candidate’s loss.
No one wants to see their future political career taken out back and shot, as the DNC’s next scapegoat, if/when Biden loses.
I think they wanted to, but the young alternatives that the party leaders and donors liked have almost 0 popular support. Buttigieg, Harris, Yang, Gabbard, and Klobuchar were all relatively “young”, the party insiders liked them, the donors/media owners don’t hate them, but the average democratic voter ether dislikes them or is apathetic.
The people who do have popular support say things that scare donors and media owners. So they have spent years trying to convince the party and moderate voters that they’re not viable candidates.
So Biden it is because incumbent advantage.
You’re still living in 2016 based on the names you put out there. Newsom is the obvious answer, who actually has been extensively discussed for this or next election. He has popular support among voters and the establishment Dems.
Others like Whitmer have plenty of name recognition nationally, and in her case especially a great story to run on (Republicans wanted me dead to shut down my political views, now I’m gonna take that perspective to the office of the president).
There are others, too, but if you’re still listing Tulsi Gabbard as a Democrat I am not surprised you’re not up to date on candidates; she not only left the Democratic Party (and wrote a book about it), she has shifted to the Right on abortion and LGBT+ right, even publicly supporting Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
Those were literally all candidates in the 2020 primary? How am I in 2016, the primary candidates of note in 2016 were Clinton and Sanders.
Newsome is hardly new to the talk about potential candidates and is far from exciting. Whitmer is maybe a bit more appealing but we’ll see how much that holds when she starts talking to donors about funding her campaign.
Tulsi is exemplary of the issue with “moderate” democratic candidates, they’re all two bad days from starting to post about the “woke mind virus”.
I will always remember that moment in the 2020 Dem primary debates where Swalwell relayed a story about going to a political rally as a 6 year old and hearing the candidate tell people to pass the torch to the younger generation, and then revealing that Biden was that candidate, and Biden then quipping that he’d “hold onto” the torch for now.
He literally is so arrogant that he truly believes he is the only person alive who can beat Trump. He’d rather be buried with that torch than admit that there are many others that could do far better than him.
What Democrat governer, senator, congressman, mayor or whatever currently has the public profile to be electable nationally?
“Electable” is a subjective, moving goalpost.
You can easily discount Biden as being “electable” from polls that show him losing to Trump.
No one is excited for him, the most anyone can manage is that he beat Trump once, and after Gaza many people are markedly upset with the prospect of voting for him.
Point being, your question is inherently flawed: no one is voting for Biden because it’s Biden, people are only going to vote because the other person has an ‘R’ next to their name, and even more people if that person is Trump. You could probably pick a registered Democrat at random and if they were the general election candidate see them do nearly as well as Biden, barring the crusty pro-Biden fossils who would withhold their votes out of spite.
And yes, I think there are actually politicians on the “left” that you could replace him with and have a much better chance of winning, Newsom (regardless of my issues with him) being the most obvious answer.
None, of course. This is an ivory tower sort of article, a pining for an America that doesn’t exist right now. She’s the Left’s version of Matt Gaetz saying that Mike Johnson is too liberal and rolls over for the Democrats. It’s a good path to a D loss in the fall, and Vladimir must be excited to have her on his team.
The thing is though, I think he’s right. There is no younger alternative to him that has any chance of winning an election right now. At best, some are popular among college-aged males, a group that thinks they are far more important and numerous than they actually are (see also: Bernie-Bros).
Newsome would wipe the floor with Biden’s crappy poll numbers, and I don’t even like him.
Your argument is literally the argument that was put forth against Obama when he first announced his run. People always falsely claim the DNC’s ordained pick is the only path forward, when in reality they tend to eke out a win (or not, see 2016), while the dark horse candidates run away with elections.
The anti-Bernie rhetoric is #8 on the “Ur-DNC list of characteristics”, where the alternative candidates are cast as both too strong and too weak; having enough support to tank the election, but also so little support as to be safely ignored.
December 2019:
“If Biden is elected, he’s going to be 82 years old in four years and he won’t be running for reelection,” a prominent adviser to the campaign told Politico.
By Feb 2020 that wording changed slightly:
“I’m in pretty good health, but, look, I guarantee you this: If anything changed in my health, making it incapable for me to fully exert all the energy and mental acuity that was needed to be done, then I give you my word: I would not run again,” Biden said.
I remember this as well and I posted about it either here or the r/ and got downvoted all to shit over it. Gaslighting that it never happened. He said something about being a transition pres, bringing people back together and would hand o er the reins or some shit. I voted for him and he got his 4 years. Now the old Warhawk has lots of potential conflicts to get us mired in and doesn’t want to give up the chair.
Even if Biden beats Trump, I still fear for the effect of an apathetic, depressed voter turnout on down-ticket races. If Biden holds onto the presidency, but a congress and state and oocal races go the other way, we won’t be in a great place.
Apathetic and depressed is not what I’d call the voter turnout in the elections since 2020. The R’s blew their load too fast on overturning Roe v Wade and it’s been consistently fucking them in the ass since.
I think it is far too late for that.
Where the fuck is the VP? I have not seen her since she was elected.
She wants to run for president, probably thinks that being too public right now might hurt her reputation long term.
She stuck her neck out and tried to make a name for her self earlier in the presidency and was met by foaming frothing rage from the right (nothing new there despite openly pandering to them) and apathy or distaste from the left. She and her team probably think that response is from her association with Biden, but I suspect that is more to do with the vibe she gives off of being a careerist politician.
Being from Oakland a lot of us also know that she’s totally fine jailing people for weed, you’d think that a rationale move you would try and step away from the “just doing my job DA” to “Vice President of the People” by pushing for policies that prevent unnecessary jailings.
But you’re right, I didn’t even really realize until now that Kamala has been almost seemingly less active than Mike Pence as VP. You’re probably onto something with the long term campaign, although I also wouldn’t be surprised if it was “suggested” that she let Biden take the lead or something.
If this were a company, then this would be a lack of building up the next generation of leaders. I guess politics is a game of everyone for themselves, and not a team.
In a Terry Crews’ book he discussed being a rookie in the NFL. One’s teammates woke to tear a person down, and not build them up. They are all competing for the same small number of spots.
