Why the fuck are these two the choices?!
Because the system is set up to prevent any real change for the benefit of the common people. So your choice is between the friendly, somewhat reasonable oligarchy stooge and the utterly deranged oligarchy stooge.
A somewhat less pessimistic take: the system is set up to be self-stable.
And it was also designed so that States would have most of the power, not the Federal government.
At various points in history the common people did get benefits. New Deal. Universal suffrage. Civil rights. Abolition.
But it always requires a critical mass of the population to support change.
Like in the 2016 election? Or in 2000? The system is set up to prevent the will of the people from being enacted and it takes a massive crisis for everyone to be pissed off enough to do something. Add to that the control of nearly all media by the oligarchy and you get to where we are today.
And it was also designed so that States would have most of the power, not the Federal government.
Yeah, but then we changed it because of the civil war…
The system was designed for the president to be a mostly performative figurehead. Then we gave the president real power, but left determination like the president didn’t matter.
Same reason every independent store and restaurant gets replaced by a chain.
People want what’s familiar. Both these men won their primaries and have the most support out of anyone in their parties.
Look at the last handful of democratic presidential losses to see this in action:
Gore gets nominated due to familiarity. He has the charisma of a warm sponge. He loses (barely, and not the popular vote; by the way, FUCK the electoral college) to George W. “I’d have a beer with him and hey wasn’t his dad president?” Bush.
Kerry somehow rises to the top of the next democratic primary, a fact that I will never understand, because he also has the charisma of a warm sponge. Bush is familiar and a wartime president. He is re-elected in defiance of God and nature.
Obama comes along and is a once in a generation political talent. Things are pretty good for a while.
Hillary enters the primary and wins mainly based on name recognition. She presents herself as having the charisma of a warm sponge, when we all know full well that she has the charisma of a wood chipper, and since we’re pretty good at detecting artifice she loses.
In 2019 we’ve got a pretty good set of primary choices, but Biden gets into the ring and that’s pretty much fucking it, because, again, he has name recognition, so he blows past some better, younger choices and manages to leverage his name and Trump’s fuck-ups enough to win.
The pattern is that name recognition will get you a real long way, especially with low information voters, and that is a real goddamn problem when there are objectively better options who aren’t as famous.
So anyway, I think we need a constitutional amendment forbidding members of one’s immediate family from running for president after one has been president. No sons, daughters, husbands, wives, etc. Fuck dynasties. Fucking fundamentally un-American.
Because that’s all our owners will let us have. Thanks citizen United for hammering in that final nail in our collective coffin
Do you think it’s just that, or that maybe the fact that too many people don’t give a shit in-between election years might play a role as well? Because from what I’ve seen over the decades- is that a lot of SJWs enjoy rising up every four years to complain about shit- then disappear until the next election.
Without fail.
It worries me that people can listen to trump say “we have the most unsafe border in history when I was president we had the most safe border in history” and not question that statement in the slightest.
“It votes for the geezer or it gets the fascist again.”
Edit: Iam eh gud spellor
John Stewart always finds the best way to express what I’m feeling.
Regardless of the outcome, this election will go down as a shit stain on history.
I just hope the outcome doesn’t turn it into explosive diarrhea.
Damn, I guess I’m going to ignore years of evidence that Biden’s admin can function just fine and go with my feelings on this one. I mean would you vote constructively if it meant getting over yourself? Of course not. We’re Americans. We want a leader with a good jaw, not with good character or good ideas.
Nah but seriously though. Biden and Trump make me feel bad so I’m going to vote in a way that harms the country. That’ll show us.
Yeah, I mean, nevermind all the pending criminal charges and evidence of incompetence from Trump’s 4 years in office where we had weekly “infrastructure week” failures, a constant stream of garbage tweets parading as “official Presidential communications”, and egregious power grabs by the Executive branch. Trump said all his same BS in a more convincing-sounding voice during last night’s debate and the guy with a known stuttering issue just didn’t have a strong-sounding voice, that’s all the convincing I needed. Biden is just so old, I literally can’t tell them apart <teeheehee>!
Don’t forget how:
"I’m NOT voting for an entire apparatus of executive government with thousands of employees, I’m ONLY voting for a charismatic messiah godking, because I’m still little more than a medieval peasant looking to be mesmerized.
Then if fascists take over the nation (again) and the most vulnerable among me suffer from it (again and again and again), that’s not MY problem. While (somehow) fancying myself as enlightened and special and pure. I’m at the center of my goddamned Universe!"
The Supreme Court, and how republicans effectively staged a coup of it in 2016 by turning their back on Merrick Garland, then packed it with corrupt right-wing zealots? “Not MY problem!”… until it is, but by then it’s way too late.
I mean, you’d think the total inability to hide Biden and Trumps’ cognitive dysfunction, caught on camera many, many times over the last few years, and now live and in color, would be enough to get people to stop pretending that there’s a good option here. Hell, Biden’s handlers have been caught on camera making sure he doesn’t wander off, like they had for Feinstein before she died.
But then again, Americans have watched the gradual, but now inevitable, slide into fascism over the last 40 years and managed to convince themselves that all is well, provided the guy enabling it is wearing their preferred jersey, so I guess we’ll just chill and let Biden and Trumps’ unelected handlers rule the country.
It’s too bad you all didn’t vote for Williamson in the primary. It’s been clear neither of these two assholes are fit for a long time, just like it was clear Feinstein wasn’t fit when she was falling asleep in hearings.
The people guiding Biden at least have an interest in keeping the united states functional. The people guiding Trump want to watch it burn.
No they don’t.
They have an interest in keeping themselves rich, consequences be damned.
What I don’t understand about the handlers thing is that when I watch other famous people walking and talking: I see their handlers steer them, give them signals, whisper names in their ear. And you know what? Celebrities in their prime look awkward all the time. People who have nothing to worry about but their craft and being famous screw up all the time.
ignore years of evidence that Biden’s admin can function
They’re doing a real bang-up job, both at home and abroad.
I wish we went further left, but the reality is that Biden has been a steady hand at the wheel where we’ve come out of economic unknown of the covid shut downs pretty well. We still have a ways to go, but we’re heading in the right direction, and the most glaring problem (namely inflation) was something baked in before he even came into office.
Abroad we actually have the respect of much of the world, and it feels like to our allies that we are actually a partner that can be trusted on. Keep in mind that if you told a republican of the 80s that a US president rally the west against an imperialistic russia invading Europe, without committing a single US or NATO troop, and exposed them for how weak they are, then they would have said he was the second coming of Reagan.
Do I disagree with a lot of what he has done? Yes. But it’s been a steady ride. Compared to Trump’s presidency, which was a bumpy ride throughout, handing off an economy that looked like it could just go completely into the shitter, and threatening our alliances across the world, he looks like straight up looks like one of the best.