Locking this thread to clean up the mess. Come on, ya’ll, we can do better than this.
Edit: I’ve unlocked the comments in here. We’ve removed some comments in this thread for being inflammatory or for not adhering to Beehaw’s one (and only) sitewide rule: Be(e) Nice.
To elaborate a bit on what that means in !politics:
Be(e) Nice doesn’t mean you have to always be positive or happy. It doesn’t mean you always have to agree. It does, however, that at all times we have to remember the human on the other side of the screen. We can disagree and still be kind to each other and try to assume that others are operating in good faith. I get it - politics are messy and complicated and the issues are big and for many existential. But we can talk to each other and disagree with one another without resorting to personal attacks or escalating the discussion into an all out flame war.
And to reiterate - that doesn’t mean that we will tolerate hate speech, JAQing off, sealioning, or other ways of engaging in bad faith. If you see these things, please report them to the mods.
Ugh. I’m not real happy about having to vote to uphold the gerontocracy, but as both likely frontrunners are a part thereof, all I can do is vote to minimize the harm.
That’s only true if you live in a swing state. If your state’s certain to go one way or the other, vote your conscience, even if it’s a write-in.
I would argue the opposite. An increasing minority vote/poll in a “safe” state would pull resources away from swing states to keep the state “safe”. Not many people would have imagined Georgia going blue in federal elections but here we are.
If things are bad enough that NY goes red, how I voted is the least of our problems.
I mean actually red or blue states. Georgia’s dynamics have been moving centerward for years, and people who pay attention to that stuff knew that.
And how do you think Georgia started going blue? It doesn’t happen overnight.
Same with Texas, down to the fact that their attorney general was bragging about preserving republican minority rule by preventing the “wrong” people from voting.
I live in Texas (a state that will go a certain way) and I will vote Dem. It makes no sense to me to help make a bigger gap between the Republicans and everybody else just because the Dems suck too.
The “principled stance” a protest vote makes only helps embolden the current political hellscape within my own state. If I can chip away at the Republican power structure, I will do it.
Wow, a lot of vitriol on this topic! Okay, so, for my first post on Lemmy I am going to make a positive leftist case for Biden.
Biden is not the problem! He wants to do big things; he wants be a great president. If congress sent him voting rights, reproductive rights, major climate action, and many other leftist priorities, he would sign them. He could definitely be better, but he is mostly not standing in our way. How many decades would you have to go back to find another president you could say that about?
Biden is not the problem. Congress is the problem. State and local governments are the problem. Nimbys are the problem. We have a lot of problems to solve but the presidency is not one of them. What we need to do with the presidency is simply reelect Biden and then get on with the work of solving the actual problems.
Biden is still a centrist, also known as a fascist enabler.
The man is not for labor, see ending the railroad strike, one of the most infuriating moves a so-called great president could perform.
If he truly wanted to do great things, and not be hindered by the backing of capital, he’d be moving fast and breaking things more than the previous administration. He’s not.
I understand your frustration but also encourage you to pay more attention to what happens behind the scenes. Your position on the railroad strike is outdated/misinformed relative to what happened a month ago:
When Joe Biden and Congress enacted legislation in December that blocked a threatened freight rail strike, many workers angrily faulted Biden for not ensuring that the legislation also guaranteed paid sick days. But since then, union officials says, members of the Biden administration, including the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, and labor secretary, Marty Walsh, who stepped down on 11 March, lobbied the railroads, telling them it was wrong not to grant paid sick days.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/01/railroad-workers-union-win-sick-leave
In other words, Biden instructed his administration to double back and force the hand of the railroad companies to get the union exactly what they wanted.
IBEW statement. this is one of the unions involved, and their official statement on the matter. pretty positive.
I think you’re wanting him to be more like LBJ, using his political power to drag reluctant congress members along, and you’re right, someone like that would have gotten more done. But LBJ wasn’t perfect either, and the LBJ approach isn’t the only way to get things done. Another way is more bottom up, get the support in congress and then just have a president who’s willing to go along. I’m guessing that’s probably AOC’s intention, to bring liberals and leftists together so we can present a unified front and get majorities in congress.
But yeah, I agree about the railroad strike. Also the vaccine patents. He’s not perfect.
I don’t think Biden wants to do big things.
Yep. He is absolutely invested in the status quo. Which is why the DNC sabotaged the 2020 primary to make sure he’d win.
Biden won the most states, nothing was sabotaged.
Going into super Tuesday, it was clear that Bernie had the lead. Most of the other candidates absolutely tanked, and afterward dropped out and all of them endorsed Biden. Then fucking Bloomberg joins the race out of nowhere, spends a bunch of money, muddies the waters, then drops out after hardly any time and endorses Biden. And when the DNC super delegates decided they’d go for Biden no matter what, it was clear what was going to happen.
Tell me with a straight face that people at the DNC didn’t contact the other candidates and make it clear that they wouldn’t have a future in the Democratic party unless they dropped and endorsed Biden.
The DNC did not want anyone but Biden to win the nomination, and they made sure it happened. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/31/dnc-superdelegates-110083
He was endorsed by the dropouts because any political operative could see that Biden was the best candidate to beat trump. Sanders core support is from white liberals and there aren’t enough of them to win a presidential election. Minorites and moderates have no interest in him and that was shown in the primary results.
Sanders would have been stomped by trump on 2016 or 2020
we pick from the menu for dinner tonight, and for future meals we fight to have more of a say in what’s on the menu. there’s too many people calling for my head right now for me to protest vote or sit out because the guy who doesn’t want to kill me is problematic about some niche policy position. remember that a lot of trump’s money in 2016 went toward campaigning for democrats to stay home, with reasons alternating between “clinton is an awful candidate” (she was) and “she’s got this in the bag so your vote doesn’t matter”.
Absolutely.
Anyone, ANYONE that is pushing for protesting the vote is UNdemocratic and essentially actively advocating for fascism.
VOTE like your life depends on it because it will
Biden is trying to get some progressive stuff done. For the most part pretty happy with his agenda. Still be nice to have someone running that isn’t old as fuck.
Really wish we didn’t need to wait for politicians to die of old age before we could replace them…
I imagine in this case there’s a little more to it, namely that incumbent presidents overwhelmingly win a second term. The last time a sitting President failed to do so prior to Trump was all the way bac in 1993.
I don’t like Biden, hell, I don’t like electoral politics; but it’s probably wise in a party-political sense.
I really wish workers had enough organizing power to yeet these duplicitous assholes. Why can’t we have candidates who actually fucking care about bettering our circumstances?
Not a big fan of this, but I can’t really blame her when the only other options are “unserious protest candidate who’s a bit of a crank” and “unserious protest candidate who’s completely nuts and possibly a crypto-Republican”.
Welp, there you have it.
AOC has absolutely, 100% betrayed the principles that got her elected in the first place. It’s not surprising. Most people who stay in Washington long-term end up falling in line, but still, kind of disappointing to see.
deleted by creator
My thought exactly. The Democratic Party is more fragmented than they want to admit. She was on the progressive side (I thought). Or maybe there actually is no progressive side.
Had high hopes that she wouldn’t fall in line.
People like AOC are why I’m generally convinced my vote really doesn’t matter. We elected a Democratic president with a congressional majority last time, and in return most of the country is working multiple jobs to survive AND you no longer have the right to abortion.
When we get conservative outcomes regardless, what does my Democratic vote really matter for?
What? It could absolutely be worse. Look at the policies in Florida/Texas/Idaho against education, trans people, voting rights, labor rights, etc. I’m glad we at least got who we got. We could have done way worse.
This. As much I would like someone to really change things for the better, I could absolutely see laws like the ones passed in Florida and Texas being passed nationally if elections go poorly.
I’d say you’re both right. But we have to be careful not to let the fear of something worse take over the potential progress (which often happens). Ultimately, the lack of progress is still a problem, even in the face of not being as bad as it could be.
Your Democratic vote is the only thing preventing this country becoming a theocracy. We had one term of Trump and look at the damage he caused. Imagine what a second term would look like.
fuck man. you gotta be in a pretty good spot not being able to tell the difference. there are people who live and die on the outcomes of these politics. if you really think it isn’t enough, get involved in a political project, join a mutual aid program, whatever you think is important, but genuinely even if it barely matters at all (and to be clear, it actually does matter a whole fucking lot, or republicans wouldn’t be pouring billions of oil dollars into mobilizing their base) its literally just a single day at most of effort. if you can’t do that, you genuinely don’t have any right to complain about conservative outcomes.
What, exactly, do you think Biden could have personally one to prevent the Supreme Court from doing what they were stacked by Trump to specifically do?
The president can’t overrule the Supreme Court. He can’t appoint any new judges until there is a vacancy.
And the economic crisis isn’t a uniquely American problem. It’s also impacting Europe, Canada, and most other western nations. What can the president of the US do to directly and quickly “fix” something of that scale? Something that had been several decades in the making?
Well… he could… if the GOP had the decency to impeach corrupt SCOTUS. But, if the GOP were decent enough to do that, then there wouldn’t probably have been corrupt judges that needed impeaching in the first place.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Or maybe there actually is no progressive side.
Hint: it’s this one.
I tend to agree but really wish I didn’t.
Removed by mod
this shit gets me angry. both parties suck, biden sucks, yeah yeah yeah. he isn’t in support of actively ripping rights away from millions of people, and he isn’t on board with genociding trans people. i swear, you have either be super out of touch with the people actively under threat by republicans or putting your principles over the lives of actual people to even begin equating the two parties. work on utopian political projects every other day of the year, build movements to affect broader social change, but i swear if you end up not voting blue during one of the most precarious moments of this shithole’s democracy what comes next is worse for all of us.
and to be clear, biden sucks and i hate him. but genuinely i don’t want to get genocided, and the blue guy is a lot less likely to try that shit on me or the people i love.
People like them is why Trump won.
No, Hillary is why Trump won.
Just on my tiny street in America, three families lost their homes to Obama’s foreclosure crisis. Multiply that by every street in this country and you have a lot of people who won’t see the appeal of Hillary being a continuation of Obama’s policies.
and the blue guy is a lot less likely to try that shit on me or the people i love.
So it’s only “a lot less likely” not a definitive won’t ever?
oh for sure. i don’t trust the dude, and his policy (like all capitalists) has tangible impacts on my quality of life. every moment we don’t have universal health care, and specifically universal gender affirming healthcare for one of my specific minority corners, leads to the unnecessary deaths of innocent people. every moment we don’t have housing justice, climate justice, and any number of other progressive policies leaves more people in horrific situations. i just don’t think electoral politics provides a pathway for anything better at the moment, and if it goes to the red team things get much worse for everybody much quicker.
Historically, the guy that fought against apartheid is unlikely to commit genocide.
There’s no definitive ‘ever’ in anything though. History has a few democratically-elected populist-turned-dictators if memory serves me right
And that statement isn’t really true if you’re a wage earner, need health care, need education, or an abortion, or need a home that you can both afford and live in. Dems just as enthusiastically shit on all of those people as Republicans.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
deleted by creator
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Lol what? Please explain the fascism that I’m apparently completely out of the loop on.
EZPZ
Democrat = Liberal = Socialist = Communist = Fascist = Nazi. Therefore all Democrats are literally Nazi Fascists
/s
No, but the uni-party that’s in power in the U.S. is quite fascist. That has nothing to do with leftism, and I never implied it does. Apparently you missed in my original comment where I made it clear that Biden isn’t the only fascist being promoted (“either”).
Oh, I was replying @DesertRose and I only saw your comment immediately before it. I’m not a ‘both sides’ kinda person but they are both quite guilty - Republicans do seem to be more mask-off tho.
That being said, I don’t disagree with your response to @DesertRose.
My comment was more tongue-in-cheek and not meant to be taken too seriously, thus the “/s”
Fair enough. It sounded like you were attempting to characterize my comment, and that the “/s” was meant to show that you, yourself, didn’t agree with that characterization. Thanks for clarifying.
Fwiw I generally don’t think Biden is a Fascist per se. I think he is a corporatist and a neolib which can quickly lead to fascism. We need a different voting system besides first past to post so we can get some of these ghouls out of office.
“‘If they didn’t vote for a lizard’, said Ford, ‘the wrong lizard might get in.’” - Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Fwiw I generally don’t think Biden is a Fascist per se. I think he is a corporatist and a neolib
Those are not mutually exclusive. Biden very much subscribes to fascist politics, and has for his entire political career.
Plenty of fascist policy in Biden’s career of politics: mass incarceration—including concentration camps—the “War On Drugs”, union busting and strikebreaking, mass surveillance (e.g. the Patriot Act, which he happily takes credit for), militarization of the police, attacks on journalism and whistleblowers, etc.
Yes, you really should work on getting in the loop.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
The war on drugs has been a policy standard since Nixon to put minorities and the leftist youth in prison and has unfortunately has not been recanted but progress is slowing being made to change that.
The union busting was heartbreaking to hear but it is by no means an indicator of somebody being a fascist. In the US there has been plenty of union busting by capitalists.
The PATRIOT Act is a very unfortunate product of fear that nearly everyone gave liberty for some sense of security. Most people in the US were frightened by the 9/11 attacks, and there were few people at the time that saw that it would be a huge mistake to give the government such vast surveillance powers. Hindsight is very strong now with this.
Militarization of the police has more to do with a state by state, and department by department thing. The federal government has very little to do with local policing. There’s several Supreme Court cases basically saying so. Probably not the greatest idea as I would like a little more federal protection from and oversight of local police forces.
The only one I’m not familiar with is the whistleblowers. The only attacks on the press I know of are him calling out far right outlets that publish false and misleading information. Certainly not the president who claimed fake news about everything.
I am not super supportive of the Democratic Party, it has its issues but it is far from fascism. I think you are confusing that with authoritarianism. The Republican Party is the one that endorses candidates that want people like me to be dead and that is a pretty big motivator to vote for the Dems to prevent that from happening to me or others.
Removed by mod
Receiving support from a political party and the ability to influence policies behind the scenes requires playing the patronage game, which means protecting incumbents, especially in the Senate and presidency. Given this, I’m honestly surprised that no third parties have been able to win seats in safe districts, because doing so would somewhat fix this problem by making those representatives a genuine independent bloc able to negotiate bilaterally with the major parties. Are voters seriously content with the two-party system just because there are primaries?
