“The choice is between two terrible people. One is actively trying to kill me and the other doesn’t care if I die.” --A old post I’m unable to find but truly sums up american politics.
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Damn. Too real.
But if you have to choose between a shit sandwich or a shit sandwich with glass… obviously hold the glass, right?
I mean seriously… We don’t have ANY better and more qualified candidates in our 331.9 million citizens? Really?
Sure we do. That apparently has nothing to do with what the parties decide to do.
Yes. But are they rich?
More qualified, yes.
Able to win the primaries of the two political parties that people will vote for, no.
The problem is the voting system. You can vote for the orange idiot and never vote again or vote for the other guy and live longer.
My hot take:
Biden has been the best President we’ve had in 30 years.
He’s exactly who we needed when we got him. He got us out of Afghanistan. As much as a debacle as it was, he not Trump and not Obama pulled us out. His deft handling of the Ukrainian conflict where he used soft-power and influence to let the EU and NATO members come to decision to enact the super harsh sanctions themselves. Knowing that if the US pressed, they’d resist. It had to be their decision. He’s continued to say and do all of the right things. His attempt to forgive student loans his huge. Some of the measures worked even if all of them didn’t. He got the most meaningful infrastructure bill passed that I’ve ever witness. Neither Trump nor Obama could make it happen and Biden did it with a split Congress That infrastructure bill was also the most meaningful environment legislation that we’ve ever had That bill also paves the way for significant investment in our broad-band across the country Passed the Safer Communities Act …actual gun related legislation since the Brady bill. Again, with a split congress. Gave us our first public defender SCOTUS justice. This might not seem like a big deal but I think its pretty significant given the amount of case law that exists that, so far, hasn’t had a public defenders ‘say’ in it.
I could go on but I gotta go eat dinner.
People want to shit on Biden, but I actually like him. He’s not perfect, but he’s been insanely effective given everything he walked in to. Including him diligently and quietly rebolstering the executive branches that were gutted and had people leaving in droves in the last admin. Eg the Department of State. He’s assigned quality folks into key roles and its making a difference.
I voted for him without hesitation because well, the alternative was terrifying, but I was not expecting much from him at all. He’s surprised me.
edit: I literally can’t figure out how to make this a list. Sorry for the wordblob.
I somewhat agree. He’s probably been the best President in the last 30 years but it’s a real low bar. He’s done the bare minimum I would expect a sitting president to actually do. Obama was a disappointment but he got the monster that is healthcare on a decent start. Too bad Trump absolutely gutted it. Should have been made with more longevity but frankly, the real people to blame are solely the Republicans.
That said Biden for a second term isn’t what I want. I barely wanted him for a first term but again, better than the literal reversal of human rights. He’s probably the best president we could have gotten but he’s still a corporate democrat pushing corporate greed. Republicans are the real reason we can’t make any progress in that regard because we have the choice between literal treasonous assholes who diminish human rights for anyone non-white non-male at any costs or we have corporate greed-pushing democrats that just want to keep the ship upright enough to keep making money.
I don’t have a lot of faith in the 2024 election but I know I’ll be voting for whomever the Democrats push forward because no one in their right mind wants the alternative.
Very well argued. This is quite unrelated but just out of interest, how realistic do you see constitutional reform in the US? Because to me as an outsider, that seems to me to be what US politics sorely needs rn. Is there appetite for it among the electorate? Among the Dems? Could it be conceivably carried out?
I suspect most don’t even want to see a Biden vs Anyone or an Anyone Vs. Trump election.
That’s exactly what the article says.
Those same Americans will just ignore that there are other candidates and it’ll be yet another presidential election where 49% of voters claim that they don’t really support the person they vote for, and that you have to do the same as a moral imperative.
And, as it’s been since Reagan, no matter who we elect we’ll only get conservative outcomes.
and that you have to do the same as a moral imperative
Railing against this fact doesn’t magically make it untrue. Not voting for the lesser evil means you don’t care which evil wins. If you legitimately think GOP rule isn’t any worse than Dem rule, then by all means don’t vote or vote third party. But if you think Christian fascism + neoliberalism is worse than just neoliberalism, then once the primaries are over you need to vote accordingly. Voter disenfranchisement is an age-old tactic you’re comment is falling right into.
And I say this all as a market socialist, so don’t for a second think I like the Dems
so don’t for a second think I like the Dems
I’d hope you wouldn’t. On any issue that matters to their voters they’re effectively no different than Republicans. The minimum wage/living wages, housing scarcity, war (and endless funding for it), cost-prohibitive education and health care, equality for queer people, militarization of police, fascism (or ignoring it), gun control, and oddly, we can now add abortion to the list after their response to Roe repeal was to fundraise. (Even though they had control of Congress and the presidency.) They did make a cool 80 million, though, so that’s something: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/democrats-pull-in-80-million-following-supreme-court-ruling-on-roe
I can’t convince myself that voting Democrat is a moral action anymore. That they say nicer things doesn’t matter much when they’re voting records and policies are conservative and regressive. Republicans may stab me in the back but Democrats stab me in the front.
I need more than pretty speeches and broken promises, and really, so does this country.
You’re not voting for Dems, you’re voting to keep Reps out. “My vote won’t help things appreciably progress so instead I’m gonna let things deteriorate” is the argument you’re making. People’s rights are getting stripped because of this kind of apathy
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I really wish we had people we could vote for instead of only focusing on who we have to vote against, but here we are
an important step toward this, if you want something actionable to do, is advocating for voting reform. pretty much any reform away from FPTP will do at this point, although personally i’m partial to working toward mixed-member proportional representation. the organization FairVote prefers RCV; STAR Voting and Equal Vote are both orgs that prefer STAR voting for starter orgs in this space. as far as recent switches to novel systems: Fargo and St. Louis have recently switched to approval voting!
I really wish we had people we could vote for instead of only focusing on who we have to vote against, but here we are
Agreed, and the way I’ve come to view it is that federal elections aren’t ever going to be making huge waves. It’s a representation of what the system is already moving towards and expecting monumental changes here is unrealistic. Local and state elections, however, is where we can push for legitimate change that eventually cascades up to the federal level. E.g. we need to reach a critical mass of state and local places using alternative voting systems before we have enough momentum to force it at the federal level, since the entrenched parties don’t want it.
Agreed. The best thing is, only one state needs to adopt proportional representation for sending reps to Congress for it to have an impact. Even a small new party with a dozen seats is likely to be a tie breaker.
Respectfully, you just watched women lose the right to abortion a year ago when Democrats had the presidency and control of Congress. Their response was to use it to raise money, not act in any way to stop it or create positive change.
There are so many more examples of this too.
You voted for deterioration, and so did I. That’s not a matter of opinion, but of historical record.
I’m not sure if you’re just ignorant of the topics you’re bringing up or are actually being disingenuous, but I’m going to act as if you’re being genuine for the sake of other people reading this.
Women lost abortion because R senators fucked with the system while Obama was in office and then pushed another SCOTUS appointment through while Trump was in office. Repealing RvW had literally nothing to do with who was sitting in the oval office and everything to do with Rs abusing the lack of a D supermajority to put corrupt judges on the SCOTUS. With that knowledge taken into consideration here, your argument boils down to “Rs abused the system while a minority and Ds didnt have a supermajority to stop it, therefore I don’t care if Rs gain a majority. Things couldn’t be done to stop the abusers before so idc if the abusers get more power.”
I voted against the US moving towards A Handmaid’s Tale; you’re arguing for who cares if it moves towards A Handmaid’s Tale
Women lost the right to abortion, because of the previous administrations actions and ability to install judges to the federal courts, at all levels, but specifically at the SCOTUS level. Though it alsorequired that cases make it through the federal courts too.
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Here’s the trick, if you keep voting dem, you will keep getting worse, Republicans. It’s a cycle that cannot be fixed by voting for the democratic party. The reality is action beyond voting is necessary. But if voting is all we have, then the only path is to attempt to vote for something else, even if it means losing, because losing will happen anyway. The future Republicans will be worse, and the delay by a few years will be moot.
Here’s the trick, if you keep voting dem, you will keep getting worse, Republicans
Completely nonsensical. Republicans have gotten worse because their bid to court the south and unite all Christian denominations under abortion was successful. It’s completely independent from Dems.
The reality is that voting for Dems in federal elections is currently the only option available for fighting Christian nationalists getting voted into federal office. Other options are much more available at the state and local levels
But if voting is all we have, then the only path is to attempt to vote for something else, even if it means losing, because losing will happen anyway.
Yea sorry to burst your bubble but I’m not interested in helping fascists takeover the country. This kind of accelerationist argument only helps the people trying to keep pushing the Overton window to the right. It’s another form of disenfranchisement
Perhaps it’s not an outright positive/negative moral action, but I’d call it a moral action in the same way the trolley problem is.
You’re a dumbass, democrats have passed tons of legislation to make things better. People just don’t pay attention to it because it’s not exciting.
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Your argument is that you’re mad that a political party fundraises and therfore you’ll continue to support conditions that allow fascism to grow?
I mean the gop does the same thing except they also actively take away rights and stoke an environment of stochastic terrorism so…
No.
My argument is that the two parties are functionally the same. You’re voting for fascism no matter which lever you pull. The difference is between perpetrator and collaborator.
This is a ludicrous assessment.
How is a vote for Biden a vote for facsism?
Edit: Sorry, let me clarify. I read your previous remarks. I agree that the democrats (the corporate centrist wing) are more concerned with fundraising and corporate lobbying, doing the neo-liberal bare minimum. You are correct.
But you realize that by sitting out this election you are helping to elect literal authoritarian fascists, yes? Which is worse than shitty neoliberals by a very wide margin.
I appreciate your opinion. I’ve outlined why I feel that way further up in the thread.
I’d also prefer Trump’s name never be on a ballot.
I’m 57 and it’s starting to look like no matter how long I manage to hang on I’ll never see a president younger than I am.
Well… not enough to stop it. Both are the most popular in their respective primaries. By far. It’s it even close.
An anachronistic old white dude vs a corrupt old orange dude. Why is this the best we as a country can do?
It’s because the election system is First Past the Post. If they changed it to Ranked Choice Voting, all candidates from both primaries (plus independents) could run in the election and it would be up to the public to decide which of them is best, with their vote going to a fallback candidate if their favourite doesn’t win.
what if we had a president who was actually going to have to live with the consequences of what they chose to do?
“Biden remains the top contender among Democrats, however, and Trump’s lead over the other GOP contenders widened following his federal indictment earlier this month.”
Given that one is the clear favorite among Democrats, and the other is the favorite among Republicans, it’d be perverse if we didn’t get a rematch between them, unless that changes between now and the election.
This is how it is supposed to work in a two-party system. The favorites of each party get to compete. If there were somebody else who was the favorite of their party, they’d get to compete.
If it were a different system (e.g. a parliamentary system), then the rules would be different. Although tbh when I look across the pond to the UK, I can’t say they consistently do a better job picking leaders than we do.
As a Briton the idea of any of the last three PMs in a presidential system is really scary in my opinion. It’s easier to depose a leader that’s failing badly in the UK which is a good thing, I think the problem is the fact too much of our actual machinery of government is based on centuries-old gentleman’s agreements which is fine up until you get a complete stranger to honour like Boris Johnson who will abuse our fairly fluid constitutional arrangements to cling onto power like a tick.
In theory the monarch is supposed to be the last line of defence against a genuinely scary and out of control government that Parliament can’t reign in but we saw how well that worked over the last three years.
Trump’s lead over the other GOP contenders widened following his federal indictment earlier this month.
…it widened after this? Jesus.
Republicans see him as a martyr and the indictments as vindicating his persecution-by-the-deep-state complex
That’s depressing. What would they need to see to drop this guy?
Fuck, why don’t we just vote for houseplants at this point?
But will they all have a unified vote in the preliminaries?
Well there already almost a dozen republican candidates, we just need to collectively back one or two that aren’t Trump. Does anyone have any thoughts on William Hurd who just announced? I don’t know much about him.
Are there any promising Democrats that are running against Biden?
There’s gotta be some better people out there right?
Cornel West is running.
Dude is legit, I’d vote for him.
Oh my fucking god you people are so determined to shoot yourselves in the foot. Vote for someone who can actually win, who doesn’t support Russia invading Ukraine.
I see McCarthyism has entered the chat.
