Probably ninety percent of those would want to replace any relevant Democrat that made it on the ballet. Big deal. What a useless story.
Yeah, that’s the expected result for any party that isn’t a cult.
If 62% wanted to replace him with the same alternative candidate, that would be significant.
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What?
This is percentage of Biden voters…
The majority of people who would vote for him. Wishes there was any other option.
That’s a pretty big story
Anyone thinking about responding to this poster, please look at their post history so you know what you’re getting into with regard to ANYTHING even tangentially related to Biden.
True for the OP too. There’s definitely an element on some of the Lemmy communities that seems to exist only or at least primarily to push negative Biden prop (or barring that, anti-US prop in general). I checked Reddit recently for the first time in months (kind of like going to Walmart–avoid it like the plague, but sometimes you just can’t), and I was genuinely astonished at how little anti-Biden content was present by comparison.
I’m voting for Joe in November, and you should too. Joe’s administration killed non-competes, flipped the procedure for airline canceled and delayed flight refunds (i.e., pro-consumer), and pushed back the exempt employee loophole–and that’s just the news from this week. He’s an awesome president without even considering that the other side is composed entirely of criminals, Russian assets, and fascists.
That actually relieves me. Like, people going, “I won’t vote/will vote 3rd party” seem to not realize that if Biden doesn’t get in, Trump will, and he not only would push genocide MUCH more, but also WILL destroy the electoral system to stay in power and avoid jail.
Hell, Project 2025 leaking proved this
So a good reminder that the Fediverse is being echoey helps the fear some
Like, people going, “I won’t vote/will vote 3rd party” seem to not realize that if Biden doesn’t get in,
I think people saying that are well aware a 3rd party vote means a second Trump presidency. Most are saying that in bad faith. The posters posting it either have no plan to vote third party, or they’re not even US citizens (as their posts would suggest they are) and they’re not allowed to vote anyway.
Joe’s administration killed NDAs,
I don’t think you mean NDAs (Non Disclosure Agreements). I think you mean Non-compete agreements.
You are correct. I haven’t seen the two separated in years, so I tend to use NDA as a blanket term. Editing for clarity.
I just had to block them. Don’t even need to see the username to know who it is. Engaging with them and even the OP here is nothing but a carnival of bad faith arguments.
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The above commenter is a well known Hawaiian Pizza lover, he’s the absolute worst. /s
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Stop being paranoid about the mods they’re actually pretty fucking reasonable.
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Why don’t you just respond to the article. This poster has a habit of posting controversial articles that are critical of Biden’s actions but America is a fucking democracy and we can have an adult discussion about his flaws.
Having those conversations makes it more likely people will vote for him - compared to just muzzling everyone and saying “he’s so perfect” because we can fucking see his flaws. Silencing discussion drives down voter turn out and low voter turnout is how asshole GOP folks keep getting elected. Also those anti choice church goers are going to blindly vote for the adulterer - so we need to overwhelm the idiot factor.
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It’s an important fact, but hardly a major or unique case. I know I’ve personally never felt like any of the candidates in any of the elections I remember were great, just “good enough” or “better than some of the alternatives,” I certainly would’ve replaced them if I could.
Looking at some recent primaries
Back in 2020, Biden only had 51.7% of the votes in the democratic primaries. That made him by far the biggest single candidate, but that also means that almost half of democrats would have probably been happy to replace them with one of the other 4 candidates if they could (though they would have disagreed on which of the 4.) Most of them would still go on to vote for biden despite him not being their first pick.
In 2016, trump won with 44.9%, again the biggest single candidate, but that means that 55.1% wanted not trump. Of course most of that majority still held their nose and voted for him in November, but the majority of them probably would have been happy to replace him at that time if they could.
2008 was really fucking close for the Democrats, Obama beat out Hillary with 48.1% of the vote to her 48%, and the remaining 3.9% voting for various other candidates, that means that the majority (51.9%) of people wanted a candidate other than Obama. Same year, McCain won his primary with 46.7%, so again the majority did not vote for him but for various other candidates.
And I think it’s pretty safe to say that in just about any election throughout history, voters would like to replace the opposing party’s candidate if they could, no surprise there.
A really big news story would be if the majority of the party not only would replace their candidate if they could, but were actually in agreement on who they would replace them with. If 6 in 10 Democrats said “We would like to replace Biden with this one specific other person that we all agreed on” then that would be big news.
That’s because we don’t respect dance.
Ah five! six! seven! eight!
Starting at five? That’s too progressive!
Kids these days don’t respect a one, a two , a one two three four.
You call that a pirouette? Chin up and again!
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Sure I’d rather vote for someone with Bernie’s politics but that’s not on the table right now. I’ll happily vote for Biden over literal christo-fascism and the destruction of our democracy any fucking time.
Yeah, I see it as voting yes on a referendum to actually have a 2028 election.
I have a feeling that’s how all of our elections are going to be from now on.
When people we won’t vote against literal fascism because the alternative isn’t their ideal candidate then ya. Republicans have no reason to not choose a dictator as their candidate next time when the dictator this time has a legitimate chance of actually winning.
What needs to happen is for the Republicans to lose so abysmally that they see this shit isn’t going to work and they restructure and kick out the crazies.
I’d rather vote for someone with Bernie’s politics but that’s not on the table right now
And America’s oligarchs will ensure that it never will be
Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. Lucy Parsons
Every election we will be faced with 2 shit choices, and voters are to blame for keeping it that way
Replace everyone in the house and senate if youre serious about changing anything
yea companies do this type of shit all the time
They dont do it often enough else these fuckheads that have latched onto the taxmans tit for 30/40 years wouldnt still be there.
Ever see a story in the sidebar, and know before clicking on it who posted it?
It’s a tone thing.
There’s a few regular article posters than either post articles with a certain tone to the headline or they editorialize the post title to fit their narrative. It’s similar to how you can notice how somebody you’re familiar with writes and uses language and can identify potential alt/sock puppet accounts from them.
Due to this I’ve come to believe that these people are astro-turfers with a disengenous agenda.
Whats a sidebar?
I’m running on mbin; it shows randomly selected stories / random communities in the sidebar (which I think Lemmy doesn’t do) with no additional details besides the title.
The Community Info. Depending on the website layout it is often displayed on the side of the screen, as a sidebar next to the main content. It usually has things like community rules. Some layouts and mobile apps refer to it as the sidebar, community description, or the community info.
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Everyone to your left is a trumper. Got it.
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That’s not what I said.
That’s all you ever say.
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Nice!
That wasn’t a compliment lol
No shit but also why the fuck didn’t we primary him?
Democrats no long believe in primaries.
All the way up till 2024 democrats were furiously protecting Biden. Shutting down any critism of him. Now it’s election time and all the discussions they refused to have for the last 3 years are at the forefront. Shame they waste their energy defending the presidential elect rather than vetting the better candidates. Like thats never blown up in their faces.
Well, I mean it’s a lot of effort rigging things so they don’t look completely janky. Debbie Whatsername-Smith was done worn out at the end of 2016 making sure it was Her Turn.
Watching the media lose its mind in 2020 when Bernie won Nevada, and candidates abandoning their campaigns like rats fleeing a sinking ship when he won California, really makes me think it was more than just DWS in 2016 fucking with things.
Also, whatever you do, don’t google “Shadow Inc Acronym Iowa Primary” or trust anything this news article says about the caucus process because its fine, everything is fine, democracy is actually very healthy and normal in this country, and anyone who says otherwise is a Russian bot.
Except for the fact, of course, that the Democrat primaries have never been more democratic. But let’s not let the facts or history get in the way of the narrative!
So you are admitting they were previously less democratic and could be more democratic?
I don’t know if I would label it “admitting,” but rather just being aware of history. Parties didn’t start having votes until around WWII, and after all of the hand wringing after the 2008 and 2016 primaries, Democrats voted overwhelmingly to dilute their power even more.
Making 2020 the most democratic primary for Democrats ever.
Did you mean 2024 or are you saying the recent primaries were less democratic (e.g. incumbent advantage).
Didn’t really include them because they aren’t concluded yet, but the rules have not changed.
Ask the DNC.
Because causing division/voter apathy when facing a threat to democracy is a terrible idea
Lol, it’s here now.
Democracy is perfectly fine until my candidate loses, at which point democracy is dead until late September when mid-terms start ramping up, and then suddenly democracy works again and we need to get ready to vote in 2026.
Democracy would be cool with primarying an incumbent president. I checked.
Democracy is perfectly fine until the candidate that loses refuses to accept the results, tries to retain power by force, then continues to try undermine faith in democracy for 4 years and is somehow still the frontrunner for his party.
Democracy is perfectly fine until the candidate that loses refuses to accept the results
Sore Lieberman '00
Gore’s VP (Joe)? I don’t remember all of the details, but that was legitimately a contested election by the numbers, not by a sore loser. Won the popular by a decent margin but lost the electoral. It was by a slim enough margin to trigger a recount. As far as contested elections go I thought that could have gone a whole lot worse.
I’m not sure I get the comparison here.
that was legitimately a contested election by the numbers
Not according to the incoming Republican administration. There are still conservatives who flog that election to prove how little Democrats care about democracy.
I’m not sure I get the comparison here.
If Gore had squeaked out a win even in the face of abundant ratfvckery in Florida and Ohio, Republicans would have insisted the election was a fraud in the same way they insisted Clinton stole the election in 1992 and Carter in 1976 and Kennedy stole it in 1960.
Because this is a partisan issue, there’s no real clean line between legitimate victory and election theft from the perspective of the partisans themselves. And because both sides routinely fight dirty (Nixon was as aggressive fucking democrats in southern Illinois as Kennedy was in fucking Republicans in Chicago), it is often difficult to talk about a clean race when the reality is more often that one person or the other lost in a dirty knife fight.
So you can imagine how much worse 2 years of it would be
It’s not though. Even though we’d prefer a different candidate, everyone who isn’t a complete moron has at least agreed that we’re gonna stick with Biden because he’s better than the alternative and it’s not even close.
People tried. They didn’t even come close.
Seems like they’d have done better with 62% of the voting public behind them.
Trump faced an entire gaggle of conservative opponents and rarely failed to clear the 50% mark by state.
Biden’s biggest defeat was to the 20% of voters who cast spoiled ballots in Michigan. Marianna Williamson and Dean Phillips were barely acknowledged.
Even RFK Jr isn’t polling at better than 10%.
Who do these people actually want for the position?
RFK is a prop to give the illusion that Biden is more moderate than he really is.
The RFK brand name carries a lot of weight among boomer voters. This looks less like coordination by either party and more like a dimwit failson cashing in on his name brand before it expires. He’s raised over $72M in his Presidential bid and has numerous friends and family on his campaign payroll.
My man is an absolute money fountain for the consultancy class. Not as lucrative as the comically overpriced Bloomberg primary bid, but definitely worth the grift on his face.
Bloomberg was the same candidate, a tool to make Biden appear more moderate than he actually is.
Bloomberg was a NYC Republican who thought he could Moneyball the Democratic Primary by focusing all his efforts in a few big states. Biden wasn’t running as a moderate candidate in 2020. He was running as a conservative democrat. The moderates - Warren and Klobacher and Buttigieg and Harris - never managed to triangulate a winning position between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.
Because no primary challenger has ever beaten an incumbent for president. It would be a waste of time and money.
62% of the voters seem to think it’s a worthwhile endeavor. You’re probably right in the sense that democrats couldnt find a progressive candidate if they came up and kicked them in the ass.
The last time the Democrats did that was Ted Kennedy challenging Carter. Even with a historically unpopular president and a well-known challenger he still lost.
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but our government is dysfunctional and incumbents are not successfully primaried.
What was lost if Biden can’t get it over the goal line?
Lots of things. That’s what we get for having a dysfunctional government. Stop thinking it’s going to work effectively: It won’t.
… you’re saying things won’t work effectively but then claiming to understand exactly how it works. I sense a contradiction.
Your initial question didn’t make sense at all because the verb tenses don’t agree. I’m just doing my best to attempt to communicate with you.
According to a Pew Research Poll. Whatever the fuck that means.
Right, I do all my own polling personally.
Heh… well I’m just saying polls are unreliable. I wouldn’t bet the farm on them.
I think these polls and the climate is very telling.
no primary challenger has ever beaten an incumbent for president
So, a bit of history.
https://time.com/5682760/incumbent-presidents-primary-challenges/
Before primary elections became the dominant way to pick a nominee, party leaders were more able to either shut down challengers or smoothly pass the nomination to someone else. Notably, four incumbents who were denied the nomination in the 19th century — John Tyler, Andrew Johnson and Chester A. Arthur — had been Vice Presidents who rose to the Presidency following the deaths of their predecessors, perhaps suggesting they’d never won their parties’ full support in the first place.
Then
In the 1952 Democratic Party presidential primaries, President Harry S. Truman was challenged by Senator Estes Kefauver. Truman lost the New Hampshire primary to Kefauver and dropped out of the race shortly after.
Also
TIME reported that McCarthy’s surprisingly strong showing in the New Hampshire primary was a statement that was “as much anti-Johnson as antiwar,” citing a NBC poll that found more than half of Democrats didn’t even know McCarthy’s position on Vietnam. Less than a week after New Hampshire, Attorney General Robert Kennedy jumped into the race. Then, on March 31, Johnson announced he wasn’t going to run for re-election.
As TIME reported in the April 12, 1968, article on Johnson dropping out, “So low had Johnson’s popularity sunk, said one Democratic official, that last-minute surveys before the Wisconsin primary gave him a humiliating 12% of the vote there.”
It should be noted that Ford nearly lost to Reagan in 1976
He racked up 1,187 delegates compared to Ronald Reagan’s 1,070, which was barely more than the 1,130 he needed to secure the nomination.
And Kennedy nearly beat Carter four years later
Carter won 36 primaries that year, but Kennedy’s 12 victories included important ones in New York and California, and he didn’t concede until Aug. 11, 1980, at the Democratic National Convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
In another historic race, William Taft was nearly edged out by Theodore Roosevelt, who went on to place second behind Woodrow Wilson in 1912. That gave Taft the dubious distinction of being the only incumbent to come in at third place in a general election.
Because the unwritten rule is not to run against the incumbent.
That’s just not good enough anymore
100 percent of return2ozma political posts are attacking Biden.
If they’re not a voter suppressionist trying to get Trump elected they’re doing a great pretending to be one.
Is the Hill trying to get Trump elected too because they published it? And these 62% of democrat voters - paid shills? Russian bots?
No pro-genocide centrist cares.
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Geez, i expected more fighting in the comments, but everyone here’s just dunking on op and calling them a “bad actor” so I’ll start one.
Is there even a single comment about the content of the article? Some of y’all commenting on FUD and OPs contributions should take a hard look at their contribution to both this comment chain, and Lemmy in general. I hope it looks better than what i see.
Anyway, enough of how disappointed i am with you, all of you, and on to the article.
Most of the article is just polling opinions, so not a lot to see, but i thought this part was interesting:
Fewer voters also say “it really matters who wins” the 2024 presidential race compared to those that said the same at this point in the 2020 cycle. Back then, 80 percent of Trump supporters and 77 percent of Biden supporters said the race really matters — but those figures have now dropped to 70 percent each.
This is surprising. I thought most people considered this election even more important than the last!
Is there a record somewhere of “election importance”? How far back does it go? Is this 7-10% drop normal?
By the way OP. As someone often critical of Biden i too get called a russian or chinese tank sometimes, so i feel close to ya. Thanks for contentin’ and shit. here’s an upvote from me <3
I think people forget how significant a moment 2020 felt.
Democrats are in for a rude awakening when the turnout plummets this cycle because normal people don’t feel like it’s the end of democracy like they do.
And then those normal people are in for a rude awakening when it is the end of democracy as we know it.
“I didn’t think the Supreme Court would actually overturn Roe!” – People in 2016 who said to not threaten them with the Supreme Court
Democrats will have no one to blame but themselves for not running on anything other than scaremongering.
Democrats will have no one to blame but themselves
Not the people who actually took away abortion rights?
Those are the people they’re loosing against, not the reason why they lost to them.
I’m sure that’ll be a great relief to the normal people suffering who didn’t take the warnings seriously.
And I don’t know if I’d call it fear mongering considering the concerns about abortion and the Supreme Court came true. If someone chooses not to take warnings seriously after that, well… They shouldn’t be surprised if this next set of warnings comes true as well.
Tell that to the dems, man! If their
scaremongeringwarnings aren’t winning over voters, maybe they should try popular governance.51% of likely voters in swing states “strongly or somewhat support aid to Israel”. Considering that is the popular opinion among crucial voters, are you fine with Biden’s position on Israel? It’s just “popular governance” after all.
Maybe Bernie should’ve also said he was a through and through capitalist to try and win the primary through “popular governance”?
Very poor argument.
That link is paywalled, so unless you share the text i guess ill take your word for it.
Regardless, that’s only “popular” if you limit your definition of popular to swing states. Nationally, only 46% of voters(note this is more accurate when limited to registered voters) support more aid to israel (Quinnepaic, April 24), even fewer when limited to democratic and independent voters.
Quinnipiac poll, support for aid to israel by demographic:
64% over 65 years old 60% Republicans 50% White 46% all voters 46% independents 42% Hispanic 36% Democrats 31% Black 26% under 35 years old
The Bernie point is actually interesting, because historically “capitalism” is broadly popular, but his socialist policies are extremely popular, which I suppose would suggest polling is kinda junk as a predictor for popularity anyway.
Although, as I’ve read, people who don’t vote are more likely to vote for trump (basically the argument is that trump convinced them he was an outsider, and appealed to people who don’t normally go out to vote because they feel there is no point), so a drop in turnout would actually favor Dems. And I do think Dems will be fired up more over abortion.
Thank you. For supposedly being “the most important election of our lives” a lot of people don’t want to hear the truth that Trump could win again and it’ll be Biden’s fault.
It’s a little late for Biden to terminate his campaign. Best thing he can do is pick a progressive VP (I don’t know much about Kamala right now) and then resign day 1.
I think Democrats have focused too much on who they don’t want as President for the last 8 years, and now the party doesn’t have any other candidates that have the name/brand power to go toe to toe with trump and his base of far-right brainwashed quislings. The best bet to win this thing is to run Biden at this point, but they need to build some candidate brand/visibility for their next election.
I spent a good amount of time calling OP a shill in this thread without bothering to read the article. The combination of thehill.com + OP’s bias + polls aren’t really indicative of anything let alone deserving of the “multiple updates multiple times per day” conceptual weight they’re being given in OP’s posting history, led me to feel it was a better use of time to just talk about why are we talking about this again and why do we think OP posts this so much, as opposed to just obediently feeling like I’m obligated to spend time talking about it again, because OP feels like posting it again.
I mean I will say in my own defense that earlier today when for the other multiple time OP posted a whole story about how bad Biden’s doing in the polls, I engaged with that story purely on its own merits. Here’s the conversation that ensued:
- Me: It seems like this poll is polling everyone, not just likely voters, which is a relevant flaw in it
- Someone: “You should read articles before posting them” “You should also believe in science”
- Me: (Asks a question to try to Socratically teach them the point I was originally trying to make)
- Them: “What are you confused about?” (illustrates that they still don’t get the pretty straightforward point I was making)
- Me: (Asks the question again)
- Them: (Finally answers the question, seeming to get what I was saying for the first time, but effortlessly pivoting to condescending about how limiting polls to likely voters is a bad idea)
And so on. It went on from there, but the point that I’m making is that engaging with this stuff on its own merits isn’t the doorway to productive conversation it might appear to be. In my experience the shills will come out of the woodwork to make weirdly hostile bad-faith conversation with you for more or less an unlimited amount of time. I think blithely being okay with putting up with an unlimited amount of that isn’t a fair thing to ask people to do.
I thought most people considered this election even more important than the last!
The most important election in history is always the one happening next year.
You are a one-trick-pony with the argument in these articles. I’m going to start voting even harder now.
So there was just a burst of 11 upvotes for this story in 10 minutes, while during the same time period there were 3 downvotes.
I wonder if the same ratio will continue during the next 10-minute window or going forward; my bet is that the ratio will more or less reverse (or more), with downvotes dominating over time. What would cause an unusual number of people to all upvote this story all at once, right after it was posted?
Maybe I am wrong. Let’s see.
Edit: I am wrong, I think. Beyond that fact that this post obviously isn’t being downvoted heavily now that it’s established, I spent a while looking at this question, and I found some things that maybe looked hinky, but nothing outwardly and obviously suspicious. And you can’t really tell anything from the behavior right after a post – it’s all noise. After about 30-60 minutes, enough votes have been accumulated that you can say something about it, but before then, all bets are off.
That’s probably just an ideological breakdown of the 15 people that browse New on Lemmy.
Tin foil hat! Oh no!
Maybe those 62% agree with the article?
Yes, lemmy downvotes are a conspiracy to make Biden look bad.
It is well documented that many political-influence organizations have extensive social-media-fakery arms, and I’m absolutely certain that most of them have as their #1 priority from now until November to get Trump elected. And Trump is clearly a pile of elephant shit in human skin, so going after Biden for a variety of random bullshit (or just talking down the whole concept of democracy in general) is their best angle of attack.
It’s not self-evident that they’ve discovered Lemmy, but I feel confident at this point that they have. And if they have, it would be weird if they decided on posting only, that voting was a red line they didn’t want to cross.
It’s not self-evident that they’ve discovered Lemmy, but I feel confident at this point that they have.
Yes, how else can you explain the unpopularity of two pro-genocide candidates? Must be a conspiracy! Everyone loves Biden!
Biden being unpopular here would make sense. I think it’s safe to say that this is a leftist community and the Democrats aren’t all that left; I don’t know anyone on the American left who’s really happy about anyone in politics (except maybe for Bernie Sanders) even when they’re not giving aid to someone who’s actively starving and shelling children.
I say I’m confident that there’s a big shilling operation on Lemmy because the behavior of the accounts doesn’t make sense. They don’t want to talk about Ranked Choice Voting. They don’t want to talk about going to the Palestine protest. They don’t want to talk about Ralph Nader or the Green Party, except every so often as a little aside about how voting is a waste of time but it you do then at least vote IDK whatever Green Party or something.
It’s like if in 2016, instead of /r/sandersforpresident, there was /r/hondurashillary and they spent all their energy shitting on Hillary (for extremely valid reasons they would have had), and saying they weren’t planning on voting at all because all the Democrats Bernie Sanders included were just bad, as a rule, because they’re Democrats. I’ve straight-up asked some of these people, what do you think about this or that leftist issue, what can I do to help make the voting system better, and no one has an answer. The reasons not to vote for Biden are super passionate and super polished. The reasons to do anything else? Who cares. I don’t know. Let’s get back to what’s really important: Not voting for Biden. That’s what I’m here to talk about today. And, they seem genuinely not to give a shit if people don’t like them – like OP posting come rain or come shine several comically transparent anti-Biden stories, every single day, like it’s… well, like it’s his job.
Also, they slip sometimes. They say “Democrat Party.” They make little fumbles about American history that I don’t think would come from a native American. They have odd little mannerisms that you can notice if you watch them closely. IDK, maybe that gets into tinfoil hat territory, but I will say for myself that there are a bunch of particular accounts that I’m extremely convinced are part of an organized effort to influence the discourse.
I say I’m confident that there’s a big shilling operation on Lemmy because the behavior of the accounts doesn’t make sense.
You have an overinflated sense of the importance of lemmy.
They don’t want to talk about Ranked Choice Voting.
Because it’s a fucking pipe dream that does nothing about the current election, which is the subject at hand.
They don’t want to talk about Ralph Nader or the Green Party
Yes, no one wants to talk about someone whose political relevance ended in 2000. It must be a massive international conspiracy.
I’ve straight-up asked some of these people, what do you think about this or that leftist issue, what can I do to help make the voting system better, and no one has an answer.
Because thy know it’s not getting better, and Democrats are taking advantage of a broken system. Bein’ like “what are you gonna do about the problem we created and perpetuate?” is just gloating.
The reasons not to vote for Biden are super passionate and super polished.
“I can’t rebut my opponent’s arguments” is not evidence of a conspiracy.
Who cares. I don’t know. Let’s get back to what’s really important: Not voting for Biden. That’s what I’m here to talk about today
Is OP doing that? Am I?
And, they seem genuinely not to give a shit if people don’t like them – like OP posting come rain or come shine several comically transparent anti-Biden stories, every single day, like it’s… well, like it’s his job.
One guy posts poll results you don’t like. Must be a paid shill.
IDK, maybe that gets into tinfoil hat territory, but I will say for myself that there are a bunch of particular accounts that I’m extremely convinced are part of an organized effort to influence the discourse.
Yes, I’d say it does. Disagreeing with you is not evidence of some massive conspiracy to influence the election through a fledgling platform full of stubborn centrists.
2 hours later…
What are your thoughts now?
I actually spent quite a while looking at it. Honestly, I found some things that I found a little suspicious, but nothing really all that compelling. I decided I was chasing ghosts and abandoned the analysis.
Since you asked, though, here’s what the ratio for this post looks like over time:
So, pretty much, exactly ordinary and as you’d expect it.
I mentioned some things I found a little suspicious – as an example, here’s the graph for this post which I also would have predicted to be a magnet for fake voting:
That one, to me, looks hinky. The slow dropoff after an initially elevated ratio looks like exactly what I’d expect if there was an organized effort right at the beginning to drop a bunch of fake upvotes. But… there could be a bunch of alternate explanations. It’s actually pretty difficult to get a prediction of what a “typical” post should look like, because there are a lot of variables and not a lot of data points (there aren’t that many posts that display the right combination of “controversial post” + “enough votes in total to get above the noise.”)
Like I say, I gave up the idea concluding that, on the balance, there’s at least not a strong indication that anyone is dropping fake votes in big batches.
I’ve been doing this for years and learned on Reddit what headlines get the most interactions. I’ve talked to you before about my Reddit account that I left during the API shutdown.
You can go look at my posts there too for more interaction data: https://www.reddit.com/u/return2ozma
You posted “Go vote Long Beach!” on the Long Beach reddit community around primary time, with a link to where people can find their voting place, but not anything like that on Lemmy (e.g. !longbeach@lemmy.world community)? Is that right?
I haven’t really interacted with my Lemmy sub in a minute. Recently posted a few things.
But you posted “Go vote Long Beach!” on Reddit, though?
Do you need me to post on Reddit? Do you not believe it’s me?
It’s an interesting fucking article. Just because it isn’t pro-Biden doesn’t mean it isn’t news.
Honestly, just get yourself an account that allows you to see who votes and vote order, it will save you a lot of paranoia.
3 of the first 11 upvotes are people I recognise and have interacted with. It’s obviously not sockpuppets.
If the downvotes I can see, two of the first 3 are people I’ve recently interacted with as well.
I’m a non-US fediversian and I upvoted it because I thought the headline was funny and because I sympathise with Americans for having to choose between these two old men (who aren’t even Bernie Sanders, which would have been more understandable).
An admin account?
Just any kbin account will do it. The info is there in ActivityPub so sooner or later there will be a client that includes it, if there isn’t yet.
(My main’s at kbin.social but we are temporarily on read-only here at lemmy.world due to our servers going haywire, so to comment here I have to use my lemmy account).
Any good kbin/mbin apps yet?
Don’t think so, kbin’s not stable yet.
I’m a bit out of the loop though because I prefer mobile interface.
I’m too happy with Sync to switch anyway.
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It very likely could be socket puppet accounts, but also there’s occasionally a lag in federation of posts and votes. So the post could have showed up on some voter suppressionist server, the users all upvoted it, and then the votes were federated all at once.
Not me. Fuck Trump. Biden is a good guy and I would vote for him no matter what but I think the idea of Harris getting to be president because Biden is too old and dies is a win win. So the Biden - Harris ticket is fuck yeah from me.
I think the idea of Harris getting to be president because Biden is too old and dies is a win win
Fuck Harris
Fuck trump
Absolutely, and if I could vote in your election, I would be voting Biden, I would just be unhappy about it.
Primaries are a different story; dissent is what primaries are for.
Fuck Harris though
Idk if I’m back on the accelerationist train or not yet. Not that I can vote in the States, so it doesn’t matter. Regardless, I feel like it would be hard for anyone that even slightly cares about the future to vote for either of these two earnestly. As a progressive, you’d have to weigh the pros and cons of the value of the Dems possibly reevaluating and restructuring if Trump gets back in, vs the absolute abysmal reactions and policies that Trump will cause if he does, especially outside the US. But then if you vote the Dems in again, the neo-nazis around the world will feel less empowered, and there will be less terrible decision making in the short term. All at the cost of Dems not having to change the status quo, and effectively being the lesser evil for the foreseeable future.
Actually, I don’t envy the American voter. And I certainly wouldn’t want to vote in this election.
When Bill Clinton was in office in the 90’s, after the Democrats lost three presidential elections in a row to Republicans, he did not adopt socialist policies. Bill Clinton and Democratic party declared they would no longer fight Republicans on economic issues. The Democratic party shifted to the right, not the left, in response to losing elections. They opted to grab moderate voters from Republicans rather than try to win over more progressive voters.
If Democrats see moderates voting in the next election, but not progressives they will move to the right to grab those voters. They aren’t interested in chasing nonvoters or third party voters. So, the choice is not between averting fascism and driving the Democratic Party to the left. Those options are one in the same for progressives. The choice is between driving the Democratic Party to the left and averting fascism or allowing fascism to take hold in the US and allowing the Democratic Party to drift to the right. Of course if we lose our democracy, which way the Democrats shift isn’t going to matter, but I think it’s important to make this clear. There is nothing to be gained for progressives by not participating in elections, only things to lose.
This is a clear cut decision, but unfortunately people on the left are not framing it that way. We need to choose the option that delays fascism for another four years. We need time to give ourselves the opportunity to convince people that socialism is the answer to fixing our problems not blaming out groups. Considering the consequences of a fascist dictatorship in the US, voting is the thing everyone should want to do.
And this makes sense. Because the election has shown that the nation is happy to vote the right wing Republicans into the government, not the lesser evil Democrats, so naturally the Democrats would have to shift towards the popular opinion a bit more, instead of radicalizing to the left.
You guys need ranked choice voting.
We need it so bad, but neither the Democrats nor the Republicans want it, so we’re fucked unless we revolt.
We aren’t Russia (for now). Some states have already succeeded in their efforts to do away with First Past The Post voting. It’s not impossible!
Don’t give up working towards peace, but yes prepare for the inevitable purge Republicans salivate over daily. They are armed and organized, are you?
Some of us aren’t privileged to be on the bottom of the Republican hit list.
I would prefer score voting but I will take anything that allows me to meaningfully vote third party.
We need to choose the option that delays fascism for another four years.
And then in four years we need to choose that same option.
And four years after that.
And four years after that.
And four years after that.
Just like every presidential election I’ve voted in.
This is why they don’t need to worry about progressives. First, because the country isn’t progressive at all. And second because they can always just tell them that if they don’t vote they’re enabling fascism.
Since Bill Clinton until Trump the choices were between neoliberals and neoconservatives. Neoliberalism leads to fascism, so if we stick with neoliberalism it’s going to become harder and harder to delay fascism. We need socialist candidates like Bernie Sanders to win the presidency and Congress. But we’re stuck with the incumbent president for this election, which is typical of American politics. If our democracy lasts that long, we will have another shot at a progressive president in 2028.
Give the polling on progressive policies, it would seem the country’s population is more progressive overall than our elected representatives. Republicans are definitely overrepresented. That means it is essential that as many progressives vote as possible to give Democrats room to move the left. All the Democrats are interested is being where the Overton window is in order to gain the most votes. Progressives have to shift the Overton window to the left by voting Blue if we want to see change. edit: typos
I disagree that the country is progressive, because we have a government that represents us and there aren’t that many progressives at any level of government.
Accepting that Americans are shitty and dumb makes it easier to understand why our government sucks ass.
The country is more progressive than our current representatives. Our democracy has many different flaws in it, that have been there since the constitution was written, that undermine majority rule. Our current government does not accurately represent the population’s views. Fascists are exploiting these flaws to perform their takeover. We need more people voting, especially progressives, to correct for these flaws. Mother Jones did a great job of reporting on this topic.
Being more progressive than our current representation isn’t hard, and doesn’t make them “progressive.”
And if progressives don’t move to the flyover states en masse it won’t matter how much they vote.
And if progressives don’t move to the flyover states en masse it won’t matter how much they vote.
There are progressives in every state. The margin of victory in swing states is so narrow that every vote counts. And even in non-swing states, there are plenty of races where progressive voters can make a difference. But more importantly, even if a progressive is in a non-swing state they should still vote, because it’s important for Democrats to see that progressives make a sizable portion of the electorate and specifically their voting base across the country.
Being more progressive than our current representation isn’t hard, and doesn’t make them “progressive.”
No where in my argument did I say that being more progressive than their representatives make them progressives. Just that the current state of affairs in the United States with its current policies is not representative of the people. Whether that issue is abortion, trans rights, the minimum wage, universal healthcare, or whole host of other issues. The majority is not being represented properly at present on these issues. By assuming that where we are now as a country on these issues is reflective of the people is to miss an incredible opportunity. There is the potential to shift the Overton window to the left and radically change the US for the better. edit: typo
No progressive is voting earnestly for Biden, they just don’t want a fucking dictator dismantling the EPA and stacking the courts with more corrupt servants of the Federalist Society.
There are no pros for the Dems restructuring, they first of all won’t do it, and secondly we are running out of being able to vote at all. The next insurrection has better odds of success.
How is this even a conversation with anyone? We don’t like Biden, but he hasn’t led an insurrection. Do people want to continue having any choice at all?
Exactly.
Anyone not voting because they don’t like Biden very much is missing the whole picture. It can always get worse.
It’s always getting worse every single day. Biden is just less worse.
I’m fine with nuance like that and I agree.
It’s like we are on a slick road headed for a tree. Biden is the brake and Trump is the accelerator: same 3 options for voting.
Dude, fuck off. Your opinion doesn’t matter, and if it’s just that doing the best thing possible also sucks then it’s not useful. Yeah, the system needs to change eventually, but I’m happy to vote for the person who is doing more good than most US presidents in my memory. Biden isn’t who I’d choose, but he’s much better than just a supporter of genocide or whatever. Under his administration the other day the FTC just banned non-compete clauses for example. It’s all very quite, but the Biden administration has done much better than most US president.
Guy reiterated what any reasonably knowledgeable American voter already knows and almost equivocated over our choice like we actually have a choice. Well, we do… throw away votes by not voting or voting third party, voting for the trump disaster, or what constitutes our liberal party with Biden.
Unless you’re into fascism and a likely dictatorship, there’s really only one choice. The only people screaming about genocide and laying it at Biden’s feet are the same ones worshipping the military industrial complex.
Regardless, I feel like it would be hard for anyone that even slightly cares about the future to vote for either of these two earnestly…
Actually, I don’t envy the American voter. And I certainly wouldn’t want to vote in this election.
Yeah, this comment is a little more than just saying it sucks that we only have two choices. It’s pretty much saying voting won’t change anything, and they wouldn’t feel compelled to vote. I’m about as left as they come, but Biden has been fairly good as far as US presidents go (which isn’t very far in the past century or so). It’s a really easy choice to advocate for, especially when the other party says and does what they do.
There’s a lot of those. I’ve mentioned it before on this site, but there are a lot of posts intimating the futility of voting, how shitty the candidates are, blaming anyone who votes for Biden as a supporter of Israel, and often just straight-up blaming Biden for Israel’s actions. They really ramped up maybe two to three months ago.
I’m a true Leftist and it’s incredibly frustrating seeing so many Democrats that just went back to sleep during Biden’s presidency. People should be out in the streets protesting and fighting for a better future. They let Dems do basically nothing because “at least Biden’s not Trump.”
Most Americans just went back to sleep.
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Most people desire peace in their life, and will suffer greatly to maintain it. But it’s getting harder for people to convince themselves that this is actually peace.
Yall call this civilization? It’s the jungle with extra steps and concrete
Idk if I’m back on the accelerationist train or not yet
Voting as Fire Extinguisher
by Kyle Tran Myhre
When the haunted house catches fire: a moment of indecision.
The house was, after all, built on bones, and blood, and bad intentions.
Everyone who enters the house feels that overwhelming dread, the evil that perhaps only fire can purge.
It’s tempting to just let it burn.
And then I remember: there are children inside.
Yes, I get that, but at what point do you start considering future children over the current children? Accelerationists are not deontologists, they are consequentialists. A child lost now is valued against the amount of children saved at some calculated point later.
No, the best way to convince an accelerationist that accelerationism is not the right play is to show that there will be no decently positive outcome. Which I’m inclined to agree with, since I can only imagine the continual election of populist figures such as Trump will only increase the divide between voters of the two parties. This’ll create more violence, possibly destabilize the US, and could destabilize large parts of the western world due to policy, military vacuum, and emboldening of alt right groups. Now measure all those consequences against the possibility of an improvement in the political system and multiply that by likelihood. This, to me, seems like a very low gain, for the high likelihood of increased losses. So it should be preferable for accelerationists to go with Biden, since he’s likely to bring about accelerationists goals too, but with less risk, but much slower.
Regardless, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s incredibly hard to vote earnestly rather than strategically.
This community by far has the worst takes on US politics
Even people on the meme sub understand Biden isn’t some magical deity who is going to save us from the literal incarnation of satan.
Why are people even remotely surprised the incumbent supporting a genocide is not popular, and that any opposition must be russian trolls or chinese propaganda.
because media has a narrative of conflict to push, and the fact that biden is overwhelmingly more popular than trump doesnt make good headlines.
The people who look for the politics sub to go post in are generally not the most reasonable about their beliefs
Our primary isn’t until next month, it literally means nothing.
Democratic primaries have been meaningless since 2012.
Any state after super Tuesday has no voice. I won’t vote for Biden but at this point I don’t know if I’ll just cast no vote or if there will be another option?
Well you can vote for the one or two other candidates depending on your state that are on the ballot. Of course they both suck. So you know do with that what you will.
This seems like a good opportunity to push for voting third party.
Excellent. Which 3rd party candidate do you expect will appeal to about 50% of voters in enough states to get 270 electoral college votes?
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Maybe none this year, but a big enough percentage of voters going third party would show the big two that we’re sick of their shit. It would also help get this false dichotomy mindset out of the majority.
Okay, how many election cycles of Republican majorities in the house and senate along with a Republican president will it take before the major parties change their platform to suit your needs? Or how long until a 3rd party candidate can garner enough votes to get elected?
What percentage will be needed? Do all of us that are involved with your scheme have to vote for the same 3rd party candidate, or can we each vote for the one we like best?
I’d love to break the two party dichotomy, so let’s figure out how all of voting party will actually make that happen.
Going by the numbers in the article, ~48% of all voters don’t like either candidate. That puts the ratio of people who like their candidate to the people who don’t like either at about the same as the Republican/Democrat split. If everyone voted for a candidate they actually like right now (assuming they find a third party they like), there’s a chance it could happen this year. Even if it doesn’t, 48% of people voting for a third party would show everyone else that it’s a viable option.
I think that’s a pretty big assumption, but okay.
I’m not sure how 48% of voters voting for n number of different 3rd party candidates shows that 3rd party candidates are a viable option. That’s kind of what we have now. Two main party candidates getting enough voter share to win the election, followed by a lot of 3rd party candidates getting an insignificant number of votes.
Maybe voting for 3rd party candidates will encourage main party candidates to adopt watered down versions of the 3rd party platforms in an attempt to lure their voters. They probably couldn’t adopt their full platforms because it would alienate other voters that don’t share the 3rd parties extreme views.
Maybe none this year, but a big enough percentage of voters going third party would show the big two that we’re sick of their shit.
Republicans don’t care. You’re just giving them more opportunities to prevent you from voting again in the future.
The time to push for 3rd party is not when someone who admits to wanting to be a dictator has a legitimate chance of winning.
Better than voting for either turd we get to choose from
Nope, voting for your favorite turd is the only adult action in a general election for president. It sucks but it’s what FPTP forces on us.
Spoken like someone who has a favorite turd.
Most people don’t like turds at all.
It’d be pretty fucking amazing if I didn’t have a preference between the two but regardless of my preference I’d prefer if you voted for your favorite turd regardless if it’s the same as mine. Unfortunately the final stage of our executive office election that will happen in November uses a completely fucking broken system.
I believe in a democracy and not that my opinion must be held by everyone else - if you vote third party in our broken ass system you’re effectively removing yourself from the voting base.
I absolutely didn’t vote for either turd in the primary though, because they’re both fucking awful.
It’d be pretty fucking amazing if I didn’t have a preference between the two but regardless of my preference I’d prefer if you voted for your favorite turd regardless if it’s the same as mine.
I don’t have a favorite turd. I resent having to vote for a turd.
I believe in a democracy and not that my opinion must be held by everyone else
You believe in your favorite turd.
I’ve been on this train for a long time, but this election is really making me question that position. Personally, I think both the major party’s candidates are dismal at best so it feels terrible to consider voting for either - I don’t want to tell either party, “hey, I like your guy and your platform.” For literally decades, I’ve been of the option that is a party wants my vote then they need to present me with a platform and candidate that I agree with - regardless of what party that actually is.
The problem is, if I vote 3rd party this time around then my greatest hope would be to contribute towards some party finally reaching 5% of the vote in order to receive federal funding for the next presidential election - in 4 years. There’s zero hope that my 3rd-party vote is going to somehow result in a shocking 3rd party presidential election victory though, which means the winner is still going to be one of the two major party’s candidates. I don’t care about voting for the “winning team” or whatever, but I do get the distinct impression that one of the two major party’s candidates has a much higher disregard towards our form of government and could pose a more significant threat to our daily lives as a nation. Thus, for the first time ever I feel myself gravitating towards voting for the “lesser of two evils.” Don’t get me wrong, I think there’s a lot of things the Democrats get right on various party positions (and I think there might be a couple Republicans do, too?) so the “lesser of two evils” phrase isn’t meant to suggest both options are depraved - just that I don’t personally particularly align with either. I am definitely feeling like I have to choose a side though, lest a “greater evil” pull off a win and jeopardize our entire democracy.
I fully agree, who in the hell would want two old coots, unless you want somebody that will be easy to control.
