When you compare Biden to Trump vs. the effects on the Palestinians, were Trump president again, he would not just help the Israelis exterminate the Palestinians, but encourage them to do so quickly- as he’s already told Bibi to “finish it”. So your dichotomy is more than a bit disingenuous .
If our only standard is not a Republican, then everytime Republicans lower their standards, they lower the only other option’s standards too.
It’s not fucking sustainable.
Voting the lesser evil still leads to evil in the long run.
You got a practical alternative you’d like to share with the class?
Vote in your local elections, and support (or directly work to pass) election reform laws, particularly related to ditching the electoral college.
Not necessarily saying it’s the alternative, but it’s a start and local elections have larger personal impact most of the time.
I agree with all of this, but it’s not an alternative, it’s just an additional vector of action. My question is about alternatives to Biden for president in this election.
Well, that’s up to the DNC. They could put almost any other prominent dem and they’d probably beat Trump. The DNC also has the ability to change the candidate after the election but before the electoral ballots are cast, at least as far as I understand their rules.
Trust, I understand your point. The primaries are over, and that’s where the different candidate should have been chosen. But unfortunately, the whole not knowing any viable alternatives line of thinking is what got the DNC into this mess in the first place.
Yeah, I think any other Dem candidate is a gamble: you lose out on the significant incumbent boost, you only have 4 months to campaign if you start now, and you risk losing momentum on the moderate vote. This isn’t an election I want to gamble with, especially with the recent SCOTUS ruling. Everything said and done, I don’t think the benefits outweigh the risks.
November 6th is when we should start pushing for significant changes. 11th hour fuckery isn’t going to help this cycle.
Yeah, I think any other Dem candidate is a gamble: you lose out on the significant incumbent boost
Except Biden has a 37% approval rating…
That’s Jimmy Carter level…
Do you know what happened with Jimmy Carter’s second term?
An incumbency only translates to a boost, when being the incumbent is a positive thing.
2/3s of voters don’t think Biden is a good president. 56% think he is a bad one.
We can’t afford to hope enough people hold their nose for him.
This is bigger than any one person, even Joe Biden
But all the people whining about gEnOciDe jOe are only upset because its and election year. They disappear after November and don’t show up again until 4 years later.
Trump used Palestinian as a slur & they are laughing with him. Not sure how serious anyone is supposed to take them.
Well, they’re serious about urging people to not vote against MAGA, so…. There’s that.
socialism
I’m all for socialism long term solution. I’m confused as to how that is an alternative to voting against the present greatest threat to socialism that can be voted against. What is the material implementation of “socialism” which provides a timely alternative to that action?
op commenter was talking about a long term solution.
socialism begins with the organization of the working class. this organization can be used to press your boss and the government in an effective way in the short term.
this ‘pressure’ can look like a strike, but its not limited to it.
Again, actions I support. These actions, however, are not mutually exclusive to voting in elections for the lesser evil. In fact, these actions are more substantially suppressed under the greater evil. The rational action then is to use all avenues available to oneself, including but not limited to voting for whichever of the two dominant parties is less detrimental to action on other avenues.
One of the two dominant parties is objectively worse for the organization of the working class. Vote for the less worse party, while you organize and pressure the powers that be.
are not mutually exclusive to voting in elections for the lesser evil
I agree with that. This case though, presents two very evil options. You guys have been legalizing child labour again, building a theocracy and doing an ethnic cleansing in the middle east under the supposed lesser evil. They are accelerating fascism regardless of who wins, vote if you will but other avenues must be pursued if you are to keep your thin veil of civility.
When the choice is between the lesser evil, and losing our democracy, having our LGBTQ+ friends and family lose their rights to exist and feel good in their own skin, our sisters, mothers, and daughters losing their body autonomy…
I’ll take the lesser evil- ANY FUCKING DAY YOU ASK.
But NOW we’ll start organizing… more than we had been previously! I swear we won’t declare victory and do basically nothing political at all for the next 4 years.
And the short run.
You know I hear people say this and and yet the Democratic Party is further to the left than it was under Bill Clinton. So how does it follow? I mean I hear people say stuff like we keep moving further to the right and the Republicans certainly are, but I see a Democratic party that’s for gay rights and that didn’t use to exist. I see a Democratic Party that’s that’s talking about higher taxes on the wealthy and trade regulations and consumer protection Acts. None of that was true in the '90s. In the 90s the Democrats said the era of big government is over. Now Democrats are supporting good government policies. We can certainly support better government policies, and I personally would like to see them go much further , but I can’t see a scenario in which the Democratic party isn’t further left than they were.
Removed by mod
The democratic party didn’t even universally support abortion rights not that long ago.
This. This all day long.
This does not logically follow.
It really does though…
This is a proposed political idea. It doesn’t make it true and doesn’t make the statement that are options are reduced unless we all allow it to be true.
If the Republican decide to burn all gay people, one cannot claim to be a democrat because they simply want to gas them all.
We decide where the line is drawn. Ignore the propaganda that tells us we have no control over the process. That apathy is how the window shifts, not because the republicans shift.
The Overton window is a way of framing change in the baseline ideology of a population. It is hardly a “law” or dogma of any kind. On its own it’s meaningless, you can’t just couch an argument in “…because of the Overton window.” It’s also got its valid detractors like broken window theory and such.
Lol, I wasn’t making an argument that anything is “because of the Overton window”, the OP of this thread is literally describing how the Overton window works. You, and that other person not liking or understanding it, doesn’t change that, nor the fact that what op described is demonstrably happening in politics right in front of your fucking eyes, and only “doesn’t follow logic” if you’re aggressively wilfully ignorant.
Yikes I think you’re a little too riled up for this conversation. Have a good one dude.
Not in terms of pure logic but definitely in practical terms. You don’t get far in humanities if you only follow pure logic.
So is societal which means it’s not a person or group but all of us. It isn’t just this one thing everyone on the left likes to point out as if that absolves them from having any personal responsibility in the matter.
The concept causes itself to exist by acceptance that it is inevitable.
Remember how blaming individuals solved climate change, too?
I’m starting to suspect that Taylor Swift doesn’t even care what we think!
I remember!
Could never of had a Bernie because Hillary bought the DNC.
In exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised… This victory fund agreement, however, had been signed in August 2015, just four months after Hillary announced her candidacy and nearly a year before she officially had the nomination.
Emphasis mine. It was a captured field, with a performative primary - Hillary/‘s campaign abused their position against a broke DNC and elevated herself above all others.
Emphasis mine. It was a captured field, with a performative primary - Hillary/‘s campaign abused their position against a broke DNC and elevated herself above all others.
Supreme court also ruled that this was fine and very cool, very legal.
This is why young people need to vote in every election especially the local ones, even the ones that seem insignificant like a school board election. The only way for a Bernie to win a primary is if such a candidate is not an outlier. The entire party needs to move to the left and that starts from the ground up. Since people need to get exposed to more left wing politicians so left wing ideology becomes more normalized and at the moment it’s not.
When young people vote you get people like AOC and Omar into office. The only way to get a Bernie elected is if there are more AOCs and Omars filling seats in local, state and the federal government. From the school board all the way up to the Senate.
You never really know what you of until you don’t of it anymore
Too young to remember how bloodthirsty Hilary was as secretary of state. Member when “we came, we saw, he died tehe”?
A lot of retrospective handwringing forgets this, or the vile comments that came out during Bill’s multiple sexual assault allegations.
Hillary was not the right candidate to fight Trump, Jeb Bush more likely. After Obama, returning to an establishment candidate was a mistake, and I don’t care if “it’s her turn” after stepping aside in 2008. Politics has real consequences for people who don’t vacation in the Hamptons.
Yeah but she paved the way for ISIS with such girl power
Ummm… Trump will turn UP the genocide.
Way more pro Israel rhetoric that any Biden comment but he then doubles down with lots of anti Palestine comments.
Trump will do the same amount of Genocide. He’s just more honest about it.
Comments like this are why no one takes you seriously.
They do. It’s just 6 months later after they’re done with the mental Gymnastics and have to admit I was right all along
Israel is a Nazi state turned out not be such a hot take after all.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Even a liberal is right 6 months too late.
Yeah, after all you’ve successfully predicted 20 of the last 3 social problems.
Admitting liberals are wrong and actively support Genocide is hard.
6 months later
You are optimistic. Some people won’t ever notice the lebensraum.
Yeah I’m not sure how to take this post. The image is clearly both-sides-ism but the text of OPs post on it appears to be calling that bad.
This posting format makes sense in specific subreddit/communities like /leopardsatemyface or /whitepeopletwitter. But here it just makes it unclear what the intended message is.
If the choice is between genocide and genocide + fascism, and there is no viable option 3 without genocide, then the argument is still embrace the genocide or democracy ends. The alternative is embrace genocide and who really needs all this democracy anyway?
It didn’t all happen in 2016. Fascists have been quietly diminishing the power of the electorate for decades now. We’ll keep on having “the most important election of our lifetimes” until we manage to undo the damage. IF we manage to undo the damage.
If we manage to have any more non-sham elections.
The problem is fascists, but it is also compounded by neolib Democrats never reducing government authority either, but often even strengthening it, knowing full well that power can easily be seized by the extreme right at any time.
Your dichotomy of saying we have to pick between the Turd or a Douche is disingenuous.
As someone who voted 3rd party in 2016 and regrets it. While you are technically correct, the last 8 years have shown that there is so much more on the line than what I was protesting against with my 3rd party vote. I didn’t like Hillary Clinton’s positions on war. And sure, my vote probably wouldn’t have mattered all that much as I live in a very red state, but every time the Supreme Court does some bullshit, I feel a bit of regret that I didn’t use my vote to support the best candidate who actually had a chance.
If he had more votes in the primary, then that could have been true despite the superdelegates. As it would be true for any other candidate.
But he/they didn’t, and here we are moping over something that didn’t happen years ago while the USSC lays the final stones in the foundation for an actual dictatorship.
Bold strategy. Let’s see how that works out.
There are some elections between 1929 and 1939 that would be more consequential.
What we learned without any doubt was that the Democrat Party does NOT represent the people; only their own power and clubhouse alumni. They proved that they were exactly who the fascists said they were. Fast forward to today, and Joe is telling me what he’ll do to stop fascism in his next term if I give him money to do the job he already gets paid to do, but wont do a goddamn thing to stop fascism RIGHT NOW WHILE HE HAS THE POWER. To my first point: Joe has been in DC SINCE 1972.
The DNC failed to put in a non-establishment candidate, so the Republican voters made it happen.
That huge failure continues to haunt this country while the DNC and the Republican voters double down on their mistakes.
We can still have Bernie. But the DNC would rather have Trump.
They could put Bernie forward, but we’d get Trump.
Cope
Bernie would definitely outperform Biden. This is just a fact. Left-Wing candidates do better with higher voter turnout. They get higher voter turnout when people are actually excited about the person they’re voting for, especially young people. Young people hate Biden. You can see this from all the protests about the genocide and Palestine he’s enabling. Will have low voter turnout compared to Bernie. Biden might lose the election giving us Trump again.
Don’t mean to tell you what you already know a stranger. Just saw you being gaslit and wanted you to know that you’re not crazy 👈😎
Yeah, how did the Bernie magic work out for Jamaal Bowman? Somehow he is the best candidate but can’t get people to attend a rally for an incumbent Democrat let alone vote for him.
Have you considered that? Maybe the amount of attention Americans give the presidential election is many times more than any other election? Do you think Americans are more likely to know the current president and who they ran against In the last election than their own senator? Or their own member of the House of reps?
Do you think that might affect things?
Be serious my dude
I’ve always held that Bernie deserved better than his supporters.
The one time he actually needed all that energy and noise and the shitbags turned out with all the enthusiasm of a deadbeat dad being asked to come to parent teacher night.
Millenials and Zoomers turning out at population share at the primary would have made it a landslide for him. They couldn’t even do that much, nevermind the easy dominating overrepresented share they could take with all the boomers catching the MAGA brainrot.
Nah, Bernie deserved better than the backroom deals that kept him from ever having a fair chance at getting the nomination.
Bernie lost at the ballot box ultimately. The reason he couldn’t make any backroom deals is because he spent his time attacking the Democratic Party the entire primary both times. I don’t understand why people expected them to shake his hand as he continuously spat in theirs.
I am a fan of Bernie. I volunteered for one of his campaigns. But it is always surprising to me how people forget the game he played. He wanted to be a revolutionary, to be a massive wind of change and take down the Democrat establishment. He described them as corrupt and awful at every single campaign stop. What the hell did people expect other than the Democrat establishment being upset about that? He’s not even a Democrat, he’s an independent who joined their party for the purpose of trying to get the nomination. Fair play, and obviously the only realistic way he had a shot at being president, but he is by every definition an outsider to the party - which we loved about him! But why on earth would they warmly embrace him?
deleted by creator
You mean like the delegate system that actually benefited him disproportionate to the share of the vote he got?
Or how apparently not letting a candidate pull the nomination with a minority of support is some grand conspiracy of moderate candidates by collectively having more support than him?
Or any number of other reason why the fact that you spent primary day flicking your boogers at the ceiling to see if any of them would stick has nothing to do with Bernie not having as much primary support as his campaign events would suggest?
Millennials and Zoomers turning out at population share at the primary would have made it a landslide for him. They couldn’t even do that much, nevermind the easy dominating overrepresented share they could take with all the boomers catching the MAGA brainrot.
First off, Gen Z was born between 1995 and 2012, which means only a small % of them could even vote in 2016 (1995-1998) and 2020 (1995-2002). Even 2020 we’re talking less than like 30% of the generation was even old enough to vote. In 2016 it was like 12-15%? So I would take a step back for a second and think through this blanket statement of yours on that alone. 6 years out of 17 won’t be able to vote this coming election, so we’re talking (napkin math) like 70% of the generation is even eligible in 2024. I hope my point has been sufficiently made here.
Second, why is it the responsibility of Gen Z and Millennials to save everyone else, or rather - why is it our fault when other people vote for Trump/someone else in the primaries? Why didn’t Gen X vote for him? Why are boomers off the hook? It’s not Gen Z and Millenials’ collective fault that other people voted for Trump. That’s absurd.
This just gives me flashbacks to Republicans in 2016 essentially saying “well you forced me to vote for Trump when you all [insert social issue they are mad about]” as if they aren’t responsible for their own actions and it’s everyone else’s fault they voted for the bigoted conman.
I love how you just came right the fuck out and admitted you expect everyone else to do the revolution for you but tried to phrase it like never turning out is some kind of virtue.
I’m not sure I follow…? Are you responding to the right person?
Gen Z could barely vote for Bernie in the primaries. Holding them accountable for “not turning out“ when it was literally impossible for the vast majority to is a pretty bold take.
I am responsible for a vote and who I support. That doesn’t make it my fault when someone else votes for a different candidate.
Both Gen Z and Millenials underperformed share of the voting age population. Millions of both actively chose to just not show up the one time it mattered.
Your right that it ain’t your fault when other people vote for someone else, but the Bernie crusaders have NEVER owned up to that being 99% of what happened both times around, other people voted for someone else, and that number of other people was well surmountable by turning out at voting age share at a minimum, let alone how much more young voters could take in over representation if they could be fucking bothered to do anything but get mad at other people for not voting the way the non voters wanted them to.
I don’t really see the sense in blaming 18-25 year olds for not bailing us out of our mess.
We could have had Bernie if the NY Board of Elections didn’t purge all newly registered Democrats despite complying with the October 9th deadline. They erased over 120,000 in Brooklyn alone. The fix was in.
The fix was in but easily surmountable by just fucking turning out.
DNC meddling is a fucking boogeyman, only 30 million people voted in the primaries, y’all fucking flaked and won’t deserve a leader like him again until you all fucking own that y’all abdicated.
The best excuse y’all could possibly have is that the DNC meddling boogeyman actually spooked you out of participating. Then at least you’re just a moron instead of being pathetic too.
I fucking turned out and voted, dickweed. For the wrong candidate.
Nostalgia is a good tool against anxiety, but it may perturbate the notion of reality
How is a screenshot of a twitter post a meme?
Twitter screenshots make up, like, a third of all memes at this point.