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this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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Why? It'll be a proven winning formula.
I'm more annoyed because "Don't vote for the other guy, they're the worst!!!" campaigns basically never succeed. If you've got nothing in your platform, screaming about the opposition being the Antichrist mostly just turns your own base off voting entirely.
At some point you have to deliver the goods to your constituents. Trump's people know that if he takes office, he's going to start handing out treats to them left and right. They're enthusiastic.
Biden voters are utterly depressed. They know if he wins they'll continue to get ignored and denounced as insufficiently loyal. They know they'll get blamed for his loss no matter how hard they work (just like Bernie got blamed for Clinton, after busting his ass on her behalf).
If Biden can win on that platform, what is the take away? Abuse your idiot voters. Only take. Never give. They'll love you for it anyway, because you're not the Other Guy.
Only by losing do Democrats realize they actually have to produce something for their base.
That's more or less what I'm saying. I don't vote because I don't like the other one, I vote because I believe that the candidate has the potential to do things that are more invested towards my values.
So if your entire campaign is about shunning the other guy it doesn't mean I'm going to vote for the other guy but it also sure as hell doesn't mean I'm going to vote for you. If I see no value in the candidate I'm just not going to vote or if there is a party that does represent my values then I will vote for that one. I believe that a good portion of my generation feels the same. This current cycle I believe will be the last one that's able to adequately use this tactic because the concerns are absolutely real this time around so it's dangerous to not participate but I can foresee if this ends up being the campaign strategy during the next cycle that it's not going to work
Okay, sure. But then at least one of them has to do at least something productive.
2006 kicked the legs out from under Bush Jr because he stopped doing Cool Cowboy War on Terror shit and started talking about privatizing Social Security and opening the border to Evil Immigrant Hordes. He lost, in no small part, thanks to an insurrection in his own party. John McCain and Mitt Romney suffered a similar fate (although McCain mostly just drowned in a sea of enthusiastic minorities and young people rallying around the Hope And Change guy).
I lived through 2016 and I lived through 2004 and I lived through 1996 and 1988. And I gotta say, the "you have to vote for my guy because the other guy is SO MUCH WORSE!" line never really bore out in any case. Trump, at his worst, simply wasn't doing anything that Obama and Bush and Clinton had already been doing. The tax cuts, the racism, the shitty Federalist Society SCOTUS picks, the police brutality at home, the resource-snatching wars abroad... What's new?
If Jan 6th proved anything, it proved that the folks who think they can do a civil war or a coup are a bunch of fucking attention seeking clowns. Meanwhile, the people we actually need to worry about - the Greg Abbots and Ron DeSantises and Josh Hawleys - aren't being obstructed in any meaningful way by the current administration. Electing Biden won't save democracy, because Joe Biden has demonstrated no interest in saving democracy. Letting Trump have a second term won't protect us from another round of tax cuts and deficit spending, followed by the gutting of education and health care and social security followed by more nightmarish wars across the Middle East and coups in Latin America and tin pot dictators in The Philippines and Indonesia, because these are things Democrats have already sponsored at home and abroad.
This current cycle is going to be more of the same. Its Bush v Gore all over again, with Democrats saying "We need to do something to save social security and stop climate change!" on the campaign trail while they sell all this shit down the river in the Senate cloak room.
I hard agree with everything you stated, and if there was a better alternative I would go for for it however I don't think it's possible this time around so you can only be optimistic for next time round
The White House campaign team and the DNC made a very deliberate effort to prevent anyone with a serious shot of challenging Biden off the primary ticket. I have no idea what they needed to trade (although I suspect its a fist-full of cabinet positions and a ton of fundraising money), but I guarantee there were better alternatives waiting in the wings. Even Gruesome Gavin Newsome and "Look out she's got a stapler" Klobacher aren't completely senile, and they're both still very hungry to try for the Top Job.
How do I "save democracy" by voting for this guy when he's done such a spectacular job of demolishing the institution at the primary level? How do I save democracy from a guy who insists there is only one valid choice in an election cycle?
I could say this about Biden, but lets be real. I could say this about practically anyone in the Two-Party Duopoly. I'm being told I need to defend democracy while living in a gerrymandered district who routinely watches his red governor strip tens of thousands of names off the voter rolls in my bright blue city. How the fuck does supporting this asshole do that?
I've been optimistic since my first presidential election in 2004. This is the fifth time I've been told to "just be optimistic about next time". I'm out of optimism. These people suck. This party sucks. Its a suckers game to keep supporting them.
You completely lost all credibility at this point. By no metric is Biden "senile." He has been running a very competent administration. It's just some stupid propaganda that he isn't mentally fit to serve, based almost entirely on the fact that he's old and has a speech impediment.
This literally never happened. The party always protects the incumbent, because they have tend to have the best chance of winning. Just because you think there are other better candidates doesn't change the benefit of being the incumbent. The party, of course, is going to protect itself and push to keep legitimate challengers off the ballot by telling them not to run but there has been no demolishing-the-primary going on. This is just made up nonsense.
Who do you think is more likely to do something about gerrymandering and protecting voting rights?
If you are actually serious, the problem is that you have fallen into the typical pitfall of "it's a top down" game. That's not how it works. If you want real change, you should be working locally. Expecting to elect a president and then all of your problems are solved is just pure naivety. This doesn't mean that a POTUS can't really harm you (just look at how the election of Trump led to a drastic rightward shift of the COTUS and how it has stripped individual rights and is likely going to strip the executive branch from the ability to regulate) but if you want change, you have to work for it at the local level, and then work to help it trickle up.
So competent he's getting heckled out of his campaign events by the base of his party? So competent he's lost 20 approval points since October in a gangbusters economy?
At this point? Trump does appear to be a guy who will bust up the system if it gets in his way.
Biden just rolls over, for fear of upsetting his fellow House octogenarians.
Donald Trump as president is an existential threat
Joe Biden as president is a useless lump.
What a curious way to view the office.
Fuck right off with that nonsense. The party doesn't want help. They want to take your time and your money, then leave you used up when they've won.
This is a party of social climbers, not socialists. They aren't your friends and they have no interest in doing you any favors.
You base a person's competency on public perception? Wow. Also, how does him getting heckled prove he is senile? You are basically saying "well, other people are falling for the propaganda! So that makes it true!"
Wait, you're arguing that the guy who we have, on tape, trying to get someone to overturn an election they lost, is the one more likely to protect your right to vote? And you think they'll do this by "tearing it all down" and magically put something back in place that doesn't favor them? Holy shit.
You can see nothing between "solving all your problems" and being "a useless lump"? Again, wow.
This is right in line with the level of critical thought I normally see from "muh both sides!"-ers.
Of course, you don't want to work. You just want to complain.
I understand this, but I'm also smart enough to think on my own and actually see that the shit they are doing is thousands of times better for us all, especially in the long run, and not caught up in the doomerism propaganda that you are slurping down.
In a democracy, you kinda have to. That's the entire premise of the system.
The most effective forms of propaganda are simply restatements of obvious truths that support your view.
No, I'm suggesting the guy we've got on tape trying to strong arm governors into overturning an election is the guy mostly likely to strong arm legislators into changing election laws.
Biden couldn't even deliver on DC Statehood. If the DC has been a free two Senator / six House Rep pickup for the GOP, Trump would have passed that bill on day one.
Sisyphus fails because he is too lazy.
Lol literally nothing about a democracy that requires you to hold such a dumb position as measuring competency on public opinion.
You're either incredibly dumb, or just incredibly disingenuous. Either way, I'm done.