Summary:
Democrats are becoming increasingly concerned about a possible drop in Black voter turnout for the 2024 presidential election, according to party insiders. The worries arise from a 10% decrease in Black voter turnout in the 2022 midterms compared to 2018, a more substantial decline than any other racial or ethnic group, as per a Washington Post analysis. The decline was particularly significant among younger and male Black voters in crucial states like Georgia, where Democrats aim to mobilize Black voter support for President Biden in 2024.
The Democratic party has acknowledged the need to bolster their outreach efforts to this demographic. W. Mondale Robinson, founder of the Black Male Voter Project, highlighted the need for Democrats to refocus their attention on Black male voters, who have shown lower levels of engagement. In response, Biden’s team has pledged to communicate more effectively about the benefits that the Black community has reaped under Biden’s administration, according to Cedric L. Richmond, a senior advisor at the Democratic National Committee.
However, Black voter advocates have identified deep-seated issues affecting Black voter turnout. Many Black men reportedly feel detached from the political process and uninspired by both parties’ policies. Terrance Woodbury, CEO of HIT Strategies, a polling firm, suggests that the Democratic party’s focus on countering Trump and Republican extremism doesn’t motivate younger Black men as much as arguments focused on policy benefits. Concerns are growing within the party that if they fail to address these issues, disenchanted Black voters might either abstain or, potentially, be swayed by Republican messaging on certain key issues.
Maybe… Maaaaaayyyyyyybeeeee the Democrats need to nominate someone who is actually worth getting excited about instead of just being not-Trump.
Because if voters are excited, they may start voting in primaries…
Every since Obama beat Clinton 15 years ago, party leaders seem more motivated to make sure their pick wins the primary than a Democrat winning the general.
“Moderates” seem ineffictive because they’re not trying to just win, they’re trying to win by as little as possible. Like a corrupt pro athlete who’s not throwing the game, but trying to win by less than the spread.
They know the reason most people vote for moderates like Biden, is if they don’t, someone like trump would win. It’s just the party leaders would rather trade back and forth than let Dems like FDR win every election for decades.
Ever since Obama beat Clinton 15 years ago
Jesus I thought you were exaggerating and then I did the math
If you think that’s bad:
Biden’s first presidential primary was 35 years ago…
He was the expected front runner due mainly to his (at the time) exceptional public speaking but got caught plagiarizing speeches, lying about his grades in law school, and even people finding out he cheated while in law school by plagiarising papers.
But everyone forgot about all that because he spent 8 years standing next to Obama. And the only reason he got that job was to make old white people less uncomfortable voting for a Black guy.
That’s a great way to put it. Both parties are funded by dark money interests, one drives us to the right and the other keeps us in place. This is described as the ratchet effect
and millions are claiming the democrats are radicals, little do they know that the country was more progressive on certain fronts 50 years ago. So they have to resort to blaming gays and trans, because everything else about the current staye of the country is kinda right-wingy to begin with.
Anyone “worth getting excited about” is going to challenge the status quo too much - even nominally - for the DNC to be okay with it. They are conservative in the descriptive sense. “No-one’s standard of living will fundamentally change.”
I get that we have many problems that aren’t really being actively solved, but personally I’ve been pretty happy with this return-to-status-quo term as compared to the previous non-status-quo term… and right now the narcissistic traitor is leading the nomination polls.
You’ve been pretty happy with status quo have you? Great, love that for you. Sounds like being apathetic to the problems is working out for you specifically. I certainly wouldn’t want you to have to think about the enormous numbers of disenfranchised, poor and minority people who overwhelmingly don’t turn out to vote because they don’t see a real difference in their lives between parties and the dems aren’t doing anything to prove to them why they should care. That sounds like it wouldn’t be comfortable for you, and that’s the top priority here.
Or maybe you need to understand that the down ticket races are more important than the presidency?
Change in the US starts at the bottom. Not the top.
Fuck the presidency. Just vote for the candidate that isn’t going to burn the country down.
You want real change? Real progressivism? Vote progressives into local offices. Your young, progressive education board member today is your congressional rep tomorrow. Your congressional rep today is your presidential hopeful tomorrow.
Let the status quo dems toss whatever geriatric they want at the presidency and vote them in so we don’t get another trump, or worse, a president desantis or something.
Presidents don’t often push new laws anyway. You want to change the country? Help take the House and the Senate. As long as the president is the same party they’re not going to veto progressive legislation.
I was about to write something like your comment.
You want real change? Real progressivism? Vote progressives into local offices
Show up to every local election. Pay attention at the local level. Use your passion against the two party system to get third-party candidates elected to your state house.
This shit right here. Both times I was exited for a candidate he got thrown out because the party leaders didn’t like him, first with Hillary, and then with Biden. I’m just going to continue to vote for not-trump because I know how bad it will be but I don’t want any centrist democrat almost as much as I dont want trump.
Maybe… Maaaaaayyyyyyybeeeee the left voters need to actually show up to vote.
Now everyone is going to say they voted in a presidential election, possibly even a primary which makes them a rarity! Those aren’t what we’re talking about. The right has made it a point to vote on everything even as small as schoolboards so the only people voting in the tiny little races are the right wing rage crowd or the centrists who are being pulled to the right. Yes, the presidential vote matters, but frankly those lower down votes mean a lot more and if you watch how the Republican primaries are going, shows exactly how much power that batch that will show up has over a party.
This is some real “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” energy. If “just vote” actually worked, they’d change the system just enough so it doesn’t. Assembling establishment voltron in 2020 during the primaries is just a tiny taste of the lengths that democrats will go to in order to prevent a progressive candidate from winning.
Thing is, it isn’t “Just vote”, it’s being absolutely active every step of the way. Dunno what your territory is but my state we’re having an absolute route of the ultra-right wing going for every local position with the Republicans national conference funding them, the Dems have considered the entire state a lost cause.
So kinda, yea, it is a pull yourself up by the bootstraps, and anyone else who you can pull up as well because we’re sure as hell not getting help from the top, but it’s either that or sit on our fucking hands and go “whelp”. Remember, whether you like her or not, AOC primaried the supposed “2nd in command” Democrat. If you don’t like the establishment, you root it out from the bottom.
I don’t think that was the main reason.
IMO, Biden was nominated because he was a fairly uncontroversial (by mainstream sensibilities anyway) white male candidate who also isn’t that attached to many positions that would threaten the powers that be.
Biden is a weather vane that swings in accordance to the winds. Which is all that was needed to beat a historically unpopular candidate like Trump. Thankfully, Trump is such a bad option that even Biden can be a palatable candidate.
Why this fossil didn’t bend the knee and allow another younger, more exciting candidate step up for 2024 is beyond me though. But I guess seeing the average age and mental capability of Congress, it shouldn’t be surprising. IMO, everyone over the age of 65 should be ineligible for elected office. They are at retirement age, and have no real, justifiable stake in the future. They should retire with the knowledge they won life and can live out the rest of their days in comfort and leave running the country to people who have skin in the game and the energy/mental faculties to actually play it.
Biden joining + everyone else dropping out was the last hope the establishment had to kneecap Bernie, and it fucking worked
Biden won because black women liked him and they actually go out and vote in the primaries, unlike the louts in this thread who are literally talking about how they won’t vote.
Why this fossil didn’t bend the knee and allow another younger, more exciting candidate step up for 2024 is beyond me though.
Probably because the geriatrics fucked two whole generations of politicians by not stepping down when they should have.
Gen X and millennials don’t have enough horses in the race with the experience necessary to run for president because they got fucked by the boomers.
We’re going to be in for an exciting ride over the next two decades as something like 40% of Congress retires or dies in office without anyone with experience available to replace them.
And this is on both sides.
Well…maybe it will be his time and we will get Harris. We can dream I guess.
Your dream is Harris?! Shit, no. No, no, no.
My hope is that Biden is staying in the race until the 11th hour to be the lightening rod and the dems have someone better to step in.
Of course, that would require some intestinal fortitude and a few brain cells and I don’t think the dem leadership has that.
Or maybe grow up and realize that political offices and the people that fill them shouldn’t be “exciting”. Maybe the problem is that we all want someone exciting… With no regard for competence.
“I’d have a beer with him.” Who gives a fuck???
Problem is that you need to convince tens of millions of people to grow up. I think this chap here is merely suggesting we give the idiots what they want.
Candidates that will the whole party will find exciting are basically a once in a generation event, if that. This generation’s such candidate was Obama. Democrats as a party are reliant on far too big of a tent to make this a viable strategy or thought process.
A candidate that I, a far left progressive, would get excited about is a candidate that a lot of center-of-left or moderate voters would find boring. Even within wings of the party there’s not going to be lockstep excitement (go back to Dec 2019 and ask Sanders supporters how “excited” they’d be for a Warren candidacy!).
This line of argument is consistently just people pining for candidates that more closely reflect our own ideological views, not a reflection of the reality available to us. There was no such candidate in 2016 or 2020 and won’t be for 2024. I’m not going to hold my breath for 2028 either. Maybe by 2032 we might see the next Obama, someone that excites the whole party.
It will only last a few more years, but in the near-ish future the problem will take care of itself. (They’re both very old)
I’d rather we nominate someone who is electable, i.e., palatable to centrists, even if they’re not as exciting as someone who would move the Overton window leftwards.
What if is instead of focusing on a vanishingly small number of centrist swing voters, you focused on the 35% of non-voters by improving their material conditions?
The majority of non-voters believe there is no material difference between candidates. Improving candidates is not going to fix that. The problem is lower level civic engagement rather than “Pick a more leftist candidate.”
Because those people just don’t show up to vote.
Maybe all the people bitching need to show up EVERY ELECTION and then they’ll start getting good candidates. But time and again progressives and everyone else just decide to not vote so therefore don’t even come close to getting what they want. Vote in every election for even dog catcher like it’s your religion and maybe you’ll start seeing change.
Biden may not be exciting, but he’s had a surprising amount of policy victories given the deadlock in congress. And he hasn’t tried to burn our democracy to the ground to satisfy his own ego, so that’s always a plus.
That’s because democracy was burnt to the ground awhile ago and all that’s left are corporate shills.
From a non-US standpoint this is rather easy:
You have 2 geriatric options. Option 1 would lead to a dictatorship. Option 2 would lead to the - non-ideal - status quo.
How the fuck do you even have to think about which option would be better???
The Dems have ran non ideal status quo candidates for so long it becomes fatiguing so people stay home or write in Snoop Dogg.
While I totally understand the frustration - apathy cannot be a solution in this scenario!
You’d rather sit at home and watch your democracy go up in flames than just make an “x” on a piece of paper or a screen? Seriously, come on man…
Democracy is going up in flames either way, the question is whether we want it fast or slow. The only way to stop it is for the Dems to put up decent candidates who want to stop the slide, and thus far, they’ve declined to do so. So while yes, we should keep voting blue to slow the slide, we shouldn’t be stupid enough to believe that doing so is enough to stop it.
Don’t be an idiot. It’s been going on for so long, and the two party FPTP system is so broken, that this disgruntlement is justified. If neither party changes, and if voting for the less bad choice is construed as endorsement, them what other choice does a conscientious voter have?
You don’t. You don’t understand the frustration. You’re not part of this you’re just a casual observer with an opinion formed from the outside.
Clinton was definitely not ideal, lol. Just another corporate dem. I still voted for her though.
Because the dictatorship is a minor inconvenient side effect of their team winning.
But if you don’t consider Trump the absolute threat that he is, you just stay home. When I thought there was no way he’d win (2016) I didn’t vote for Hilary because I hate her. I voted for Biden because the threat had become real.
Dems are correctly assessing that there are still people who see Trump as a clown show rather than a future dictator.
Easy is subjective. The choice is obvious but having to vote for someone you know doesn’t represent most of us isn’t easy. It’s a hard thing that we have to do. Nobody is thinking about what option to vote for here. We’re grieving the decision that’s already been made for us because there’s no acceptable alternative. But thanks for your contributions. It’s always so very helpful when people that don’t even live our lives roll up to state the obvious.
If an actual fascist dictatorship were a real threat the democratic party would be totally impotent against it.
An actual fascist dictatorship IS the real threat. What do you think trump will do if he wins?
Yep. These “I just won’t vote” comments are naive.
We have lost the Supreme Court to Republicans and they put in three hack judges. We have lost the House. We barely have a 50/50, and some paid off Dems like Tricia Cotham who was a GOP plant switched sides. Steve Bannon is running chaos agent RFK Jr. to try to screw up Dem votes. We cannot pass any bills, really. We are at risk of Trump or a Hitler clone like Desantis running. We are at high risk of fascism right now.
The LAST thing we need right now is to whine about current candidate availability. We are not in a position to do so. To not vote, or even vote third party right now in our tenuous position is suicide. We can fix these things later. But not now. The goal right now is to get in enough Democrats to repair what Trump did. Then prevent it from happening again. And it takes time.
I just don’t bother voting. We need a large majority of eligible voters, those who actually don’t believe in the system, to stop showing up. When the tide goes out, we can all see who’s swimming naked.
This is the dumbest thing I’ve read in this thread. I can’t imagine you’re anything but a troll trying to get people not to vote.
I’m not from the US either, but I’m pretty sure there’s a third choice - staying home.
I was mostly referring to the (likely) candidates as options, but yes, sadly you are right. Doesnt help that by design it is more difficult to vote for certain groups than others. Still. If I had to take a day off and risk my job by doing so - It would be worth it to prevent a dictatorship!
First of all, not voting is, by definition, not a vote for anyone or anything. Second, the right to vote always includes the right to not vote for any of the given choices.
fuckin find a decent nominee then
In 2020 there were double digits dems in the primary…
In 2024 we’re expected to believe the only choice is Biden or a Republican.
If you’re pissed “there’s no other nominee” be mad at the party leaders who aren’t allowing a primary. And realize there’s 100s of people qualified to run as a Dem
Double digit nominees…that all lost to Biden.
We gonna drag them up again? So they can lose again?
… That’s what a primary is for. So people can, like, actually choose.
There are a LOT of people who don’t want Biden for another four years. There are people who didn’t like him, but have warmed up to him.
Would he win a primary? Yeah, probably, because of incumbent advantage.
But that should be for people to decide.
Maybe one that isn’t older than average life expectancy already let alone after another term. Just an idea.
Cool, if that candidate showed up and won the Democratic primary in 2020 I would have voted for them. As things stand I’ll go with the most viable one that’s most likely to defeat fascism. That’s the incumbent, Joe Biden. I don’t care if he’s elderly.
If the DNC didn’t say there would be no primary on day 1 then we might have actually been able to see people step forward. Marianne Williamson is at least running on the issues and is physically capable of having a two hour conversation. Biden… not so much
I don’t know why they’re so content to hitch themselves to terrible candidates. I’ve never in my life voted Republican, and the last time I was excited about a democratic nominee was Obama (RIP young idealistic me). Hillary had more baggage than a travelling circus, and felt a lot like just dead ass casting a vote for Goldman Sachs to run the oval office; Primary Biden made Jeb Bush seem like a live wire, besides not really having much to get excited about on his platform. Bernie was basically the only exciting thing the democrats have had going in soon to be over a decade now. The part has to do better.
Williamson is a nutcase, and Kennedy is a racist anti-vaxxer. How about we get a serious candidate or two?
As if Biden wasn’t already a serious candidate with a provable winning record.
Biden is clearly the better option and it shows by how much money the Republicans and the far right are dumping into “Democratic candidates” like RFK Jr and Dr. Cornell West. Which is also why the Right wingers and their “Democratic” proxies are the only ones trying to push for a democratic primary that would set a new precedent by primarying an incumbent Democratic President.
The only person this infighting about these unqualified challengers to Biden helps is Trump or whatever MAGA loyalist that replaces him once Trump finally winds up in prison. (Hopefully)
Capable of a two hour conversation maybe, but a strong candidate? Not even close
I think if there was a regular debate schedule it could have gotten interesting. But with the way it is now, you’re absolutely correct
While I didn’t really want Biden in 2020, after his administration’s record so far, I can honestly say I do want more of that. Not to say I wouldn’t rather have someone much better and more left, but I’m pretty sure nobody better will be any more successful than Biden has been, given the Republican opposition in Congress.
What I really want is fewer Republicans in Congress, and short of moving to another district, there isn’t much more I can do there. My district’s congressmen are fantastic.
People are braindead if they don’t vote Biden again. Sure we don’t want him, but do we want Hitler 2.0 instead? Because Ron Desantis is a preview of that if a Republican wins. Biden will then be gone next time and we’ll have a younger candidate. Sadly, voting takes time. Remember that it took decades of this shit for Republicans to steal the Supreme Court.
I agree with the other user who said this a terrible take.
Biden is who the Democratic party selected overwhelmingly (to my chagrin) and there is nobody who can beat him in a primary (the person who theoretically could already lost before, and immediately endorsed Biden this time around).
It also makes no sense to take out the guy we know will beat Trump.
Americans are desperate for change, but half of them want to go backward and half want to go forward. Add to that it basically takes a supermajority to pass legislation that makes real changes and well… you’re pretty much left with things you can do via the executive branch.
So yes, a big part of the problem is that neither party really has the ability to appeal to the other “side” at all. We need sweeping social change before we get sweeping political change.
