“We elected him once and our boat isn’t flying!1! Why isn’t he doing anything?!?” (/s)
Like, fuck, Biden was like, my third least favorite pick in the 2020 primaries. And he’s risen to maybe middle-of-the-pack by his actions (that is to say, I wasn’t expecting much, but I was mildly pleasantly surprised), compared to his 2020 peers. I’m not exactly his fucking fanboy, I just recognize that he’s not a Republican fucking ghoul. But the way people seem to judge actions in complete ignorance of how our government works, or of how fucking byzantine the processes even just for passing, much less implementing, legislature is… it’s exhausting, frustrating, and infuriating.
The way people talk around here you’d think the president was a monarch. I know that’s the way Trump and his sycophants want it or believe to be true, but Biden is only 1/3rd of the entire government.
If we could get people to turn out to vote in local elections, we might actually see some reforms over a period of couple years that could lead to lasting change, at least on a local level, but long term planning is impossible to sell when everybody demands a strongman who can solve every problem or issue on the federal level right now.
Like, fuck, Biden was like, my third least favorite pick in the 2020 primaries.
Behind Bloomberg and DeLaney.
DeLaney wasn’t even on my radar. I apologize for being an ardent Bernie voter with Warren as my second choice; I understand that basically makes me a conservative in the eyes of Lemmy’s Very Serious Leftist Brigade.
A little later:
“Okay SURE the boat is flying but as a strong leftist advocate I really think it’s problematic how he’s treated the underpaid people who build flying boat motors, and I think we need to focus more on what Biden should be doing better to convince me to vote for him against the hole-drilling-and-baby-punching club, because I think probably I’ll sit this one out”
Also “sure, the boat’s flying now and we aren’t drowning, but what we really need is to get to land, being in a boat doesn’t even make sense. So I’m going to sit this one out because both parties want us in the boat. What’s that? The other party’s trying to sink the boat before we get to land? I don’t care, it’s about the principle of wanting to be on land!”
“I don’t see the boat flying, see this is the whole problem with the Democrats is that when people tell them they’re HURTING they just break out all these figures about altitude and tell you to stick your hand out the boat and see if you can touch the water, that’s super condescending and not very productive and unresponsive to criticism, it’s like a cult man, blue MAGA amirite, so anyway I’m definitely not voting for them NOW because now you hurt my feelings.”
Israel is committing genocide, and that’s not the only thing happening in the world right now.
In a world full of ‘flying boats’, asking why we aren’t also flying is valid
Nobody reasonable is asking for the impossible, we’re asking for what those who are “worse off” financially have
I can understand being unwilling to vote for Biden because he’s supporting genocide. That, taken by itself, is perfectly reasonable.
Why aren’t those otherwise intelligent, thoughtful people looking at the bigger picture, though?
Don’t they understand that under Trump, things will be much worse? What’s their moral rationale for allowing fascism to take over America, and empowering untold numbers of reprehensible people? I’m trying to understand, but I just don’t get it.
They don’t seem to understand that the Israel/Palestine situation is not on the ballot this November; does anyone actually think Trump would oppose Israel? Even if he personally wanted to, his supporters are all nominal Christians who would turn on him in an instant if he suddenly stopped supporting God’s Chosen People.
Except for the anti-Semites, who make up a decent chunk of his active base. Or are they also pro-Israel?
Can anyone explain to me how the Nazis and pro-Israel crowds seem to be so friendly at the moment? It’s almost like this has nothing to do with Israel.
Except for the anti-Semites, who make up a decent chunk of his active base. Or are they also pro-Israel?
Yes.
Antisemite support of Israel is very common, because antisemites:
- Have a lot of overlap with fundies, who believe that Israel MUST exist for the apocalypse to occur
- Enjoy the thought of an ethnostate where they can deport all the Jews to
- Hate Muslims more than Jews
The Cristo-fascists are actively hoping for an Armageddon situation to bring about all their end of world predictions. The IDF may belong to a different abrahamic cult but they’re useful for fomenting that chaos in the region and lighting the lamp for jeebus or whatever the fuck they believe
They understand perfectly and that’s why they’re making it on the ballot. So what’s it going to be: continue supporting genocide and lose votes or stop supporting genocide and gain votes? Seems like an obvious choice, but maybe you’re too smart and understand too much over the masses you look down upon.
It is on the ballot if the voters put it there. If the voters say “I’ll vote for you no matter what you do or don’t do about the genocide”, then it isn’t on the ballot.
Bur you wouldn’t be voting against genocide. Both options support it. Not voting will also reault in one of the supporters winning.
The even bigger picture is the trend of things getting progressivelly worse even when Democrats are at the helm.
For example, it was Clinton that reppealed the Glass-Steagal Act which in turn led to hyperfinancialization and the 2008 Crash and it was Obama who chose to then save Asset owners in general (i.e. the Wealthy), unconditionally and on the backs of everybody else, leading to the slowest recovery from a Crash ever and all the imballances of the US Economy at the moment which as manifesting themselves as a complete total collapse in Social Mobility and rise of Inequality and Poverty.
Clearly electing Democrats doesn’t improve things either.
The problem is of course that the US is not a Democracy (hence how there are only 2 carefully selected real options, which in this election are so bad that they’re both hard Genocide supporters) so merelly voting for a President won’t solve anything, and the only solution probably involves levels of political activism Americans aren’t used to (one might even say they’ve been conditioned against it) such as General Strikes.
I can’t argue with anything you said. I can only argue that under Democrats, authoritarianism and the erosion of civil rights happen slower. We’ll have more time to acclimate ourselves to the concept of a General Strike. There’s no reason to give facism a helping hand by skipping the election.
It’s my impression that Historically the slow bloil tends to breed acceptance, not rebellion, and when it doesn’t there is generally a long period (decades, even centuries) of misery after the slow decay before people finally force a change for the better.
I can see your point, I just don’t agree with your expectation that the slow crumble will be a less painfull way overall to get people to do what it takes to recover than the crash-n-burn - yeah, it’s less painful immediatelly, but the pain lasts longer and the depths reached are probably much worse since human perception of how bad a crisis is, is based on where they were before not on absolute terms, so a crash-n-burn (i.e. a crisis, unlike the slow crumble) needs not collapse things quite as badly as the slow crumble to induce a general feeling that “this is unnacceptable”.
All that said, I’m fortunate I’m not an American or living in America and that the actions of both Trump and Biden (more the former) have made the US be seen as “not all that great” and “a bad example to follow” over here so the contagion factor for whatever happens over there is a lot less than it would have been a decade or two ago.
I can safelly wonder about all that at an intellectual level safe in a country that’s not really going to hurt from the changes taking place in America.
It’s always going to be this way. Every election will be an emergency. Every election in my lifetime has been. We’re in an abusive relationship and we need to get out of it. We need to break the duopoly. We need sane polling methods. But, no. Just like they keep us divided they’re keeping us distracted.
The problem is that roughly half of voters want that crazy shit, so until they’re overwhelmingly the minority and have no chance of winning, they will have a platform.
They’re both fucking crazy. They’re not the same, but they’re both insane to half the fucking population. That’s their power.
It’s shitty. We’re abused spouses. At some point we have to defeat the fear and either go to a shelter or the street. Until we’re willing to do that, well, enjoy.
If you want to understand, I can explain fairly simply.
Consider this thought experiment. We are getting $100 to split, but only if they can agree on how to split it: I get to make an offer, then you choose whether to accept. If you announce that you’ll accept whatever deal so long as accepting is better than the alternative - that is, that you’ll act “rationally” - then the rational thing for me to do is to offer you only $1, while I get $99. Researchers have actually tested this game in real life, however, and it generally doesn’t play out that way. Why? Because the numbers don’t tell the whole story of what you’re giving up by accepting a bad deal. Once you’ve demonstrated that you’ll accept a deal like that, then you’re communicating something about your behavior for all future deals. It may be rational in the context of a closed experiment, but for the general case, our minds know better than what may appear “rational” at first glance. If you tell me, “I will refuse anything less than $30,” then you are openly declaring that you intend to behave “irrationally” and trying to convince me that you will - and it would most likely produce better results than behaving “rationally.”
The moment that you say, “My only condition for voting for the democrats is that they be better than the republicans, who are unimaginably horrible,” you have sacrificed every ounce of bargaining power that you could’ve wielded. So the real calculation is not “Who’s better between Trump and Biden,” but rather, is the difference between Trump and Biden worth sacrificing all my bargaining power?" And for me, the fact that Biden is supporting genocide makes that decision very easy and straightforward. I’d rather at least try to leverage what power I have against genocide altogether, rather than supporting the “lesser genocide.” If I cannot set even something like genocide as a red line, then I am very clearly communicating to politicians that they can count on my vote no matter what they do, and they have no reason to ever consider my political priorities.
And yet your actions will lead to “more genocide” while you go and jerk off in the mirror with your newly gained bargaining power! Good job!
This is a false equivalence though: In the thought experiment, you denying to split ensures that none of you get anything. In this real-world scenario, you refusing to make a choice between more or less genocide increases the chances of “more genocide” winning. By not making a choice, you aren’t punishing the person proposing the deal, you’re just allowing someone else to make the choice for you.
There are elections in which it makes sense to vote against a candidate like Biden: In every election where there is a better choice on the table. That includes primaries, it includes backing candidates opposed to him in local elections, and elections for the house and senate. That is when you make your stand.
By not voting, in any specific election, you are simply giving up your right to have an impact on the outcome. That means that if the outcome is an increase in people killed, you are responsible, because you had the option to save lives, and chose not to take it.
By voting for the lesser of two evils, you are not signalling that you accept the lesser evil, but simply that you believe it is the best possible choice of those given. You can signal that you dislike the lesser evil by voting against it when an even lesser evil is on the table (or, preferably, something actually good).
Also, it’s not like “the democrats” tactically choose a candidate that they think the voters will reluctantly accept. The candidate is specifically the person that got the most votes in the primaries. The candidates in the primaries are typically people who got enough votes to be either governor or senator or something previously. By consistently voting for the better candidate in all those elections, you can actually have an impact on the presidential nominee, and signal your beliefs to the political party, without running the risk of having a wannabe dictator become president.
It’s not a false equivalence because I never claimed it was equivalent. The purpose of the hypothetical is to explain a concept, not to draw a direct comparison.
Not voting for Biden is punishing Biden because it’s denying him something that he wants. I’m not allowing other people to make the decision for me, it’s not as if my vote passes to the next person in line or something.
Primaries are not legitimate elections. There is no oversight and no legal requirement that they be conducted fairly, or even that they be conducted at all. The democratic establishment has the ability to influence the outcome or cancel them altogether, which it exercises regularly. What should I do if the democrats said, “We’re not doing primaries at all any more, we’re going back to the old days where party elites select candidates in smoke-filled rooms?” Should I just give them my full compliance?
I reject lesser evilism for reasons I already explained.
I am not responsible if withholding my vote leads to an increase in people being killed. That’s not how responsibility works. The responsibility is on the people doing the killing, the people ordering them to, and the people supplying them with the means to do so. It’s like if a serial killer tried to plead “not guilty” on the basis that one of his hostages refused to cooperate and that caused him to fly into a rage and kill more people so it’s really the hostage who should be tried for murder. It’s an absurdity, and frankly it betrays a refusal, in your psyche, to hold politicians accountable for their failures and misdeeds, instead trying to shift the blame onto ordinary people.
So true. Where’s all the reply guys who love to say “this is russian propaganda! Vote biden!”
Based on my experience, they’re probably about to show up and complain that two paragraphs is too long to read, or chime in with some cheap rhetorical snipes, or pick apart the hypothetical for not being directly analogous while ignoring the concept that it’s there to demonstrate - basically whatever brings the conversation closer to a cable news tier of debate.
So, say you were in a swing state, right? Then it might make sense to vote for biden. Or, a state where your votes are tallied earlier in the process, since a larger victory earlier in the process has an effect on those votes later on. Or, a state where your votes are disproportionately of more weight, maybe so long as you also live in a swing state. Those are the contexts in which it might actually make sense to vote for biden, because those are the contexts more broadly in which voting actually matters.
But, say you don’t conform to those criteria, say you live in a highly populous state, like, say, california, new york, maybe texas. These are states where they’ve already pre-committed themselves to one candidate over the other, and regardless of like, screeching about like, “oh well all votes count everything has an impact”, nothing’s realistically gonna change in those states unless some major cultural shifts and maybe even demographic shifts took place. You’d pretty much be an idiot to believe otherwise, right, to believe, oh, well, this time, this time california’s gonna vote red. Especially with a candidate like trump. Maybe if somebody like bernie suddenly became a republican or something, that might cause a decent amount of upset, but without a larger shift taking place there basically beyond your control, not much is gonna happen. The race has already been called for you, and been called for those states ahead of time. Maybe egg will be on my face if california votes red this election, but somehow I just don’t think that’s gonna happen.
In those cases, in those particular contexts, where your vote matters doesn’t really matter, it actually makes more sense, in my mind, to vote for the candidate you actually believe in. Even if that ends up being no candidate at all, which, admittedly, I do find pretty unlikely. Like, you have nothing to lose or gain really either way, so the best thing you can do in my mind is just clearly signal what your actual priorities are, and then hopefully someone looks at the poles and changes tactics because of it. To either appeal to your bloc more, or say, the DSA gets more funding because of increased voter turnout, or whatever.
I have never heard anyone really provide a legitimate counterargument to this set of tactics, because I don’t think you really can. It’s just an elaboration on strategic voting with more specifics than “vote blue no matter who” as sort of a blanket, contextually devoid statement that doesn’t make sense for a bunch of different scenarios. And strategic voting is what people are already doing when they’re trying to do a compromise vote for one of the two main parties in a FPTP two party system. That’s already a form of strategic voting, I’m just elaborating on it, instead of making a generalized party line heuristic that doesn’t make sense inm frankly, most cases, for most people that you’re gonna be talking to.
If Democrats lose to Donald Trump, then it will be entirely their own fault. Progressives have said for years and years exactly what they want, but Democrats think it’s much more important to appease the Trump voters than it is to appease us. Let’s see how that pans out.
From my perspective it seems like Democrats are trying to lose.
The people who fund the pro-Oligarchic Neoliberals who control the Democratic Party are the same people who fund a similar faction plus the Fascist faction in Republican Party, so either way they win.
For them the little mice under the table squealing “Vote Biden to stop Trump!!!” are just entertainment.
Yeah, let the country collapse under Trump, that’ll show them! I keep seeing this foolish argument over and over on Lemmy. Not sure if Reddit was this infested with naive and/or Russian trolls.
If Trump wins, everyone who didn’t vote for Biden shares the blame. When the situation in the Middle East gets worse, you’ll be to blame. When LGBTQ people get even more targeted in the US, you will be to blame.
Weasel out of it all you want, but come November, there’s really k lot two choices vote for Biden, or (in)directly help Trump.
I still find it incredibly rich that Democrats never have to take any blame for their bad positions. It’s not even a considerable option that they actually capitulate to the voters.
You are literally victim blaming. How on earth can you act like they need progressives and then not throw them a bone at the same time?
Do you know how a first past the post electoral system works? Or are you young and naive, thinking that politics isn’t about compromise?
Seems like compromise is “the political party does whatever they want and you guarantee your undying loyalty to them with your vote”. You speak of youth and naivety, but only an idiot would accept such a “deal”. If our votes have power then we should wield it.
Politics is absolutely about compromise, but Democrats never really compromise with progressives. The most we get is putting weed in the hands of the pharmaceutical companies, Yippee.
Yeah, I do, like harm reduction. Which is what a vote for Biden is. I’m not willing to accelerate the situation in the middle East, climate change, pollution and erosion of rights to make an ineffective point.
Ah but I hear you say Biden isn’t perfect, no the fuck he isn’t but we’re that much further from the left thanks to last time we tried this in 2016.
I know what “not perfect” looks like. Full-throated support of a genocide is more than a difference of opinion. Will anyone be left alive in Gaza by the time of our election? I can’t take the idea of campaigning for genocide as a form of “harm reduction”.
Hillary Clinton was campaigning on (and truly did believe given her track record) in universal healthcare. How exactly have we moved to the left?
Don’t they understand that under Trump, things will be much worse?
Under Trump, things were much better. Housing was much more affordable relative to wages. Food was much cheaper. Inflation was much lower. Illegal immigration was much lower. People are used to politicians lying to them, so they believe what they see and experience. That’s why Trump is now projected to win.
There were also riots in the streets, huge companies going out of business and massive layoffs, family farms going under because of soybean tariffs, and a massive pandemic where the federal government was confiscating PPE and selling it to Trump’s friends. All the while the president of the country was too fucking busy calling Rosie O’Donnell fat on Twitter to care.
Yeah shit was totally better back then.
I would imagine the Dem looking at the Republican and say “don’t do it again”, then turn towards the non-voter and say “the boat is now repaired” and then sit down pleased with himself.
You’re not wrong. But I don’t have much sympathy for people cheering on the boat sinking and everyone drowning because the Dems are a bunch of dumb, unimaginative, spineless twats.
It’s a terrible situation all around. Especially considering the anti-trans bills already coming out. I think the biggest issue is we can only vote for senators in our state, meaning it’s go big or go home. You should probably remind people the importance of voting for congress.
That’s what pisses me off so goddamn much about this BiDeN BaD TrUmP BaD bullshit pissing contest.
IT’S ABOUT CONGRESS AND THE JUDGES THEY PICK.
just look at the last decade. It wasn’t the president doing the most damage and changing law, it was the scotus
Republicans used to go on and on about “activist judges” because that was their exact plan. Install partisan judges and have lawsuits come up in favorable locations (looking at you 5th circuit from hell) that can then work their way up to the conservative rubber stamp that is our current scotus.
The fact that it’s even close is an indictment of the American people. Clearly we’re too stupid to run a country. What a shithole.
I figured the point the comic was trying to make is, “undecided voters are the dumbest people on the face of the Earth.”
I love this.
Though, it would be more accurate if the guy said “I’ll eat your enemy’s kids to death! Oh also, that guy is your enemy, k?”
“Vote for me or the other guy will eat your children to death” is closer to what’s going on.
(“vote for me instead, I will only eat the tallest of your children!”)
Where are the centrists giving the Republicans a drill and arguing that a just giving them a slight smaller drill bit then they requested is a good thing and the only way to keep the boat from sinking faster?
The editor has foolishly put them at the front of the boat pretending they’re enforcing it instead of slowly pouring cups of water into the boat.
Leftists are the solution, not the far right and right.
Also centrists under a fully right system, are sitting in the centre of the right and thus still rightists.
Leftists are the solution, not the far right and right.
It would be nice if they would vote once in a while. I’m assured they’re the vast majority of this country, but curiously, none of them ever seem to vote.
Vote for who? So far, we’ve only had capitalist candidates. That’s not really up my alley, champ.
The analogy from the cartoon is actually deeply flawed for the present situation; back about 10-15 years I think it was pretty accurate.
What it should be now, the best that I can make it out, is a pretty big boat that’s in quite a bit of mechanical trouble to the point that there’s a lot of unrest on board and it may not make it back to land and may get sunk by the next big storm. And, on board is:
Republicans actively drilling more holes, setting the engine on fire for some reason, stealing the flares and emergency beacon so they can sell them off to each other, shitting in the water supply, basically doing too many different bad things to even count or keep track of
A third of the people labeled with “Democrat” helping them, a third looking the other way or making vague attempts to tell them to stop, a third vigorously trying to stop them, sometimes with some level of success
Biden presiding over that whole process, and somehow producing some level of progress on the most critical of the problems, which is actually pretty shocking considering how fuckin insane the entire boat is at this point.
(Oh and also one of the Republicans has a handgun and keeps talking about how we need to shoot every single person on the boat who isn’t a Republican, and a lot of the Republicans are agreeing with him and saying they should have handguns too)
A tiny handful of people who are actually trying to organize, work on problems, work out how we might be able to get to land, put together water distillation since we’re running out, better system for choosing who’s in charge, some genuine improvement to our situation.
And then, a certain body of people who are swearing they are actually part of that last group, but who spend 100% of their time saying they don’t see any difference between Biden guy and handgun guy, and some of the other people were punching some of the last group, and anyway what about the water, no wait I meant what about the flares, he hasn’t even done anything about the flares… just more or less a constant drumbeat of opposition with none of the forward movement that comes from the last group. And, whenever someone starts yelling at them about handgun guy who literally might want to murder them, they accuse that person of oh isn’t that convenient that now I have to support Biden-guy now, I guess now you’re ordering me around that somehow I have to or else handgun guy will come after me, I bet Biden and handgun guy set the whole thing up themselves.
That’s still an oversimplification. But it seems somewhat more complete and accurate than the cartoon. My man: Start talking about ranked choice voting. Start talking about joining Extinction Rebellion. If you want to do better than Biden, fuckin do it, it sounds great. But saying that letting Trump win this particular election is anything other than the end of the world, is just lying.
And, whenever someone starts yelling at them about handgun guy who literally might want to murder them, they accuse that person of oh isn’t that convenient that now I have to support Biden-guy now, I guess now you’re ordering me around that somehow I have to or else handgun guy will come after me, I bet Biden and handgun guy set the whole thing up themselves.
This is what gets me. Some (most, if the news is accurate) Republicans are so cartoonishly evil that people’s first reaction is “that can’t be right, you’re just exaggerating” followed shortly by “oh isn’t it awfully convenient that you aren’t a part of that group?”
This wall of text makes me think either a bot or non-medicated mental illness.
It is the second one, coupled with profound irritation that there’s so much malicious bullshit in this innocent internet forum, designed to further destroy the governance in my country and harm me and lots of other people.
It might seem like a weird thing to get so worked up about, but l’m pretty sure that, aggregated together with all the other malicious organized propaganda on the internet, it does real damage in the real world (and not a small amount.)
