My friend said to me the other day “why did democrats nominate such a weak candidate?” To which I asked since given the fact that weak and strong are relative terms, can you point out 1 specific aspect where Biden is weaker than his opponent? She had no answer other than “he is just weak”
Don’t let these fuckers gaslight you in thinking the convicted felon with 90+ indictments and a wannabe dictator is somehow stronger than the alternative.
He's a weak candidate because he's a tepid aged rich guy who only loosely reflects what his base wants and is incapable of delivering the level of change the historic moment requires.
He's uninspiring. The US desperately needs large scale institutional change. With how broken those institutions are, that's going to require a groundswell of public support, something that can only be done by an inspiring reform candidate, not an establishment figure.
I'm still voting for him, but I'm (eternally) disappointed in the short sighted cowardice of the democratic party.
a tepid aged rich guy who only loosely reflects what his base wants and is incapable of delivering the level of change the historic moment requires.
I mean, green energy, student loans, proper actual judges, high-speed rail, decriminalized weed, support for Ukraine, prosecuting trump for at least one of his many many crimes, increased school funding, etc etc and that was with half his term under a batshit republiQan House that can barely not hold up revenge porn in public hearings.
Such a weird statement to me. Why would anyone expect to be 'inspired' by a politician? They're tools to represent your interests in government. If there's someone running that does that better- vote for them. Really wish people could be more boring and practical about politics. All this emotional sentiment does no one any good.
The US desperately needs large scale institutional change. With how broken those institutions are, that’s going to require a groundswell of public support, something that can only be done by an inspiring reform candidate, not an establishment figure.
Isn't that how Trump happened? People seem to get inspired by some pretty fucked up shit.
Somebody figured out that a lot of human judgement comes down to groupthink. If you see a bunch of people who are clearly operating guided by some assumptions, then you'll take those assumptions on and start being guided by them, whether the people you saw were real or fake.
Then, a few years ago, it became cheap and easy to flood both social media and news media with restatements of whatever assumptions you want people to pretend that are guided by.
And so, behold: The economy is crashing, which is all Biden's fault, and he's a weak candidate who loves genocide. Everyone's disappointed in him. Everyone knows all these things and sees them all the time. The simple repetition is actually a very solid system for producing the public opinion you want to produce.
At the present moment, they are trying to do it tactically with the "anyone who is disagreeing with me is trying to silence me, in fact they are literally hitting me in the face (also! Note that I'm allowed to disagree with whoever I want)" narrative -- simply repeating it, over and over, in the hopes (probably pretty well founded) that people will start to absorb it and behave the way they want them to behave.
At the present moment, they are trying to do it tactically with the “anyone who is disagreeing with me is trying to silence me, in fact they are literally hitting me in the face (also! Note that I’m allowed to disagree with whoever I want)” narrative – simply repeating it, over and over, in the hopes (probably pretty well founded) that people will start to absorb it and behave the way they want them to behave.
Social media is both a blessing and a curse. Depending on context you might think a little of both at any given time.
I hope you do keep engaging with it. The easy thing to do would be to ignore the alarms, but it's not the smartest.
Public perception and narrative is where Biden is weak. Seeming physically feeble. There's a number of ways. I'm going to vote for him, but don't just yourself. You're sleepwalking towards the grave.
Biden is ancient and incomprehensible in half of his public appearances. Not saying Trump isn't, but his people love his crazy rambling.
It is not unreasonable for people to be disappointed. They are being forced to choose between two dementia riddled candidates. The only people who truly think Trump would be the better alternative are dumbass "centrists" and conservatives.
Yes, lesser evil voting is good, but you can't shame people for not smiling while smelling shit.
This is ableism. Biden doesn’t mumble because of his age, but because he’s had issues with stuttering since he was young. To a few kids he’s even been an inspiring image for the fact he rehearses his speeches so well he rises above the impromptu stutters.
The question isn't whether or not he is weaker than the other candidate. The question was, would a better Democratic candidate have stood a better chance? I think you're misrepresenting what your friend had said.
It's actually kind of rude how you're depicting them right now, as some sort of buffoon.
Trump is vastly better at campaigns, Biden is far too insulated from public appearances. Trump is also really good at inspiring his base, half of Biden's party doesn't even want him. Trump gets to point to a generally good economy for his term until states shut down for covid, Biden gets to downplay a cumulative 20% inflation during his term.
Biden is in trouble in the states he needs to win, and these weaknesses are a big part of it.
Hey, remember what I said about groupthink and just repeating the assumptions and then hoping people will absorb them? This is textbook what I meant.
Trump is vastly better at campaigns
Half-empty campaign rallies and people leaving before the end are a hallmark of Trump's campaign rallies. I would assert that it's because he just stands up saying literally any unhinged, weird, angry garbage for literally hours and it gets tiresome after a while.
I have seen one story of people leaving before the end of Biden's speech, and that was because of a delberate protest for his genocide-enabling foreign policy, and then it turned out not to be true anyway.
Trump's also gutted the RNC because he needed all the money to pay his legal bills. It remains to be seen exactly how bad the impacts will be on his and everyone else's ability to run a campaign, but it seems unlikely that it'll leave in place a powerhouse. Eight years ago, some of Trump's natural skill at understanding TV audiences made his skill as a campaigner a lot more real than today; at this point I would say that most of Trump's broad support from conservatives is because a complicit conservative media lies for him like a North Korean news anchor, and not because of anything he's doing.
Trump is also really good at inspiring his base, half of Biden's party doesn't even want him
Trump has 75% of the popular vote in the primary; Biden has 85% (in the midst of historic reasons not to vote for him in the primary and an organized effort specifically not to vote for him, even from staunch Democrats). Also -- 30% of Republican primary voters in a few different state polls said that they wouldn't commit to voting for Trump if he won the nomination. That's a huge deal, and very unusual, with only one real explanation (unlike the differences in primary numbers, which obviously aren't a really apples to apples comparison).
Trump gets to point to a generally good economy for his term until states shut down for covid
Can we please summon to this comment some of those people who jump on every story which covers good things about Biden's economy, to start talking about how good economic numbers don't always translate to a better economy for actual humans?
Biden's strengthened unions, bounced back smoothly from Covid better than literally every other first world country, and boosted pay for low-wage earners even in the face of historic inflation. Trump started mini-trade wars with Canada and China, directly went to factories and coal mines and promised he would bring the jobs back and then weeks later the literal exact same places were closed, and gave away half a trillion dollars via direct Covid-aid fraud (that is literally the number -- not like forgiven PPP loans, which were also massive, but simple rampant theft).
Biden gets to downplay a cumulative 20% inflation during his term.
Quick question, what was cumulative wage growth during Biden's term? Average or median or 10th percentile; you pick.
I for real saw it and thought, yes, that is 100% the correct response at this point 😃. I mean I don't think extensive criticism is the same as hitting them in the face, but metaphorically speaking, yes, it sounds good.
When there have been 2-3 extensive discussions on your viewpoint, then okay sure, that's your free speech and we are here for political discussion whether or not I agree with it.
Once it reaches 20 or 30 times and you're still doing it multiple times per day every single day from multiple accounts and totally unresponsive to people pointing out every time objective flaws in it, I think we can start hitting you in the face as soon as you start.
I gotta be honest, I seriously had a lot of support for Batman when I first saw it 🙂.
I mean the whole premise is hilarious. Disagreeing with them is not the same as hitting them in the face, obviously, and of course they're not planning on stopping disagreeing with anyone around them or yelling their viewpoint at people who don't want to hear it. It's the standard conservative tactic of "how DARE you do back to me a lesser version of what I did to you, actually specifically in response to me doing it to you, that's literally oppression so unreasonable and I'm a total victim now and how dare you."
I know it's good in this instance that Biden is likely to win because he can out spend the orange one, but I still find it crazy that your politics is just about who has the deepest pockets. Spending limits are a thing for a reason.
It's not. In 2016 Bloomberg outspent the other candidates by orders of ten and still lost horribly. Bernie raised funds from his electoral base and came to be a close contender to Clinton. You just can't fix shit personality with money.
Biden is the most liberal President that the Democratic Party has allowed to become president since Jimmy Carter. And that’s cool.
But after 40+ years of both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party getting on their knees to give the sloppiest, messiest blowjobs for corporate America, the Republican Party lacks the ability to govern, and the Democratic Party lacks the ability to lead, and neither have any intention of doing anything to benefit U.S. citizens unless it either benefits the wealthy most or is needed to improve their chances of reelection.
I feel like this messaging is reductive and stupid. The problem is not people being anti-Biden. The problem is a broken-ass system and political parties that hope we don’t realize it.
The exceptionally stupid thing is that Republicans want to tear the system down and take it over, and the Democratic Party seems to think that is a cute point to campaign on, rather than an existential fucking crisis that they aren’t taking seriously because they’re afraid if they pull that corporate dick out their mouth and start actually embracing the will of the people that they won’t have the funds to campaign.
Honestly, best case scenario is that the Dems get a big enough win that the GoP tears themselves apart trying to pin the blame, and ends up collapsing. Then the Democrat party splits due to some seeing a void, and the US gets a hard shift left with the new right wing party being only marginally more right wing than the Democrat party is now
My dream scenario was first enough states passing the interstate voting compact by ballot initiative to bring it into effect, immediately followed by adoption of preference voting systems, campaign finance reform, universal mail in voting and electoral holidays.
But like, I think tribalism and the entrenched systems that benefit from this system would topple the U.S. into autocracy before people could unify enough to make even a fraction of the above happen.
Notwithstanding, there is currently both massive internal and external pressure to push the U.S. to that point regardless of what is happening, so we’re pretty much fucked six ways from Sunday.
I'd have the same response to "If the Cowboys want to win this year..." if I gave two shits about football.
At best it's just mindless armchair politics. Nobody cares what you think Biden 'should do'. If it's not obvious to you that he's the best option you can stfu and vote Trump.
Neo liberals famously would rather have Donald Trump in charge than actual progressive policy. I'd argue it's that exact mindset why they scorned Bernie and let Trump get come to power to begin with.
I'm not keen on the philosophy of accelerationism but america is so chewed up with essentially two party's both fucking terrible and with a limited chance of any other party ever getting in that I can only imagine the path to change in america would be a destructive one. Its lovely to think that maybe the masses would mobiles and democratically bring in a alternative party, truly lovely.
From Europe its sadly easy to think this but I do feel for my american comrades, solidarity.
the problem is, some people aren't liberal and would like for leftist parties to have a fighting chance. and the political system in america built on money and generation has made for a two party system, a two party system that can not be democratically removed.
I recommend you as tribute to the front line then. You want to burn it down? Fine, get in the front line and take it in. The rest of us have families and responsibilities and would prefer to put in the work to fix things instead of virtue signaling online about the "glorious revolution".
Biden said nothing would fundamentally change if he was elected in 2020 and look where it's gotten us. Him and Trump round two. Nothing is going to change unless we make a change and people like you are making it so that doesn't happen.
And before you fucks say j"ust vote for Trump you tanky" I voted for Biden in 2020 and I will probably vote for him in 2024, but since I'm in California, my vote for presidency doesn't matter.
This is regarding the gradual but steady decrease in dignity for the working class, and the limited democracy and thus method to vote in policies that could benefit the working class.
I'm European and will be in my own fight (hopefully a democratic one)
I'm not the biggest fan of genocide Joe myself, but when it's the only thing you post about 24/7, people are going to start to get suspicious of your motives.