That’s true, but if you’re letting it get to angry heated bitter arguments, that’s at least partly your fault. With an open mind and a friendly attitude you can mostly avoid those.
Of course they didn’t. They literally had every establishment democrat coordinatedly drop out of the primaries in exchange for cabinet positions to throw their support behind Biden when Sanders started winning the primaries in 2020. Like, it’s been clear they’d learned nothing. And thanks to the idiotic two party system, they got rewarded for that maneuver with the opportunity to say “we told you so! Look, we got trump out of office!” And when they lose this time…they won’t learn a goddamn thing. Again.
luckily, they won’t have to learn a thing if trump wins, because MAGAts will stack the odds so much in their favor that no dem will win a presidential election in many years. yay project 2025!
Why doesn’t anyone call him out on lying about running for a second term? I very vividly remember hearing him say in 2020 that he would not seek reelection and yet here we are.
Yeah, I don’t get it. I was confused and not happy when I saw he was running again. He could’ve gone out like a heavily watered down LBJ, instead he’s going to be forever remembered as the lost nursing home patient who wandered onto the debate stage. This is an unmitigated disaster, and the only way forward I see now is have Joe step down and let Kamala be the president. I’m not excited for that prospect, but I assume she can at least win a debate against a potted plant.
Just went ahead and Googled it and I can find no credible source that he actually said these words at any time. So, if you'd like to bandy out that source, I think we'd all appreciate it.
No, your own source states that that was never announced. It was talked about within the party. There was never a public announcement to the American people stating that he would not run as an incumbent. Every source reporting on that was and is reporting on unsubstantiated hearsay never set into stone.
I would vote for a wet sandwich before I vote for Trump, but Jesus Christ, it would be nice if the democrats fucking tried.
why should they? you’re going to give them what they want from you anyways in november and multiple novembers into the future; there’s literally no reason for them to ever bother.
Remember when a bunch of people didn’t vote because the Democrat candidate was a piece of shit? And then trump won? And then the democratic party said “oh wow we should put up actual candidates instead of decrepit neolibs” except they didn’t because they didn’t learn shit.
Democrats suffer from a condition that I’ve come to call “Democratic Realism,” named after Capitalist Realism. No matter how much they get their shit kicked in. No matter how badly they do. No matter how little they accomplish. No matter how badly they look or do in debates. Democrats always believe, beyond a shred of doubt, that they’ll win elections without trying. Not because of their own merits, but because they’re just the only “real” choice; they simply can’t fathom anyone willingly voting for their opponents.
Hillary barely campaigned in the “flyover states” that she needed to win because she couldn’t be fucking bothered to actually try. It wasn’t worth the effort to try and persuade people she thought of as her lessers. And the DNC just went “well, it’s obviously her turn. She’s been waiting for the chance at the presidency for 20 years now. We should go ahead and let her be president.” Because that’s the mentality. They don’t have to “win” elections. They just pick a candidate and they get to win, because there is no “real” alternative. That Bush and Trump won don’t indicate that, yeah, actually, you do have to fight for the people who are voting for you, otherwise they’ll vote for the schmuck that appeals to their basest and most venal instincts. Those were just flukes…right? And you don’t have to inspire confidence and admiration in others, because they should just recognize how smart and accomplished and inoffensive their candidates are, and that they’re told to vote for them by people that are smarter than they are, so they should just shut up and do it.
It’s a party driven less by any kind of ideological goals and more by a pervasive sense of smug, impotent, lazy egotism. And, yeah, they’ll get a shitload of votes in the elections because the alternative always seems to be someone who is one goose-step shy of a literal Nazi. Biden will probably even win the popular vote. Y’know…just like Hillary did…
Good essay. I don’t know if you remember after Obama won in 2008 a bunch of democratic party apparatchiks came up with this idea of “the coalition of the ascendant” and that they pretty much had the government locked in for a generation, due to support that would never waver for them amongst immigrants, yuppies, tech bros, etc. They didn’t need the working class anymore and the Republicans would be the minority party for many years.
Two years later the democrats were wiped out in the midterms.
The coalition of the ascendant concept is kind of insane when you remember for a moment that the popular vote is kinda worthless in winning elections. The electoral college is structured in such a way that conservative whites have a larger share of the electorate relative to their minority peers. It doesn’t matter if you’re a lock for California and New York (enclaves of coastal elites and minorities alike) if you lose the entirety of the South, Southwest, and Midwest, enclaves of…the opposite of those things, really. This 538 article on it has links to other discussions related to this and represents a fascinating look into the relationship between popular votes and electoral votes. fivethirtyeight.com/…/what-a-difference-2-percent…
They think they don’t have to, they just have to keep you scared enough of the GOP that you’ll vote for them out of terror. It’s how Biden won the first time, after all.
You misunderstand the dynamic. Most GOP voters are going to vote and are going to vote for the Republican, regardless of how awful that Republican is. Voting is a civic duty and party above all are kinda core ideas for them.
Dem voters are a lot more flighty in general. Any barrier to voting no matter how small (even having to rise from the couch) impacts Dem voters more than GOP ones.
There are more Dem voters than GOP ones except maybe in very red states. It’s about turnout - US voter turnout is God awful and it’s worse among Dems than GOP.
That’s why the debate was so bad for the Dems, because it’s not about whether or not it pulls voters to Trump but about what it does to Dem turnout.
I see, sorry for misunderstanding. I’ve also heard about the problem with voting turnout. As a European, the whole US voting system just seems kinda obscure in general. Although, to be fair, the right party voters are also way more likely to vote here than the ones from other parties.
There was a show primary but candidates were essentially stonewalled from participating and voters browbeaten for not supporting Biden, which is why only wackos like RFK Jr are the only other people who ran.
Up until tonight, there really was little point. Biden already beat Trump, has the incumbent advantage, and has had a successful term. I’m still not convinced that replacing him suddenly this late is even remotely a good idea unlike a lot of people seem to be
Not American, but a furby surrounded by Biden’s team would still be preferable to Trump to most people, so I’m not sure this changes much. Americans around here seemed to mostly be in the “hold your nose and vote for Biden” camp anyway. Not sure how representative that is.
I see your post is missing the required 20,000 word essay in how the Republicans are worse then democrats… thus you are a secret Russian Republican antisemite!
I do love having to give a 2 paragraph disquisition of caveats about how I didn’t vote for either major party candidate in 2016 or 2020, before I can make literally any comment on either of these people or the current state of US politics, lest I be downvoted into oblivion or accused of being an evil Repub shill.
Ironically when we do this on Lemmy we are qualifying ourselves to a cohort of mostly people who didn’t vote at all, or aren’t even Americans.
And remember how they made a big deal about Bernie’s age in 2020? They asked for medical records, and even after getting letters from two or three doctors, that wasn’t enough. It was like the birthers all over again: when they got what they asked for, they moved the goal posts and wanted the long-form documents.
Meanwhile, not a peep about Biden, who is Bernie’s junior by fourteen fucking months, as if that made all the difference.
And then, four years later, it wasn’t an issue anymore. Just run the guy again.
On top of that, the DNC would condescend to anyone left of center about electability.
It amazes me that one of the largest countries in the world, with the most diverse demographics, can only chose between two candidates. This is not democracy. It’s a shit show that has been going on for far too long.
Said by a man who ran a country that outlawed all but the party he was prime minister of. He was probably a little salty about criticism over the lack of democracy in his country.
The USA is proud to have the oldest and longest-standing written constitution. The fact it hasn’t been rewriteen in a long time help explain why there’s still an electoral college, slavery for prisoners (13th amendements), and weak regulation of campaign finance.
Which is honestly meaningless but very convenient for US narrations. There were also older de facto constitutions, which are usually forgotten like the Henrician Articles of P-L Commonwealth. US constitution is famous because it was the one which was loudly proclaimed and imitated later.
That’s not how it works. As long as FPTP exists, it will lock us into two parties. We have had multiple party systems that all demonstrated this principle. Some places are experimenting with alternatives on the state and local level, but it will take time.
You’ve already got one response to this which is correct. I want to add to it to help explain how FPTP voting systems result in a 2 party system and simply voting for another party does not solve the issue.
But first you’re either aware of the problem and want to encourage people to vote third party while pretending not to know how the system works or you’re actually just ignorant to the issue.
I don’t normally like video links in discussions like this but this one is especially good and is only 6.5 mins.
The presidential vote is where it’s fixed. Republicans have already moved to ban other voting types calling them ‘too complicated’. Democrats will join them the second their duopoly is endangered.
Just like how they crack down on student protests and block ballot access for third parties, Democrats have no standards either.
Strange you’re including Republican in there. You believe Biden is winning right? So your money should be on Biden and any other winner would make you lose.
you’re either aware of the problem and want to encourage people to vote third party while pretending not to know how the system works or you’re actually just ignorant to the issu
It is kind of amazing how even those disenfranchised voters will rally to support the hegemony of the “two party” corporatist rule. I suggested recently we could consider rallying behind a single issue 3rd party candidate who would end the legalized bribes and replace FPTP with a more democratic alternative, and was immediately downvoted and told it’s not possible due to FPTP.
It is theoreticaly possible, but praticaly speaking it would be near impossible.
To acomplish this, you need to get 51% of the population (who actually vote) to all vote for one person. However, with FPTP, you get one choice on the ballot. Is the average voter going to risk their vote on a 3rd party, or vote for who they belive to be the “lesser evil” of the two that have a shot at winning?
Even if you do manage to get 51%, there’s the electoral collage. Never forget, our democracy has built in the ability to overwrite the presidential vote.
Your first hurdle is getting any one to name an independent candidate.
I agree with this. But also, this time is the closest to “end of the world” stakes we’ve had in recent memory. We have a literal criminal, rapist, and fraudster who already tried to overthrow the government once leading the polls.
The shitty thing is by the time my states primary pretty much every else has dropped out. We need to run the primary like a real election not piecemeal.
I understand what you are trying to say. Ultimately, there are only two to vote for. Ideally, there should be more than two parties, and more than two candidates. That’s how democracies work. What you have is a dysfunctional system that divides people in two groups, and there are no incentives to cooperate between parties. Proper voting is also suffering due to the two-party system.
In my country, the parties with the majority of votes and the ability to cooperate gets to form a government. We also try to make it easy to get people to vote, insted of your system of gerrymandering.
Yes I know, but the voting system favours the two largest. Thats why they are large. Small parties have 0% chance og getting representatives into the houses, so they are basically irrelevant.
The RNC never intended to run a candidate other than Trump because he controls MAGA, which is what remains of their energized base. The primaries they held were “just in case” Merrick Garland actually did something useful and successfully prosecuted Trump for insurrection, which never came to pass.
The DNC did everything they could to prevent primary elections from occurring in various states, and bullied anyone who was floating a run into submission. This included the state dept making calls to state DNC committees to cancel primaries, or remove certain candidates from their ballots. According to them, it was an insult to Biden admin and their legacy to even suggest another candidate should run. And now look where that’s gotten us.
So no, we didn’t actually vote in primaries this year because the establishment refuses to relinquish the status quo.
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