We could have just ran a popular candidate that helped people for four years instead of spending that time what to do about the unpopular candidate not being able to decisively beat the worst president in the history of America.
A random empty suit off the street would easily beat trump.
You are right, but we're kind of past the point where saying so is useful. But if Biden resigns and hands the reigns to Kamala, no way in hell should anyone accept another sham primary because she is an encombant. I'm so sick of these supposedly pro-democracy Democrats and their entire bullshit primary system.
Biden, for whatever reason, is an extremely unlikable president. Undeniably so. These two candidates might literally be the only two candidates that could lose to the other. Sad state of affairs.
Personally I think Bernie would still easily steam roll trump and is far more popular than Biden. Only way he would run tho is if Biden stepped down which he won't.. but that's sorta the problem
I don't think you can say what Bernie would do if Biden stepped down, he has stated that he will not run precisely because Biden is running again and he doesn't want to make any voters think he was an option, the incumbent is just automatically going to win the primary. He doesn't want to sour any voters that really wanted him to win the primary when there is no chance he will win going up against an incumbent. If Biden stepped down and it was an open DNC primary then I think Bernie would almost certainly run again.
You are being weirdly stubborn in considering actual possibilities. I get that we are likely stuck with Biden but that's because Biden is going to run again, not because there are no other options. Biden is not a good choice though and he should honestly step down, there are way better choices. Newsom would also be better than Biden and you could be sure if there was a primary with no incumbent in it he would be in there.
You are like a broken record. No democrat is going to run against incumbent it would be pointless, there is no chance they will win a dnc primary with Biden in the race. The incumbent always wins the primary and everyone knows that except apparently you, but that doesn't make Biden the best choice, far from it. Especially with the dnc canceling primaries where progressives might actually win like NH. The Marianne williamson run was just a protest run, she didn't think she would win.
The problem is Biden is running again despite him saying in 2020 that he would be a 1 term president.
He's a proven leader, appeals to many on all sides of the political spectrum, and the supreme court has ruled they can't keep someone off the ballot, and neither can states, so if the Senate Democrats don't stop it then there's nothing that can be done about it.
If the leader of an insurrection can be on the ballot, a foreign born American citizen can.
Yeah, that's kinda my point. He's ineligible, but so is trump. The Supreme Court said that only Congress can keep someone from running, and the current Congress won't do it for trump, and may not do it for someone running as a Democrat, if they could beat trump.
He's not running because he didn't think he could, but the general hasn't started, so he has time.
If you have a working strategy to get there, I'm all ears. Despite Biden's lack of popularity, the vast majority of Democratic voters seem to be in the "don't challenge an encombant" camp.
Still not seeing a plan. My state hasn't voted yet, and I won't be voting for Biden, but I still know he is the nominee. It's not even really possible for him to lose at this point, and everyone else has dropped out. The party could replace him, but I don't see that happening without some kind of major medical episode.
No, you just keep ignoring it, I said it a long time ago...
A random empty suit off the street would easily beat trump
We run someone else in the general.
It cost a literal billion dollars for Biden to win his first presidential election. And that was by like 30k votes in a few states. He's less popular now, especially in those states due to his actions in Israel.
Do you legitimately think a random American couldn't be trump with a billion dollars?
Because it's not going to be cheaper for Biden this time.
The DNC can list whoever they want there, regardless of what happens in any primary
The last three elections they've picked geriatric unpopular candidates and refuse to listen to voter feedback.
Sooner or later you need to realize:
"vote blue no matter who" is fucking you
The DNC needs voters more than voters need the DNC.
Hell, look at what Biden did in NH. He pulled out of the primary because the DNC yanked the delegates, then Biden spent a bunch on a write in campaign and bragged he "won".
But I'm blocking right after I send this. You're just repeating the same shit over and over again, it's like talking to a brikwall.
The last three elections they've picked geriatric unpopular candidates and refuse to listen to voter feedback.
Those candidates were picked by voters, so this isn't exactly true. They just lead voters by the nose through establishment bias in mainstream media.
The one place where I think this is true is with Kamala Harris. She solidly lost the 2020 primary, yet there is a chance that she will be the one to finish a Biden second term, and they will try to skip her next primary because they will call her an incumbent. That is the eventuality that we should be preparing to fight right now. The battle to replace Biden for 2024 was a worthy one, but we lost.
"vote blue no matter who" is fucking you
Did I say that? The second we have a red candidate that's better than a blue one, I'm voting red. Third party strategies will fuck me worse.
The DNC needs voters more than voters need the DNC.
Meaningless drivel with no practical strategic relevance. It would be awesome if we could form an ideal party and get most Democratic voters to switch, but that's a childish fantasy.
then Biden spent a bunch on a write in campaign and bragged he "won".
Getting the most votes as a write in is pretty impressive honestly. The real scandal is that the DNC put a swing state in jeopardy to favor a deeply red state just to create a harder path for progressives. Hang them with that.
Biden has given a massive boost to unions in multiple ways, restarted enforcement of anti-trust laws, eased enforcement of Marijuana laws / moved towards decriminalization, and has forgiven $138 billion in student debt.
I'm no fan of Biden and we should definitely demand better, but it's ridiculous to claim he hasn't done just one thing to make people's lives better. This list is just off the top of my head, except the figure for student debt. I didn't even include climate issues since there has been some bad to subtract from the good, but he's been far better than any Republican would be.
Just appoint a head of the DEA who won't arrest people for pot and pardon everyone in prison for possession/distribution. He chooses to allow the violence of criminalization to continue.
has forgiven $138 billion in student debt.
The overwhelming majority of that was due to a bush-era law.
We saw how much unilateral power the executive has under trump. We see how capable the democrats are of whipping the vote when it's funding to bomb foreigners or lock them in cages. What would it take for you to realize they are not unable to do these things, but unwilling? I struggle to imagine a scenario that would prove that, which hasn't already happened.
Just appoint a head of the DEA who won't arrest people for pot and pardon everyone in prison for possession/distribution. He chooses to allow the violence of criminalization to continue.
You know he already pardoned everyone who was in federal prison for simple possession, 2 years ago, right?
And passed a bill for full federal legalization, which the Republicans defeated in the senate?
We saw how much unilateral power the executive has under trump.
Yes, Trump famously got everything he wanted. Ukraine never got their military aid that he tried to block, and the Department of Justice famously bent to his every whim and prosecuted his political opponents when he kept ordering them to. I remember it well.
We see how capable the democrats are of whipping the vote when it's funding to bomb foreigners or lock them in cages.
This is actually the most heinously dishonest of the things you've been saying but I have become discouraged and don't want to spend too much more time researching and illustrating why this is all wrong.
Family separation at the border was already dead when Biden took office; it only ran for about a year in the middle of his presidency. But Biden did start the task force to find the kids' families and reunite them. The flow of immigrant children was quite literally in the exact opposite direction of what you're saying under Biden: From being imprisoned in cages to being back with their families. Look up your own citation for it, I'm getting genuinely irritated that I have to spend time talking about this.
And passed a bill for full federal legalization, which the Republicans defeated in the senate?
The president doesn't pass bills, and this one wasn't passed by those that do pass bills. Tell progressives again that they don't know how government works.
I'm gonna cut to the chase of a longer comment I typed out. The only part that really needs to be said:
"So, since there's no way to argue with it factually, the combatant seizes on a deliberate misunderstanding of what I was saying and tries to reframe the whole conversation around that misunderstanding, in order to create a thing to disagree about which isn't the factually-indefensible original thing to disagree about."
The rest and the context are pretty self-explanatory.
You wanted to give him credit for passing something that didn't pass and that he can't pass. If you don't want people getting on your case for it, don't tell others that they don't know how government works.
He proposed legalizing it. Nothing passed. Proposals and failures are not accomplishments. He doesn't get credit for BBB for the same reason: it failed.
You may be willing to give him credit for failures. I give him credit for his successes, such as selling weapons to Netanyahu for genocide.
You seized on literally the only thing in my long-enough-to-be-tedious list that was an attempt instead of an outcome, and are trying to spin it into me giving him credit only for failures. I'm almost impressed.
The first two items in my list represented the successful outcome of his second attempt at something, after the first attempt was blocked, but those $144 billion and 40% reduction numbers are the outcome (after the initial much bigger attempt). Then comes the attempt at marijuana legalization. Every other item is simply the outcome.
I think you should get some sort of award for how vaguely plausible you make this argument sound, given the yawning gulf between it and what actually happened, and the fact that the evidence for it not happening the way you said is literally just right up there in the comments up above (not buried away somewhere in some government document that there could be legitimate debate about how to interpret.)
You seized on literally the only thing in my long-enough-to-be-tedious list that was an attempt instead of an outcome, and are dealing with it as if giving him credit for that attempt was the only thing I'd done, instead of one attempt listed among a big group of demonstrated successes. I'm almost impressed.
The first two items in my list represented the successful outcome of his second attempt at something, after the first attempt was blocked, but those $144 billion and 40% reduction numbers are the outcome (after the initial much bigger attempt). Then comes the attempt at marijuana legalization. Every other item is simply the outcome.
I think you should get some sort of award for how vaguely plausible you make this argument sound, given the yawning gulf between it and what I actually said, and the fact that the evidence for it not happening the way you said is literally just right up there in the comments up above (not buried away somewhere in some government document that there could be legitimate debate about how to interpret.)
Any new DEA administrator would have to be approved by the Senate, and an an appointment that was a defacto decriminalization vote would not pass.
The bar that was set in this discussion was that Biden hasn't done anything to improve lives. I have already made a comment elsewhere in this thread indicating that I do not suffer from the delusions you are putting on me. Biden absolutely should be doing more, that just wasn't the bar presented.
I LOVE seeing this nonsense downvoted. It gives me hope that lemmy is not going to turn into an echo chamber for manufactured outrage and misinformation.
Distinguishing between far-left rhetoric and right-wing propaganda is virtually indistinguishable nowadays though. And I think the MAGA trolls want it that way.
Gotta love being called an evil shitlib for suggesting that Joe Biden isn't turbo hitler and the current system, while flawed, can be improved and burning it all down would likely result in far more hardships than reforming what we've got.
Oh, come on. Centrists have been saying that everyone to their left is all the way to their right since before Clinton lost to every centrist's second choice.
Biden isn't exactly my cup of tea but he's more or less reasonable on the national field. And people should understand when you elect a president (despite what Trump would tell you), you are actually electing an administration, a structure of workforce based on certain values. As long as something crazy doesn't happen that puts the speaker up there, for the most part it's those ideas that are winning the elections.
The primary is performative, the DNC has been openly admitting they're not interested in fair primaries go like a decade now, even openly saying if they don't get the results they want, they'll ignore results.
You might not have realized it yet, but you personally don't need to understand something for it to be true
And people should understand when you elect a president (despite what Trump would tell you), you are actually electing an administration, a structure of workforce based on certain values.
A-fuckin-goddamn-men.
This is what I always had a problem with as far as Trump is concerned. Trump only cares about Trump and he also believes he knows everything. He hires "yes men" not people who will inform him, not that he's the type to accept information from others (unless it's a lie meant to disparage his opponents.) That's way more dangerous to us than his stupid Twitter usage and drawing on weather maps.
It's also why, although I don't love Biden, I'm ok with him. I know he's only responsible for putting the rubber stamp on ideas his administration is coming up with. He may issue initial goals, but the administration has the expertise and does the work and they don't exactly seem like a bunch of ghouls in this administration.
this is the shitty world we live in for 2024. Unless one of these geezers dies this is what its going to look like.
And no, a random empty suit off the street would not easily beat trump; when the corporate media aparatus is pointed at you things will always be like this because they want the worst guy to win, always.
I have a feeling all those crazy 2016 Clinton supporters were IP banned from most major social media sites.
So now they're on Lemmy.
Theyre just as bad as trump voters. They don't care about issues or what a candidate achieves if they win. They just want their "team" to win an election.
That's their end goal, so if anyone ever says a negative thing about their teams candidate, they take it personal and say the worst thing you can ever do is admit any flaws.
It's blind loyalty to a person. And that shit is fucking dangerous.
I just can't support that shit. I paid attention in history class. If the only two political options are that far gone, there's been other political parties in America before, and there can be again.