Please vote

I don't even see why that matters. Even if the candidate was an actual real turnip, the choice would be obvious.

I mean I don't vote in your election but it seems quite clear to me.

I think part of our different view might be based on how our electoral system is.

So to explain: Trump's never won a popular election before. Even when he became president, most Americans voted for his opposition Hillary Clinton. We have a very gerrymandered and corrupt voting system to oversimplify. Because of that The main decider for presidential elections is voting turnout. If a lot of people come out to vote, the Democrats usually win. If they don't the Republicans win. Voter turnout is higher when people want to vote for the Democratic nominee. No one really wants to vote for Biden. Most of us will vote against Trump myself included. That being said, if we run a very unlikable candidate against him like we did in 2016, he might win and that's terrifying. This election is serious so we should take it seriously and run somebody likeable and not half way to being a turnip.

God forbid if Biden stays in there, I hope he wins. I'll even vote for him but I am not feeling good about his odds.
- I think you missed their point. They, and many others, don't know why anyone would vote for Trump to begin with. Of course, I said the same thing when he first started being presented as a candidate for 2016. Like, of all people, him? But, here we are today, wondering if he actually had a chance for another term.
  
  A different voting method may have avoided him getting this far, but he really shouldn't have even gotten out of the joke candidate category to begin with.
  
  My bad Thanks for letting me know.
  
  I totally get that sentiment. I don't really understand it either. I have family members that votes for Trump. It's like their brain is rotted. They constantly use words that they don't have a definition for like woke or CRT. They think everyone is lying except for Trump. It's terrifying honestly.
  
  I think that's about 30% to 40% of Americans sadly.
  
  In my experience, the people who vote Republican/conservative/Trump do so out of a certain amount of philosophical and emotional laziness and denial. Confronting the roots of our societal problems is difficult and uncomfortable, and takes a degree of empathy and emotional intelligence that many people simply do not have. To be clear; it is rarely their fault and frequently a result of the external influences and education during their formative years.
  
  The conservative viewpoint that has functionally become hereditary and contagious is that you are special and good, and the only people that are also special and good must have the same values, prejudices, advantages, and deficiencies that you do. This is why if you are nice and polite to conservatives they start spouting more and more bigoted bullshit. It's because, in their mind, the only good people are the ones that agree with them, and they perceive you as "good" for extending basic decency to them.
  
  This cognitive shortcut is how I have succeeded in planting a lot of seeds of progressive values in the minds of my classmates at the conservative, religious school I accidentally ended up in. Each one of them is a single starfish, so to speak, but each individual moves the needle a little bit. Small progress is better than no progress.
  
  I also attended a small private religious conservative school growing up. Happy to see someone like me out in the world with progressive politics. Good on you stranger. ☺️ I hope you're living life to the fullest.
  
  That explanation makes sense to me. Good theory 👈😎
  
  I compare my time in a similar situation to being exposed to some nasty disease. It was misery at the time but has provided some inoculation against authoritarianism and demagoguery since. Also let me know sadists are a thing.
  
  This is why if you are nice and polite to conservatives they start spouting more and more bigoted bullshit
  
  I always interpret this as projecting their opinions. If you give the person nothing to suggest a specific political leaning and have a positive enough interaction it's too easy for them to assume you hold the same values as you.
  
  I've honestly caught myself in the same, so I just try to stay apolitical in interactions at work until others reveal their opinions to me
- TLDR: the Electoral College is DEI for Republicans.
  
  Addendum point: The people we need to convince to win are not the people who see the obvious distinction between Joe and Trump, and if you haven't convinced them yet, you probably aren't going to -- especially not after that debate performance (which is why they took the gamble to do that debate in the first place).
  
  And before that, it was DEI for the pro-slavery States. Back before black people and even women could vote, whites didn't have numbers enough to win many elections, so they created the Electoral College and made it so that black people counted as 3/5ths of a "person" and slave owners could vote in the names of their slaves.
  
  Ah yes the 3/5 "compromise".
- Yeah, this is where I'm at. I'm not an American, but I will feel the impact of your country's decisions very quickly. I think the best option is to beg the non-voters to get out and vote however you can while building a new party, or rebuilding an existing one, from the local level on up until you have a realistic chance of putting a leader worth having in place.
  
  For what it's worth, I think the Biden administration hasn't done terribly. They could have done much better with the latest episode of the Israel-Gaza conflict, but we literally had Congress people advocating for a nuclear response. A lot of improvements in other areas were quietly made in the background that wasn't really talked about. I can't say if that's because Biden picked the right people to get things done, he had the right vision, or he just had good handlers. I'm not sure I care because, whatever the answer is, the opponent certainly doesn't have any of those.
Because he has to be effective for four more years after the vote.

Fuck its like you people think everything just closes up for the next four years and elections are just a one-day championship ceremony
- After the ceremony, you plant the turnip in a flower pot and have the administration run things. There's hundreds of other people, from ministers (or secretaries, over there) to all kinds of aides and attachés and whatnot. Just one guy missing wouldn't really make much difference.

Agree, this astroturfing is insane. I can't help but think it's a coordinated campaign, because Biden was very clearly senile in that debate, if not something worse. Democrats can still win if they let Biden retire and choose someone who can rebut Donald Trump.

Just look at my two recent submissions to c/politics that were immediately down-voted anonymously for highlighting FOCUS GROUPS of UNDECIDED SWING VOTERS.

Not one substantive argument.

And you know I can't tell if it's scared Dems, or astroturfing right-wing operatives trying to ensure we maintain course with this sinking ship.
- Dude I've been wondering the same thing lately. I've been countering the same types. I've been referring to him as blue maga.
- Not astroturfers; brigaders....the worst kind of trumpian pussy
  
  Try scared democrats who refuse to accept that anyone could disagree with them cause they are right and think by plugging their ears it will just work out.
- Are there any communities where we can look at that kind of data and commentary without being censored? Lmk, c/politics is insane.
  
  c/politics is a radical conservative liberal shithole. None of those people give one single fuck about this country or it's people. They're fucking brunch lemmings who round up their change at Whole Foods and think they've saved the world
  
  To be fair, that's just Lemmy.world in general at this point in time. It's only gotten worse.
  
  Rich people who are less and less connected with those they pretend to be on the same side of. There is also a lot of entitlement of thinking they know how everything works and they and only they have the right answers from most of the user base of Lemmy. That's a curse from everyone that's here thinking they are "smarter" for being here than traditional social media.
  
  I don't think many people here are rich or think they are smart just because they use Lemmy.
  
  Then you aren't looking at the self hosting community on here. Or gardening. Or so many other communities. If you are on here you have free time and that's usually because you are poor or rich

Hey it worked out well when they protected Hillary.....

Wait no it didn't

Any other candidate just wouldn't have the name recognition. Millions of Americans just vote for the incumbent regardless of who it is

If Biden gets out of the way (of his own accord or not) and somebody else becomes the nominee, they will have name recognition immediately. I promise you.
- They really won't. I think as someone on Lemmy you're probably overestimating how much the average person pays attention to politics
  
  I appreciate the non-rude and direct response. Someone else raised this point to me and I responded with this link that shows 70% of Americans watch cable news. Considering digital news is much bigger now, that means even more Americans watch the news regularly, so I believe you are incorrect.
Is this the new liberal bible prayer each night? Keep telling yourself ~~god is real and he loves you~~ Biden will win because he's a "good" choice for the idiots who don't know better?

Bush was clearly the face man of an executive admin that he didn't run, he was s figure head. Clinton, it was assumed by the press and a lot of the voter base wasn't running his admin, the first term Hillary was said to be running things and a slew of technocrats was assumed his second term, Reagan, we now know historically, was experiencing Alzheimer's all through out his presidency, much like Trump, he also had a strict schedule of not even pretending he showed up to work.

There's nothing wrong with electing the face of an administration you want in office, this is largely Obama's admin still running the government, that's what we all want. Unkie Joe can take all the naps he wants, it make no real difference.

I don't know why everyone thinks this is some rarely understood point. I think most people get this.

However, You have to be electable to a country where 30 to 40% of people. Think Trump is a god king who can do no wrong and never lies. Hillary's administration almost certainly would have been better than Trump's. Hillary still lost. Biden running as he is now is dangerous. That's where it makes the real difference. Biden might lose to trump and we might get Trump again. Any other sane and half way competent milk toast politician won't have that problem. Biden continuing to run is a danger to democracy.
This is a really important point.

The president is really only as good as his staff. They can only do so much as an individual person.

Joe Biden knows how to hire a good staff, and respects the limitations of hisnl office.

Meanwhile, if Trump could've harnessed the energy from his revolving door of "loyalists", we might've been able to stay under 2°C.

But, part of Project 2025 is actually planning to make 50,000 merit-based non-political positions (basically middle-management, and sometimes lower, at NASA or ATF or Dept of Education or FDA) into political appointments, and fire them if they don't toe the party line. In order to circumvent Congress and run everything unilaterally.
- Are you telling me that a younger progressive would not have a good staff?
  
  Yeah. That was a weird comment...
  
  Biden supporters try to defend Biden, and always end up making the argument that trump is terrible and/or the president isn't important
  
  So like, we should just replace him is the logical conclusion.
  
  But that's the opposite of what they set out to say.
  
  The president sets the tone of the administration. Ultimately they are the big boss, but they don't do everything.
  
  I take issue with being called a Biden supporter. Biden is mediocre at best. I'dve much preferred if a more...motivational, I guess, DNC candidate in 2020. We obviously knew that whoever won would be 4 years older (and many more battle-worn) come re-election, and it's pretty unorthodox for any party to let the incumbents president be primaried. I can't think of a time.
  
  In fact, I think the DNC was secretly hoping that Biden would've bit the dust 2 or 3 years in.
This is a terrible sentiment. Yes, no leader can do things by himself. But he needs to be present. He needs to understand what is going on. He needs to be able to resolve conflicts and make decisions. And he needs to smell it, if someone is trying to sell him bullshit.

Do you think the administration is just all great teamplayers who have no agendas of their own, who have no conflicts or problematic histories with each other? Of course not.

Think of it like any team sports team. You cannot win the superbowl or champions league with a bad trainer.

And the guy who already beat him once just isn't good enough huh

Biden seems to misunderstand why he won.

He seems to think that people were really impressed with him as a candidate and that since he's so much more impressive than all the other potential Democratic nominees, he's the only logical choice to try to beat Trump.

He certainly enjoyed the support of many people who believe that but he relied heavily on the support of several other cohorts to push him over the edge. Those cohorts didn't like him. They didn't like him at all. They just hated Trump more, held their noses, and voted for Not Trump.

Biden has been telling several of those cohorts that their priorities don't matter. He had tenuous support from those groups and he took that support for granted. Many of those groups are now thinking, "You failed to deliver on the one thing we wanted from you. I no longer see you as a significant improvement over Trump."

Claiming that they're just throwing a tantrum over a raspy voice further trivializes their concerns and pushes them farther away.

A clever MAGA troll would make exactly this kind of post. All it does alienate critical voters from Democrats.
- It's important to remember Bernie was set to have the lead after Super Tuesday.
  
  Then within like 24 hours of Super Tuesday, pretty much every other candidate dropped out and endorsed Biden.
  
  It was too late notice for Bernie to campaign in all the states, or for voters to decide. They just followed their candidates advice and voted Biden.
  
  Biden never had a mandate, and 2020 came down to a handful of states by like 10k votes each.
  
  Mainstream media has been calling him "the next fdr" for so long I think he legitimately believes. He has no idea how unpopular he is with the average voter, because he doesn't interact with the average voter. His campaign is tailored to getting donations from the wealthy, so Biden just gets handshakes from the famous and wealthy that tell him he's perfect.
  
  He's insulated from real feedback and believe his yes men.
  
  So Biden won fair and square because more primary voters voted for him.
  
  Thanks for reinforcing that point.
  
  The first primary was marred by controversy, as technical issues with vote reporting resulted in a three-day delay in vote counting in the Iowa caucus, as well as subsequent recounts. The certified results of the caucus eventually showed Mayor Pete Buttigieg winning the most delegates, while Senator Bernie Sanders won the popular vote in the state. Sanders then won the New Hampshire primary in a narrow victory over Buttigieg before handily winning the Nevada caucus, solidifying Sanders' status as the front-runner for the nomination.[6][7]
  
  Biden, whose campaign fortunes had suffered from losses in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, made a comeback by overwhelmingly winning the South Carolina primary, motivated by strong support from African American voters, an endorsement from South Carolina U.S. Representative Jim Clyburn, as well as Democratic establishment concerns about nominating Sanders.[8] After Biden won South Carolina, and one day before the Super Tuesday primaries, several candidates dropped out of the race and endorsed Biden in what was viewed as a consolidation of the party's moderate wing. Prior to the announcement, polling saw Sanders leading with a plurality in most Super Tuesday states.[9] Biden then won 10 out of 15 contests on Super Tuesday, beating back challenges from Sanders, Warren, and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, solidifying his lead.[9]
  
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
  
  So Biden won because voters coalesced around him.
  
  Thanks again for reinforcing that point.
  
  and one day before the Super Tuesday primaries, several candidates dropped out of the race and endorsed Biden in what was viewed as a consolidation of the party’s moderate wing. Prior to the announcement, polling saw Sanders leading with a plurality in most Super Tuesday states
  
  Biden won because every other candidate besides Bernie coalesced around him to stop Bernie from winning as projected.
  
  So Biden got more votes compared to Bernie so thus was more popular.
  
  Thanks for confirming this.
Did you see the debate last night? That ain't the dude who ran in 2020. Also I think the political pressure pot of 2020 was unique because people were trapped inside and forced to watch the news even more. People would have voted for anyone but Trump then. There's still a lot of people that feel that way myself included. But not everyone who felt that way in 2020 feels that way in 2024. That's just the reality. I really don't think Biden has it this time.
- He should have been running ads reminding people of 2020
Biden literally hung his mouth open like a brain dead zombie. He lost his train of thought multiple times... He said "we beat Medicare" ffs. Wtf does that mean?? I want to defeat Trump, but Biden is not going to accomplish that. Change the Democratic candidate before it's too late.

I think it's more insane to say that Biden doesn't have a chance against Trump when he's already beaten Trump once, which is why he's President Biden.

He's deteriorated a lot in 4 years
- No, he hasn't. He's always been slower and more measured in what he says because he used to be a stutterer, so he comes across less strong in his speech, but it's his actions that matter much more.
  
  Have you seen this last debate? I would have said exactly that until I saw this one. To me the difference between Biden in this debate vs Biden debating in 2020 is night and day different. So I think it's fair to say rapidly deteriorating. 🤷
Well I hope you're right but I and many other see it differently. 🤷