I'm so close to blocking this community. Its Rule #5 states:
Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
Instead, it's basically a leftist version of a right-wing echo chamber where if you don't support your candidate hard enough then you get downvoted into oblivion. Which is meh personally, but on the wider scale also shuts down interesting conversations that could result, if people felt more free to actually articulate their positions, using coherent logical formulations mind you. And even that is fine I suppose, if that's what this community wants to be, then it is on me to seek out what I want elsewhere.
I may not agree with someone, but I will defend to the death their right to speak.
Anyway, sorry OP that your The Atlantic article - a liberal media source if I ever heard of one - is getting downvoted to oblivion in spite of the rules of this community specifically asking for the opposite behavior. Fwiw I cross posted it to another news community in case that helps.
Hrm, account that joined 36 minutes ago - and btw wow, what a username!!!:-P - what I actually said was:
Not good enough, and also btw a violation of the rules of [that other] community. Would you like an opportunity to change someone’s mind using logical articulation rather than merely emotionally venting your random surface thoughts? e.g., perhaps while doing that you could demonstrate that you actually read the article rather than merely the title? These are weighty matters, and not to be taken lightly. But perhaps I’m the horseshit for hoping that people could have rational and logical discussions on a social media website.
They spoke, and I spoke back. We are still not the same. But one thing I will hold to: the Truth. Which is that I am horseshit indeed, for hoping for more from this social media site where when users are blocked they simply make a new username and continue - bc other people's "no" is just another opportunity to evade the block and turn it into a "yes".
It’s just dumbfucks unable to accept reality for what it is. Same as it ever was. FWIW, I don’t think Biden should step down (i.e., resign right now), and I’ll vote for whoever the D is, no matter what. But I also think Biden should fuck off into the sunset and endorse someone else. He has no business continuing on to a second term, even if he could win (and I don’t believe he can).
I am not sure that I agree, but you clearly articulated your point so I am upvoting nonetheless:-).
For myself, it depends on the facts, which I am not in full possession of. Everyone has bad days imho - that's not "news" at all - but more important is what that performance indicates about his current state. And more importantly, the state he would be in 4 years from now.
This puts the nail in coffin, so to speak, on the idea that he would even live through his Presidency, much less remain salient throughout. A vote for him is a vote for Harris, as the article suggests, and talks about how acknowledging that reality might help pick up more independent voters that could turn the tide of the election.
People kept telling me that Trump will win and I kept fighting it, but it seems that you cannot escape facts: conservatives pull together, when it counts, whereas liberals eat their own.
Oh yes, I earned these particular downvotes, to be sure.:-) But I was talking about OP.
It does make it hard to have intelligent discussions on Lemmy when we cannot handle anything other than strict agreement to whatever the crowd-think happens to fall upon that day.
By that token though, are there any true leftists alive or dead that ever existed on planet earth? The issue with such an ideological purity test is that it keeps shifting around, forever trying to distinguish the pure and correct ones from those on the periphery who are somehow worse than those entirely outside bc these at least should have known better. I'm not even saying that you are wrong - obviously there's a spectrum and obviously some people are more along it than others, but I'm saying that that entire mode of thinking is problematic in the practical sense. Example: isn't my very own message hypocritically doing exactly this, and I would have done far better to have been more accepting of your words? 😜 So it's like the trolly problem: not meant to find a practical solution, just something to consider in case it's fun to do so.:-)
Given Biden’s condition, the Trump campaign will try to stoke irrational fears about a potential Harris presidency anyway. And the hypothetical, driven as it is by lurid right-wing fantasies, will necessarily be worse than the reality. That is, Harris can begin to defuse apocalyptic right-wing arguments against her—that she is some kind of left-wing radical who will render the country unrecognizable—by governing wisely for the remainder of the term.
But the simple fact remains that if one believes Biden cannot campaign or debate successfully, then he cannot run the country presently. The Constitution contemplates a scenario in which someone would need to take the place of a president who is so diminished, and that someone is the vice president. Biden should step aside from both the campaign and the presidency, and allow Harris to take her best shot at saving the country from those who would destroy it.
A really good take on how Harris could provide an opportunity to draw a stark contrast between the Nazi...I mean, Republican party and a peaceful transition of power in a functional democracy.