Voting blue didn't stop shit
Thanks Dems for doing jack shit about abortion bans, trans bans, the cost of living, the drone strikes, global warming, COVID.
Might as well just call them Blue conservatives. The outcome of voting for them is much the same.
Biden has been demonstrably, measurably worse on covid than Trump. If I had to vote for one of them today, and I was going to do it based solely on “who is going to get less people killed?” I would vote for Trump, and that’s fucking horrifying.
The bar was buried 6 feet underground along with hundreds of thousands of people dead from covid, and Biden still didn’t clear it.
The argument that Biden is worse on covid than Trump has the built-in assumption that Trump would have done more about it in its second year and beyond than Biden did. That's honestly a ridiculous assumption. There was always an expiration date on covid mitigation measures and it was always soon. It's not like Trump would have had any more incentive than Biden to demonstrate his pandemic management skills after the election, he would have been out there declaring victory over Covid just the same.
The difference is when Trump said we don’t need masks, or that we don’t need to quarantine as much, or to test less people, everyone who wasn’t one of his freaks was furious. When Biden does the exact same things the liberals go “Yay COVID’s over 🙂” and the Trump freaks continue complaining about the “lockdowns” that hardly existed and ended years ago
They literally just ignored the problem and pretend its not there
If I had to vote for one of them today, and I was going to do it based solely on “who is going to get less people killed?” I would vote for Trump, and that’s fucking horrifying.
I'm not sure this holds up if you speculate on deaths in other countries. Trump still fights a proxy war with Ukraine (probably more of a chance of deeper U.S. involvement) and does all the other background horrors of imperialism. I'm 50/50 on whether he'd pull out of Afghanistan. He'd probably try to start a war with Iran for a third time, and maybe that time it would happen. Could easily go with major force against Niger, too.
Can you provide some evidence for this claim?
More people died from covid in the same period of time after Biden took office compared to Trump before. Biden lifted the mask requirement on transit. Biden ended the public health emergency. Biden allowed Medicaid to kick people off again, and SNAP and unemployment to reduce payments again. Biden ended free covid testing. Trump said “less tests = less covid”, Biden made it policy. Under Biden, it was decided that employers cannot be held liable for giving their employees covid. Under Biden, the government stopped tracking covid cases in the same way, leading to more spread and worse information.
Biden declared the pandemic is over, when it is not.
I mean, they are blue conservatives. American politics are horribly skewed to the right, so your options are between conservative-lites and literally Nazis lol y'all are fucked.
Anyone else is unelectable, according to... my "Shadow, Inc" Iowa Caucus App projections.
Also found out you aren't allowed to strike if you work for railroads
Biden was allegedly 'labor friendly' president.
You forgot the restoration of child labour.
don't forget biden's historic health care expansion (for victims of havana syndrome)
no more half measures walter
Lol getting a lot of mileage outta this one huh?
I'll never make that mistake again.
please keep up this bit. it is good.
I’m not keen on defending democrats, but there would absolutely be a federal abortion ban right now if Trump had been re-elected.
Our government is in extremely bad shape, one federal election isn’t going to fix it.
Roe v Wade was overturned under the Biden administration, idk if you missed that.
Yeah because we should totally trust that the guy who spent 99% of his career opposing reproduction rights just couldn't do anything to stop the supreme court from overturning Roe
Yeah, seems like Biden just let it happen because even if his position changed publicly for the 2020 election, what he believes behind closed doors never changed
I get the impression no one in the senior dems actually cared about abortion. Pelosi saying it wasn't important, multiple failures to pass legislation. The unforgivable acceptance of fash scotus' lies when they said they weren't going to overthrow roe. They've never done anything to protect abortion on the national level, and the simplest explanation is they don't give a shit.
there would absolutely be a federal abortion ban right now if Trump had been re-elected.
There will be a federal abortion ban in another few years, half a dozen Dem Senators will vote for it, and if you suggest they should be recalled or primaried out then you'll actually be on the side of the Republicans.
Depressing how this comes back here every few years like the ongoing history of american politics doesnt spell that out. It's like people spent 7 years forgetting everything we talked about last time
well, it's either the guy who's terrible or the guy who will adopt the terribls guy's policies in 7 years
Doing an insanely small amount better than the other slave master is not a good thing. "They stabbed me five times, but the other guy would've stabbed me seven!".
Sure, please vote for five-times-stabber instead of ol' seven-timeser, but by gods neither are worth defending in any sense.
You’re right, Trump’s half-measures on covid were much better than Biden’s no-measures.
Edit: I think I missed a key word in your comment and thought you were genuinely saying voting for the lesser evil is good, my bad
based and bourgeois-democracy-is-not-democracy pilled
Death to America
The democrats are as bad as the republicans, they just use different methods
That's the problem. We don't have a liberal party and a conservative party anymore. We have a conservative party and a regressive party
Liberalism is regression, it's the epitome of hypocritical liberation.
we have von hindenberg and the NSDAP
A liberal party is bad on its face. Better they show exactly what liberalism truly is than mask it better. When the dems where a "liberal" party they did fucking Vietnam
The democrats were always a conservative party, it's just that the republicans shifted to a mask-off fascist party around 2016.
Typing :Hindenburg: really ought to do something here
The Democratic Party just represents another faction of the bourgeoisie. They only “support” different social issues to opportunistically appeal to a different voting blocs, but they have little or no intention to truly do anything. The only constituency they serve are just a different group of capitalists. Once you understand this, that all bourgeois politicians don’t represent you at all, US politics and policy decision making becomes crystal clear.
Its less cruel to vote Blue, so you shuld still do it. Its whats called harm reduction.
Declared the pandemic over. Removed most, if not all economic and healthcare protections for affected by the pandemic.
Still have immigrant concentration camps, just rebranded.
Billions wasted on trying to create a forever war for Russia.
Half hearted attempt to reduce college debt.
No attempts to protect abortion or LGBTQ+ rights.
Paltry environmental protection policies. Awful response to climate disasters that have gotten worse due to climate change.
I could keep going, but you get the point.
I'm going to keep going lol
Meddled in the rail unions' contract negotiations, then he and his party broke their strike after his corporate-friendly PEB's agreement was rejected by the unions. And no, the crumbs that were thrown at the rank-and-file after the fact does not make up for it, no matter how many flowery press releases from union leadership get pushed out there.
Opposes universal healthcare, doesn't even want a public option (but sure as hell campaigned like he did!). Likely not going to hear a peep about healthcare in the lead up to 2024, and this is with an ongoing pandemic that's already taken the lives of over two million people and disabled tens of millions more.
Wants more cops and more funding for cops after sucking all of the oxygen out of the Black Lives Matter movement and neutering all of their demands. Favors more surveillance and more privacy invasion.
Doubled down on Trump's immigration policies, sanctions on Cuba, and saber rattling over China, blew up Nordstream, bombed Syria (really, Biden's entire foreign policy has been and is astoundingly inhumane and terrifying, even for a US ghoul).
Continued to retain or has re-hired plenty of Trump (and Obama…and Bush) appointees who have demonstrably awful track records.
Weak-to-no leadership even within his own caucus that has resulted in failures to raise wages, build infrastructure, strengthen regulatory powers, or combat an openly corrupt Supreme Court (plus, he's rewarded the so-called obstructionists: Manchin and his family get pipelines and favors and special perks, Sinema gets to sit at the BBB negotiating table); that ended up doubling childhood poverty after spending a year touting its reduction by only half for some reason; that led to countless unnecessary deaths from nixing all sorts of programs and protections from a pandemic he pretends doesn't exist even harder and even more callously than his predecessor.
Above all, is simply Reagan in a blue tie, who is to the right of Reagan on several issues, more senile, and ultimately serves the entrenched power of capital and bourgeois interests that are destroying the planet. On its face, that should be enough for a leftist to hate his guts, but I also think he's a racist piece of shit, a sex pest, anti-labor, a serial liar, and an all-around slimeball and shitheel, and I base this on his entire miserable life as a politician, which has seemingly been memory-holed ever since Super Tuesday.
None of the above is "harm reduction," and the diminishing returns of using the specter of a Republican doing worse only reinforces my belief that the Democrats are aware that there isn't any effective distance between the parties other than aesthetics and won't do a thing to change that perception, seeing as we get Republican policies regardless of who's in office.
The vaccine was supposed to end the pandemic, but when not enough people got it to hit 80% immunity or whatever, liberal governments around the world were just like "uh, we pretend anyways?"
Also, I do think that marriage rights have been federally protected in legislation after ROE was struck down and they eyed going after gay and interracial marriage.
Still, I'd of course like to see him using federal land in red states to provide abortion access.
That said, I do also think things would be worse right now if Trump had remained president.
Not voting all is fixing that in what way.
Can you help me win over some voters on the fence? I tried explaining to my coworkers that Biden cutting their food stamps by more than half was harm reduction and good for the soul of the nation, but they just won't donate $50 to the Beto O'Rouke alderman campaign
If he cant agree that people like Ron deSantis are Fashists, im sorry i wish i knew how to help. If he can recognise Fashists why would he not want to vote against that?
That's right, we harm-reduced the hell out of Roe v Wade
we really need to organize outside of electoral politics. might as well vote too if it's low effort and there's actually any hope of harm reduction (although it's worth considering that a person that is guaranteed to vote and vote blue is a person the dems feel safe dismissing)
but ultimately electoralism as it currently stands in the US is a mechanism designed to attract and dissipate social energy, like a lightning rod.
Voting as part of an ongoing, multi-faceted strategy of civic and social engagement is fine. Especially because there are times where it directly leads to positive outcomes, like state Constitutional amendments that check legislative power. Voting can instead be a method of organizing, where after the election you keep together and continue to be activists in more direct ways.
Ballot questions are under attack by Republicans in many states because they're the last remaining avenue for many political causes in the states that they've all but made themselves the single party dictators of.
But please still vote. You can walk and chew gum.
I am in two minds about this:
Dems winning = Biden starting fights with everyone else on the planet (Trump also wanted to but he’s too scared to pull the trigger) = higher chance of everyone dying in a nuclear apocalypse
GOP winning = far worse ghoulish policies against minorities and stripping of civil rights in the country = higher chance of dying from deranged conservative government policy
The inflation reduction act invested heavily into renewables and green tech. There is always more that could be done, but you really think Trump would've passed something like that?
Ok but Floridas oceans are boiling now so whats some minor green tech investment going to do?
Are they banning fossel fuel? No. Are they expanding public transport? No. Are they making it easier for people to work from home to reduce cars communitng? No. Are they abolishing the needless overproduction in the private sector that's causing global warming? No.
They're doing some light handed shit that will probably just result in a new kind of pollution (lithium batteries are bad for the environment.)
They're never going to solve climate change under capitalism because the will never stop the ever growing production and consumption of the businesses that donate to them.
I will share with you an important moment in the history of my jokerfication
I was at a meeting of an org I used to be in that worked with democrats and a guy who described himself as "progressive" was making his pitch for our endorsement. I asked him if he would support creating a light rail network in the minor metro area I was living in. This metro area once had a light rail system that was ripped out to make way for cars.
He said he was not interested in such "antiquated" technology but was interested in supporting public transportation of the future.
Public transportation of the future? State-subsidized Uber
Anyway fuck vooting bloo for what little it's worth (hardly anything) after they fucked Bernie I voted green in the general and next time for me it's between Cornel West and Gloria LaRiva
I always laugh at the people who cry about needing to "compromise" on these things.
I want the forced nationalisation of the energy industry and a managed decline of fossil fuels. Passing legislation to regulate them instead is the compromise, now make it effective actually instead of this weak-ass incentive based bs
Couldn't agree more. But you can't overthrow capitalism, not now. It's too powerful, the only way to change it is to work with it, organize, and get elected. There's not much me or you alone can do.
That's great and all but I'm more concerned that every GOP state is engaged in actual by the book per international law genocide against my friends and loved ones and the President is doing fuck all about it.
Like great, cool, awesome, symbolic gestures about a crisis that is far to advanced to avert, but could you please send the army in to Florida before they start murdering trans people at an industrial rate.
Man who the fuck was actually helped by that. Do you know anyone that can afford shit? I certainly don't. All the folks I know that were trying their best but living paycheck to paycheck before the pandemic are living credit card to credit card now. Once that runs out they'll probably be homeless. Inflation reduction only helps if it means people can actually afford shit.
it's not that trump would have been better, it's that we shouldn't be using trump or republicans as the bar we measure politicians against. it's a really low fucking bar.
these democrats are occupying the position of opposition, but since they're ineffective and corporate, the republicans are allowed to push further and further right with every election. And since democrats are occupying said position (and actively attack anything that threatens said position) it's difficult for any other person or institution or party to arise that can represent actual, effective opposition to republicans.
So in each individual vote we are trapped in an impossible-to-win game theory problem in which choosing the lesser of two evils is the strictly rational choice, no matter how bad it is, as long as it's technically better. And thus democratic politicians can assume any "rational" dem voter is going to vote blue no matter who, so they (the democratic politicians) can spend their time/energy catering to other demographics (or more often, their major donors).
It's only the actual threat of a withheld vote that keeps dems in line, as the only thing more materially impactful to their interests than donor money is losing their seat (and thus the power that the donors are paying for). So despite the fact that the rational choice within a single vote is to choose the technically better option no matter what, when acting in a series of votes it may become rational to abstain when our interests aren't being represented.
And even so, all of this electoralism is very effectively acting as the circus of bread and circuses. We need to be out and organizing outside of controlled political institutions.
Wow. That really matters.
Government funds stolen from the third world I hope your settler colony burns. Can't have "positive reforms" under an imperialist structure
Trump never blew up NordStream and killed thousands of poor Europeans with that heinous act.
Imagine still trying to be a trump fan in 2023. Dude he tried to dissolve the democracy in order to stay in power. How much more smack to the back of the head do you need?
Pointing out the ways in which biden is worse than trump =/= being a trump fan
Dirt Owl with one of those doctors' reflex hammers, meticulously tapping every possible lemmy lib struggle session topic and standing back to watch.
I'm here for it
When can we have something like :sicko-popcorn:?
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