• Xhieron
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    -332 months ago

    Squid, I appreciate your contributions to putting content on the platform, honestly, but I couldn’t be any less interested in that take. My history speaks for itself, and anybody can read it who cares to. Everybody must vote. I don’t think I could be any clearer about that. I was a staunch advocate for Biden, and I’ll be a staunch advocate for Harris, Newsom, Whitmer, or anyone else who carries the Democratic party forward.

    But every single one of them polls down from Biden. To the extent any of the whining on social media since the debate hasn’t been astroturfed, advocacy for Biden to drop out resulted in this news, and it means that the party has now voluntarily given up the single biggest proven advantage a candidate historically has in a presidential election: being the sitting president.

    I’m encouraging people to vote, but you know as well as I do that people who were going to vote anything-blue were going to vote for Biden no matter what anybody said on almost-reddit. Harris has to move the needle further than that, and that means that all the armchair it’ll-be-better-if-he-drops-out analysts now need to step the fuck up if they want this news to mean anything other than “The DNC just handed Trump 2024.”

    Everybody knows that the kids screaming “oh if the candidate were just younger, the Dems would have it in a landslide” were full of shit, and now we’re about to see just how big a deficit we’re actually running. I’d love to be wrong! I’d be delighted, ecstatic, beside myself to discover that next weeks polls put all these convention front-runners up 10 points on Trump. But I’ve studied this stuff, and it doesn’t take a veteran pollster to realize it doesn’t work that way. Actual campaigning has to happen.

    If you cared enough to want Biden out, but not quite enough to want Harris to win, then you were going to hold your nose in the ballot box either way and it doesn’t fucking matter: Trump would still win. That’s not discouraging. That’s statistics.

    • Flying Squid
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      452 months ago

      Telling people that if they don’t go out and campaign, they might as well be a Republican is just counterproductive. Insulting people is just never a way to get them to do what you think they should do.

      I don’t know why so many people think that’s the right tack. Have you ever been insulted into doing something?

      • Xhieron
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        -212 months ago

        The few words of hyperbole is what you took away? I expected better, but I guess that’s on me.

        • Flying Squid
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          182 months ago

          The few words are the problem. And I doubt people are viewing it as hyperbole.

          • @[email protected]
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            -52 months ago

            I mean yeah it was a bit much on their part but I think you’re hyper focusing on it well past the point of productivity.

            • Flying Squid
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              122 months ago

              I am trying to explain someone else how they are not being productive.

              As I said to them, have you ever been insulted into doing the right thing? I sure haven’t. I don’t know of anyone who has.

              In fact, the quickest way I know to get someone to not take your advice is to insult them.

          • Xhieron
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            -82 months ago

            Didn’t bother to read the multi-paragraph follow-up? Don’t worry about it. I’ve had my fill.

            • Flying Squid
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              132 months ago

              You really don’t understand the concept that being hostile to people is the worst way to get them on your side.

              • Xhieron
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                -92 months ago

                You know, Squid. You’re right. This whole time I’ve been venting because I feel like we’ve been completely outplayed by astroturfing foreign propagandists and bots, and it feels like I’m the only one who realizes it. This stuff has real, serious consequences for real people–but why would I expect a bunch of NEETs and children to get that?

                Everybody who swallowed it still genuinely thinks they won something, so I guess it’s not fair to lash out. I don’t really want to get anyone on my side because my side doesn’t exist here anymore.

                I have to thank you for finally getting me off the platform. It’s just not worth it.

                I’m sure this’ll all work out the way you want.

                • Flying Squid
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                  102 months ago

                  Or… you could be encouraging rather than hostile.

                • the post of tom joad
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                  12 months ago

                  It’s all a huge conspiracy by foreign propagandists to… replace Joe Biden? Why? And this conspiracy either fooled or forced DNC wonks to pressure Biden to drop his campaign, and this propaganda… originating from foreign sources that you but not they can see, caused Biden to concede.

                  Look dawg i know someone saying take a breath on the Internet has the opposite effect but for real, maybe you need to take a step back right now and take another look