Saw this today, and … well, I’m not going to be so forgiving to people suggesting to vote Third Party rather than vote for Biden. If Trump wants me to do something, and you want me to do that same something, that tells me you’re aligned with Trump.
Saw this today, and … well, I’m not going to be so forgiving to people suggesting to vote Third Party rather than vote for Biden. If Trump wants me to do something, and you want me to do that same something, that tells me you’re aligned with Trump.
I think Biden supporters are uhh… plenty divided. No need for help…
Not really on basic principles. Just on methods and approaches. There’s general agreement that the civilian casualties in Gaza are too high, for instance. The debate is do we try to maintain some influence over Netanyahu to try to sway him, or do we just cut them off and then whatever happens over there is whatever happens, we’d wash our hands of it.
Then the people that go after him more hardcore aren’t exactly the strongest “supporters”.
Yeah that’s just patently untrue. The people going hard in the paint on Biden from the left are your hardcore progressive and leftist base. People that actually volunteer on campaigns, donate, go door to door, sign people up to vote and otherwise do work to get people elected. Think our revolution, justice democrats, extinction rebellion etc… Its not people passively engaged in politics that are activated and engaged in these organizations which are fundamental to getting any Democrats elected. Its activated, deeply engaged, strongly opinionated people who do the work of getting Democrats elected.
And this highlights the divide in Biden’s support. You have armchair centrists who basically do almost nothing and are only minimally engaged in the political process wagging their fingers saying “Any Blue Will Do” at the cohort of individuals who are being critical of Biden, but whom are also operate the cranks of the actual machines that gets Democrats elected. Any leftist worth their salt understands strategic voting, but that’s not the point. The point has been that this neo-liberal, technocratic approach to voting that Democratic centrists are insisting on, is losing and will continue to lose this election. The only thing that has kept Biden in this game was an activist rebellion within the Democratic primary system that forced his response, and he’s only really offered a papier-mâché stiffening of his rhetoric on Israel, but has done basically nothing to fix the underlying issue. IF Biden doesn’t fundamentally shift his position on Gaza and Israel now, this is over. He’s lost this election.
In this vein, the only thing that can actually save Biden from him self is a complete and total rebellion within the DNC voter base, and to basically drag Biden to a better policy position. Otherwise he will lose this election. The lame ass excuse of “Well Trump would be worse” is actually working against Biden right now, because Biden is actually the president, not Trump. The phrase “The buck stops here” is so apropos in this situation, that its almost comical.
That seems to be the central point of your argument, and then you claim all the centrists are not really helping in the trenches. It seems to me this has no basis in fact, and there are plenty of more moderate dems that volunteer, donate, are politically active, etc.
I imagine the confusion stems from moderates not protesting at as high a percentage, since protests draw a lot of attention, where a lot of the other work is less dramatic. The core of the democratic party isn’t just excited young progressives though, it’s also educated soccer moms with time on their hands.
edit: Consider it this way: When Hilary ran against Bernie, did she just have no volunteers on her side, because they were all with Bernie?
You obviously have no clue who is involved or works on political campaigns.
Both left and right, its people who care deeply about something. You don’t do that kind of work if you are on the fence on issues. You do that kind of work when you have a strong belief about something.
The problem I have with your argument is the implication that people who care deeply about helping the Democratic party are extreme leftists/progressives and not extreme neoliberals.
When you volunteer for a campaign, you aren’t volunteering for the “Democratic Party”, you are volunteering for a candidate, whom you may agree with somethings on but not others. However, people who want to make a difference are strategic about how they use their time. You pick whoever you are ideologically aligned with that you can stomach and you think has a chance of winning and you sign up and start dialing/ knocking on doors/ etc.
You’re just assuming that there aren’t people that care about having moderate policy positions.
edit: Here’s another question to get at the heart of that. Are all moderates just “on the fence” between two extremes that draw the only people that feel strongly? Or is centrism its own philosophy, that someone can believe deeply in, even if you personally may not see the appeal?
Are you asking rhetorically or do you need basic instruction in the political philosophy and hegemony of the previous 100 years of US history?
Because none of this is unknown or really up for debate.
I don’t know, I think you’re just spinning together a bunch of bullshit to hide the fact that there kinda is a large, more moderate faction in the country, that doesn’t like any extremist politics. They’re not all disengaged or apathetic, they’re the Bill Clinton supporters, and now Joe Biden supporters.
This group is far larger than either the far left or right, often middle aged, employed, often with kids. They’re not disaffected, and actually pay quite a bit of attention.
Of course, the existence of this group completely destroys the entire DNC conspiracy theory bullshit people like to lean on to attack democrats, just like it destroys MAGA people’s happy illusions that they’re the ones that are actually the “average American”, so I understand why it’s so distasteful to some.
But yeah, they’re out there. So go ahead I suppose, what do you got?
I keep half-agreeing with your comments: you’re right about the faction you’re talking about existing, but I think it’s a very them-centric point of view to call them “moderates” and not “neoliberal extremists.”
I keep hearing words like “fight” and “drag” and “push” as to what we do to stop this, but they don’t mean actually fighting or dragging or pushing, just being annoying in ways that are easily dismissed.
I’ve gotten enough “fuck you I do what I want” letters from my reps and senators about things that I’ve given up “pushing” them in that way.
I think you make a good point on this. Its also not clear to me that any amount of cajoling is going to move Biden. However, I can’t think of anything else that can be ‘done’. If demanding he step further to us on a policy to get our votes when he’s losing an election doesn’t move him, it might be that he cares more about the policy position than he does winning the election.
And it kind of seems like that’s the case. He’s losing the election and he’s not moving on the policy position except in ‘leaked calls’ and sternly worded letters. If he doesn’t move left, he loses the election, but staying where he is at policy wise might be more important to him than preventing Trump from taking office. We shouldn’t assume he has the same priorities we do around government. Everything I’ve seen from his generation of geriatric politicians is an unfounded faith in the systems ability to self correct and resist things like the coup attempt in 2021. He’s from a generation that believes “the system works”, because its worked well for him/ them. I wouldn’t put it past him to leave us completely exposed to a fetishist take over because of this unfounded belief. In failing to support Ukraine when its core to the principals of a liberal democracy, and in supporting Israel while the actions they take are antithetical to a liberal democracy, he’s left us glaringly exposed to a fascist take over this election cycle.
The other part is that online lefties like us are a minority. If Biden does move left he risks losing the election to the majority of Americans who support Israel unconditionally. So nobody’s going to end up happy and he loses the election anyway.
This is a great insight that people who keep saying “we just need to push him after the election” don’t seem to get. Yes, I’m sure that in the past writing letters to Congress might have done something more than waste paper. But the system is so broken now that people don’t believe them and see the only way to get a message across that this is unacceptable is to not vote.
[Edit: I did not mean to write an essay but then here we are…]
I agree completly overall, but I want to dig into this particular statement. My view on elections and electoralism has evolved, and at this point, I consider the ‘center’ of Americans to be a fiction. The basic paradigms driving votership in the US has shift to be basically cohorts of distinct voting blocs that have to be corralled into moving together. I think the right have used this understanding to great effect, and because of this they’ve been punching well above their weight class in terms of electoral impact relative to the actual number of people who vote. The right started this strategy in the 1960s with the southern strategy splitting off white evangelicals from Christians more broadly, and building them into a coherent voting bloc. Its more than I want to put the effort into writing down here, but my basic argument is that you don’t win modern elections through broad appeal. You win modern elections by appealing strongly to specific voting blocs and driving those cohorts of individuals to the polls. Bernie used this to almost snatch the primary from Hillary, before the DNC pumped the brakes and put the fix in. He wrangled voting blocs that were otherwise non-voters or more limited in their engagement with the party (leftists, progressives, black, lgbtqia, etc…) to engage a diverse coalition into voting for him, even if they were not individually united in their interests. Trump is doing a similar thing with libertarians, MAGA, qanon, anti-women voters, fascists, christian fascists, neo-liberals, and neo-conservatives. Internally they don’t really have a coherent issue set, but he basically goes to them one at a time, develops an understanding for their priorities, then speaks to those priorities directly. Trump isn’t making a broad appeal to the American center, he’s making a narrow appeal to hyper engaged individual blocs of voters, and its working extremely well. Biden comes from a different generation of neoliberalism (1984-2000) when there basically was 0 diversity in American politics and both parties effectively had the exact same set of policies. It was a unimodal distribution of issues, and so appealing to the center made sense. We no longer have a unimodal issue set or a unimodal distribution of voters. We have something, not even bi-modal, but more like two inverse paretos or poissons. There is almost no overlap in votership or policy priorities for the two parties or for the sets of demographic blocs that are going to show up to get some one elected.
So my overall argument is that an appeal to the center or to moderates is basically worthless because they don’t actually exist any more in the American electorate. There isn’t a silent majority. The unimodal distribution of votership died during/ after Clintons second term. Since then we’ve become increasing polarised as a country and as a votership because we no longer overlap whatsoever in terms of legislative priorities. As such, there is little value in appeals to moderation or centrism, because there are no voter blocs in those locations you can drive out to the polls. And recursive or negative attacks are also of little value because blocs aren’t formed ‘against’ things, they are formed ‘for things’ so you have to be ‘pro-something’ to drive a bloc. I think Trump gets this very much and is using it effectively, whereas Biden and basically all Democrats apart from Bernie simply do not understand how the electorate is formed and what it takes to win a national election at this point. 2020 was exceptional in that Bernie had fully activated a massive bloc of progressive and leftist voters on issues that were priorities for them. Young people and progressives won 2020 for the Democrats, and have been basically rewarded with a punch to the teeth in terms of Bidens policies.
In summary, modern voters don’t like Democrats or Republicans, but are voting based on their particular issue sets or identities and who is speaking to them or prioritizing those issues. Trump figured this out in 2016 and has been using it to great effect. Biden still thinks voters are “Democrats” first, and that their policy positions come second. This view is a holdover from a political paradigm that is no longer present.
Thanks for the essay! I liked it a lot. (Though the first paragraph could be broken up for readability.)
The tl;dr I’m getting is this: Both parties are “big tent” parties now, and Democrats seem to have forgotten this and are operating on 90s political theory. Sound about right? If so, I agree wholeheartedly.
That’s a great way to put it.
My problem with the idiots screaming “Genocide!!!” is that they are overly simplistic in their understanding of the problem. First, if we cut Israel off, lots of very pro-Israeli donors carry out their threats to cut donations to the Left and give more to the Right. That’s more ads, more canvassers, more campaign staff, and more polling moving from Team Blue to Team Red. As much as I hate the fact that $$$ rules everything in the fucking USA, it’s still a fact, and the LAST thing Team Blue wants to have voters hearing is “America sold out Israel to Hamas after Hamas started the war.” Think about how low-information so many voters are in the USA, and think about how EASY it would be for Russian-Amplified Republican Propaganda to convince low-information, and frankly low-IQ voters that Democrats are the antisemites in the discussion.
Speaking of Russian-Amplified propaganda, let me remind everyone of these fact:
What is Russia trying to do? Reduce America’s influence in the world so it can step in and take over (it will fail, and learn QUICKLY that it is China’s bitch, but it doesn’t know this yet…). What’s the easiest way to do that? Have America cut off aid to Israel, then step in. Alternatively, if America STAYS supporting Israel, amplify the lie that Biden supports Genocide since he won’t cut off aid to Israel, allowing Russia to step in.
We need to call this bullshit out here and now, and point out the fact that either people pushing this nonsense are useful idiots, pushing Putin and Trump’s propaganda like the morons they are, or that they’re actually in cahoots with Putin and Trump, and need to be called out as the shitheads they are.
I’m done playing nice. It’s time to call a spade a spade.
Anybody who thinks the US will abandon Israel is ignorant of history, too. As is anybody who thinks they can vote for a president and not get blood on their hands.
I think this is a bad way to say ‘you have to vote for the least bad option out there’, because it implies you are responsible for what your President does. The logical next step, argued by shitheads a plenty here, is that if you don’t vote for a president, you don’t have blood on your hands. My argument is that’s not true.
Because Israel sucks and so does Hamas, Palestine is going to get Genocided either way. The difference is that with Biden in office, Muslims, Gays, Minorities, and Transgendered folks aren’t going to get genocided here, and MAYBE Netanyahu reads the room and backs off, grudgingly, because he knows Dem voters are good with hanging him out to dry if he keeps this shit up. Elect Trump like the assholes we keep encountering screaming Biden Genocide want us to do, and not only do Palestinians get gleefully genocided by Netanyahu (who is the actual genocidal maniac), then so do all the other people I listed above.
If you’re not ashamed to be an American you probably failed history.
There. Fixed it for you. And trust me, if I could trade my American citizenship for something else, I totally would, assuming it wasn’t worse.
I don’t think the Gaza issue will end up being a big issue for Biden. Those wanting more action on Gaza are generally to the left of Biden. It’s not likely that they will stay home on election day or vote 3rd party and help Trump that way. They’d much rather have Biden after all.
So you support apartheid, you just draw the line at too many dead children?
Stupid hot-take. Israel has been an ally of the United States for decades. Biden is trying to walk a fine line between maintaining relations with them (despite their current despicable right-wing government, which might not last long, given the huge calls for a new election in Israel) and pressuring them to stop. Trump would gladly suggest paving Gaza over and turning it into a parking lot, and voting for any third-party candidate is identical in result to voting for Trump.
This you? Biden vows ‘ironclad’ US commitment to Israel amid fears of Iran attack
The outrage (can we even call it that) is purely performative.
Will you address the fact that Trump is much, much worse for Palestinians? You and the rest of your ilk have been dodging that. Address it directly, or GTFO.
Threatening people is never a good look.
I didn’t like Biden in the 80s when he voted on a constitutional amendment for states to over turn Roe v Wade. I didn’t like Biden in the 90s when he reinforced the war on drugs and drastically increased the prison population. I didn’t like Biden in the 2000s when he supported the Patriot Act, the Iraq war, and removed the ability to default on student loans. And I still don’t like him today when he claims he’ll undo some of the awful shit he did if we vote for him just one more time, all while supporting a genocide and inching us closer and closer to an all out war in the middle east.
So no, I won’t be bullied. If your candidate sucks, and you parties policies suck, that’s on you.
OK, filing you away under “textbook example of what the article is about.”
Have a nice life.
Yes, Biden sucks. Nobody disagrees. But that’s still not addressing the problem of the only other viable candidate—Trump—being considerably worse.
I’m actually going to disagree that Biden sucks. Biden did the best he could with what he was given. Let’s remember:
I see jerks who come in and complain they didn’t get what they want to be akin to staying home on the election because they didn’t get the shiny rainbow unicorn they SWORE they were promised. Like a petulant child stomping his feet because he didn’t get the Christmas gift he begged Santa for, just before he threw a screaming temper tantrum in the Mall when his parents were warning him that Santa knows when he’s been naughty. An immature git that deserves to be taken over a knee and swatted, or just outright ignored, rather than indulged.
Inflation sucks. These last 4 years have been difficult, and not everybody has gotten out in one piece. But it was worse for a whole hell of a lot of people when Trump was in office, and he promises to make it hard for those people again if he gets in office. We can’t reach out to the Trumpers, but let’s NOT do their dirty work for them!
- Strange game, it seems like the only winning move is not to play.
Wow. You did a good job illustrating exactly why I’m not going to play nice with you people anymore. You’re lying and distorting the truth in order to make it more likely that people like my wife are ground under the bootheel of Team Pepe authoritarianism this time next year. Let’s break this down a bit, shall we?
Your claim that Biden voted for a constitutional amendment for States to overturn Roe v Wade omits the fact that he voted against it the next time Shithead Hatch presented it. Why don’t you explain to the class why you felt it necessary to distort Biden’s record, holding him accountable for a vote he has already acknowledged he got wrong by voting against it the second time it was presented, eh?
And the Iraq War? Yes, Biden got that vote wrong. He bought Bush’s lies that this was about bringing Hussein to the negotiation table, like a lot of us did in that time. The guy even admitted he got it wrong as early as 2005. What more can you ask? The guy can’t go back in time and fix his mistake. He can just own up to it. And let me tell you, I was on the same page as Biden back in 2003, when it seemed that Hussein was holding onto weapons and helping the people that attacked us on 9/11. I hoped we would use the same things that Biden hoped we would use – diplomacy and the threat of the big stick to convince Hussein to let the weapons inspectors back in and comply with the mandates the UN put on him.
The Patriot Act was indeed one of the darkest moments of American history, a knee-jerk reaction to 9/11 that we should have gotten rid of far sooner than we did. Biden was instrumental in getting it passed, for sure. But it expired in 2020…and despite Biden being in office for 4 years, it has not been reauthorised. Again, are we not to give him credit for what he’s done since these horrible things he did? Is he to be held accountable for everything he’s ever done, with no chance of redemption? I think that’s really damn stupid, or a plot by a really evil person to try to eat away at Biden’s voter base in order to get somebody far worse elected.
Let me remind you who is on the other side of the equation – a man who bragged he could grab any woman he wanted by the privates, who ran the country headfirst off the cliff of Covid because he thought it was some Democratic Party plot, who pulled us out of Kyoto AND scrubbed any mention of climate change from the website, who got into a trade war with China without any plans for how to deal with our reliance on cheap Chinese manufacturing (causing the inflation we are dealing with, in part), and who referred to the shitheads that killed minorities, gays, and liberals as ‘good people’. I also remind you that he plans on being “Dictator for a Day” should he win in 2024, and will implement Project 2025, a nightmarish scenario for gays, minorities, transgender folk, environmentalists, scientific thinkers, and liberals of all stripes. And need I remind you that Roe v. Wade went down thanks to Trump.
One of two people will win the election in 2024. You can’t change this. Either the guy who may not be liberal enough for you wins, and we make slow and halting progress on all Left-Wing priorities, or the guy who is an utter shithead gets into office and everything we’ve worked for in the past 100 years gets torn down. Gay marriage? Gone. Minority rights? Gone. Freedom to worship or not worship according to one’s desires? Gone. Freedom to protest our government? Remember the white vans that disappeared people during the George Floyd protests? Yeah, gone too. Oh, yeah, and IVF and contraception is gone, and women’s rights are gone. It’s very likely that your 2028 election will look like the one Putin just ‘won’, corrupted and replaced with ‘vote for Master Trump or suffer’. We aren’t kidding when we say that this is the most important election ever. It’s a rehash of 2020, which was the most important election ever (prompting me to donate money to a politician for the first time in my goddamn life…) at that time.
So. There’s one of two things you could be. Either you are…
So, which is it? Are you a moron, or are you an asshole? Either way…this article wasn’t meant for you. It was meant for the people you and your fellow sockpuppets full of excrement are trying to convince to let Trump win the fucking election.
Per Rule 6, I am not allowed to call you what I really want to call you, nor use the strength of language I feel you and your fellow … ahem, ‘dissidents’ deserve. Therefore, I’ll just say it this way. You can buzz off, pal. You aren’t convincing me of your nonsense, and the only reason I’m here is to tell people who might fall for your … BS…yeah, I’ll call it that…is that this person trying to convince you to vote third party or stay home is full of nonsense and will lead this country into ruin. So, do us all a favour and piss off, would ya?
I just want to make you aware that your argument is that Biden is basically not responsible for his position on Israel. Like I really want you to actually notice what that does rhetorically, because you are effectively ceding the position that Biden is bad, but Trump would be worse (maybe).
So is Biden the President or is he not? Like, the fucking point is that Biden can do better right now and is choosing not to. Is he the President and capable of such a thing or is he not? With whom does the buck stop?
You need to start understanding that the consequence of the “Any blue will do argument” is the recognition that Biden is a weak, unfit leader that doesn’t have accountability, and that this rhetorical structure is what is losing Biden this election. Making excuses for Biden on this policy position weakens him as a candidate, and further ensures a Trump victory.
That’s a blatant misreading. He is fully responsible for his position, but due to the circumstances of this situation, his position is necessarily nuanced. It has to be, to avoid destabilizing the entire Middle East.
Imagine he just declares Israel no longer an ally, and tells them they’re on their own. How long before Iran attacks? How long before other Muslim-majority countries are dragged into it? How long before it becomes a broader conflict, with Israel fighting basically everyone?
How long before we end up dragged into it anyway?
Biden is trying to pressure Netanyahu with what leverage he has, and he is trying to prevent it from become a large regional conflict. I’m sure he wishes BiBi wasn’t the one in charge there - most Israeli citizens certainly seem to want him gone, too - but wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which one fills up faster.
With Biden, we have someone in the White House who actually gives a shit whether Palestinians get to live. That’s a hell of a lot better than anything Trump has to offer.
Man, there’s a bajillion angles to this. We’re talking global politics here.
Israel under Netanyahu has said that it will extinguish Hamas even if the entire world turns against them. And you can go down many paths looking at what happens if the US abandons Israel.
First, some facts.
Now, just think for a moment what Russia might do if the US were to end its special relationship with Israel? I’m sure that’s weighing on Biden’s mind as he navigates the waters of reining in Israel’s attack on Palestinians. Putin is looking for ways to erode American influence world-wide, and this might well be an own goal if we just blindly drop Israel like so many of these…ahem, ‘dissenters’ seem to want us to do.
Besides. Trump says Israel should ‘finish the job’ in regards to the Palestinians so I’m not sure how the … person below you thinks Biden is to the right of Trump on this matter. Unless ‘the right’ means letting SOME Palestinians live, and ‘the left’ means ‘invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.’ I mean, it’s not like some rightwing shithead ever said anything like that, amirite? Lol.
Biden is, and always has been, a full throat-ed Zionist. He’s maybe the furthest right Democrat on this issue from his cohort/ demographic of senators. He’s hard right in this way. Further right than Trump. You are projecting nuance and your own desire to belief that Biden is good on Israel onto Biden beliefs. But by Biden’s own words and his stated beliefs, he is doing pretty much exactly what we would expect him to do in support of Zionism. If you map current actions onto his previously stated beliefs, nothing is out of order. The only change has bee some lip-service sound byte level saber rattling. There is no need to project deep nuance onto the situation if you just look at Biden’s words and policy positions and map them to what he does. He lines up as a squarely Neo-conservative Zionist in rhetoric (preter Israels advancement of the genocide of the Palestinian people post October) and has lined up squarely as a Neo-conservative Zionist in action. He makes decisions and acts like the person he said he is.
The alternative is Trump. Tell me Trump’s position on Palestine.
Yeah see you are doing it again. Why do you want Trump to win?
Biden, who once said “I’m a Zionist, if Israel didn’t exist, we’d have to create it” is walking a fine line? Give me a break.
They’re projecting what they wish Biden believed onto what he actually believes.
Biden is a Zionist. His words, not ours.
On this we agree.
So, if Biden doesn’t win, Trump WILL.
What’s Trump’s plan?
Arm Israel and expand the genocide.
How can you possibly think you have any kind of moral high ground when you’re willing to let someone win that will make the problem worse?
This is a literal example of the trolley problem.
If you do nothing and don’t vote, millions of children die.
If you vote, thousands of children will die.
But you know who’s killing those children?
Benjamin Netanyahu
Yet you fuckers act like Biden is over there doing it with his bare hands.
Get your morals straightened out, because if Trump wins, that blood is on your hands as well as his, and I’d rather only have a little blood of my hands than a lot.
I’d be far more interested in discourse if they sad what’s actually going on. Biden’s turning a blind eye towards the misbehaviour of Netanyahu because he’s afraid of what happens if he actually takes a stand. He’s not actually doing the Genocide. He’s picking sides.
It’s like threatening your best friend with a knuckle sandwich if he doesn’t stop creeping on a woman you barely know and don’t really like. Do you throw away decades worth of friendship by setting your best friend straight, or do you tolerate the boorish behaviour from your male friend? Bonus points: if you choose your friend over this woman, you get called a rapist, despite the fact that you told this gal to get lost and leave you alone. That’s the choice Biden has right now. Israel is America’s friend. Hamas is not and while we are empathic about innocent Palestinians caught in the crossfire, we know that Russia is waiting in the wings to reduce our influence world-wide…so on TOP of having to choose between your best friend and some annoying woman you barely know, you ALSO have your worst enemy at the club waiting to swoop in and tell your now-ex-best-friend how awful and cruel you are and bend said ex-best-friend into another enemy. Yay!
Its like you are dis-interested in actually winning this election…
Stop scapegoating Benjamin Netanyahu, he’s a symptom not a cause.
Oh, then who’s ordering around the IDF?
Let me guess, you think it’s Biden don’t you?
The Knesset, the will of the Israelis?
I think that few people are Biden supporters and more are “We have to get Biden in so that Trump doesn’t get in and hopefully someone younger will come by for the next round but he’s still better than the alternative by a mile”.
We could have elected a shoe into office in 2020 the anti-Trump sentiment was so strong. Its not as strong now, and Biden is a worse candidate than he’s ever been.
Neither points are true.
Username checks out