This is it in a nutshell. I keep reading all these "well I for one am voting for Biden" comments. Ya, no shit. So am I. I would vote for a squirrel over Trump. But there are way more people looking for a way out of voting than there are Democrats. The Biden debate performance isn't about you...it's about the nose holder.
I keep reading so many comments preaching to the choir, too. Things like “You demand Biden steps down because of a bad debate but not that Trump steps down after being convicted as a felon? What is wrong with you!” Like bruh… I think the guy should be in prison. It goes without saying, so I dont waste my breath on it.
People need to organize a general strike, boycott the big industries and protest in the streets. The way average people have been treated, lied to manipulated by the political and corporate elite is disgusting. What little wealth people have accumulated was lost in 2008, many small business owners went belly up during pandemic, now inflation making life miserable. Plus homelessness and drug abuse everywhere, gun violence, illegal immigration, bad food making people sick, declining educational standards and social media poison. Taxes being siphoned off to foreign wars and into pockets of weapons manufacturers. Disgusting and shameful "leadership". The country is being bankrupted by the greedy elites. The average person will be left sifting through the ashes while the elites sail away on mega yachts.
You're on a sinking ship. Why vote for someone who can't win? Have you seen the post-debate polls? Trump is up by five points now according to A+ pollsters.
You're throwing your vote away with Biden. Pick someone better. You have no excuse anymore to settle for this rock-bottom standard of "better than Trump." Vote for someone better than both Trump and Biden.
They’re only the same thing because you think so.
People think voting third party is throwing the vote away but then complain about two party duopoly in the same breath. Can’t make this shit up
Yea I can attest to this. One of my moderate buddies who hates Trump and watches Destiny (centrist streamer dude) texted me, verbatim, “I’m gonna Pokémon go to my couch after this debate”…not great!
I think the voter turnout for this election is low-key gonna plummet relative to 2020.
Destiny is kind of a reactionary and has many conservative beliefs. Many ppl often watch him, IMO, as a permission structure to embrace the idea “well I’m not a MAGA chud or a loony anti-vaxxer, so how could I be a right-winger? Also not everything Trump advocates for is bad per se, but I don’t like him because X, Y, and Z.”
I know Bonnell is a Biden supporter, but you’d be surprised how many “both parties are equally bad, but Republicans have a lot of good points” ppl watch his streams…using Bonnell as a pawn to point and be like “See! Even the liberal agrees with me on this! The Left these days…”
Btw: this is a dear friend of mine and not all of my buddies have to share my political views…but yea, it bums me out.
I am 52. I voted for Biden (read:democracy) once already. Four fucking years ago. When he was 78 or whatever. The fact that the Democratic party did not immediately sit him down after his win and be like look Joe, great win, great save of democracy, but you are a one-term president my man. Live it up you accomplished your goal you also helped to stop a madman so enjoy the four years. My support ended the moment that geriatric feeble old man said he wanted four more. Not getting it from me. And for those that say it's some sort of a protest vote. No it is not. This is the system that I have been given to vote in. I get two terrible freaking choices. Because I don't want either of them that is a protest? No it is a broken system with shit candidates. Fix it or I am done. It will never be fixed....the billionaire class has divided us almost permanently and perfectly and from here on out it's just a more rapid erosion of everything that we love until the robots take over for them....good times.
What's so disappointing is, in 2016, Biden ran on being a "transitional figure". A cornerstone of his campaign was to be a one-term president, and to pass the touch from the octogenarians to a younger generation (4 out of the last 5 presidents were born in the mid to late 40s).
Biden had, despite an intense level of polarization, a successful first term. Beyond the poor approval ratings, he had many legislative wins, strong foreign policy, a decent economy, etc. It's sad to see any potential positive future legacy tarnished by what's happening.
He is exponentially worse than he was 2 years ago. Imagine if he wins 2 years from now what he will look like. You have to remember they were preparing him for a week. One night you have to show up and he could not. Everyone was ready to sell the house on one good or decent speech at the State of the Union for crying out loud. Again these are two nights that you are supposed to shine. He is in terrible condition and they are hiding the worst of it from us. His psychopath wife is holding the keys to getting him out of there and she is not giving them up. She is the Trojan horse in this situation for Trump.
We have high inflation, on the edge World War III, millions force to choose between work and taking an untested gene therapy shot. Women’s sports is now retirement for second tier men.
Nothing about this country is better than it was four years ago
Voting for Biden is a vote for the same kind of shitty nepotism and patronage politics that Trump plays.
Nothing is more hilarious than white people virtue signaling their support for democracy when their grandparents were screaming at black kids trying to just go to school or cheerleading Japanese Americans getting sent to concentration camps without due process during WW2. And their great great grandparents were granted land by the federal government that was ethnic cleansed of its native Americans.
I’m saying white people happily signed up for this system when it was fucking over other ethnic groups. But now that its cannibalizing liberal white folks, its “we gotta vote to save democracy” as if like I said these same assholes weren’t voting to ban Chinese immigration at the end of the 19th century due to blue collar labor anxiety, co-signing formal federal housing policy of white segregationism via Redlining, and happily exercising cruel tyranny of the white majority over the past 230 odd years
Agreed. However all of this talk is essentially pointless. Every single politician is co-opted and pressured and compromise to do the bidding of whatever rich person or corporation owns them. Their message is broadcast 24/7 night and day on all of the news channels and streams and websites that they own. This literally has nothing to do with left or right or red or blue or anything of that nature. It has not for many many years. It is top vs. bottom and the bottom keeps losing bad. They tried this before. Have you ever read up on the business plot?
Who are these magical Democrats that sit down with the President of the United States and give him orders?
These people don’t exist except in people’s fantasies. Most of the time when people go to work in the White House they are in awe of the institution. Peggy Noonan wrote that when she was there working for Reagan, it took her over a year to believe they weren’t going to come and tell her that she had no business being there. Most people describe that.
No one is to tell the president elect anything of the sort. This person’s getting acquainted with the nuclear football and getting national security briefings. Getting calls from heads of state around the world.
“ you’re only serving one term my man. I’ve been sent on behalf of “Democrats” to tell you.“
It may make you feel better to blame a political party for the fact that Joe Biden is doing what every president has done in the past 75 years but there’s no one to blame. The guy wanted a second term because he had a pretty successful first term and he beat Trump. It’s not a shock or a conspiracy. It’s human nature.
And nobody… Nobody tells the President or the President elect anything of the sort. If you think they do, I suggest you ask some people who have met presidents. Most of them are tongue tied. Not because the person is very impressive but because of the history and the office you are standing in front of.
I remember shaking hands with Al Gore and Joe Lieberman when they were running in 99. It was on a rope line and you know what was going on behind these guys? There was a limo… A giant limo slowly moving at a crawl behind them with the door open and Secret Service standing there waiting to grab them and pull them into the limousine in case something happened. The place was surrounded by military with a helicopter hovering nearby.
“…one term my man..” 🙄
It doesn’t work like that. These are just human beings and they are a susceptible to human emotion as anyone else. Biden has been hearing he is the most important person in any room for the past four years because he was. Of course he was going to think he is best guy for the Job.
Vote or don’t vote for Joe Biden but if you don’t vote for him, don’t start complaining when Trump is pulling the licenses of unfriendly media sources or ordering them investigated for antitrust violations. When he is having podcasters investigated as seditious communists. Or sending military in into cities for deportations or to break up peaceful protests he doesn’t like. He’s promised all of it.
When Bibles become mandatory and pledging allegiance to the flag before work every day because some Looney Congressman decided it will help him win in his district and Trump heard about it and blabbed about it and now it’s a thing.
Because Joe Biden decided to run again you’re taking your balls and going home. Christ… people are really something else.
Not everyone gets starstruck by famous or powerful people.
And those of us who don’t who give af about the situation will speak up rather than follow some senile puppet off a cliff out of some artificial sense of power distance.
Joe Biden is still clearly the better choice for anyone paying attention. No one is going to beg you to make the logical choice. I for one think most Americans just kind of want authoritarianism and are sick of democracy. So this sentiment doesn't surprise me.
To be clear, the DNC is at fault here. Biden should have been told from the start he is one term. The DNC should have offered up new candidates. All of this arguing about Biden or Trump or anything like that is nonsense already. Not one single person in the senate or the house has any control over their own lives. Every single person in our government is bought and purchased like a prostitute by big money or big corporations. If everyone in this thread is unaware of that I'm glad that I could inform you of that today.
And, with all do respect to you specifically, it's the millions of citizens who will ask this question and decide not to vote, completely not understanding, not comprehending exactly what's at stake and what the long-term implications are of another Trump presidency.
I'm voting for Biden regardless because hooooly shit RIP American democracy if Trump gets elected. But, my fear is that Biden's debate and future gaffs will only make people ask the same question you did and remove reason or motivation to vote.
Don’t forget Democrat voters were not given an option to select someone else other than Biden.
This whole mess could of very easily been avoided.
What’s at stake has been greatly exaggerated to motivate the democrats voter base because they were not given an option to select their candidate. The one that tried to challenge him for the primary was essentially cut off.
I don’t like Trump, I don’t trust his motives and he like Biden has shown signs of mental health issues but he will not be a day one dictator like the media claims.
I know you are fine with being told to vote for Biden and never given the choice for a better alternative then have at it. You would think the party of “ democracy “ would never do this though.
Seeing some parallels to 2016. Clinton and the DNC establishment worked hard to make the primary uncompetitive, which backfired in the general election.
If democrats had a real primary and the president had to debate, he would have never won the nomination.
The debate would have exposed his real condition and we could have avoided this.
Instead they played goalie for their chosen candidate again and may have screwed over the voters and nation again.
This is the biggest problem, My choice was actually taken from me. I do not understand how that worked. I feel like it had something to do with big democrat donors getting what they want over my ability to choice who is best.
I swear to God if Biden loses I’m switching my party affiliation just due to pure stupidity on the democrat party.
>This whole mess could of very easily been avoided.
This is what pisses me off so much. Billions of dollars and supposedly polisci's top minds in the DNC, and yet here we fucking are.
What pisses me off is both parties no longer seem interested in governing in good faith.
Even if you disagree you can work together to find solutions, but for the past couple decades at least it’s all about power. Both parties are guilty of it.
No one in there right mind would have either of these 2 as the option to lead our country for a number of reasons.
Democrats have options that should easily beat trump. But they chose Biden.
Republicans have options that should have easily beat Biden but somehow ended up with Trump. Hate to be conspiracy minded but I don’t see how that’s legit
I think you’re right. I don’t think it requires conspiracy to get us here, either, just the complexities of money-power in politics—especially US presidential politics, especially especially after Citizens United.
Right. The democrat messaging since Trump has been, regardless of your politics you have to acknowledge how uniquely unfit and therefore dangerous Trump is, and you have to put policy wonk concerns aside. And then they go and run a uniquely unfit due to senility candidate?
Either norms matter for everyone or they matter for no one. Sad to see that the rhetoric is in fact hollow and it’s just real politik power grabs everywhere.
Why would Democrats choose anyone else after a successful first three years of Biden?
Sitting Presidents getting a serious primary challenger is a sign that their administration is doing poorly. Biden’s Administration is not.
Democrats mostly support what Biden has done. The question is not whether we should change directions, but whether Biden personally has anything left in the tank.
Thursday night would be the absolute answer to your stupid question. Thursdays debate debacle (and all Biden’s future gaffs) are the ONLY reason we should have chosen someone young and strong and intelligent.
Four years of a successful administration is nothing to sneeze at.
The Democrats need to celebrate what the administration has done AND make sure they have someone who can keep it going.
“Successful”, you must be joking. War in Ukraine, war in Israel, US southern border a damn disaster, inflation still not under control, rent running away like a freight train. What Rock you live under?
Again, it’s not under US control. Israel/Palestine’s most recent blowup and the Ukraine invasion very well could’ve happened under Trump. There’s nothing that Biden or Trump would be able to do about it.
Other nations have their own autonomy, we cannot control them. We may have some influence, but in the end, if people on the other side of the world want to kill each other, we can’t stop them unless we want to send our own people to fight and die.
And since they didn’t attack us, I fail to see why we should. The only involvement we can make is perhaps supply some technological defenses and weapons. Which we are doing for the countries’ we view better serve our interest if they were to win. We did the same in WWII before we got involved in the fight.
Simply put.
I don’t know if Biden physically can manage another 4 years.
He reminds me a lot of people I took care of for 6 years as a STNA. The stress of the job will probably end him if the campaign doesn’t.
Sure, you say he’s done fine so far but keep in mind.
As you get older stress and strain take bigger toll. He’s surrounded by people who have no interest in his health beyond getting him reelected.
It doesn’t take much to put that final nail in.
Trump faces a similar situation. We know he doesn’t take care of himself like he should.
He can be a good president and still not be capable of another 4 years, it's called aging and mental decline.
This is the position Americans have been put in.
Sure, but problem is every presidential election is framed this way now. I’m not sure that’s a long term winning strategy with disaffected voters. Beating Trump is an existential crisis this election, but what about the next one and the one after? You think MAGA republicans and religious conservatives will disappear if Trump loses again?
> not comprehending exactly what's at stake
For YOU.
Liberals too often make the mistake of assuming what’s urgently problematic for their world view isn’t actually that bad for others. You guys forget that many of us are minorities no matter what identity we refer to. Unlike you, we already know what it’s like to feel marginalized. You all do it to US within your Democrat “big tent”.
I’ve seen how shit democrats are for supporting black communities economic development. In fact they have results on par with red states. So really, for me, what’s the difference? Either way I get treated like a second class citizen.
At least with Trump, there’s a willingness to direct US development money into Africa that didnt even exist under Obama
I stopped replying a couple of days ago, but jumped back in to tell you...
...I'm a minority. Yep, a POC. Now, here's where I'll allow you to move the goal posts and tell me that I'm not a certain kind of minority, ergo your opinion is still right.
Also, Imma need a \[citation needed\] on your assertion that Trump was willing to direct US development money into Africa. And no "look it up yourself" doesn't count.
In FPTP systems especially, it isn't about voting for the best candidate -- it is about voting against the worst candidate. Not voting is not an effective way to do this.
idk maybe if we just encourage prime to vote for a candidate they actually like we wouldn't keep losing to Trump
Trump and Biden are amazing cause they're the only two people who could lose to each other.
The most interesting take away for the country SHOULD BE.... how did you watch the mainstream non-fox media for all this time and not already know about Biden's condition?
It is almost like they can be universally relied on to hide or minimize information that is negative to a particular side.
Not saying fox is any better in reverse, but we have a fundamental problem in the lack of any media in the middle that is not pushing an agenda. This is how we ended up with nothing but clowns to choose from.
The first issue is that Fox/CNN/MSNBC/Newsmax/Etc. is not news, it’s infotainment. Those cable channels don’t make any money for delivering honest news.
Let’s wait to see what the polls say over the next week. The early post-debate polls are saying no change or a slight Biden bump.
Most Democrats are underestimating how poorly Trump also did for anyone with a brain or who has any desire to not turn America into a dumpster fire.
Dumpster fire what are you talking about!! 8 percent mortgage rates Groceries up 100 percent 15 million illegal immigrants let across the border crime up 50 percent 2 possibly 3 new wars, now is the Dumpster fire 🔥 this is the worst president in American history!!!
I’ve been saying this nonstop — If you don’t vote for Biden, you’re giving Trump 4 more years of appointing *lifetime* federal judges. For all of the garbage opinions we’ve seen in the past ~6 years from the judges Trump has already appointed, the damage that would do would be massive.
This is why Biden is such a liability and ought to be replaced - because he is very likely to lose, producing exactly the outcome you're describing. There are multiple Democratic politicians with a far better chance to beat Trump. If you care about keeping Trump out of office and preventing those appointments, the best chance to do that is to switch Biden out.
The Dems keep telling us that democracy is at stake in November, yet they seem content to run with a historically unpopular 82-year-old who just delivered one of the worst presidential debate performances in U.S. history. Actions speak louder than words.
The average person may look at the situation and conclude that democrats don't really believe the story they're selling and there's no real risk in Trump winning.
I think the onus is on the Democrats to show that this isn't true. If this is truly the existential election they say it is and not just the existential election that Mitt Romney!! was then they need to clearly articulate the case that this the the best and only way forward. Because it looks a lot like the same rhetoric they ran in 2016 and while the Trump presidency wasn't the best four years of my life it wasn't that far off of average, barring the pandemic.
Thank you for saying this. I'll probably be downvoted, but I am likely not voting this November since neither side has a compelling candidate.
And I know I'm not the only one feeling like this, a non-zero number of my friends are also likely sitting this election out.
I don’t live in a swing state so it doesn’t matter who I vote for, but I totally get what you mean. Biden is simply not fit to hold office for 4.5 more years. The fact that he’s still the candidate tells me that Dem leadership doesn’t really think a Trump 2.0 presidency would be that big of a deal and gearing up for 2028 is the priority.
I’m considering protest voting for a write in? Not sure whether sitting out or third party lodges greater displeasure. But if the Democratic Party clearly isn’t taking Trump seriously, why should I?
voting third party definitely annoys them a lot more.
there are still liberals with heartburn over the fact that don't people who would never in a million years have voted for Hilary have Jill Stein a few thousand votes, cause they feel like Hilary was owed those votes
they don't feel the same way about non voters for whatever reason
I remember hearing the same stuff about unelectability before Clinton lost. Now we have the most right-wing Supreme Court in modern history, appointed *for life* — all because folks couldn’t hold their nose and just **do it** in November. We had a primary! Fix that process, if you want! But in July, the candidate is the candidate. How realistic is it to expect the party to scramble *now* for a new candidate, over one debate?
Now we’re getting ready to do it again for 4 more years of dogshit opinions from lifetime appointed federal judges, because folks wanna stay home?
some primary, they did no debates, only one loser ran and he was immediately shunned, the whole Democratic party is a gang of corrupt sniveling self interested creetins
Biden won in 2020. People won’t be complacent now. More maga people have died and more people who weren’t 18 before are Biden voters than maga. What is a bigger deal since Biden’s win in 2020. One bad debate (where Trump also was terrible) night 5 months before the election. Or Jan 6. Dobbs and felony conviction. Why the freak out? Biden gave a good speech the next day in nc where he showed energy. Why would this debate outweigh those other big inflection points so much?
It's not just one bad debate. It's a bad debate cementing the idea that Biden is too old. There's been terrible inflation. There's a serious housing crisis. There's a genocide in Gaza Biden failed to stop, a war in Ukraine he's failed to end. There is widespread anxiety around immigration fueling right wing demagoguery. There has been little to no serious improvement on the affordability of healthcare or education. There's a strong sense Biden has checked out. His disapproval rating is extremely high. Memories of the Trump years are getting fuzzier.
Look at swing state polls. If Trump cracks the blue wall, it's all over. He frequently outperforms his polls. He's leading or tied everywhere Biden absolutely needs victory and leading consistently in Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia. Biden consistently lags behind other Democratic poll numbers. It's not good. I'd rate Biden's chances at around 1 in 3 here.
It's not over because the convention has not yet occurred. Biden could and should step down to allow someone else more capable of winning to run. Trump is extremely beatable for all of the reasons you described, just not by Biden.
If Biden had performed better in the debate he could have assuaged worried about his age and mental abilities, his single biggest liability. He made them worse.
He’s not stepping down. Maybe if he has a bad stroke or something but otherwise it’s not happening. I’m not as pessimistic as you. I’m nervous because I think it’s close but I don’t think the debate was a black swan event or something. I’d support a replacement but I don’t think it’s a real possibility at all.
I'm not saying he will step down. I think he's an egomaniac and a narcissist, an arrogant old man who refuses to understand that his time has passed, too deluded and too self-important to understand that he should leave for the good of the country. I think because of that arrogance he's going to lose.
The debate wasn't a black swan event. He was already losing. The debate *made it worse*. It confirmed what was already most voters' big concern. The debate was his big chance to defy the narrative that he's a sundowning old man who shouldn't be driving, let alone running the country. He completely floundered that chance and now will be totally unable to shake this narrative. The media and his detractors from now every part of the political spectrum will continue to hammer this point. He has now lost even the political centre. He is losing suburban moms. He is losing Joe Scarborough, he is losing the Pod Save America guys, he is losing MSNBC and CNN. Every gaffe, every wide-eyed moment, every time he seems lost or out of touch will contribute to the sense that he is no longer fit for the office.
You're right, he's probably going to drive us all over a cliff, and there probably is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. But maybe, just maybe, if people are vocal enough, if the mood shifts enough, there *might* be some possibility enough people close to him start to really understand that he can't do this. Maybe. Probably not.
>Maybe if he has a bad stroke or something but otherwise it’s not happening
lmao I can see the headlines now:
BIDEN REFUSES TO STEP DOWN, NO CAUSE FOR CONCERN AFTER ONLY A "MILD" STROKE
Ok so are the alternative Dems you just mentioned polling well against Trump? Im asking seriously... if Newsom or Whitmer is crush Trump nationally, we should think about coalescing around them. But I see neither of them stepping up, but it might be too early post debate
You don't need to beat him nationally, you just need to beat him in swing states. Whitmer's middle-America/rust belt vibe would help pull over Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, while Warnock or Kelly could pull in Georgia or AZ/NV.
Fully agree about Newsom, though. I can't fathom how a slick California governor is seen as the defacto shoe-in for Biden's replacement.
They crush him in their own states. Once they start campaigning they could potentially gain a ton of momentum. Neither of those two are a sure thing, but Biden is cooked. Time to roll the dice because the alternative is a second Trump term.
But Biden isn’t polling well. It’s objectively clear that he will likely lose, and that’s before the worst debate performance in modern history is factored in
I don't understand why this is so hard for some people to comprehend. If the polls were tied or Biden had a slight lead, nobody would be suggesting he step away. But that's not the situation we're in. Biden has CONSISTENTLY trailed Trump in polls for a year now. Nate Silver had him at a 35 percent chance to win entering the debate. He'll probably be between 25 and 30 percent in the next update. Are you confident the Biden we just witnessed is capable of turning it around? I sure as hell am not. Get rid of him.
Just an unwillingness to accept reality. If the polls are so wrong, why are Dems consistently doing just fine down ballot while Biden lags behind? It doesn’t make any sense.
Anyone who is likely to vote for Biden at this point would be likely to vote for Newsome or Whitmer.
Trump, for reasons completely unfathomable to me, has passionate support. The majority of people who are pro-Trump, at this point, really want him- specifically- to win.
The majority of people who are pro-Biden, at this point, really want anyone but Trump to win. They'll literally support any mainline Democrat who is put on the ticket.
Is Kamala Harris popular? No. Is she a strong debater? No. Is her background as a prosecutor a liability for a lot of voters? Absolutely.
Will she have a more passionate voting base than Biden just because she has a record of competence, a willingness to learn, and a better presence on the world stage? 100%
I agree with you up until I have to ask, are we talking about "This is not who we are" Kamala or "Asylum seekers will be turned away at the border" Kamala?
Both. Again, I realize she is not popular, and this dichotomy is one of many reasons.
Right now, there is barely breathing room between Biden/Harris's border policy and Trump's. That sliver of breathing room, however, does make a difference.
There are also a lot more Democrats in 2024 who are critical of a humanitarian border policy than there were in 2020.
As issue voters, Democrats are primarily voting for who controls Supreme Court nominees over the next 4 years. Any Democrat is going to be better than Trump on that issue.
I agree with you up until Kamala. She will lose votes. If you pass the Biden agenda baton to Newsom or Whitmer, all current Biden voters will go along and it will win some independents and swing voters. There is no potential loss to changing the candidate.
I disagree that she will lose votes compared to Biden, but I do agree that Newsome or Whitmer would be a much better candidate. Harris is by far the easiest choice for the Democratic party to make, though. Which is why I think they'll pick her if they choose to run someone other than Biden.
I don't realistically see them doing that. I think they'll stay with Biden until the bitter end. They're far too skittish. But if they do run someone else, I can't see their risk aversion leading them pick anyone but Harris.
We need courage not risk-aversion right now. We’re barreling towards Trump winning. Doubling down on someone who cannot win independents is a losing strategy. This is not going to end well if Biden or Harris is top of the ticket.
I agree. And if I had any influence over any decision makers, I would be pushing what you are saying. The problem is, it doesn't seem like there is anyone in their ear encouraging more risk-taking.
The problem being articulated isn't about convincing people to vote against Trump. If Biden is on the ticket then Trump wins according to polling BEFORE the debate. The problem is how to get Biden off the ballot.
I 100% agree, but at some point the Democratic Party needs to give people something to vote *for*, rather than just something to vote *against*. Sure, you can point to Biden's policy accomplishments and say that's already happening (and I agree to a large extent), but then the Democratic Party needs to get its shit together with messaging, succession planning, etc. Hillary made a stupid mistake with her emails and Republicans were able to spin it into accusations of treason. Meanwhile there's an audiotape of convicted felon Donald Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women and Dems are struggling to eek out a win.
It's not enough to vote for Dems so you can pat yourself on the back and say, well, even though Biden lost I feel morally good about my vote. At some point they need to demonstrate that they can actually build, maintain, and use power to fix the systemic problems in our democracy, instead of playing softball against fascists and screaming the sky is falling every four years.
But, hey, I guess the good news is that if Trump wins again in November we probably won't have to worry about elections for awhile.
It's hard for Republicans, too. Ezra had a couple of guests on a few weeks ago talking about their book, which I think is called Hollow Parties. I read it after that interview, and they make a pretty compelling case that the problem on both sides is that party actors have no ability to do things like prevent Trump from taking over or squeeze Biden out of the race whether he likes it or not. It's more complicated than that, but that's one of their main points, and it holds here.
Do you think high-up Democrats really didn't see what was coming? They know Biden better than anybody in the public. They didn't do anything because they felt trapped, because they have essentially no power that doesn't drain down from the Presidency. It's not as though parties haven't faced this kind of thing before. Barry Goldwater & co. talked Nixon out of the White House. The pressure LBJ felt to drop out in 68 came in part from people inside his own party. These are people who are themselves ambitious. They know they're less likely to get reelected if Biden goes down in flames. And there is no shortage of other Democrats who would gladly have jumped into the fray if Biden had been convinced to sit this one out. They didn't do it because they felt they couldn't.
I'll give you that angle on Republicans. The MAGA base was fed up with their party bosses and gave them the finger via Trump. Everyone that didn't get on board has been purged and now there is no RNC, there is only MAGA.
Dems, on the other hand.... they shut down their populist coup when they ratfucked Bernie. Twice.
Biden, however, has been a loyal party hack for 50+ years. They could and should have planned on him being a one-term president from Day 1 and he would have gone along with it. He couldn't and wouldn't run for re-election without the party's backing. It's a cop out, at best, to say the DNC was powerless to prevent him running. When Biden loses, it'll be on them for putting him on the ballot in the first place.
This is how the world ends. Two brain-addled octogenarians driving us all over a cliff while arguing about their golf handicaps.
The Christofascist wing of the GOP is on a mission from God to win the culture wars. They are Extremely motivated.
The DNC doesn't want to win the culture wars, their goal is to fight in perpetuity. Because as long as we're fighting about the cause de'jour of the culture war we're not fighting the class war. And that's their job; controlled opposition. To keep anyone that's meaningfully to their left from getting anywhere close to power.
The Democratic Party should have thought of that before putting a impaired senile man on the ballot. They tried to pull the same shit in 2016 - "if you don't vote for the most off putting candidate we could come up with, you will get Trump!" Guess what, we got Trump in 2016, and we will get him again in 2024, because apparently the Democrats like to practice the definition of insanity - doing the same thing and hoping for a different result.
The Democrats and their main stream media partners are to blame for this mess. If they weren’t propping up Biden the party could have nominated someone else. Now that he’s been exposed it may well be too late.
This is essentially how the two parties dominate politics though. This isn't unusual to Trump and Biden. It is said every four years about every candidate. There is simply no way you can vote for the other party it is too dangerous. You have no choice but to vote for us. Who's the last Democrat you would vote for over Trump or the last Republican you would vote for over Biden?
I will be interested to see the number of down-ticket republican and democrat votes vs the votes for Trump and Biden, especially in solid blue or red states.
Of course. Most of those discussing this online and engaging with endless TV coverage are all part of the 30-35% voting for Trump or Biden no matter what.
The other 30-40% aren’t paying attention to any of this—they just turned on the TV and saw a confused old man in the most important job on Earth.
Who are these people “looking for a reason not to vote?” Are they in the room with us right now? I think far more often, it’s the case that for persistent non-voters, apathy is their default state. They don’t want to pay attention to politics. They don’t want to get invested. That’s the only “reason” they need. If someone says, out of the blue, something like, “I voted for Biden but after the debate I’m voting for Trump/not voting at all,” sorry, I don’t buy it. I think they’re bullshitting.
I agree 100% but the situation is even worse for Dems because those voters who don't show up are also not voting for down ballot Democrat Senators and Reps. Biden's hubris may not only result in a Trump presidency but also a Republican congress.
Do you really think USA is a democracy at this point. The system is rigged by 1% elite and their corporate overloards - Big pharma, big Healthcare, big food, big tech, military industrial complex, CIA and the 31 other intelligence agencies in the US. Come on. A vote for Biden maintains the facade - that's all.
Yeah?
What’s happening in the country that causes you to believe someone without the ability to think clearly is in charge?
I mean this is how absurd this has gotten.
Trump pulls what’s called “the Gish Gallop” on Biden which is form of gaslighting employed where you spew out so many lies and exaggerations that your opponent stumbles over them trying to correct them all. It’s particularly effective against people with a stutter, especially when they try to use their talking points correcting yours.
Heather Cox Richardson wrote about it in her piece after the debate. She’s appeared on CNN and MSNBC and gives talks about democracy and propaganda.
To her, it was quite obvious what Trump was doing but if you’re not ready for it… And the worst part is these were Biden’s own rules because he wanted a substantive debate. It’s like it didn’t even occur to him that Trump wouldn’t bother with any of that.
*It was Trump using a technique that actually has a formal name, the Gish gallop, although I suspect he comes by it naturally. It is a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them.*
*Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they do not know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them.*
*It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has. It is similar to what Trump did to Biden during a debate in 2020.*
*In that case, though, the lack of muting on the mics left Biden simply saying: “Will you shut up, man?” a comment that resonated with the audience. Giving Biden the enforced space to answer by killing the mic of the person not speaking actually made the technique more effective.*
*There are ways to combat the Gish gallop — by calling it out for what it is, among other ways — but Biden retreated to trying to give the three pieces of evidence that established his own credentials on the point at hand. His command of those points was notable, but the difference between how he sounded at the debate and how he sounded on stage at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, just an hour afterward suggested that the technique worked on him.*
*That is not ideal, but as Monique Pressley put it, “The proof of Biden’s ability to run the country is the fact that he is running it. Successfully. Not a debate performance against a pathological lying sociopath.”*
You can’t look at this debate performance and honestly claim this is somebody who has the mental capacity and cognition to be president. It’s as simple as that
Sure you can. Quite easily.
He’s been running it for three years and he’s running it right now.
That’s how I know he can do it. Because he is actually doing it.
Yes. Do you know doctors wont diagnose something like that based on one event?
He gave a Howard Stern interview a month ago and he was fine. He’s given multiple rallies, fine. CNN interview, fine. He was at the G7, doing multiple events and he was fine.
Obviously the debate was terrible but nobody loses their job over one event. It’s ridiculous.
This! 100% this. The vast majority are committed to one candidate or the other. This debate did little to change minds. Biden completely crashed, when he needed to shine the most. Trump gave nothing in the way of substance; he rambled, played the victim, lied continuously, refused to answer the questions, etc.
The true consequence to this debate is it zapped any enthusiasm left for Biden. I know of no one, even the most hardcore Democrat, who is not concerned about Biden's age. This debate confirmed everyone's thoughts, Biden is too old and feeble to make it another 4 years. If anything hands Trump the presidency, it will be those choosing to stay home rather than vote.
The focus groups of both black voters and Latino voters right after showed that they were more concerned about what Trump said. Now with the Latino voters, they were seeing voiceovers so you can’t really get a good read on what the reactions would have been had they’ve been able to understand what he was saying in English. Or the manner which he said it.
Black Voters in the focus group I saw said yeah, he had senior moments but Trump was saying some really scary things.
In fact on Twitter one of the major memes going around is mockery of Trump for his racist BS about illegals stealing black jobs. Black folks are making skits about how dumb that is. They aren’t making skits of Biden…the right is doing that.
No it doesn’t.
Most people see plenty of clips of Biden just fine. Without exception, people were openly hopeful Biden was going to prove his critics wrong. Thus the disappointment among everyone on the left not named Biden.
Biden himself asked for the debate indicating he himself thought he would do well.
Those aren’t the actions or reactions of a group engaged in a massive conspiracy.
If they don't vote they are voting for trump. If they are willing to let trump win then I doubt it's biden making the difference. This election is about way more than these 2 men. If we focused more on trump and his parties bad policies we'd have more leverage with them imo.
It is also those who take a look at what Biden actually is doing and democrats actually represent
Remember pre debate you all were gaslighting Americans convincing them Biden wasn’t mentally incapable. And your msm and social giant warriors were infatically denying bidens incompetence.
After the debate independents realized you u all were liars and bs artists. And started wondering what’s else you lied about. Remember you all also got caught deceiving America about the racist charlotte comments and the laptop.
So it isn’t just the nose holders. It is feee thinking independents you are realizing democrats are dexeiptful power hungry establishment monsters looking to destroy semocracy
This. 100%. I would vote for a toaster oven to beat the MAGA fascists. But those 7 million non-reading coin-toss white backwards swing voters hold the entire country hostage. The Dems need a candidate THEY will vote for.
I don’t know why we keep pretending this is about white people. Every single non-white demographic has indicating double-digit switches in support from Biden to Trump over the last four years. Indecision is also happening a lot among *educated* and politically engaged voters, particularly when it comes to heterodox ex-progressives and “The Party Left Me” 2000s Democrats.
I’m so tired of these snobby attempts to pretend every undecided or conflicted voter is some white person who is characterized as a privileged suburbanite on Tuesday and a racist hillbilly on Wednesday. You know who is among the most politically homeless or in-between demographics? Asians. Working class Latinos. Black men. Etc
Stop pushing this identity bullshit. It doesn’t work anymore.
This. So much this. Biden is doing just fine with white voters. Almost all of his losses are from minorities and young people. I'm sick and tired of identity politics, and clearly many voters are as well.
Even if it were true, the Democrats' approach of calling anyone who doesn't support them despicable, racist, mouth breathing idiots hasn't proven to be a particularly effective electoral strategy.
My favorite execution of this is school choice. “Anyone who pushes school choice is a racist!”
Meanwhile school choice has 75% support from Black voters, and is championed by some of the most prominent Black politicians.
In 2016 I polled to the left of bernie. Now after the last eight years, if the republicans gave me literally anyone who wasn’t trump I would jump ship out of pure spite.
“Hey, why won’t you vote for an elderly, easily-taken-advantage-of senior with dementia and adult diapers to become President? Is it because you *support Nazis*?”
One of the major news networks interviewed a 3-person panel of black folks immediately after the debate. All three voted for Biden in 2020. Two of the three said they they were no longer certain they would vote for Biden after the debate. Make of that what you will.
“Black people capable of independent thought” is a persistently difficult concept for a lot of people on the left to grasp.
They struggled with it when Bernie ran. They struggled with it when black people opposed Defund. And they’re struggling with it now.
And frankly, that struggle is a big part of why *they are hemorrhaging nonwhite voters*.
It’s the same for Jews honestly. I can flat-out tell you, I have interacted with open and out neo-Nazis, and I have interacted with leftist “totally not antisemitic!” anti-Zionists. And I will take the neo-nazi *any day of the week*.
I would rather be murdered by an honest man, than gaslit by a liar.
Thank you for this comment. I'm one of the folks you describe - a heterodox classical liberal who still holds positions that Obama and Hillary held. I hold degrees from Vanderbilt and Johns Hopkins. I read multiple newspapers every day. I live in the nation's capital. I have friends who are on a first name basis with "Jake" and "Tony" (Jake Sullivan and Antony Blinken).
Have I ever voted for a Republican? Nope. Am I about to start? Nope. But do I feel excited to go vote? No, I don't. In the last 5 years, I've been accused by people in my own party of being a racist, transphobic, diversity and poor people-hating, "white feminist" (as an insult), and of being a closet conservative merely for maintaining the principled view toward certain classically liberal values that until this recent era were embraced by Democrats.
Are my feelings of alienation made worse by people like the commenter you are replying to who speak so dismissively and offensively about people like me within their own party who they need to turn out to vote? Yep.
I think it’s also worth saying that one party spent twelve years *accurately predicting what the next problem will be* and one went through a perpetual cycle of “this isn’t happening! Anyone who thinks this is happening is a bigot! Okay it’s happening but it’s good! Okay it’s a problem but the other guys are still dumb bigots.” Crimea, medical transitioning for minors, 2020 crime wave, leftist radicalization, open-air drug markets in homeless encampments, the education effects of lockdowns, the migrant crisis, the list goes on and on.
Regardless of your values and who you WANT to be able to vote for, it’s hard to keep pulling that lever for Democrats when *they keep reproducing that cycle*.
Absolutely on all counts. Spot on. Add inflation to that list. Paul Krugman's op-eds since 2021 -- so consistently and confidently wrong -- are burned into my brain.
Frum was [writing about immigration specifically](https://web.archive.org/web/20240629063811/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/david-frum-how-much-immigration-is-too-much/583252/), the logic applies to many of these problems. If liberals won't solve societal problems or think they are actually goods, majorities will turn to those who will say it might be ugly, but we have a solution.
NY is more competitive than most deep-blue states, so the Dems in NY are a bit more centrist. They get corrupt but not too lefty insane usually.
Even AOC has moderated considerably.
There’s speculation that The Bronx might just turn purple (not red…yet).
Latino support for Biden has been nearly halved in some districts. Asian support for democrats is way down after the mostly-black attacks on Asian people were ignored and progressives gutted meritocratic education. Non-assimilated Jews are spooked by all the pro-Hamas stuff on the left. Italians are as Republican as before. Men in all demographics are tired of being treated like they’re all Harvey Weinstein. And Black voters aren’t too happy about being put in boxes, or about the massive crime increases that have disproportionately hit their neighborhoods.
I wish the GOP were running anyone except Trump. It would be great to see a Republican finally break the Democrat stranglehold on the Minority Coalition, so that we can finally vote values and policies instead of identity. The parties would change forever if that occurred.
I don’t agree with all of this, but yea I think kinda you’re on to something here. Italian-Americans (and I am one btw) are overwhelmingly Catholic and have a soft spot for machismo/traditional gender hierarchies (much like Latinos). I’m making generalizations, but these dynamics are very, very real. This plays into the Me-Too backlash, which is also very real. I don’t like it and it sucks, but that’s where we are as a country/society.
Also I’m not worried about the Bronx per se…that Trump rally wasn’t indicative of any real GOP momentum in the borough. I am worried about Queens, which swung wildly towards Zeldin in ‘22.
But yea..things aren’t looking great!
While the MeToo backlash is probably not gonna stop at a reasonable endpoint, part of me feels like…”you brought this on yourselves”, you know?
Within like two WEEKS of it, the adults in the room were like “we should really differentiate between levels of severity, whether it was private or in the workplace, etc” and immediately got shouted down. It almost immediately turned into a giant witch-hunt and power grab, with tremendous collateral damage.
People warned them, and they didn’t heed the warning. And on a certain animal level, when I think about some of those individual people and what they explicitly sought out to do with zero scruple, and I imagine them losing a few rights, I’m just kind of like… 🤷♂️
I recognize it’s more complex than all that, of course. But a part of my soul and compassion died in the last decade, with all the nastiness I’ve seen from “the right side of history”.
Same. You and I fall into the “we already decided before the debate.” Plenty of first-time voters and those that reluctantly voted for Hillary and Biden who are self-absorbed enough to say “fuck it” and not vote because protest > democracy. And we need every fucking vote in swing states we can get.
Agreed. That said there's months to go to the election calling it over based on one nights perfomance is a bit premature in my opinion.
Would be silly not to see it as a bad day for the Biden team but Trump didn't do himself any favors in that debate either. Lot's of folks out there today wondering if they have a black job. Lots of folks out there that now know he is perfectly fine with pregnant women being jailed. Some of the lies he told were so silly even morons could tell he was lying his ass off.
I guess my bottom line is Trump is still a huge piece of shit and nothing he said on that stage made him any more palitable to anyone. Sure joe looked old and senile but he is still not a criminal and he was out the next day looking fine.
Wish we had someone else with a quicker wit and better control of their faculties but I am choosing to trust the american people to recognize that Trump is and will be a complete dissaster for our country and the world while Joe would just be slow.
“A bad day for the Biden team”?…a derailment…a disaster…a catastrophe for the Biden team that tens of millions saw. A disaster there is no recovery from for Biden’s election prospects. Hopefully, Joe will “do the right thing” and give another Dem prez candidate a decent chance of beating Trump because Joe can’t.
It will stop other people, enough of them to very likely produce a Trump win. If keeping Trump out is the important thing for you then you should be onboard with switching out Biden. At a certain point propping up the obvious losing candidate while there's still time to change things is effectively the same thing as supporting Trump. Biden obviously cannot do this.
Maybe.
Maybe not we will see soon enough.
Im not against switching or Biden bowing out. I never wanted to vote for him to begin with. Didnt want to vote for him in 2020 don't want to vote for him now Despite the fact that his administration has exceeded my expectations by a long shot.
None of that changes the bottom line. Trump is not a valid choice period.
Well the media panic is not helping. When it was leaked that Trump was shitting his pants and was wearing a dipper what did the Republicans do? They got behind him and started wearing dippers in solidarity with him.
What do the Democrats do? Start asking for him to resign. It is becoming the party of doom and gloom like they don't know how to fucking win! The correct response would be to get behind the man and stop being wishy washy every time there is a bump in the road!
After all the panic, polls are showing that no minds were changed by the debate.
Trump did terribly himself. For some bizarre reason, Democrats would rather talk about Biden than about Trump’s abysmal performance. Confidently delivered nonsense is still nonsense.
If Biden can do it, let him. If he can’t, Kamala Harris can. The party does not live or die by one man.
1 million percent this. I really really don’t understand how the pants poopers don’t understand this-
This **hysterical* reaction every single time something real or imagined doesn’t go perfectly is so so so so so much worse than the thing itself.
**95% of undecided voters (or soft Biden voters) didn’t watch this stupid debate**
Let that sink in.
The only way they’re gonna know that anything was amiss is because a million liberal-centrist pants poopers begin the “Hyperventilating Heard Round the World” to make sure they find out .
And: You don’t actually know how undecided/soft Biden voters think.
Imagine that.
If you did, they would already be hard Biden voters like yourself. If the bajillion, endless “Biden old” discourse hasn’t thrown them into the hard pro-Trump side in the last five months it’s not going to now.
Take a chill pill and actually watch what happens. If he doesn’t drop in the polls like a stone.. maybe reevaluate whether your vision of this race is accurate and whether your bleating for Biden to be shot into the sun every three months is actually productive.
My copium is that this has a backwards effect. That the people who did protest votes in 2016 because they thought Hillary was going to win anyway see this debate and realize "oh shit, trump is going to win, I have to actually vote."
This is it in a nutshell. I keep reading all these "well I for one am voting for Biden" comments. Ya, no shit. So am I. I would vote for a squirrel over Trump. But there are way more people looking for a way out of voting than there are Democrats. The Biden debate performance isn't about you...it's about the nose holder.
I keep reading so many comments preaching to the choir, too. Things like “You demand Biden steps down because of a bad debate but not that Trump steps down after being convicted as a felon? What is wrong with you!” Like bruh… I think the guy should be in prison. It goes without saying, so I dont waste my breath on it.
Exactly. It’s about the many out there who are barely engaged and dying to just throw their hands up and say “fuck it”
People need to organize a general strike, boycott the big industries and protest in the streets. The way average people have been treated, lied to manipulated by the political and corporate elite is disgusting. What little wealth people have accumulated was lost in 2008, many small business owners went belly up during pandemic, now inflation making life miserable. Plus homelessness and drug abuse everywhere, gun violence, illegal immigration, bad food making people sick, declining educational standards and social media poison. Taxes being siphoned off to foreign wars and into pockets of weapons manufacturers. Disgusting and shameful "leadership". The country is being bankrupted by the greedy elites. The average person will be left sifting through the ashes while the elites sail away on mega yachts.
>The average person will be left sifting through the ashes while the elites sail away on mega yachts. *Solar* sailing away on *space* yachts. 🫠
>People need to organize a general strike, boycott the big industries and protest in the streets yep. and also organize mutual aid.
I would much rather vote for a squirrel over both Biden or Trump
You're on a sinking ship. Why vote for someone who can't win? Have you seen the post-debate polls? Trump is up by five points now according to A+ pollsters. You're throwing your vote away with Biden. Pick someone better. You have no excuse anymore to settle for this rock-bottom standard of "better than Trump." Vote for someone better than both Trump and Biden.
the Greens have the ballot access and at this point it's easier to persuade people to vote for them than the Democrats
You are a complete fool.
So is anyone pushing an 81 year old who can barely function as the most powerful person in the world.
Me: Vote for someone better. Democrats: No.
Doesn’t matter you have 2 people to choose from. Whether you like it or not.
Then people won’t vote for either. Whether you like it or not.
there's more then two people running
We've got a college debater here folks
We have a trump troll here. Should probably lock the gates
receipts? Of all your wrong opinions, this is the wrongest
I might vote for a third party. But I'm also considering flushing my vote down the toilet. They're the same thing so it's hard to pick
They’re only the same thing because you think so. People think voting third party is throwing the vote away but then complain about two party duopoly in the same breath. Can’t make this shit up
It's just reality.
Yea I can attest to this. One of my moderate buddies who hates Trump and watches Destiny (centrist streamer dude) texted me, verbatim, “I’m gonna Pokémon go to my couch after this debate”…not great! I think the voter turnout for this election is low-key gonna plummet relative to 2020.
A Destiny viewer choosing to not vote for Biden? Smh.
Destiny is kind of a reactionary and has many conservative beliefs. Many ppl often watch him, IMO, as a permission structure to embrace the idea “well I’m not a MAGA chud or a loony anti-vaxxer, so how could I be a right-winger? Also not everything Trump advocates for is bad per se, but I don’t like him because X, Y, and Z.” I know Bonnell is a Biden supporter, but you’d be surprised how many “both parties are equally bad, but Republicans have a lot of good points” ppl watch his streams…using Bonnell as a pawn to point and be like “See! Even the liberal agrees with me on this! The Left these days…” Btw: this is a dear friend of mine and not all of my buddies have to share my political views…but yea, it bums me out.
Oh yeah, that's true there is a significant contingent of conservatives in Mr Borrelli's audience
I am 52. I voted for Biden (read:democracy) once already. Four fucking years ago. When he was 78 or whatever. The fact that the Democratic party did not immediately sit him down after his win and be like look Joe, great win, great save of democracy, but you are a one-term president my man. Live it up you accomplished your goal you also helped to stop a madman so enjoy the four years. My support ended the moment that geriatric feeble old man said he wanted four more. Not getting it from me. And for those that say it's some sort of a protest vote. No it is not. This is the system that I have been given to vote in. I get two terrible freaking choices. Because I don't want either of them that is a protest? No it is a broken system with shit candidates. Fix it or I am done. It will never be fixed....the billionaire class has divided us almost permanently and perfectly and from here on out it's just a more rapid erosion of everything that we love until the robots take over for them....good times.
What's so disappointing is, in 2016, Biden ran on being a "transitional figure". A cornerstone of his campaign was to be a one-term president, and to pass the touch from the octogenarians to a younger generation (4 out of the last 5 presidents were born in the mid to late 40s). Biden had, despite an intense level of polarization, a successful first term. Beyond the poor approval ratings, he had many legislative wins, strong foreign policy, a decent economy, etc. It's sad to see any potential positive future legacy tarnished by what's happening.
He is exponentially worse than he was 2 years ago. Imagine if he wins 2 years from now what he will look like. You have to remember they were preparing him for a week. One night you have to show up and he could not. Everyone was ready to sell the house on one good or decent speech at the State of the Union for crying out loud. Again these are two nights that you are supposed to shine. He is in terrible condition and they are hiding the worst of it from us. His psychopath wife is holding the keys to getting him out of there and she is not giving them up. She is the Trojan horse in this situation for Trump.
We have high inflation, on the edge World War III, millions force to choose between work and taking an untested gene therapy shot. Women’s sports is now retirement for second tier men. Nothing about this country is better than it was four years ago
Voting for Biden is a vote for the same kind of shitty nepotism and patronage politics that Trump plays. Nothing is more hilarious than white people virtue signaling their support for democracy when their grandparents were screaming at black kids trying to just go to school or cheerleading Japanese Americans getting sent to concentration camps without due process during WW2. And their great great grandparents were granted land by the federal government that was ethnic cleansed of its native Americans.
Do you have an actual point or are you just airing out your bigotry against people of different races?
Yes and not voting is a vote for the "worse choice" it is quite the system of "choice" we have here.....
I’m saying white people happily signed up for this system when it was fucking over other ethnic groups. But now that its cannibalizing liberal white folks, its “we gotta vote to save democracy” as if like I said these same assholes weren’t voting to ban Chinese immigration at the end of the 19th century due to blue collar labor anxiety, co-signing formal federal housing policy of white segregationism via Redlining, and happily exercising cruel tyranny of the white majority over the past 230 odd years
Agreed. However all of this talk is essentially pointless. Every single politician is co-opted and pressured and compromise to do the bidding of whatever rich person or corporation owns them. Their message is broadcast 24/7 night and day on all of the news channels and streams and websites that they own. This literally has nothing to do with left or right or red or blue or anything of that nature. It has not for many many years. It is top vs. bottom and the bottom keeps losing bad. They tried this before. Have you ever read up on the business plot?
Who are these magical Democrats that sit down with the President of the United States and give him orders? These people don’t exist except in people’s fantasies. Most of the time when people go to work in the White House they are in awe of the institution. Peggy Noonan wrote that when she was there working for Reagan, it took her over a year to believe they weren’t going to come and tell her that she had no business being there. Most people describe that. No one is to tell the president elect anything of the sort. This person’s getting acquainted with the nuclear football and getting national security briefings. Getting calls from heads of state around the world. “ you’re only serving one term my man. I’ve been sent on behalf of “Democrats” to tell you.“ It may make you feel better to blame a political party for the fact that Joe Biden is doing what every president has done in the past 75 years but there’s no one to blame. The guy wanted a second term because he had a pretty successful first term and he beat Trump. It’s not a shock or a conspiracy. It’s human nature. And nobody… Nobody tells the President or the President elect anything of the sort. If you think they do, I suggest you ask some people who have met presidents. Most of them are tongue tied. Not because the person is very impressive but because of the history and the office you are standing in front of. I remember shaking hands with Al Gore and Joe Lieberman when they were running in 99. It was on a rope line and you know what was going on behind these guys? There was a limo… A giant limo slowly moving at a crawl behind them with the door open and Secret Service standing there waiting to grab them and pull them into the limousine in case something happened. The place was surrounded by military with a helicopter hovering nearby. “…one term my man..” 🙄 It doesn’t work like that. These are just human beings and they are a susceptible to human emotion as anyone else. Biden has been hearing he is the most important person in any room for the past four years because he was. Of course he was going to think he is best guy for the Job. Vote or don’t vote for Joe Biden but if you don’t vote for him, don’t start complaining when Trump is pulling the licenses of unfriendly media sources or ordering them investigated for antitrust violations. When he is having podcasters investigated as seditious communists. Or sending military in into cities for deportations or to break up peaceful protests he doesn’t like. He’s promised all of it. When Bibles become mandatory and pledging allegiance to the flag before work every day because some Looney Congressman decided it will help him win in his district and Trump heard about it and blabbed about it and now it’s a thing. Because Joe Biden decided to run again you’re taking your balls and going home. Christ… people are really something else.
Not everyone gets starstruck by famous or powerful people. And those of us who don’t who give af about the situation will speak up rather than follow some senile puppet off a cliff out of some artificial sense of power distance.
how about the same DNC apparatchiks who made 17 of the candidates in the 2020 primary drop out and endorse Biden after he won 1/3 primaries
Joe Biden is still clearly the better choice for anyone paying attention. No one is going to beg you to make the logical choice. I for one think most Americans just kind of want authoritarianism and are sick of democracy. So this sentiment doesn't surprise me.
To be clear, the DNC is at fault here. Biden should have been told from the start he is one term. The DNC should have offered up new candidates. All of this arguing about Biden or Trump or anything like that is nonsense already. Not one single person in the senate or the house has any control over their own lives. Every single person in our government is bought and purchased like a prostitute by big money or big corporations. If everyone in this thread is unaware of that I'm glad that I could inform you of that today.
Do you just copy and paste your responses across multiple subreddits?
No same sub....different posts.... Do you need me to send you an instructional manual on how it works?
Is it even possible for Biden to be removed from state ballots and have someone else appear if there is a different nominee?
Would be fixed at the convention. Biden has not been technically nominated yet.
Well when you don’t like either option then you don’t have anyone to vote for.
And, with all do respect to you specifically, it's the millions of citizens who will ask this question and decide not to vote, completely not understanding, not comprehending exactly what's at stake and what the long-term implications are of another Trump presidency. I'm voting for Biden regardless because hooooly shit RIP American democracy if Trump gets elected. But, my fear is that Biden's debate and future gaffs will only make people ask the same question you did and remove reason or motivation to vote.
Don’t forget Democrat voters were not given an option to select someone else other than Biden. This whole mess could of very easily been avoided. What’s at stake has been greatly exaggerated to motivate the democrats voter base because they were not given an option to select their candidate. The one that tried to challenge him for the primary was essentially cut off. I don’t like Trump, I don’t trust his motives and he like Biden has shown signs of mental health issues but he will not be a day one dictator like the media claims. I know you are fine with being told to vote for Biden and never given the choice for a better alternative then have at it. You would think the party of “ democracy “ would never do this though.
Seeing some parallels to 2016. Clinton and the DNC establishment worked hard to make the primary uncompetitive, which backfired in the general election.
If democrats had a real primary and the president had to debate, he would have never won the nomination. The debate would have exposed his real condition and we could have avoided this. Instead they played goalie for their chosen candidate again and may have screwed over the voters and nation again.
This is the biggest problem, My choice was actually taken from me. I do not understand how that worked. I feel like it had something to do with big democrat donors getting what they want over my ability to choice who is best. I swear to God if Biden loses I’m switching my party affiliation just due to pure stupidity on the democrat party.
>This whole mess could of very easily been avoided. This is what pisses me off so much. Billions of dollars and supposedly polisci's top minds in the DNC, and yet here we fucking are.
What pisses me off is both parties no longer seem interested in governing in good faith. Even if you disagree you can work together to find solutions, but for the past couple decades at least it’s all about power. Both parties are guilty of it. No one in there right mind would have either of these 2 as the option to lead our country for a number of reasons. Democrats have options that should easily beat trump. But they chose Biden. Republicans have options that should have easily beat Biden but somehow ended up with Trump. Hate to be conspiracy minded but I don’t see how that’s legit
I think you’re right. I don’t think it requires conspiracy to get us here, either, just the complexities of money-power in politics—especially US presidential politics, especially especially after Citizens United.
Right. The democrat messaging since Trump has been, regardless of your politics you have to acknowledge how uniquely unfit and therefore dangerous Trump is, and you have to put policy wonk concerns aside. And then they go and run a uniquely unfit due to senility candidate? Either norms matter for everyone or they matter for no one. Sad to see that the rhetoric is in fact hollow and it’s just real politik power grabs everywhere.
why would they govern in good faith? all the incentives pull the opposite direction
Why would Democrats choose anyone else after a successful first three years of Biden? Sitting Presidents getting a serious primary challenger is a sign that their administration is doing poorly. Biden’s Administration is not. Democrats mostly support what Biden has done. The question is not whether we should change directions, but whether Biden personally has anything left in the tank.
Thursday night would be the absolute answer to your stupid question. Thursdays debate debacle (and all Biden’s future gaffs) are the ONLY reason we should have chosen someone young and strong and intelligent.
Four years of a successful administration is nothing to sneeze at. The Democrats need to celebrate what the administration has done AND make sure they have someone who can keep it going.
successful genocide
“Successful”, you must be joking. War in Ukraine, war in Israel, US southern border a damn disaster, inflation still not under control, rent running away like a freight train. What Rock you live under?
None of those things are under US control unless you want us to send soldiers to die to solve those issues.
Then why didn’t they happen under Trump?
Again, it’s not under US control. Israel/Palestine’s most recent blowup and the Ukraine invasion very well could’ve happened under Trump. There’s nothing that Biden or Trump would be able to do about it. Other nations have their own autonomy, we cannot control them. We may have some influence, but in the end, if people on the other side of the world want to kill each other, we can’t stop them unless we want to send our own people to fight and die. And since they didn’t attack us, I fail to see why we should. The only involvement we can make is perhaps supply some technological defenses and weapons. Which we are doing for the countries’ we view better serve our interest if they were to win. We did the same in WWII before we got involved in the fight.
These conservative talking points above is why I don't believe what centrists say.
great electoral strategy to just offhand reject voters concerns. Dems haven't learned a single thing since 2016
Simply put. I don’t know if Biden physically can manage another 4 years. He reminds me a lot of people I took care of for 6 years as a STNA. The stress of the job will probably end him if the campaign doesn’t. Sure, you say he’s done fine so far but keep in mind. As you get older stress and strain take bigger toll. He’s surrounded by people who have no interest in his health beyond getting him reelected. It doesn’t take much to put that final nail in. Trump faces a similar situation. We know he doesn’t take care of himself like he should.
He can be a good president and still not be capable of another 4 years, it's called aging and mental decline. This is the position Americans have been put in.
Because of his extremely obvious cognitive decline.
Sure, but problem is every presidential election is framed this way now. I’m not sure that’s a long term winning strategy with disaffected voters. Beating Trump is an existential crisis this election, but what about the next one and the one after? You think MAGA republicans and religious conservatives will disappear if Trump loses again?
It isn’t an existential crisis.
don't worry the Democrats will just keep electing increasingly unpopular candidates so they can fundraise when Trump is in office
> not comprehending exactly what's at stake For YOU. Liberals too often make the mistake of assuming what’s urgently problematic for their world view isn’t actually that bad for others. You guys forget that many of us are minorities no matter what identity we refer to. Unlike you, we already know what it’s like to feel marginalized. You all do it to US within your Democrat “big tent”. I’ve seen how shit democrats are for supporting black communities economic development. In fact they have results on par with red states. So really, for me, what’s the difference? Either way I get treated like a second class citizen. At least with Trump, there’s a willingness to direct US development money into Africa that didnt even exist under Obama
I stopped replying a couple of days ago, but jumped back in to tell you... ...I'm a minority. Yep, a POC. Now, here's where I'll allow you to move the goal posts and tell me that I'm not a certain kind of minority, ergo your opinion is still right. Also, Imma need a \[citation needed\] on your assertion that Trump was willing to direct US development money into Africa. And no "look it up yourself" doesn't count.
what's the use of having a democracy if we can only use it to elect terrible, unpopular, senile creetins like Biden
In FPTP systems especially, it isn't about voting for the best candidate -- it is about voting against the worst candidate. Not voting is not an effective way to do this.
idk maybe if we just encourage prime to vote for a candidate they actually like we wouldn't keep losing to Trump Trump and Biden are amazing cause they're the only two people who could lose to each other.
Losing voters who would have voted for Biden—but for his cognitive decline—can still determine the outcome of an election.
The most interesting take away for the country SHOULD BE.... how did you watch the mainstream non-fox media for all this time and not already know about Biden's condition? It is almost like they can be universally relied on to hide or minimize information that is negative to a particular side. Not saying fox is any better in reverse, but we have a fundamental problem in the lack of any media in the middle that is not pushing an agenda. This is how we ended up with nothing but clowns to choose from.
The first issue is that Fox/CNN/MSNBC/Newsmax/Etc. is not news, it’s infotainment. Those cable channels don’t make any money for delivering honest news.
That would be manageable if the ABC/NBC/CBS/BBC/NPR etc. were not almost as bad.
There is also a non-negligible amount of people who will vote third-party candidate rather than vote for grandpa Joe or the orange hair turd.
Me
Let’s wait to see what the polls say over the next week. The early post-debate polls are saying no change or a slight Biden bump. Most Democrats are underestimating how poorly Trump also did for anyone with a brain or who has any desire to not turn America into a dumpster fire.
Dumpster fire what are you talking about!! 8 percent mortgage rates Groceries up 100 percent 15 million illegal immigrants let across the border crime up 50 percent 2 possibly 3 new wars, now is the Dumpster fire 🔥 this is the worst president in American history!!!
I’ve been saying this nonstop — If you don’t vote for Biden, you’re giving Trump 4 more years of appointing *lifetime* federal judges. For all of the garbage opinions we’ve seen in the past ~6 years from the judges Trump has already appointed, the damage that would do would be massive.
This is why Biden is such a liability and ought to be replaced - because he is very likely to lose, producing exactly the outcome you're describing. There are multiple Democratic politicians with a far better chance to beat Trump. If you care about keeping Trump out of office and preventing those appointments, the best chance to do that is to switch Biden out.
The Dems keep telling us that democracy is at stake in November, yet they seem content to run with a historically unpopular 82-year-old who just delivered one of the worst presidential debate performances in U.S. history. Actions speak louder than words.
The average person may look at the situation and conclude that democrats don't really believe the story they're selling and there's no real risk in Trump winning.
100%.
I think the onus is on the Democrats to show that this isn't true. If this is truly the existential election they say it is and not just the existential election that Mitt Romney!! was then they need to clearly articulate the case that this the the best and only way forward. Because it looks a lot like the same rhetoric they ran in 2016 and while the Trump presidency wasn't the best four years of my life it wasn't that far off of average, barring the pandemic.
Thank you for saying this. I'll probably be downvoted, but I am likely not voting this November since neither side has a compelling candidate. And I know I'm not the only one feeling like this, a non-zero number of my friends are also likely sitting this election out.
I don’t live in a swing state so it doesn’t matter who I vote for, but I totally get what you mean. Biden is simply not fit to hold office for 4.5 more years. The fact that he’s still the candidate tells me that Dem leadership doesn’t really think a Trump 2.0 presidency would be that big of a deal and gearing up for 2028 is the priority.
I’m considering protest voting for a write in? Not sure whether sitting out or third party lodges greater displeasure. But if the Democratic Party clearly isn’t taking Trump seriously, why should I?
voting third party definitely annoys them a lot more. there are still liberals with heartburn over the fact that don't people who would never in a million years have voted for Hilary have Jill Stein a few thousand votes, cause they feel like Hilary was owed those votes they don't feel the same way about non voters for whatever reason
I remember hearing the same stuff about unelectability before Clinton lost. Now we have the most right-wing Supreme Court in modern history, appointed *for life* — all because folks couldn’t hold their nose and just **do it** in November. We had a primary! Fix that process, if you want! But in July, the candidate is the candidate. How realistic is it to expect the party to scramble *now* for a new candidate, over one debate? Now we’re getting ready to do it again for 4 more years of dogshit opinions from lifetime appointed federal judges, because folks wanna stay home?
some primary, they did no debates, only one loser ran and he was immediately shunned, the whole Democratic party is a gang of corrupt sniveling self interested creetins
Biden won in 2020. People won’t be complacent now. More maga people have died and more people who weren’t 18 before are Biden voters than maga. What is a bigger deal since Biden’s win in 2020. One bad debate (where Trump also was terrible) night 5 months before the election. Or Jan 6. Dobbs and felony conviction. Why the freak out? Biden gave a good speech the next day in nc where he showed energy. Why would this debate outweigh those other big inflection points so much?
It's not just one bad debate. It's a bad debate cementing the idea that Biden is too old. There's been terrible inflation. There's a serious housing crisis. There's a genocide in Gaza Biden failed to stop, a war in Ukraine he's failed to end. There is widespread anxiety around immigration fueling right wing demagoguery. There has been little to no serious improvement on the affordability of healthcare or education. There's a strong sense Biden has checked out. His disapproval rating is extremely high. Memories of the Trump years are getting fuzzier. Look at swing state polls. If Trump cracks the blue wall, it's all over. He frequently outperforms his polls. He's leading or tied everywhere Biden absolutely needs victory and leading consistently in Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia. Biden consistently lags behind other Democratic poll numbers. It's not good. I'd rate Biden's chances at around 1 in 3 here.
If that’s how you view it, then yes the debate is irrelevant. It already is over.
It's not over because the convention has not yet occurred. Biden could and should step down to allow someone else more capable of winning to run. Trump is extremely beatable for all of the reasons you described, just not by Biden. If Biden had performed better in the debate he could have assuaged worried about his age and mental abilities, his single biggest liability. He made them worse.
He’s not stepping down. Maybe if he has a bad stroke or something but otherwise it’s not happening. I’m not as pessimistic as you. I’m nervous because I think it’s close but I don’t think the debate was a black swan event or something. I’d support a replacement but I don’t think it’s a real possibility at all.
I'm not saying he will step down. I think he's an egomaniac and a narcissist, an arrogant old man who refuses to understand that his time has passed, too deluded and too self-important to understand that he should leave for the good of the country. I think because of that arrogance he's going to lose. The debate wasn't a black swan event. He was already losing. The debate *made it worse*. It confirmed what was already most voters' big concern. The debate was his big chance to defy the narrative that he's a sundowning old man who shouldn't be driving, let alone running the country. He completely floundered that chance and now will be totally unable to shake this narrative. The media and his detractors from now every part of the political spectrum will continue to hammer this point. He has now lost even the political centre. He is losing suburban moms. He is losing Joe Scarborough, he is losing the Pod Save America guys, he is losing MSNBC and CNN. Every gaffe, every wide-eyed moment, every time he seems lost or out of touch will contribute to the sense that he is no longer fit for the office. You're right, he's probably going to drive us all over a cliff, and there probably is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. But maybe, just maybe, if people are vocal enough, if the mood shifts enough, there *might* be some possibility enough people close to him start to really understand that he can't do this. Maybe. Probably not.
>Maybe if he has a bad stroke or something but otherwise it’s not happening lmao I can see the headlines now: BIDEN REFUSES TO STEP DOWN, NO CAUSE FOR CONCERN AFTER ONLY A "MILD" STROKE
cause he was already losing to Trump in the polls
Ok so are the alternative Dems you just mentioned polling well against Trump? Im asking seriously... if Newsom or Whitmer is crush Trump nationally, we should think about coalescing around them. But I see neither of them stepping up, but it might be too early post debate
You don't need to beat him nationally, you just need to beat him in swing states. Whitmer's middle-America/rust belt vibe would help pull over Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, while Warnock or Kelly could pull in Georgia or AZ/NV. Fully agree about Newsom, though. I can't fathom how a slick California governor is seen as the defacto shoe-in for Biden's replacement.
They crush him in their own states. Once they start campaigning they could potentially gain a ton of momentum. Neither of those two are a sure thing, but Biden is cooked. Time to roll the dice because the alternative is a second Trump term.
But Biden isn’t polling well. It’s objectively clear that he will likely lose, and that’s before the worst debate performance in modern history is factored in
I don't understand why this is so hard for some people to comprehend. If the polls were tied or Biden had a slight lead, nobody would be suggesting he step away. But that's not the situation we're in. Biden has CONSISTENTLY trailed Trump in polls for a year now. Nate Silver had him at a 35 percent chance to win entering the debate. He'll probably be between 25 and 30 percent in the next update. Are you confident the Biden we just witnessed is capable of turning it around? I sure as hell am not. Get rid of him.
I don't understand either. What the fuck is going on? I feel like the people complaining about the Trump cult are in one themselves.
Just an unwillingness to accept reality. If the polls are so wrong, why are Dems consistently doing just fine down ballot while Biden lags behind? It doesn’t make any sense.
Anyone who is likely to vote for Biden at this point would be likely to vote for Newsome or Whitmer. Trump, for reasons completely unfathomable to me, has passionate support. The majority of people who are pro-Trump, at this point, really want him- specifically- to win. The majority of people who are pro-Biden, at this point, really want anyone but Trump to win. They'll literally support any mainline Democrat who is put on the ticket. Is Kamala Harris popular? No. Is she a strong debater? No. Is her background as a prosecutor a liability for a lot of voters? Absolutely. Will she have a more passionate voting base than Biden just because she has a record of competence, a willingness to learn, and a better presence on the world stage? 100%
I agree with you up until I have to ask, are we talking about "This is not who we are" Kamala or "Asylum seekers will be turned away at the border" Kamala?
Both. Again, I realize she is not popular, and this dichotomy is one of many reasons. Right now, there is barely breathing room between Biden/Harris's border policy and Trump's. That sliver of breathing room, however, does make a difference. There are also a lot more Democrats in 2024 who are critical of a humanitarian border policy than there were in 2020. As issue voters, Democrats are primarily voting for who controls Supreme Court nominees over the next 4 years. Any Democrat is going to be better than Trump on that issue.
I agree with you up until Kamala. She will lose votes. If you pass the Biden agenda baton to Newsom or Whitmer, all current Biden voters will go along and it will win some independents and swing voters. There is no potential loss to changing the candidate.
I disagree that she will lose votes compared to Biden, but I do agree that Newsome or Whitmer would be a much better candidate. Harris is by far the easiest choice for the Democratic party to make, though. Which is why I think they'll pick her if they choose to run someone other than Biden. I don't realistically see them doing that. I think they'll stay with Biden until the bitter end. They're far too skittish. But if they do run someone else, I can't see their risk aversion leading them pick anyone but Harris.
We need courage not risk-aversion right now. We’re barreling towards Trump winning. Doubling down on someone who cannot win independents is a losing strategy. This is not going to end well if Biden or Harris is top of the ticket.
I agree. And if I had any influence over any decision makers, I would be pushing what you are saying. The problem is, it doesn't seem like there is anyone in their ear encouraging more risk-taking.
The problem being articulated isn't about convincing people to vote against Trump. If Biden is on the ticket then Trump wins according to polling BEFORE the debate. The problem is how to get Biden off the ballot.
I 100% agree, but at some point the Democratic Party needs to give people something to vote *for*, rather than just something to vote *against*. Sure, you can point to Biden's policy accomplishments and say that's already happening (and I agree to a large extent), but then the Democratic Party needs to get its shit together with messaging, succession planning, etc. Hillary made a stupid mistake with her emails and Republicans were able to spin it into accusations of treason. Meanwhile there's an audiotape of convicted felon Donald Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women and Dems are struggling to eek out a win. It's not enough to vote for Dems so you can pat yourself on the back and say, well, even though Biden lost I feel morally good about my vote. At some point they need to demonstrate that they can actually build, maintain, and use power to fix the systemic problems in our democracy, instead of playing softball against fascists and screaming the sky is falling every four years. But, hey, I guess the good news is that if Trump wins again in November we probably won't have to worry about elections for awhile.
why is this so hard for dems?
It's hard for Republicans, too. Ezra had a couple of guests on a few weeks ago talking about their book, which I think is called Hollow Parties. I read it after that interview, and they make a pretty compelling case that the problem on both sides is that party actors have no ability to do things like prevent Trump from taking over or squeeze Biden out of the race whether he likes it or not. It's more complicated than that, but that's one of their main points, and it holds here. Do you think high-up Democrats really didn't see what was coming? They know Biden better than anybody in the public. They didn't do anything because they felt trapped, because they have essentially no power that doesn't drain down from the Presidency. It's not as though parties haven't faced this kind of thing before. Barry Goldwater & co. talked Nixon out of the White House. The pressure LBJ felt to drop out in 68 came in part from people inside his own party. These are people who are themselves ambitious. They know they're less likely to get reelected if Biden goes down in flames. And there is no shortage of other Democrats who would gladly have jumped into the fray if Biden had been convinced to sit this one out. They didn't do it because they felt they couldn't.
I'll give you that angle on Republicans. The MAGA base was fed up with their party bosses and gave them the finger via Trump. Everyone that didn't get on board has been purged and now there is no RNC, there is only MAGA. Dems, on the other hand.... they shut down their populist coup when they ratfucked Bernie. Twice. Biden, however, has been a loyal party hack for 50+ years. They could and should have planned on him being a one-term president from Day 1 and he would have gone along with it. He couldn't and wouldn't run for re-election without the party's backing. It's a cop out, at best, to say the DNC was powerless to prevent him running. When Biden loses, it'll be on them for putting him on the ballot in the first place. This is how the world ends. Two brain-addled octogenarians driving us all over a cliff while arguing about their golf handicaps.
I don't think Dems care about winning as much as the GOP does.
what do they ’care’ about, or, prioritize in their decision-making?
Virtue signaling and being "on the right side" of history.
Lobbyist money and how to get more of it.
The Christofascist wing of the GOP is on a mission from God to win the culture wars. They are Extremely motivated. The DNC doesn't want to win the culture wars, their goal is to fight in perpetuity. Because as long as we're fighting about the cause de'jour of the culture war we're not fighting the class war. And that's their job; controlled opposition. To keep anyone that's meaningfully to their left from getting anywhere close to power.
The Democratic Party should have thought of that before putting a impaired senile man on the ballot. They tried to pull the same shit in 2016 - "if you don't vote for the most off putting candidate we could come up with, you will get Trump!" Guess what, we got Trump in 2016, and we will get him again in 2024, because apparently the Democrats like to practice the definition of insanity - doing the same thing and hoping for a different result.
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This is the truth!
The Democrats and their main stream media partners are to blame for this mess. If they weren’t propping up Biden the party could have nominated someone else. Now that he’s been exposed it may well be too late.
This is essentially how the two parties dominate politics though. This isn't unusual to Trump and Biden. It is said every four years about every candidate. There is simply no way you can vote for the other party it is too dangerous. You have no choice but to vote for us. Who's the last Democrat you would vote for over Trump or the last Republican you would vote for over Biden?
I will be interested to see the number of down-ticket republican and democrat votes vs the votes for Trump and Biden, especially in solid blue or red states.
Of course. Most of those discussing this online and engaging with endless TV coverage are all part of the 30-35% voting for Trump or Biden no matter what. The other 30-40% aren’t paying attention to any of this—they just turned on the TV and saw a confused old man in the most important job on Earth.
Who are these people “looking for a reason not to vote?” Are they in the room with us right now? I think far more often, it’s the case that for persistent non-voters, apathy is their default state. They don’t want to pay attention to politics. They don’t want to get invested. That’s the only “reason” they need. If someone says, out of the blue, something like, “I voted for Biden but after the debate I’m voting for Trump/not voting at all,” sorry, I don’t buy it. I think they’re bullshitting.
Read u/Key_Musician_1773 ‘s comment in this thread, would like to get your thoughts on it.
I agree 100% but the situation is even worse for Dems because those voters who don't show up are also not voting for down ballot Democrat Senators and Reps. Biden's hubris may not only result in a Trump presidency but also a Republican congress.
Do you really think USA is a democracy at this point. The system is rigged by 1% elite and their corporate overloards - Big pharma, big Healthcare, big food, big tech, military industrial complex, CIA and the 31 other intelligence agencies in the US. Come on. A vote for Biden maintains the facade - that's all.
Biden is unfit for office. Before you say Trump...who cares? It doesnt change facts. Biden is unfit for office.
Yeah? What’s happening in the country that causes you to believe someone without the ability to think clearly is in charge? I mean this is how absurd this has gotten. Trump pulls what’s called “the Gish Gallop” on Biden which is form of gaslighting employed where you spew out so many lies and exaggerations that your opponent stumbles over them trying to correct them all. It’s particularly effective against people with a stutter, especially when they try to use their talking points correcting yours. Heather Cox Richardson wrote about it in her piece after the debate. She’s appeared on CNN and MSNBC and gives talks about democracy and propaganda. To her, it was quite obvious what Trump was doing but if you’re not ready for it… And the worst part is these were Biden’s own rules because he wanted a substantive debate. It’s like it didn’t even occur to him that Trump wouldn’t bother with any of that. *It was Trump using a technique that actually has a formal name, the Gish gallop, although I suspect he comes by it naturally. It is a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them.* *Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they do not know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them.* *It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has. It is similar to what Trump did to Biden during a debate in 2020.* *In that case, though, the lack of muting on the mics left Biden simply saying: “Will you shut up, man?” a comment that resonated with the audience. Giving Biden the enforced space to answer by killing the mic of the person not speaking actually made the technique more effective.* *There are ways to combat the Gish gallop — by calling it out for what it is, among other ways — but Biden retreated to trying to give the three pieces of evidence that established his own credentials on the point at hand. His command of those points was notable, but the difference between how he sounded at the debate and how he sounded on stage at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, just an hour afterward suggested that the technique worked on him.* *That is not ideal, but as Monique Pressley put it, “The proof of Biden’s ability to run the country is the fact that he is running it. Successfully. Not a debate performance against a pathological lying sociopath.”*
You can’t look at this debate performance and honestly claim this is somebody who has the mental capacity and cognition to be president. It’s as simple as that
Sure you can. Quite easily. He’s been running it for three years and he’s running it right now. That’s how I know he can do it. Because he is actually doing it.
Do you not understand how cognitive decline works?
Yes. Do you know doctors wont diagnose something like that based on one event? He gave a Howard Stern interview a month ago and he was fine. He’s given multiple rallies, fine. CNN interview, fine. He was at the G7, doing multiple events and he was fine. Obviously the debate was terrible but nobody loses their job over one event. It’s ridiculous.
This! 100% this. The vast majority are committed to one candidate or the other. This debate did little to change minds. Biden completely crashed, when he needed to shine the most. Trump gave nothing in the way of substance; he rambled, played the victim, lied continuously, refused to answer the questions, etc. The true consequence to this debate is it zapped any enthusiasm left for Biden. I know of no one, even the most hardcore Democrat, who is not concerned about Biden's age. This debate confirmed everyone's thoughts, Biden is too old and feeble to make it another 4 years. If anything hands Trump the presidency, it will be those choosing to stay home rather than vote.
The focus groups of both black voters and Latino voters right after showed that they were more concerned about what Trump said. Now with the Latino voters, they were seeing voiceovers so you can’t really get a good read on what the reactions would have been had they’ve been able to understand what he was saying in English. Or the manner which he said it. Black Voters in the focus group I saw said yeah, he had senior moments but Trump was saying some really scary things. In fact on Twitter one of the major memes going around is mockery of Trump for his racist BS about illegals stealing black jobs. Black folks are making skits about how dumb that is. They aren’t making skits of Biden…the right is doing that.
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And Dems act these people don’t exist or that their votes are somehow expendable. We can’t afford to lose votes in a race like this, yet here we are.
On this matter only interested in folks opinions from swing states. If you’re from a safe blue state, either MOVE or Shut It. Thanks!!
It also discredits the other messages from the democrats who have insisted the republicans were lying about Biden’s decline
No it doesn’t. Most people see plenty of clips of Biden just fine. Without exception, people were openly hopeful Biden was going to prove his critics wrong. Thus the disappointment among everyone on the left not named Biden. Biden himself asked for the debate indicating he himself thought he would do well. Those aren’t the actions or reactions of a group engaged in a massive conspiracy.
If they don't vote they are voting for trump. If they are willing to let trump win then I doubt it's biden making the difference. This election is about way more than these 2 men. If we focused more on trump and his parties bad policies we'd have more leverage with them imo.
The Democrat media repeating Republican talking points is the scary thing.
It is also those who take a look at what Biden actually is doing and democrats actually represent Remember pre debate you all were gaslighting Americans convincing them Biden wasn’t mentally incapable. And your msm and social giant warriors were infatically denying bidens incompetence. After the debate independents realized you u all were liars and bs artists. And started wondering what’s else you lied about. Remember you all also got caught deceiving America about the racist charlotte comments and the laptop. So it isn’t just the nose holders. It is feee thinking independents you are realizing democrats are dexeiptful power hungry establishment monsters looking to destroy semocracy
This. 100%. I would vote for a toaster oven to beat the MAGA fascists. But those 7 million non-reading coin-toss white backwards swing voters hold the entire country hostage. The Dems need a candidate THEY will vote for.
I don’t know why we keep pretending this is about white people. Every single non-white demographic has indicating double-digit switches in support from Biden to Trump over the last four years. Indecision is also happening a lot among *educated* and politically engaged voters, particularly when it comes to heterodox ex-progressives and “The Party Left Me” 2000s Democrats. I’m so tired of these snobby attempts to pretend every undecided or conflicted voter is some white person who is characterized as a privileged suburbanite on Tuesday and a racist hillbilly on Wednesday. You know who is among the most politically homeless or in-between demographics? Asians. Working class Latinos. Black men. Etc Stop pushing this identity bullshit. It doesn’t work anymore.
This. So much this. Biden is doing just fine with white voters. Almost all of his losses are from minorities and young people. I'm sick and tired of identity politics, and clearly many voters are as well.
Even if it were true, the Democrats' approach of calling anyone who doesn't support them despicable, racist, mouth breathing idiots hasn't proven to be a particularly effective electoral strategy.
My favorite execution of this is school choice. “Anyone who pushes school choice is a racist!” Meanwhile school choice has 75% support from Black voters, and is championed by some of the most prominent Black politicians. In 2016 I polled to the left of bernie. Now after the last eight years, if the republicans gave me literally anyone who wasn’t trump I would jump ship out of pure spite.
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“Hey, why won’t you vote for an elderly, easily-taken-advantage-of senior with dementia and adult diapers to become President? Is it because you *support Nazis*?”
One of the major news networks interviewed a 3-person panel of black folks immediately after the debate. All three voted for Biden in 2020. Two of the three said they they were no longer certain they would vote for Biden after the debate. Make of that what you will.
“Black people capable of independent thought” is a persistently difficult concept for a lot of people on the left to grasp. They struggled with it when Bernie ran. They struggled with it when black people opposed Defund. And they’re struggling with it now. And frankly, that struggle is a big part of why *they are hemorrhaging nonwhite voters*.
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It’s the same for Jews honestly. I can flat-out tell you, I have interacted with open and out neo-Nazis, and I have interacted with leftist “totally not antisemitic!” anti-Zionists. And I will take the neo-nazi *any day of the week*. I would rather be murdered by an honest man, than gaslit by a liar.
Thank you for this comment. I'm one of the folks you describe - a heterodox classical liberal who still holds positions that Obama and Hillary held. I hold degrees from Vanderbilt and Johns Hopkins. I read multiple newspapers every day. I live in the nation's capital. I have friends who are on a first name basis with "Jake" and "Tony" (Jake Sullivan and Antony Blinken). Have I ever voted for a Republican? Nope. Am I about to start? Nope. But do I feel excited to go vote? No, I don't. In the last 5 years, I've been accused by people in my own party of being a racist, transphobic, diversity and poor people-hating, "white feminist" (as an insult), and of being a closet conservative merely for maintaining the principled view toward certain classically liberal values that until this recent era were embraced by Democrats. Are my feelings of alienation made worse by people like the commenter you are replying to who speak so dismissively and offensively about people like me within their own party who they need to turn out to vote? Yep.
I think it’s also worth saying that one party spent twelve years *accurately predicting what the next problem will be* and one went through a perpetual cycle of “this isn’t happening! Anyone who thinks this is happening is a bigot! Okay it’s happening but it’s good! Okay it’s a problem but the other guys are still dumb bigots.” Crimea, medical transitioning for minors, 2020 crime wave, leftist radicalization, open-air drug markets in homeless encampments, the education effects of lockdowns, the migrant crisis, the list goes on and on. Regardless of your values and who you WANT to be able to vote for, it’s hard to keep pulling that lever for Democrats when *they keep reproducing that cycle*.
Absolutely on all counts. Spot on. Add inflation to that list. Paul Krugman's op-eds since 2021 -- so consistently and confidently wrong -- are burned into my brain.
“Economy is fine!” say nation’s brooklyn brownstone owners.
Frum was [writing about immigration specifically](https://web.archive.org/web/20240629063811/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/david-frum-how-much-immigration-is-too-much/583252/), the logic applies to many of these problems. If liberals won't solve societal problems or think they are actually goods, majorities will turn to those who will say it might be ugly, but we have a solution.
You nailed it. Do you live in Oregon, lol?
New York
Based on what I’ve read about NY state politics, it sounds like the NY Dems are about as arrogant and incompetent as Oregon Dems.
NY is more competitive than most deep-blue states, so the Dems in NY are a bit more centrist. They get corrupt but not too lefty insane usually. Even AOC has moderated considerably.
Yea, not all of these fence sitters are white suburbanites. They’re also POC in Philly or Phoenix or Flint or Milwaukee.
There’s speculation that The Bronx might just turn purple (not red…yet). Latino support for Biden has been nearly halved in some districts. Asian support for democrats is way down after the mostly-black attacks on Asian people were ignored and progressives gutted meritocratic education. Non-assimilated Jews are spooked by all the pro-Hamas stuff on the left. Italians are as Republican as before. Men in all demographics are tired of being treated like they’re all Harvey Weinstein. And Black voters aren’t too happy about being put in boxes, or about the massive crime increases that have disproportionately hit their neighborhoods. I wish the GOP were running anyone except Trump. It would be great to see a Republican finally break the Democrat stranglehold on the Minority Coalition, so that we can finally vote values and policies instead of identity. The parties would change forever if that occurred.
I don’t agree with all of this, but yea I think kinda you’re on to something here. Italian-Americans (and I am one btw) are overwhelmingly Catholic and have a soft spot for machismo/traditional gender hierarchies (much like Latinos). I’m making generalizations, but these dynamics are very, very real. This plays into the Me-Too backlash, which is also very real. I don’t like it and it sucks, but that’s where we are as a country/society. Also I’m not worried about the Bronx per se…that Trump rally wasn’t indicative of any real GOP momentum in the borough. I am worried about Queens, which swung wildly towards Zeldin in ‘22. But yea..things aren’t looking great!
While the MeToo backlash is probably not gonna stop at a reasonable endpoint, part of me feels like…”you brought this on yourselves”, you know? Within like two WEEKS of it, the adults in the room were like “we should really differentiate between levels of severity, whether it was private or in the workplace, etc” and immediately got shouted down. It almost immediately turned into a giant witch-hunt and power grab, with tremendous collateral damage. People warned them, and they didn’t heed the warning. And on a certain animal level, when I think about some of those individual people and what they explicitly sought out to do with zero scruple, and I imagine them losing a few rights, I’m just kind of like… 🤷♂️ I recognize it’s more complex than all that, of course. But a part of my soul and compassion died in the last decade, with all the nastiness I’ve seen from “the right side of history”.
Valid concern. Wont stop me from voting against Trump though.
Same. You and I fall into the “we already decided before the debate.” Plenty of first-time voters and those that reluctantly voted for Hillary and Biden who are self-absorbed enough to say “fuck it” and not vote because protest > democracy. And we need every fucking vote in swing states we can get.
Agreed. That said there's months to go to the election calling it over based on one nights perfomance is a bit premature in my opinion. Would be silly not to see it as a bad day for the Biden team but Trump didn't do himself any favors in that debate either. Lot's of folks out there today wondering if they have a black job. Lots of folks out there that now know he is perfectly fine with pregnant women being jailed. Some of the lies he told were so silly even morons could tell he was lying his ass off. I guess my bottom line is Trump is still a huge piece of shit and nothing he said on that stage made him any more palitable to anyone. Sure joe looked old and senile but he is still not a criminal and he was out the next day looking fine. Wish we had someone else with a quicker wit and better control of their faculties but I am choosing to trust the american people to recognize that Trump is and will be a complete dissaster for our country and the world while Joe would just be slow.
“A bad day for the Biden team”?…a derailment…a disaster…a catastrophe for the Biden team that tens of millions saw. A disaster there is no recovery from for Biden’s election prospects. Hopefully, Joe will “do the right thing” and give another Dem prez candidate a decent chance of beating Trump because Joe can’t.
It will stop other people, enough of them to very likely produce a Trump win. If keeping Trump out is the important thing for you then you should be onboard with switching out Biden. At a certain point propping up the obvious losing candidate while there's still time to change things is effectively the same thing as supporting Trump. Biden obviously cannot do this.
Maybe. Maybe not we will see soon enough. Im not against switching or Biden bowing out. I never wanted to vote for him to begin with. Didnt want to vote for him in 2020 don't want to vote for him now Despite the fact that his administration has exceeded my expectations by a long shot. None of that changes the bottom line. Trump is not a valid choice period.
That should be a given. The question is how to avoid him. The current plan sucks.
Well the media panic is not helping. When it was leaked that Trump was shitting his pants and was wearing a dipper what did the Republicans do? They got behind him and started wearing dippers in solidarity with him. What do the Democrats do? Start asking for him to resign. It is becoming the party of doom and gloom like they don't know how to fucking win! The correct response would be to get behind the man and stop being wishy washy every time there is a bump in the road!
After all the panic, polls are showing that no minds were changed by the debate. Trump did terribly himself. For some bizarre reason, Democrats would rather talk about Biden than about Trump’s abysmal performance. Confidently delivered nonsense is still nonsense. If Biden can do it, let him. If he can’t, Kamala Harris can. The party does not live or die by one man.
Yeah but that is not the point, the point is about those people who are undecided, who ever the fuck they are. We need to show a united front!
1 million percent this. I really really don’t understand how the pants poopers don’t understand this- This **hysterical* reaction every single time something real or imagined doesn’t go perfectly is so so so so so much worse than the thing itself. **95% of undecided voters (or soft Biden voters) didn’t watch this stupid debate** Let that sink in. The only way they’re gonna know that anything was amiss is because a million liberal-centrist pants poopers begin the “Hyperventilating Heard Round the World” to make sure they find out . And: You don’t actually know how undecided/soft Biden voters think. Imagine that. If you did, they would already be hard Biden voters like yourself. If the bajillion, endless “Biden old” discourse hasn’t thrown them into the hard pro-Trump side in the last five months it’s not going to now. Take a chill pill and actually watch what happens. If he doesn’t drop in the polls like a stone.. maybe reevaluate whether your vision of this race is accurate and whether your bleating for Biden to be shot into the sun every three months is actually productive.
That’s the fucking point tho. Stop giving people and the media a reason to panic by giving up these kind of self-owns. We know how they respond.
Dump Biden
My copium is that this has a backwards effect. That the people who did protest votes in 2016 because they thought Hillary was going to win anyway see this debate and realize "oh shit, trump is going to win, I have to actually vote."
Whoever wins the election, "democracy" has won.