Well that’s certainly true, but Biden is a problem that really shouldn’t exist. He is by far the lesser of two evils, but we still deserve better.
Biden and Trump are symptoms of the same problem, which is the political system. Without getting rid of the framework that effectively supports only 2 parties you’re never going to get better candidates. The parties have too much power over the pick because what are the voters going to do, give their vote to the candidate they believe to be an even worse president?
Without getting rid of the framework
The framework has a lot of fat on it. Tens of thousands of bureaucrats and lobbyists and party cronies exist to facilitate the corporate-financed bipartisan system. To change the framework, you’ve got to fight with all the folks who profit off their positions in that framework.
The parties have too much power over the pick because what are the voters going to do
Parties have enormous amounts of money and manpower at their disposal. The money comes from business interests exchanging cash for political favors (a thing which SCOTUS now recognizes as perfectly legal). The labor comes from armies of paid workers, complemented by even larger seasonally sourced pools of local volunteers, who have been whipped up into a panic by mass media.
That’s what gives party leadership the influence it commands. There are huge carrots for folks who play ball with the sitting administration and huge sticks waved over the heads of party-splitters and indie candidates.
No, it’s Joe Biden. Republicans are total pieces of shit, but they wear their shit on their sleeve. People like Joe Biden Company or like snakes in the grass that hide among us claiming to be our ally. The Joe Biden we saw at the debates was the Joe Biden that the DNC has known about for years yet they still pushed him as their preferred candidate and refusing to primary him. Not allowing voters a right to choose who they would like to elect is not democratic
The neolibs don’t like when you point out the dems just throw pride flag stickers on the bombs they sell to Israel.
trump isn’t the cause, he’s a symptom.
trump might be the worst so far, but so has every single Republican president going back to Nixon.
When the Republican nominee is finally not trump, there is zero logical reason to expect that next person to not be even more crazy.
We can’t keep reacting to them and treating every election like it’s the last night at the Alamo.
If we want to stop fascism we need long term planning, planning for what we do if we win, plans for when shit goes wrong, plans for fucking every contingency. Plans for the next decades even after we think we finally beat fascism.
That’s supposed to be the entire point of the national party. Long term strategy past any one candidate.
Instead they only care about raising as much money as humanely possible in the moment.
Shit is too real to just blindly vote blue no matter who, we need to start asking why the people running the party are even around. And if they’re honestly more worried about making money that stopping fascism.
It’s not even Republican presidents. Newt Gingrich destroyed the House. Mitch McConnell destroyed the Senate. And there’s a whole bench of people willing to continue their work.
The entirety of the Republican party, from their philosophy to their platform to their elected officials to the individual voters, is a poison. And they have a lot more power than Democrats thanks to their low population density.
McTurtle is one of the last dinosaurs where he was in office and doing the dirt.
Ever since Nixon though they realized it’s better to have a fall guy in office and stay behind the scenes.
There’s new generations of them, most people will just never know their names now.
I think you’re right about him not being the cause, but I’m not sure he’s just a symptom. At a minimum he’s certainly a catalyst.
That’s where I disagree.
trump just didn’t maintain a veneer of civility.
But any Republican president would have done 99% of the same shit trump did.
What would really be dangerous is someone that didn’t also run around admitting to all of their crimes, we barely are holding trump accountable and he’s completely blatant and unapologetic when breaking the rules.
If it had been Paul Ryan or Jeb in 2016…
We’d be even more fucked than now.
You might be right, but what I meant is that no one can whip their followers into a mouth-frothing frenzy quite like he does. Come on, no one is storming the capital for Jeb.
What did trump actually do to cause it?
Bannon and other shit heels organized it, trump let it happen and shares all the guilt.
But it didn’t happen because trump made it happen, it happened because he let it happen.
What’s fucked, is someone like Jeb likely wouldn’t have been in the position to even try it, because he wouldn’t have fucked up COVID so spectacularly and likely would have won a second term. 2016 would have led to “project 2025” without the need to wait for 2025. Shit would have probably already been done. Jeb would have even gotten more SC seats that second term.
But if he lost due to something like Russian interference coming out (they’d have supported any Republican) and if he thought he honestly might face consequences…
Jeb would have 100% let it happen too.
trump just accelerated things before they were ready, so they failed.
But conservatives have been planning this shit literally since Nixon. Say what you want about the figureheads that get elected, but the people running the show behind the scenes are fucking intelligent, have resources, and plan decades ahead of time.
They also donate to both parties these days to ensure even when they lose, they’re not really losing.
The surface game is just to distract us we won’t fix shit until at least one party’s leadership isn’t corrupt.
It doesn’t fucking matter who the Republican president is, the Republican president hasn’t been the one actually doing shit since before Reagan.
And I know I went on a rant, I’m just sick and tired of the people who deserve the real blame constantly getting away with shit because everyone goes for the fall guy. Fall guy is still guilty. But you don’t stop after getting the fall guy.
Here I think lies the main problem. When Biden was elected in 2020, in my understanding the goal was always for him to warm the seat for the next/younger generation. In those 4 years nobody stepped forward, and they are scared of proposing a forward looking vision because it may alienate some voters (either on the left or in the center). So now we have the choice between stagnation or actively tearing down Democracy.
You can’t put it on junior party members…
Biden appointed DNC leadership, and if anyone challenged him or the status quo, then they’d ruin their career if they missed.
Obama made it, but if he had lost 08 and gotten the 2016 Bernie treatment it would have likely ended his career.
I’d also argue the concern of the party and it’s leadership isn’t alienating voters, it’s pissing off donors.
For decades the neoliberals running the party have cared about donors over everything else. It’s literally killing the party and preventing us from “winning” even when Dems win an election.
Because the donors that the DNC doesn’t want to piss off, are often the same wealthy assholes giving to Republicans.
People desperately want to act like the Clinton’s attending Trump’s wedding was a one off.
But most of the big Dem donors have more in common with trump than us, and there’s no way they’re giving all that money away to just have to pay more in taxes.
The wealthy bought out both parties long ago, and we can’t just keep ignoring it.
It’s not enough to just be slightly less shitty than republicans.
I think the Democrat party is a problem for pushing forward candidates that suck. There no way Trump wins in 2016 if he was going against somebody that was actually popular.
I am getting serious 2016 vibes this cycle. Biden should never have run a second time. And after that debate performance it feels like continuing with Biden is just as big of a mistake.
There no way Trump wins in 2016 if he was going against somebody that was actually popular.
No way he would have won the primary without Hilary’s Pied-Piper Strategy
This isn’t even entirely an optics problem. Democrats in leadership believe they are best served when they are the centrist running against fascism rather than a progressive running against some boilerplate business conservative. So they actively encourage the freaks in the GOP while fighting tooth and nail to keep greens and socialists off their end of the ballot
THE PROBLEM IS FUCKING PROPAGANDA RUNNING RAMPANT!!
we would LITERALLY not have to deal with Trump if Newsmax, OANN, Fox, and their like weren’t allowed to just lie and specifically aim to enrage the population. They hide behind the “opinion” designation of their show but act like it’s news, or they admit it’s opinion and claim it’s opinion entirely based on “facts.”
The reason Trump exists in the form that he does, with the support that he does is 110% at the feet of the fucking propaganda that gives him cover.
We wouldn’t have to deal with trump had it not been for Clinton’s Pied Piper strategy. That’s the sole reason he’s in politics.
we would LITERALLY not have to deal with Trump if Newsmax, OANN, Fox, and their like weren’t allowed to just lie
Okay, but while we’re rounding them up for the gulags, can we sweep through and pick out all the fuckwits at NYT, WaPo, WSJ, and The Economist that were insisting Joe Biden was our Last Best Hope To Save Democracy and Actually Whip Smart And Totally Ready To Lead? Hell, even NPR gets in on this shit, and its supposed to be the nice polite republican media rather than the frothing bomb-everyone-that-criticizes-Israel news outlet.
The reason Trump exists in the form that he does, with the support that he does is 110% at the feet of the fucking propaganda that gives him cover.
Trump is the direct result of Republican rhetoric outrunning its own policy. For the last 40 years, we’ve been told that immigration is the root of every problem in the country - from bloated budgets to housing crises to drug use to violent crime to COVID. And as things keep getting worse, and immigration keeps getting blamed, the only conclusion Americans are allowed to make is that they’re not hard enough on migrants.
The celebrity candidacy of Trump was made possible by a news media fixated on the opulence of rich white guys, a conservative leadership that saw enormous profits in using migrant laborers to supplant labor unions, and an aging American public with a Pavlovian hatred of brown people. (And also, Hilary Clinton backing him in the GOP primary because she thought he’d be easy to beat).
But the real root of the problem is our national fixation on scapegoating. If Trump hadn’t won in 2016, it could just as easily have been Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, both of whom are perfectly happy with our home grown brand of fascist tendency. They’re riding the same Hate Wave as Trump, he just did it better.
We are truly fucked. Thanks for letting the wrong guy run and dooming us a terrible outcome.
Imagine if Biden has initiated prosection of Trump within his first 100 days, rather than waiting until his last year in office to press charges.
That’s kind of what Republicans are going for. The president prosecuted his enemies, with a rush job to make it look sort of good.
Personally I’m happier with going through all due process to prosecute this particular criminal, and that it is not in the hands of the sitting President
Personally I’m happier with going through all due process to prosecute this particular criminal
SBF went through due process in a matter of months and is currently cooling his heels in MDC Brooklyn. There’s no reason to believe Trump should be permitted to continue his crime spree under Biden for the last four years.
Imagine all you want, in reality he shouldn’t have final say regarding anyone’s prosecution… Its sort of a cornerstone of this supposed democracy experiment thingy that we’re doing.
he shouldn’t have final say regarding anyone’s prosecution
His entire purpose as head of the executive branch is to assign the nation’s chief prosecuting attorneys. If he’s not setting their prosecutorial agenda, he’s not doing is fucking job.
I think Brandon should fuck off. But i am 100% voting for him and it should be plain as day that while he is declining, he is nonetheless leagues superior to a fascist traitor.
Of course trump is an existential threat. Brandon is just a basic problem.
Brandon 2024. Fuck the republican traitor filth.
Brandon also filled his administration with a competent team of non-fascists and none of his relatives.
Brandon also filled his administration with a competent team
I haven’t seen much evidence of this
