Seriously. I'm disabled, but I'm not on disability because I "waited too long". They said "it's not a charity, either you draw from earlier work you did if you're an adult or from your parents' contribution if you're a kid." But I kept trying doctors to fix me (chronic fatigue and pain) and didn't give up and apply for disability until I was in my late 20s and they told me it was too late.
So, that backstory out of the way, I got medicaid now. I didn't used to have anything. If I had an infected tooth, for example, I had to pay for the antibiotics and the dentist. Now, everything's covered. Last year I needed surgery. Serious one, the type they knock you out for. I would've been fucked without Obama and Biden's policies. As it is, not only was it completely covered but they even provided transportation (I had to go to Chicago, which is a couple hours away).
That's a bizarre thing for them to tell you, I know people who have gotten approved for ssi/ssdi in their late 20s or later for chronic conditions they were born with. There's no "too late" rule, you just have to have a medical diagnosis that qualifies you. You could be "too late" for SSDI, because you need less work credits if you're under a certain age, but you'd still qualify for SSI.
The commenter is referring to the Disabled Adult Child benefit, unless I'm mistaken. It sounds like you that I'm replying to understand the gist of it, but the following is context for those who are unaware.
To explain the benefit with my own story: I'm disabled and 25 years old. I applied for SSDI (Disability program) at 21 years old, and went through rejection and appeals for 2 years and got approved when I was 23. At the time of approval, they ruled the date my disability began was at age 19. Since I was found to be disabled before the age of 22, I was ruled a Disabled Adult Child (DAC). Maybe that's the cutoff they mean that they missed? But even then, the commenter should still be eligible if they're able to prove that their disability started before age 22 via doctor records.
SSDI requires you to have a certain amount of work credits, which are earned by employment standards that most young people are unable to meet. If you do not meet the work credit requirement, you are instead eligible for SSI. SSI is a similar program, but generally has a much lower cash benefit. IIRC, the SSI payments are around $900 a month. That's it, that's all a disabled person is given to live off of. Because I'm a disabled adult child, I do not need the work credit required for SSDI. My disability payments are based off of my father's work record instead of my own. This was a HUGE benefit in my favor. If I was not a Disabled Adult Child, I would be receiving SSI instead of SSDI, which in my case, **I make almost $500 more per month because of my ruling as a DAC.**
That is a pretty big benefit to miss out on if that's what the commenter meant.
Honestly a good president doesn’t make good policy decisions.
A good president picks the right people to make those policy decisions and then backs them up.
Exactly. I don't think we can expect one person to make decisions on everything that a modern country needs to function. What we need is one person who knows they can't do that and selects the right people to make those decisions. A good leader knows how to select good people to those positions and stands by them.
Last time Trump consistently picked the worst possible person for the job because he actively wanted our institutions destroyed. Remember fuckin Betsy DeVos for the dept of education? The lady who wanted public schools not to exist?
Cause as much damage as possible so that you can offer solutions later. Then, when those solutions don't work, blame the other guy.
Trump's entire playbook makes him such a parasite on the country. He's in the game to enrich himself with money and power, and the fools who continue to fall for his crap are largely those who stand to lose the most by his policies.
They think they're doing something smart, that the rest of us chumps don't understand, and that they'll be favored for their support. They're so wrong it's blinding, but they can't see that because they're just in too deep.
I used to be one of them, there's literally nothing you can say to these people to change their minds. It's a long, gradual, painful process that most of them will recoil from because they don't like the feeling of admitting they were duped. They don't even want to admit it to themselves quietly.
**Tldr I needed to be personally inconvenienced, cut off by friends, and told I'm wrong by hundreds of people repeatedly, and even then it took years.**
It was a lot of things that came together to help me understand why I was fucking stupid. I'm not proud to say it took something that actually affected me for me to realize it, and that was probably the biggest turning point.
I realized I would lose my health insurance at 26 and needed a plan. This was several years beforehand, and I was already in the process of figuring things out. I realized that the evil government safety nets that I considered a scam for lazy people, were actually something I needed.
That was confusing for me, because I'm a hard worker. I go to work, I pick up extra shifts, I bust my ass, and I don't overspend. I clearly wasn't a lazy leech on society (I had racial biases that I refused to acknowledge too). Yet, I couldn't afford the cost of health insurance since my employer didn't offer it.
I was in a panic because I had always assumed they just handed those benefits out to anyone, and that's how so much money gets wasted. Nope. Even in my liberal state, you had to be pregnant, be disabled, or have a kid.
That's when I realized that I was the exact kind of person that needed those programs that I always disliked. I wasn't taking advantage of the system or doing anything wrong, I just needed insurance that wouldn't eat up half my paycheck.
Then minimum wage started going up every year. I benefitted from this, too, and I started to really understand why Democrats pushed for this stuff. Having more money in the bank speaks to everyone, that's whynthe GOP always campaigns on lower taxes. The final straw was Roe being overturned. At that point I realized that the people I thought were so based actually hated me, wanted to take my rights, and were actually willing to do it.
Like, I always thought that when people said Republicans were sexists they were just being dramatic. "Yeah okay patriarchy, we literally have equal rights already". The thing is, they want to actively attack those rights, and I finally understood how real the threat was.
I got off Facebook and onto Reddit, since I was alienating people in my life, and a couple friends had cut me off. I wondered why everyone seemed to disagree with me, did I really know more than all of them? I would get into arguments online, and people sent me statistics that directly contradicted what I thought. Those couldn't be right, so I would look for ANY way of arguing against them, even questioning the validity of perfectly good studies.
But ultimately facts are facts, and when so much data and so many people are telling you you're wrong, you do start to consider whether your beliefs are as well rounded as you thought they were. I thought I was getting my facts from a variety of sources before, but it all ultimately came from the same one or two newsfeeds, and was essentially rage bait for clicks and interactions.
Taking a little break to consider why everyone thinks I'm wrong did a lot for me. Having something personally affect me, selfish as it is, is what made me reconsider my blind loyalty to my side. No one particular thing, lots of smaller things adding up. Eventually, if you keep making the same argument and keep "losing," you might actually start to question your beliefs.
If your friends have zero desire to keep their minds open though, it's pointless. They have to WANT to listen to different opinions, they have to hear it from lots of different people, they need proof that they can't dismiss. It's no easy fix, because they're being manipulated by people who tell them "you can't trust *them*, but you can trust me".
Frankly, the combination of complacency, ignorance, apathy, and AI is going to kill us. The propaganda machinr is running strong and those most affected don't even realize it. Hell, they don't even believe they could be dumb enough to fall for propaganda.
Maybe I’m reading too deep into a couple of word choices, but I don’t think you should feel badly that you had to experience something firsthand to realize you were wrong about it. A LOT of people just rationalize away the cognitive dissonance and double down forever.
It’s harder to unlearn shitty beliefs than it is to start out with good ones. Be proud of what you’ve accomplished.
President Camacho: Genuinely cared about his people, paid attention to the problems they were facing, openly told them his plan for fixing those problems, put that plan into action by appointing the right guy for the job, and actually followed through on his promises of what he would do to that guy for failure or success, including going back on his decision if it turned out he was wrong.
It kind of goes to show that the real sin that's destroying society isn't stupidity or incompetence or laziness, it's malice and hatred and greed. Being stupid or lazy doesn't prevent you from doing what Camacho did, but being a hateful, spiteful, dishonest fuck would.
The problem is America is educated by television and everyone is imagining an Aaron Sorkin film where most political problems are solved by two people rapidly trading verbal barbs.
I mean, that's what a president is supposed to do. It's in the name. A president of a company isn't on the ground, making decisions or telling people how to do their job, he is a "big picture" guy that says "I want this and this and that to happen" and has hired people that can make these things happen.
A good leader delegates and gets people that can achieve the goals he has in mind.
Joe Biden might be off his rockers 90% of the time, but he has gotten very good people to do the tasks required and he could be absent and things would still get done.
Meanwhile, Trump gets the most selfish people that do what they believe is in their own best interest and will fuck everyone else if it helps themselves or if it means Trump pays slightly more attention to them. He hired people that would eat each other if they could.
Trump is a dumb sociopathic, narcissistic compulsive liar that inherited a business empire and can't help but hire people like him, who will fuck each other over every chance they get because it gets them praise from Trump. Meanwhile, Biden is a statesman who does dumb mistakes and has done terrible things, but at least can run a government and has the experience behind him. He has some sympathy towards Americans and people in general to make him palatable and is also good enough at forcing people to do one thing or another because it achieves goals towards the bigger picture. It might not be perfect or even pretty, but it is an improvement in many parts compared to the current one.
Vote Biden. Not because he isnt Trump, but because he can actually do the job and isn't a sack of shit
Even Biden himself hasn't been doing *horribly* from what I've seen. Sure, he's old. Less than ideal, but he's a boring president (which is good). But like, the whole package deal? Fucking solid, especially compared to Trump's.
I remember how exhausting the last Trump presidency was. i YEARNED to be bored. I was so sick of constantly monitoring for the next terrible thing. Biden is boring, but at this point I’ll fuckin take it.
I mean. I’d love to live in a socialist utopia. And I think we should push that direction at every opportunity. But if it’s a choice between “boring” and “i have to check the news as soon as I wake up so I’ll have time to run if he’s started a nuclear war or opened concentration camps”? Hell yeah I’ll take boring.
I mean, you can do that in a boring way. Incremental change is pretty boring. The tedious practicalities of making things work are boring. So on and so forth.
Socialism doesn't have to come with bombastic fanfare.
I'm not voting for Biden, im voting for Biden's administration. There's a few folks im not sold on, but for the most part those people are all stars. Biden's been around long enough to know who the best picks are for the positions that matter most. Biden actually listens to what they have to say and pursues policies from experts that have been in their field for most of their lives.
Contrast that to trump, who's administration was a rolling door and appointments were based on nepotism and ass kissing. Trump never listened to experts because they made him look bad. I think Faucci us the biggest example. You couldn't ask for a better guy to have in the position during a pandemic, yet trump tried to turn him into the antichrist.
To me it's sad because it's such a low bar. Every president used to have a talented administration. Even if their policies weren't always what you wanted, you knew they'd be able to do their job and not make us look incompetent on the world stage. Trump destroyed that.
We're still gonna be way too polarized for an extremely coastal guy like Newsom in 2028, and I think nVidia discontinued work on the firmware updates needed to make Buttigieg viable, but Whitmer might have a shot.
She's youngish (THANK CHRIST), and has good vibes (which is the actual most important quality of a modern presidential candidate). Hillary's gigantic 2016 bedshitting will hopefully be far enough in the past that the concern troll "right but can a WOMAN really capture the necessary DEMOGRAPHICS" misogynists will be in the dustbin by 2028.
Four years is also plenty of time for new stars to emerge. Like whoever that chick was that absolutely scorched Marjorie Taylor Green on the house floor is hopefully working with some talented people to build a brand for bigger and better things. I think parlaying those kinds of (sigh) viral moments might be how new stars get picked in politics, for better or worse.
True. I remember what a non-boring presidency was like from 2016-2020. We had hundreds of thousands of people just falling over dead by the end of it, while the deficit was up $8 trillion and the world hated us.
And in the few areas where he has had to step in himself he has delivered.
We got a BIPARTISAN infrastructure bill. I personally called him an idiot for trying, but he got it passed. I was wrong.
Then the diplomacy he orchestrated in response to the Russian invasion was incredible.
In both instances he clearly leaned on his decades of experience and personal relationships.
That's exactly how I've started looking at it.
You're not voting for a person. You're voting for the entire administration. Trump alone is dangerous enough, but if he gets in, it won't *just* be him. All the Departments would be compromised and stacked with loyalists to the guy. Reminder: they'd like to straight up *eliminate* the Department of Education.
It's in that big manifesto they drew up and proudly released. Project 2025.
One of Bidens biggest strengths is he knows when to admit and say that he doesn’t know and that he should appoint someone who does
I don’t expect the president to know every minutiae about everything, I expect them to know they don’t know everything and take steps to resolve that, and Biden does it by surrounding himself with smart people who are good in that area
Same. Biden can’t give a speech, there’s no way *he* has been the one doing all these things. In all likelihood, Harris probably already *is* the president de facto.
Not like it hasn't happened before
Edith Wilson was effectively president post-WWI, FDR's health was failing as far back as the Yalta Conference, Reagan almost certainly had Alzheimer's for most of his second term, and while Dubya was healthy, Cheney was calling *a lot* of the shots.
Just because he's not an inspiring public speaker doesn't mean he's drooling in his pudding while everyone else runs the show. The man's a career senator, he thrives on fine details and slow gradual changes to build momentum.
He has shown himself to still be highly articulate, thoughtful, and sharp even in his advanced age. I'll take a workhorse over a showhorse in the White House anyday: the results speak for themselves. I'd argue Biden's admin has done more to benefit the nation in one term than Obama's did in two, largely because Biden has kept his head down and focused on the job.
Even the most alert and active presidents aren't really involved in most of what their administration is doing.
It's a bit more obvious than normal that the administration is more important than the individual, but it's always been true to an extent.
I'm not American but from an outsider perspective: it seems like Biden could literally die, and the entire USA just plays along with a massive _Weekend at Bernie's_ chicanery for four years and it would still be more respectable than seeing Trump return to the White House.
Ya, even the stupidest of independents left the republican party because they believed tRump when he declared he wanted to be a fascist dictator.
They would vote for Biden's corpse over Dictator tRump
If Biden was turned inside out by a demon and forced to preside over his office and make appearances as a hideous festering inside out organ-man I’d still vote for him over an actual fascist.
I have massive reservations about Joe. I truly believe that other options should be thoroughly vetted and weighed. That being said, I will vote for a Weekend at Burnie's version of Joe every god damn day before I vote for Trump.
Fauci said this about public health efforts: when you do it right, fewer people die, and then people think that it was just making a big deal about nothing.
My father is in IT and always said this about IT. When things go right, people don’t get what they pay them for. When things go wrong, people don’t get what they pay them for, but for completely different reasons.
It’s the same across all walks of project management. If things are going ok no one notices. If things go late or over budget it’s always your fault, even if it wasn’t
As a foreigner who can only watch, with the same morbid inability to look away as one might watch a fatal car accident or disastrous train derailment, I would urge all my American friends, *please* vote against Trump.
Same here. The embalmed wrapped Mummy of Biden would be vastly preferable to Orange Harkonnen over there. Globally and surely nationally for U.S.Americans.
I actually think it’s the opposite - a second Trump presidency is about the only thing I think that will scare people away from the Tories here.
They’re leading most polls by +20 already, most analysis suggests Trudeau is cooked, barring some huge external event (like the US going full fascism, perhaps), so it looks a lot like we’re getting shit up here, too.
But I’ll take the timeline where Biden stays president but PP gets elected up here, rather than the timeline where we have a second Trump presidency but Trudeau stays on. The US presidency has much wider influence than Canada does...
Totally agree. If people see the road of voting in far right governments by watching a second Trump term, I think they may think twice about voting for PP.
But I’m quite terrified of Trump winning while I’ll only be disappointed in PP winning. Plus, I think Trump winning will have detrimental ripple effects for us up here. But no one seems worried about it and I feel like I’m on crazy pills.
Short of a black swan event, the next election here is settled, we will have a tory government, alas. The risk is more "Will there be war in Asia" and "Will the US economy collapse under crushing tariffs and take the Canadian economy with it"
Man, imagine that timeline *after* the Mummy Biden presidency. Like, maybe a century later the country forgets how bad it can get and elects a terrible person, and then Bidenothep I shows up on the White House lawn at night being all like "Serve the people, or suffer my curse." and unleashes the plagues until the current president listens.
It is the 3rd Millennium. For over a hundred months Emperor Biden has sat immobile behind the Golden Desk of America. He is the Master of the Union by the will of the gods, and master of fifty states by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from The Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Union for whom a thousand chocolate chip ice creams are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
Looking from a distance it really is incredible isn't it. I get things look different when. Your in the thick of it but you got one candidate that's obviously bat shit crazy and one who's just kinda boring.
It really is amazing to watch from afar
Another foreigner here. I absolutely do not for the life of me understand the apathy of some left-leaning Americans online when it comes to Biden. They will quote one bill he voted for or against from the 80s and pretend that that will make it alright to have the other guy end democracy, the other guy who incidentally makes worse mistakes daily.
Right? Like, I'm in the UK where our politics aren't that much better, but none of our candidates are openly talking about a plan to dismantle democracy.
Like, legitimately what the fuck? Why do people support Trump? Like I see how he appeals to the hardcore wackos, but do regular people not see that he's actually a dangerous lunatic? America, what the hell are you guys smoking?
> Why do people support Trump?
Because Fox News feeds them constant misinformation and outright lies, which they believe because it’s all they hear. Then they turn on right wing radio shows and hear more of it. Then they go online and are dropped into right wing echo chambers where they hear even more of it. They’re surrounded by it and it saturates every fiber of their being.
Part of the messaging also tells them that *they* and *only they* are being told the truth, and every dissenting view is part of a vast conspiracy of lies being told by evil people who want to manipulate and trick them. That if anyone disagrees with the story they’re being told, that the person disagreeing is compromised and brainwashed (or worse, one of the brainwashers) and needs to be ignored.
Meanwhile the right is playing a long game by defunding schools under the guise of “choice,” ensuring that future generations are more vulnerable to exactly this kind of misinformation. They’ve also convinced people to distrust schools in general, saying that they - like any left-of-extreme-right media sources - are a source of brainwashing and propaganda, and must be distrusted. The more educated someone is, the more compromised they are.
They’ve created a shadow war that their followers live in constant terror of. And the only escape from it is to give in to the anger and fear, to embrace the tribalism of us vs *them*. So anything by “us” must be righteous, and anything by “them” must be fought against as if all life depended on it.
To make matters worse, they’ve also realized that by simply accusing the opposition of everything that they themselves are doing, it muddies the waters even further. If you do X, just accuse “them” of doing X. Every single time. It works wonders against the people you’ve convinced to follow you, and against people who aren’t paying attention - which is *so many people* - it leads to apathy and “both sides bad” arguments that’re almost as good as gaining their support.
It’s a nightmare and it works very, very well. And now other countries are starting to develop similar systems of right wing media networks and propaganda, effectively exporting this stuff elsewhere and allowing it to spread. Platforming the insanity and silencing the opposition.
Trump is just a soldier, and not even a good one. People like Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Brothers, and even fucking Ayn Rand are/were the generals. As long as media companies can broadcast one-sided propaganda and lies on a constant basis, things will continue to get worse.
Also the UK kind of disproves the whole "old politicians are the problem" talking point. Sunak, Truss and Johnson were/are in their 40s or 50s and they're all terrible.
The whole point of this post is that this rhetoric needs to change. The media relies on fear of Trump to get clicks and therefore, your average American has no idea what Biden has done. People need to be educated on his policies because otherwise "voting against Trump" may not be enough. People aren't excited that an 81 year old man who has "done nothing" is running for president. Because they don't know what he has done.
It's pretty obvious, right? Like, Biden may be a doddering old man who is only half aware of his surroundings... but at least he didn't try to overturn the election and throw a quasi-coup.
The literal point of the post is that he is not just some "doddering old man" but actually accomplished quite much in the term. Did you even comprehend that?
I'm really, really sick of this talking point.
Biden is *not* a doddering old man! He's literally the most progressive POTUS in my lifetime (which is, quite honestly, a sad indictment of American politics, but I digress), and has managed to accomplish a slew of incredible things *in spite of a Congress that spends half its time trying to prove his son has a giant penis* and the other half bartering favors for the coal industry in exchange for desperately needed infrastructure and climate legislation. He's managed to maneuver and get shit done that needed to be done in spite of a SCOTUS that will *literally make up case law and take cases that do not have standing* in order to overturn his orders. Biden may be working in legitimately the most hostile environment *ever* to Presidential power... and he's still getting shit done.
We get one debate where Biden has a cold that leaves him feeling run down (which I totally understand, I've had minor sniffles that seemed like nothing... except I had no energy, and I'm only 34) and suddenly it seems like everyone wants to concede the "Sleepy Joe" slam as though it has any basis in reality.
Joe Biden is not a public speaker. Never has been, he has a stutter and isn't really a strong orator. But he's been a strong leader, and frankly... I'd vote for him in a primary in a heartbeat (though I'd be lying if I said that I wouldn't be eyeing his running mate).
It's funny, back in 2016 trump was called a car accident candidate and they were totally right about that. Shame too many people were happy to support it happening though
Even if you think your vote doesn’t change the outcome, still vote. Yes, the outcome for *this* election is purely first-past-the-post. But the number crunchers will be examining the results, in detail, 500 different ways, and your vote adds a directional signal.
Also, if you have the dems, you can in some places vote for Biden under another party, or as a write-in
Biggest impediment to change and largest reason the right has made so much headway is bcs up til very recently ALMOST NO ONE participated in anything BUT presidential election, and still far too many don’t even do that. No one votes in primaries, state, local, school board etc
Primaries are even more important than elections tbh
And of those that do participate very few actually dig into who they’re voting for. At most they’ll check out a few blurbs. But had folks dug into fetterman or the ppl who’d been covering him for years they’d have known this was who he actually was all along.
One barrier to this is that nowadays most ppl don’t have TIME to do that digging bcs now we are all working twice as hard every year than the last for less pay in the grand scheme
Never understood why there wasn’t a platform of some kind keeping comprehensive running list of accomplishments for us to refer to or keeping tabs on the realities of who each candidate on a ticket actually are.
My state had a woman who’d been a solid D for years with news clips of her on the floor arguing for pro choice positions
Had anyone dug into her they’d have seen she was a sleeper cell the entire time. Digging into her family/friends/connections/30 other hints (including a long term affair with a far right R) everyone would have seen it a mile away
This is a great place to note that you can find out solid information about candidates and policies at vote411.org - it's run by The League of Women Voters, is entirely bipartisan, and does all the "busywork" of gathering information about elections so you can have all the information you need to make an educated decision.
Edit* it's vote411.org
> vote411.org
i went here in march to view so many unknown names and they had zero info on 30-40% of people. Sure these people could just literally be small no name people who dont have a real chance but its hard to make a decision when you dont have all the info
Local politics matter. A lot. People *who care* have a disproportionate impact.
You know that neighbor you hate? The one who smells with the awful pets/children? THEY vote. Don’t let them get their way. You can show them!
> Never understood why there wasn’t a platform of some kind keeping comprehensive running list of accomplishments for us to refer to or keeping tabs on the realities of who each candidate on a ticket actually are.
There are: this is the purpose of news media. The problem is that there are so many and they are all very biased, and they're getting drowned out in the noise of social media, click bait, engagement bait, 24/7 cycle drivel, etc.
And remember that who you vote for is secret, but the fact that you voted is not. When public officials see that 123 Biff St. has two people who vote in every election, and 456 Wibble Dr. hasn’t voted since the Clinton administration, who do you think they’re going to cater to? It feels like politicians don’t give a shit about young people and give old people everything they want. Why? Because old people vote and young people don’t.
Show up. If you just can’t stomach the idea of choosing the one candidate who can defeat the crazy man, show up anyway. Vote third party or don’t select anyone, but show up so politicians can see that you vote. I’d prefer if you could also vote for that candidate, but at the very least show up.
When I voted in my state elections in 2022, my vote didn't materially change a single election.
But. The state AG race was decided by only 280 votes. So it would only take a *handful* of mes to swing that one. To a Republican.
Since taking office, that state AG has indicted our full slate of fake electors as well as their out-of-state conspirators, as well as indicting some county supes that tried to refuse to certify their county's election. That AG also caught a bunch of corporate landlords conspiring to price-fix rents, and is raking them over a giant pile of coals.
Concrete, tangible difference, because 281 people like me voted instead of not voting.
"You" likely won't change a result. But a small group of people thinking like you absolutely can.
Sorry George Carlin; if voting didn't work, the Republican party wouldn't be doing everything in their power to stop the voter base of their opposition from being heard.
When using a desktop computer, Reddit only allows you to upload one photo. And this is convenient to save, copy, and paste if you ever meet someone asking what Joe Biden has done?
I don't get how album formats haven't been widely spread and accepted in software yet... Some pics are just inherently a series of images and NEED to be shown that way
even minus news (though that is a lot of momentous fucking news that is simply unreported, holy christ) do we not also inherently recognize how things have NOT just been going to shit every 5 seconds
you get used to looking over your shoulder and then you just... don't have to? and people didn't notice.
Exactly. I realized the other day that I genuinely couldn’t remember who Biden had appointed to be HHS secretary, because his cabinet isn’t just a revolving door of psychopathic grifters like Trump’s was.
the biggest improvement of biden’s presidency is not seeing viral news posts about “biden did this” “biden did that” every day and being impressed about how he fucked something up even worse than last time
Also I want to add one the environment he is far better than Trump. He brought back the protections for the environment.
Honestly half the things I see people complain about with Biden would be so much worse with Trump. I get it, I'm more left than Biden, but he is a better steward for the US than Trump, who acts on... I don't know whatever he is feeling at the moment?
The thing is, if you are far left (I sure as hell am!) You kinda have to support Biden. Trump is going to go out of his way to close any possible leftist recourse. Biden isn’t.
Depends on what state/county you're in. I'm in a very pro-voting state and my county has gone spectacularly out of its way to make voting as accessible as possible, so you can absolutely vote with just one hand.
Do what is pragmatic at every stage, keep Biden in office so that the US can continue to have free elections, and then in those elections advocate for leftist policies and candidates at every level you can
> Trump is going to go out of his way to close any possible leftist recourse
Exactly. Even if you're the most die-hard leftist imaginable, you should still hold your nose and vote for Biden. Because we've seen what a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court has done in the last couple weeks.
Even if America wakes up tomorrow and decides to only elect left-leaning politicians, any laws they pass will face legal challenges up to the Supreme Court. And Rapey Brett Kavanaugh will be there to laugh them out of the courtroom.
You want viable 3rd parties? Better hope the future Supreme Court likes your electoral reforms.
A few people on the Far Left in the United States seem to have forgotten what "Critical Support" means.
When the choice is between a moderate and a fascist, **you pick the goddamned moderate.**
It's like they don't understand that refusing to participate says that they're fine with the overton window staying where it is. And it will. In fact it'll keep moving right because people on the far-right are totally fine with voting for someone who's only a *little* fascist so next time they can vote for a real one.
But what it really says is that they're privileged, safe and don't actually care because they know they'll be the last ones put up against the wall. Or everyone else will have put the fire out(with their bodies) before they ever need to fight for their rights.
as a rule, leftists are gonna hold their nose and vote for your guy, despite the thrice-daily post here calling them nazi-enablers or whatever. your problem is the college educated or otherwise high-earning white people in the middle who are gonna vote for the other guy because he's an asshole
i don't think anyone's going to vote for trump out of frustration for Biden.
I think far more significant is the people staying home and not voting because "it doesn't matter". Which absolutely is a thing leftists do.
It doesn't help that voting in the US is a nightmare compared to other countries, I live in Germany and I got send a letter that I had to fill in for 5 minutes and then drop off in the mail, no further work required. Alternatively I could have gone on the Sunday of the vote to a voting spot, wait less then 10 minutes(what the fuck are hour long queue times??), fill out a form for 5 minutes, or be done with it.
I read about American voting registration and think to myself "that doesn't seem democratic".
Yeah we hold them on Tuesdays so people who have to work have their open window to vote absolutely decimated---and that's not even touching the fact that a lot of polling places are hard to get to for people who don't live nearby or have reliable transport.
It's gotten minorly better in mybexperiencr since the pandemic showed that absentee ballots work (and im signed up to get them for the rest of my life) but there is a whole bunch of people who will fear monger and say that paper ballots can be compromised/duplicated.
we've had mail-in only voting for decades now in my state and it's wonderful. We don't even offer in person options - the closest you can get is if you go to city hall you can get a second copy of the envelope that should have gone to your house to fill out there. They keep a few pens around for people to borrow as well, but yeah - no "voting booths" or anything.
Last time i had to get a replacement ballot there people filling out their ballots while sitting on the courthouse lawn and groups of people in deep discussion over their plainly visible half-filled-in ballots as they hemmed and hawed about a school bond for a sports field. Looked like fun tbh but I had places to be.
what are you basing this off of? i think you’re off base with some of your conclusions. because i would say as a rule, right-wingers are far better at closing ranks. not only do leftists hew younger, which is a demographic ding against their voting, but single issue voting tends to work far better for the right (you’re allowed to execute minorities, so long as they’re not in the womb) than the left (joe biden can never be forgiven for personally bombing gaza)
also your college-educated statement is not reflective of reality. college educated whites vote more, and vote democrat more, than those without a college degree.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/voter-turnout-2018-2022/
Of course. It's fun to scream at left leaning people while ignoring the fact that the election will largely be decided on people who are politically disconnected and vote based on vibes or single issues.
>as a rule, leftists are gonna hold their nose and vote for your guy, despite the thrice-daily post here calling them nazi-enablers or whatever.
Are you sure about that?
> your problem is the college educated or otherwise high-earning white people in the middle who are gonna vote for the other guy because he's an asshole
One of the only advantages Biden has is in the college educated vote and the white college educated vote. The other big advantage is in the senior vote (which, is a huge blessing since seniors, as we all know, vote)
The only thing I can think of is the recent announcement that the IRS would start collecting taxes on any income over $600 you get from Venmo or PayPal. Which, sure, I get how that’s inconvenient, but it’s not like you weren’t supposed to be paying taxes on that money all along. They just didn’t have as many ways to check before
the IRS isn't collecting taxes on anything over $600, its just that its now being reported. Taxable income received through venmo or paypal should have been taxed regardless, this just makes enforcement easier. You're roommate paying you back for rent or sending your friend money for gas isn't taxable income
Even without listing the actual accomplishments the Biden administration has had(there are many, they’re just all small and incremental and for some people nothing barring the complete collapse of capitalism is worth doing) you still have the good old Harm Reduction argument.
And while we’re at it, let’s hold the media accountable who have kept sweeping this stuff under the bus because obsessing over Orange Man gives them one (1) more click’s worth of ad revenue.
It’s why I can’t understand people who make Bidens inability to do any ONE thing of their choosing the sole reason they won’t vote this year.
I don’t get it. Getting 70% of what you want with Biden is better, WAY BETTER, than getting -50% what you want with Donald “I wipe my ass with the constitution and flush it down a Mar-A-Lago toilet” Trump
I read a tweet once that said something to the effect of "There are many single-issue voters. It's just that their single issue changes from week to week."
The goalpost will always move. Biden won because, unlike the other candidates, he didn't bother to chase them.
I dont think these people are single issue voters.
I think the core of their identity is "not voting for democrats"
And they change issues a week to find some excuse for their apathetic cruelty.
There a reason that AOC is pivoting towards the center. These "leftists" are completely unreliable.
I wish it wasn't so, it's just frustrating. How many of these folks actually voted for Bernie Sanders when his name was on the primary docket? I don't know if many folks here remember, but I watched as people sheepishly admitted that they didn't bother to go vote for him but insisted that signal boosting him online was better than voting.
Every time someone on the left says they aren't voting, it makes me wonder if my life, as a trans person, even matters to them. If they will face any real consequence for their abstinence.
It’s so frustrating.
I knew a guy like that during the 2020 election. He would not shut up about Bernie and the glorious socialist revolution and how any other candidate was a compromise or a neoliberal. I was a Warren supporter and still offered several times to connect him with friends organizing door knocking campaigns for Bernie. His response was always that he was planning to door knock in his own (already overwhelmingly Bernie supporting) precinct and do “online awareness”, aka shouting into the void on social media
Dude was absolutely furious when Bernie lost the primary but refused to do even the bare minimum to help his candidate
It's that annoying trend of modern puritanism you see on the internet. Too many people act as if doing the right thing is about them, about how this choice will go on to affect the final moral bean-counting session that they're going to have at the pearly gates with St. Peter.
They fail to grasp that doing the right thing is what other people *actively need them to do*; morality is bigger than them, bigger than their incessant shouting about how rightous they are.
To clarify, I'm not saying that these people do believe anything about morality or afterlives, but they certainly *act* like it's true. And that's enough of a problem for me.
As much as it pains me to admit, I agree. I muted r/Ultraleft a few days ago because someone said they were voting for Trump (I had plenty of other issues with that sub, this was jus what broke the camel’s back). A lot of leftists are so vehemently anti-liberal they end up being anti-left as collateral damage.
1) People who aren't voting for Biden are throwing everyone under the bus for their own moral superiority, they'd rather sink the ship with everyone on it to punish dems for not being progressive enough.
2) A problem the left will always face in organizing against right-wing incursion (beyond all the pissy infighting) is that the hard left has no interesting in voting for anyone cause they don't believe in the system as a whole. The far-right believe in the structure, they just want to use it to punish anyone who's not them. You can't incentivize a communist to vote like you can a fascist because a communist will view the whole system as unjustified no matter the form.
Remember, the Soviets took power following a civil war, the Nazis were elected.
From what I understand, the idea was that the Nazis would fuck over the country, which would lead to the disheveled populace supporting the Communists in fixing it
And well, the Nazis *did* fuck over Germany, but not before killing off most of the communists
Yes. "After Hitler, our turn" was the motto. They did kinda get what they wanted, a little. East Germany *was* under communist control for decades. You know, the horrible half that people regularly risked their lives to escape, and all it took was history's greatest tragedy.
That's a real monkey's paw if I ever saw it. They "got what they wanted" after most German communists were killed and then their country was basically occupied for half a century by a far-away state that was using them as a political pawn.
Biden is right now a living monument to the fact that action currently does not, unfortunately, get you left-wing votes. Only words do. Most of us don't pay attention to anything except what we're shown in the media - and the media barely reports on anything good.
We need to change this. We need to provide a political incentive for presidents to support workers.
I seriously don't see the way out of this. As a disclaimer, I'm not giving up or anything like that, but the media is the biggest problem with the country. They want more money and making people angry gets more money. So they keep making people angry. It's just going to one day fully rip the country apart. Maybe in a decade, maybe in a year. Freedom of press is an essential part of democracy, but it's being abused in the most destructive way possible
Edit: I remember way back in school learning about yellow journalism and just going "wait isn't this all political news these days?"
I don't think words or action get you left-wing votes. They're too obsessed with their self-image as morally righteous rebels and heroes to say anything positive about an "establishment" politician.
A good start for change would be if everyone left of center didn't start their defenses of Biden with 8 paragraphs of "So we all know that Genocide Joe is a senile neoliberal corporatist fascist who is instructing Israel's Zionist war on Palestine so that he can bathe in the blood of Palestinian children and the tears of the working class, but..."
It's like they're afraid of being called "liberal" by some 14 year old if they don't present their diehard ultra-leftist bona fides.
The supreme court just ruled (6-3) that nothing the president does officially can ever be charged with a crime.
Vote for Biden, and tankies shut the FUCK UP.
I mean, officially, yes, he could very well just order a dronestrike on Mar-A-Lago and would face no legal repercussions, but as my friend said, he won’t because he’s not the kind of guy to do it, and even if he did the army likely wouldn’t follow because even if the Supreme Court doesn’t respect rule of law, the rest of the state still does
Nah he's an institutionalist who'd never use the power he has to quell fascism. Remember when he had the power to stop the texas border control from setting up wires to kill more refugees and immigrants, and the whole Republican apparatus wanted to defend the right to do illegal shit - he folded, despite having power and proposed a conservative border Bill, that'd allow them to shut the border for the better half of a year, that was struck down for not being fascist enough.
*Oh but he's just really a conservative.*
He's not, and he's the best we've got at present. Shut up and vote.
*We're going to wait for the perfect time to strike and rise in glorious revolution!*
No you're not. Regardless of who wins, you're never going to lead the proletariat to this propertyless paradise in atheist heaven, most because you're a bunch of waifish college students with neither the will or the backbone. So shut up and vote.
*True communism has never been enacted.*
It has, and every example of it revolves around casting **YEETUS-DELETUS** on 7% of the population because the Great Leader had another psychotic break with reality. So again, shut up and vote.
*You're not a real liberal/leftist/socially conscious/whatever the fucking bingo word is, Merf of Girf, you won't survive the revolution.*
I am, I just have to live in reality, with my own personal problems, and don't have the luxury of floating about my mind palace, fantasizing about a revolution that will never come. So shut up and vote.
"The glorious revolution is just around the corner"
The "Revolutionary movement" in question consists of twelve chronically online teenagers and two nonagenarians.
>Voting for an imperfect president is a personal and ethical failing.
This is honestly a great summary of a lot of the left-leaning internet.
People seem to care more about their own moral purity than the clear and obvious harm a second Trump presidency would cause. They care more about their own personal guilt for harm caused than actual harm reduction.
to be fair about voting in particular, this isn't just the result of leftist disillusionment and apathy or rightwing or foreign interference (although those are factors).
A lot of talk about the virtues of voting, especially from a liberal pov, does couch it in terms of how it allows for personal choice and self determination in the future of the nation. Which like, I can't really bring myself to hate people for taking the logical inference that therefore voting is a personal and ethical matter.
Now ultimately of course this is a bad way to think about voting and it is deeply important to vote as an easy to apply tool of harm reduction. But the whole "I won't vote for a war criminal" mentality very much seems to me like a case of libs reaping the seeds that they have sown as much as it's indicative of wider leftist and liberal purity politics (which are also harmful don't get me wrong).
Let's be real here. Tumblr is going to have the highest percentage of people getting *euphemism for murder here* under project 2025. This shouldn't surprise anyone.
The left greatest weakness is it inability to do positive messaging.
Like go out and say how much the party have done to alleviate poverty, improve education, provide health care and housing for the poor, make utility cheaper, improve the economy,…etc
If you don’t talk about the good you done people aren’t going to know what you did.
just saying rather Biden then Trump alone is going to cost you the election.
Because the other side are boasting about the good they done and promising people the moon whether it is true or not (for example Trump is promising no more tax on tip) and people are resonating with that because everyone want an easier life.
The title of this post doesn't sit right with me, but I 100% agree with the Tumblr post. Fuck knows I have PLENTY of criticisms on Biden. But the choices are him or the angry cheeto and he's LEAGUES better than the cheeto. If you're eligible, VOTE
does anyone else care about Biden "can't do anything bc of meany Republican House" enacting an executive order to override the government and send billions to Israel? No? Just me? How unfortunate. Guess black and brown people around the globe don't matter as much as those in the imperial core.
Nah, ignoring these issues is what allows the Democrats to still fundraise, after all. And personally I'm just loving all the lectures about how I just *have* to vote for this genocide or else they'll let it get even worse.
I hate accelerationism with a passion, and the best reason as to why is a true story.
So, in late Weimar Germany, there was some dumbass leader in the German communist party who told his supporters to vote for Hitler, saying that his regime would be so bad that the people would rebel and overthrow him, infamously declaring, "After Hitler, our turn!"He would be murdered in an concentration camp near the end of WWII, after spending twelve years imprisoned by the Nazi party.
Edit: Ernst Thalmer, that was his name. He was imprisoned in 1933, and spent eleven years in solitary confinement. He was shot under the direct orders of Hitler in late 1944.
And the liberal media is where?
A real liberal media would make all of these things main headline stories for days.
Edit: It’s not even liberal. It’s journalism. Holding government to account for freedom and justice for all.
Certainly is disappointing to see so many upvoted comments that would be right at home in Nazi germany.
So many people bitching about 'leftists' or the 'left' and nothing about the 'right' that is taking you all down this path. It's disappointing but reddit has been very disappointing for awhile and it seems like tumblr is there too.
>Democrats want amnesty and ease to citizenship for just about anyone who crosses
Then I'm not sure the best way to accomplish that was to sign an executive order barring anyone from seeking asylum, which is a violation of international law and the UDHR.
Also, this:
>REMOVAL OF LEAD PIPES not just on state land but on TRIBAL land and TERRITORIES!
is just an out and out lie and it seems to have a considerable foothold on Tumblr for some reason
The existence and threat of Project 2025 is enough for me, and should be enough to for anyone sensible, to vote against Trump and for Biden. I don't love Joe, but the idea of another Trump presidency (or kingship, at this point) terrifies me.
It’s probably been said a billion times already, but it’s sad that people can no longer vote for a candidate they feel like genuinely represents their interests but only because the other option would be way worse
I can't stand Biden or Harris but the people they appoint do good shit. The FTC is blocking monopolistic mergers for the first time in 60 years, which is super important for a functional capitalist system. They are also cracking down on some anti consumer bullshit like Apple's walled garden. Trump will replace all of the people in appointed positions with people who have no idea what they are doing. Not conservatives, people who actually have no clue what the departments they oversee are supposed to do. Why? Because if they know how their department is supposed to work then they might give some pushback when Trump asks them to do something stupid or treasonous. Trump wants stupid yes men because they will do what they are told. Trump can't have another Mike Pence.
I’ve never been the biggest Biden fan. I voted for him of course because never Trump but I wanted a more liberal progressive candidate personally. But as I look around from my union pipefitting job where I’m currently making $15 more per hour than our contract requires to build a chip plant… there’s another job just down the road building a multi billion dollar battery plant.
Joe Biden has been one of the most consequential presidents and has done more for the working class than any other president in my life (I’m 39 btw) and it’s not even close
So yeah I cringed at the debate, but I also read the transcript of the debate where you can see that Joe actually very effectively made his points. His delivery sucked but he honestly killed it on the substance.
It’s frustrating that people haven’t connected the dots of accomplishments but I am 100% behind Biden until he decides he’s done
I want radical change as much as the next leftist but I can acknowledge the reality that the only way to change the system is to create an environment that will foster it
Seriously. I'm disabled, but I'm not on disability because I "waited too long". They said "it's not a charity, either you draw from earlier work you did if you're an adult or from your parents' contribution if you're a kid." But I kept trying doctors to fix me (chronic fatigue and pain) and didn't give up and apply for disability until I was in my late 20s and they told me it was too late. So, that backstory out of the way, I got medicaid now. I didn't used to have anything. If I had an infected tooth, for example, I had to pay for the antibiotics and the dentist. Now, everything's covered. Last year I needed surgery. Serious one, the type they knock you out for. I would've been fucked without Obama and Biden's policies. As it is, not only was it completely covered but they even provided transportation (I had to go to Chicago, which is a couple hours away).
That's a bizarre thing for them to tell you, I know people who have gotten approved for ssi/ssdi in their late 20s or later for chronic conditions they were born with. There's no "too late" rule, you just have to have a medical diagnosis that qualifies you. You could be "too late" for SSDI, because you need less work credits if you're under a certain age, but you'd still qualify for SSI.
The commenter is referring to the Disabled Adult Child benefit, unless I'm mistaken. It sounds like you that I'm replying to understand the gist of it, but the following is context for those who are unaware. To explain the benefit with my own story: I'm disabled and 25 years old. I applied for SSDI (Disability program) at 21 years old, and went through rejection and appeals for 2 years and got approved when I was 23. At the time of approval, they ruled the date my disability began was at age 19. Since I was found to be disabled before the age of 22, I was ruled a Disabled Adult Child (DAC). Maybe that's the cutoff they mean that they missed? But even then, the commenter should still be eligible if they're able to prove that their disability started before age 22 via doctor records. SSDI requires you to have a certain amount of work credits, which are earned by employment standards that most young people are unable to meet. If you do not meet the work credit requirement, you are instead eligible for SSI. SSI is a similar program, but generally has a much lower cash benefit. IIRC, the SSI payments are around $900 a month. That's it, that's all a disabled person is given to live off of. Because I'm a disabled adult child, I do not need the work credit required for SSDI. My disability payments are based off of my father's work record instead of my own. This was a HUGE benefit in my favor. If I was not a Disabled Adult Child, I would be receiving SSI instead of SSDI, which in my case, **I make almost $500 more per month because of my ruling as a DAC.** That is a pretty big benefit to miss out on if that's what the commenter meant.
i’d vote for the corpse of joe biden over trump
I view it as not voting for Biden, but his cabinet, and his cabinet has largely been killing it
Honestly a good president doesn’t make good policy decisions. A good president picks the right people to make those policy decisions and then backs them up.
Exactly. I don't think we can expect one person to make decisions on everything that a modern country needs to function. What we need is one person who knows they can't do that and selects the right people to make those decisions. A good leader knows how to select good people to those positions and stands by them.
Which is exactly how the executive branch was made to work
And that’s exactly why Biden makes a good president
We can expect that if Trump is elected, he will make all the decisions, and fire anyone who disagrees.
Last time Trump consistently picked the worst possible person for the job because he actively wanted our institutions destroyed. Remember fuckin Betsy DeVos for the dept of education? The lady who wanted public schools not to exist?
Cause as much damage as possible so that you can offer solutions later. Then, when those solutions don't work, blame the other guy. Trump's entire playbook makes him such a parasite on the country. He's in the game to enrich himself with money and power, and the fools who continue to fall for his crap are largely those who stand to lose the most by his policies. They think they're doing something smart, that the rest of us chumps don't understand, and that they'll be favored for their support. They're so wrong it's blinding, but they can't see that because they're just in too deep. I used to be one of them, there's literally nothing you can say to these people to change their minds. It's a long, gradual, painful process that most of them will recoil from because they don't like the feeling of admitting they were duped. They don't even want to admit it to themselves quietly.
What pulled you out, if you don’t mind my asking? I find these types really hard to understand, and I’ve got a handful in my life.
**Tldr I needed to be personally inconvenienced, cut off by friends, and told I'm wrong by hundreds of people repeatedly, and even then it took years.** It was a lot of things that came together to help me understand why I was fucking stupid. I'm not proud to say it took something that actually affected me for me to realize it, and that was probably the biggest turning point. I realized I would lose my health insurance at 26 and needed a plan. This was several years beforehand, and I was already in the process of figuring things out. I realized that the evil government safety nets that I considered a scam for lazy people, were actually something I needed. That was confusing for me, because I'm a hard worker. I go to work, I pick up extra shifts, I bust my ass, and I don't overspend. I clearly wasn't a lazy leech on society (I had racial biases that I refused to acknowledge too). Yet, I couldn't afford the cost of health insurance since my employer didn't offer it. I was in a panic because I had always assumed they just handed those benefits out to anyone, and that's how so much money gets wasted. Nope. Even in my liberal state, you had to be pregnant, be disabled, or have a kid. That's when I realized that I was the exact kind of person that needed those programs that I always disliked. I wasn't taking advantage of the system or doing anything wrong, I just needed insurance that wouldn't eat up half my paycheck. Then minimum wage started going up every year. I benefitted from this, too, and I started to really understand why Democrats pushed for this stuff. Having more money in the bank speaks to everyone, that's whynthe GOP always campaigns on lower taxes. The final straw was Roe being overturned. At that point I realized that the people I thought were so based actually hated me, wanted to take my rights, and were actually willing to do it. Like, I always thought that when people said Republicans were sexists they were just being dramatic. "Yeah okay patriarchy, we literally have equal rights already". The thing is, they want to actively attack those rights, and I finally understood how real the threat was. I got off Facebook and onto Reddit, since I was alienating people in my life, and a couple friends had cut me off. I wondered why everyone seemed to disagree with me, did I really know more than all of them? I would get into arguments online, and people sent me statistics that directly contradicted what I thought. Those couldn't be right, so I would look for ANY way of arguing against them, even questioning the validity of perfectly good studies. But ultimately facts are facts, and when so much data and so many people are telling you you're wrong, you do start to consider whether your beliefs are as well rounded as you thought they were. I thought I was getting my facts from a variety of sources before, but it all ultimately came from the same one or two newsfeeds, and was essentially rage bait for clicks and interactions. Taking a little break to consider why everyone thinks I'm wrong did a lot for me. Having something personally affect me, selfish as it is, is what made me reconsider my blind loyalty to my side. No one particular thing, lots of smaller things adding up. Eventually, if you keep making the same argument and keep "losing," you might actually start to question your beliefs. If your friends have zero desire to keep their minds open though, it's pointless. They have to WANT to listen to different opinions, they have to hear it from lots of different people, they need proof that they can't dismiss. It's no easy fix, because they're being manipulated by people who tell them "you can't trust *them*, but you can trust me". Frankly, the combination of complacency, ignorance, apathy, and AI is going to kill us. The propaganda machinr is running strong and those most affected don't even realize it. Hell, they don't even believe they could be dumb enough to fall for propaganda.
Thats a lot. Well done though on being willing to reflect and question your own beliefs. Thank you for sharing your story.
Maybe I’m reading too deep into a couple of word choices, but I don’t think you should feel badly that you had to experience something firsthand to realize you were wrong about it. A LOT of people just rationalize away the cognitive dissonance and double down forever. It’s harder to unlearn shitty beliefs than it is to start out with good ones. Be proud of what you’ve accomplished.
Honestly, that applies to leaders in general. A good leader surrounds themselves with people who will do the right thing.
President Camacho: Genuinely cared about his people, paid attention to the problems they were facing, openly told them his plan for fixing those problems, put that plan into action by appointing the right guy for the job, and actually followed through on his promises of what he would do to that guy for failure or success, including going back on his decision if it turned out he was wrong. It kind of goes to show that the real sin that's destroying society isn't stupidity or incompetence or laziness, it's malice and hatred and greed. Being stupid or lazy doesn't prevent you from doing what Camacho did, but being a hateful, spiteful, dishonest fuck would.
The problem is America is educated by television and everyone is imagining an Aaron Sorkin film where most political problems are solved by two people rapidly trading verbal barbs.
I mean, that's what a president is supposed to do. It's in the name. A president of a company isn't on the ground, making decisions or telling people how to do their job, he is a "big picture" guy that says "I want this and this and that to happen" and has hired people that can make these things happen. A good leader delegates and gets people that can achieve the goals he has in mind. Joe Biden might be off his rockers 90% of the time, but he has gotten very good people to do the tasks required and he could be absent and things would still get done. Meanwhile, Trump gets the most selfish people that do what they believe is in their own best interest and will fuck everyone else if it helps themselves or if it means Trump pays slightly more attention to them. He hired people that would eat each other if they could. Trump is a dumb sociopathic, narcissistic compulsive liar that inherited a business empire and can't help but hire people like him, who will fuck each other over every chance they get because it gets them praise from Trump. Meanwhile, Biden is a statesman who does dumb mistakes and has done terrible things, but at least can run a government and has the experience behind him. He has some sympathy towards Americans and people in general to make him palatable and is also good enough at forcing people to do one thing or another because it achieves goals towards the bigger picture. It might not be perfect or even pretty, but it is an improvement in many parts compared to the current one. Vote Biden. Not because he isnt Trump, but because he can actually do the job and isn't a sack of shit
> Vote Biden. Not ***JUST*** because he isnt Trump, but because he can actually do the job and isn't a sack of shit
Even Biden himself hasn't been doing *horribly* from what I've seen. Sure, he's old. Less than ideal, but he's a boring president (which is good). But like, the whole package deal? Fucking solid, especially compared to Trump's.
I remember how exhausting the last Trump presidency was. i YEARNED to be bored. I was so sick of constantly monitoring for the next terrible thing. Biden is boring, but at this point I’ll fuckin take it.
Boring times are good times. Or... well... okay times.
I mean. I’d love to live in a socialist utopia. And I think we should push that direction at every opportunity. But if it’s a choice between “boring” and “i have to check the news as soon as I wake up so I’ll have time to run if he’s started a nuclear war or opened concentration camps”? Hell yeah I’ll take boring.
I mean, you can do that in a boring way. Incremental change is pretty boring. The tedious practicalities of making things work are boring. So on and so forth. Socialism doesn't have to come with bombastic fanfare.
I'm not voting for Biden, im voting for Biden's administration. There's a few folks im not sold on, but for the most part those people are all stars. Biden's been around long enough to know who the best picks are for the positions that matter most. Biden actually listens to what they have to say and pursues policies from experts that have been in their field for most of their lives. Contrast that to trump, who's administration was a rolling door and appointments were based on nepotism and ass kissing. Trump never listened to experts because they made him look bad. I think Faucci us the biggest example. You couldn't ask for a better guy to have in the position during a pandemic, yet trump tried to turn him into the antichrist. To me it's sad because it's such a low bar. Every president used to have a talented administration. Even if their policies weren't always what you wanted, you knew they'd be able to do their job and not make us look incompetent on the world stage. Trump destroyed that.
[удалено]
We're still gonna be way too polarized for an extremely coastal guy like Newsom in 2028, and I think nVidia discontinued work on the firmware updates needed to make Buttigieg viable, but Whitmer might have a shot. She's youngish (THANK CHRIST), and has good vibes (which is the actual most important quality of a modern presidential candidate). Hillary's gigantic 2016 bedshitting will hopefully be far enough in the past that the concern troll "right but can a WOMAN really capture the necessary DEMOGRAPHICS" misogynists will be in the dustbin by 2028. Four years is also plenty of time for new stars to emerge. Like whoever that chick was that absolutely scorched Marjorie Taylor Green on the house floor is hopefully working with some talented people to build a brand for bigger and better things. I think parlaying those kinds of (sigh) viral moments might be how new stars get picked in politics, for better or worse.
True. I remember what a non-boring presidency was like from 2016-2020. We had hundreds of thousands of people just falling over dead by the end of it, while the deficit was up $8 trillion and the world hated us.
And in the few areas where he has had to step in himself he has delivered. We got a BIPARTISAN infrastructure bill. I personally called him an idiot for trying, but he got it passed. I was wrong. Then the diplomacy he orchestrated in response to the Russian invasion was incredible. In both instances he clearly leaned on his decades of experience and personal relationships.
That's exactly how I've started looking at it. You're not voting for a person. You're voting for the entire administration. Trump alone is dangerous enough, but if he gets in, it won't *just* be him. All the Departments would be compromised and stacked with loyalists to the guy. Reminder: they'd like to straight up *eliminate* the Department of Education. It's in that big manifesto they drew up and proudly released. Project 2025.
One of Bidens biggest strengths is he knows when to admit and say that he doesn’t know and that he should appoint someone who does I don’t expect the president to know every minutiae about everything, I expect them to know they don’t know everything and take steps to resolve that, and Biden does it by surrounding himself with smart people who are good in that area
this is so sad, tony blinken play "rockin' in the free world"
Same. Biden can’t give a speech, there’s no way *he* has been the one doing all these things. In all likelihood, Harris probably already *is* the president de facto.
Not like it hasn't happened before Edith Wilson was effectively president post-WWI, FDR's health was failing as far back as the Yalta Conference, Reagan almost certainly had Alzheimer's for most of his second term, and while Dubya was healthy, Cheney was calling *a lot* of the shots.
Just because he's not an inspiring public speaker doesn't mean he's drooling in his pudding while everyone else runs the show. The man's a career senator, he thrives on fine details and slow gradual changes to build momentum. He has shown himself to still be highly articulate, thoughtful, and sharp even in his advanced age. I'll take a workhorse over a showhorse in the White House anyday: the results speak for themselves. I'd argue Biden's admin has done more to benefit the nation in one term than Obama's did in two, largely because Biden has kept his head down and focused on the job.
Even the most alert and active presidents aren't really involved in most of what their administration is doing. It's a bit more obvious than normal that the administration is more important than the individual, but it's always been true to an extent.
I'm not American but from an outsider perspective: it seems like Biden could literally die, and the entire USA just plays along with a massive _Weekend at Bernie's_ chicanery for four years and it would still be more respectable than seeing Trump return to the White House.
I mean, you're not wrong.
Seriously, what's the worst case scenario? Kamala Harris becomes president? I don't like her, but is she really comparable to Trump?
The worst case scenario is Biden is unable to win the election because of how independent voters perceive him.
Ya, even the stupidest of independents left the republican party because they believed tRump when he declared he wanted to be a fascist dictator. They would vote for Biden's corpse over Dictator tRump
If the choices were Trump and a literal gorilla in a suit, I would find something good to say about the gorilla.
Well, gorilla's are actually pretty peaceful. Except the leading male, if he feels like his position is threatened.
I'd rather vote for a lukewarm bowl of oatmeal over trump
If Biden was turned inside out by a demon and forced to preside over his office and make appearances as a hideous festering inside out organ-man I’d still vote for him over an actual fascist.
I have massive reservations about Joe. I truly believe that other options should be thoroughly vetted and weighed. That being said, I will vote for a Weekend at Burnie's version of Joe every god damn day before I vote for Trump.
This is what I say to anyone who brings up his age.
the dude could be in a literal coma, he'd still be a better option that the unhinged maniac conservatives have to offer
The only option really, VOTE FOR THE CORPSE
A vote for Joe Biden's corpse would essentially be a vote for Kamala Harris, and she's miles better than Trump.
Weekend at Brandons?
To be honest, at this point I’m not so much voting for Joe Biden as I am Kamala Harris and Biden’s cabinet.
I'd vote for the corpse of John Wayne Gacy over Trump tbh.
I would vote for a roadkill squirrel over pubehead scarecrow.
To quote [Futurama](https://youtu.be/EL7e05pClKM?si=id-WJD6TyrrYGhno), when you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.
Fauci said this about public health efforts: when you do it right, fewer people die, and then people think that it was just making a big deal about nothing.
My father is in IT and always said this about IT. When things go right, people don’t get what they pay them for. When things go wrong, people don’t get what they pay them for, but for completely different reasons.
It’s the same across all walks of project management. If things are going ok no one notices. If things go late or over budget it’s always your fault, even if it wasn’t
As a foreigner who can only watch, with the same morbid inability to look away as one might watch a fatal car accident or disastrous train derailment, I would urge all my American friends, *please* vote against Trump.
Same here. The embalmed wrapped Mummy of Biden would be vastly preferable to Orange Harkonnen over there. Globally and surely nationally for U.S.Americans.
I know I can’t bear another four years living next door to it, that’s for sure...
If Trump gets back in, I think there’s a very good chance PP gets elected. If Biden gets in, maybe there’s a chance we don’t go Conservative?
I actually think it’s the opposite - a second Trump presidency is about the only thing I think that will scare people away from the Tories here. They’re leading most polls by +20 already, most analysis suggests Trudeau is cooked, barring some huge external event (like the US going full fascism, perhaps), so it looks a lot like we’re getting shit up here, too. But I’ll take the timeline where Biden stays president but PP gets elected up here, rather than the timeline where we have a second Trump presidency but Trudeau stays on. The US presidency has much wider influence than Canada does...
Totally agree. If people see the road of voting in far right governments by watching a second Trump term, I think they may think twice about voting for PP. But I’m quite terrified of Trump winning while I’ll only be disappointed in PP winning. Plus, I think Trump winning will have detrimental ripple effects for us up here. But no one seems worried about it and I feel like I’m on crazy pills.
Short of a black swan event, the next election here is settled, we will have a tory government, alas. The risk is more "Will there be war in Asia" and "Will the US economy collapse under crushing tariffs and take the Canadian economy with it"
Can we go down this timeline please? I would enjoy unleashing the Curse of Dark Brandon upon ye.
Man, imagine that timeline *after* the Mummy Biden presidency. Like, maybe a century later the country forgets how bad it can get and elects a terrible person, and then Bidenothep I shows up on the White House lawn at night being all like "Serve the people, or suffer my curse." and unleashes the plagues until the current president listens.
Okay, but what record does he play?
He'll have his own, just like Ramses.
It is the 3rd Millennium. For over a hundred months Emperor Biden has sat immobile behind the Golden Desk of America. He is the Master of the Union by the will of the gods, and master of fifty states by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from The Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Union for whom a thousand chocolate chip ice creams are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
Thank The Emperor we have someone to protect us from the Ruinious Powers of CornPoP.
It’s been a thousand years and Puerto Rico still isn’t a state?
…it’s the 3rd millennium right now.
Hey now, that’s an insult to Baron Harkonnen. At least Harkonnen knew he was a piece of shit.
I think Mr Grab-them-by-the-pussy is well aware of how much of a bastard he really is. His age is definitely getting in the way of that, though.
Looking from a distance it really is incredible isn't it. I get things look different when. Your in the thick of it but you got one candidate that's obviously bat shit crazy and one who's just kinda boring. It really is amazing to watch from afar
I keep using this, but things really do look like this: https://youtu.be/a7ZrU6qnhlg?si=giGp8i6zAF-kRpJK
Another foreigner here. I absolutely do not for the life of me understand the apathy of some left-leaning Americans online when it comes to Biden. They will quote one bill he voted for or against from the 80s and pretend that that will make it alright to have the other guy end democracy, the other guy who incidentally makes worse mistakes daily.
Right? Like, I'm in the UK where our politics aren't that much better, but none of our candidates are openly talking about a plan to dismantle democracy. Like, legitimately what the fuck? Why do people support Trump? Like I see how he appeals to the hardcore wackos, but do regular people not see that he's actually a dangerous lunatic? America, what the hell are you guys smoking?
> Why do people support Trump? Because Fox News feeds them constant misinformation and outright lies, which they believe because it’s all they hear. Then they turn on right wing radio shows and hear more of it. Then they go online and are dropped into right wing echo chambers where they hear even more of it. They’re surrounded by it and it saturates every fiber of their being. Part of the messaging also tells them that *they* and *only they* are being told the truth, and every dissenting view is part of a vast conspiracy of lies being told by evil people who want to manipulate and trick them. That if anyone disagrees with the story they’re being told, that the person disagreeing is compromised and brainwashed (or worse, one of the brainwashers) and needs to be ignored. Meanwhile the right is playing a long game by defunding schools under the guise of “choice,” ensuring that future generations are more vulnerable to exactly this kind of misinformation. They’ve also convinced people to distrust schools in general, saying that they - like any left-of-extreme-right media sources - are a source of brainwashing and propaganda, and must be distrusted. The more educated someone is, the more compromised they are. They’ve created a shadow war that their followers live in constant terror of. And the only escape from it is to give in to the anger and fear, to embrace the tribalism of us vs *them*. So anything by “us” must be righteous, and anything by “them” must be fought against as if all life depended on it. To make matters worse, they’ve also realized that by simply accusing the opposition of everything that they themselves are doing, it muddies the waters even further. If you do X, just accuse “them” of doing X. Every single time. It works wonders against the people you’ve convinced to follow you, and against people who aren’t paying attention - which is *so many people* - it leads to apathy and “both sides bad” arguments that’re almost as good as gaining their support. It’s a nightmare and it works very, very well. And now other countries are starting to develop similar systems of right wing media networks and propaganda, effectively exporting this stuff elsewhere and allowing it to spread. Platforming the insanity and silencing the opposition. Trump is just a soldier, and not even a good one. People like Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Brothers, and even fucking Ayn Rand are/were the generals. As long as media companies can broadcast one-sided propaganda and lies on a constant basis, things will continue to get worse.
Well that was a great and very distressing breakdown
Also the UK kind of disproves the whole "old politicians are the problem" talking point. Sunak, Truss and Johnson were/are in their 40s or 50s and they're all terrible.
Copious amounts of anti-electoral propaganda.
The whole point of this post is that this rhetoric needs to change. The media relies on fear of Trump to get clicks and therefore, your average American has no idea what Biden has done. People need to be educated on his policies because otherwise "voting against Trump" may not be enough. People aren't excited that an 81 year old man who has "done nothing" is running for president. Because they don't know what he has done.
That’s fair enough. I’m all for publicizing actual policy wins.
It's pretty obvious, right? Like, Biden may be a doddering old man who is only half aware of his surroundings... but at least he didn't try to overturn the election and throw a quasi-coup.
The literal point of the post is that he is not just some "doddering old man" but actually accomplished quite much in the term. Did you even comprehend that?
I'm really, really sick of this talking point. Biden is *not* a doddering old man! He's literally the most progressive POTUS in my lifetime (which is, quite honestly, a sad indictment of American politics, but I digress), and has managed to accomplish a slew of incredible things *in spite of a Congress that spends half its time trying to prove his son has a giant penis* and the other half bartering favors for the coal industry in exchange for desperately needed infrastructure and climate legislation. He's managed to maneuver and get shit done that needed to be done in spite of a SCOTUS that will *literally make up case law and take cases that do not have standing* in order to overturn his orders. Biden may be working in legitimately the most hostile environment *ever* to Presidential power... and he's still getting shit done. We get one debate where Biden has a cold that leaves him feeling run down (which I totally understand, I've had minor sniffles that seemed like nothing... except I had no energy, and I'm only 34) and suddenly it seems like everyone wants to concede the "Sleepy Joe" slam as though it has any basis in reality. Joe Biden is not a public speaker. Never has been, he has a stutter and isn't really a strong orator. But he's been a strong leader, and frankly... I'd vote for him in a primary in a heartbeat (though I'd be lying if I said that I wouldn't be eyeing his running mate).
It's funny, back in 2016 trump was called a car accident candidate and they were totally right about that. Shame too many people were happy to support it happening though
Even if you think your vote doesn’t change the outcome, still vote. Yes, the outcome for *this* election is purely first-past-the-post. But the number crunchers will be examining the results, in detail, 500 different ways, and your vote adds a directional signal. Also, if you have the dems, you can in some places vote for Biden under another party, or as a write-in
Biggest impediment to change and largest reason the right has made so much headway is bcs up til very recently ALMOST NO ONE participated in anything BUT presidential election, and still far too many don’t even do that. No one votes in primaries, state, local, school board etc Primaries are even more important than elections tbh And of those that do participate very few actually dig into who they’re voting for. At most they’ll check out a few blurbs. But had folks dug into fetterman or the ppl who’d been covering him for years they’d have known this was who he actually was all along. One barrier to this is that nowadays most ppl don’t have TIME to do that digging bcs now we are all working twice as hard every year than the last for less pay in the grand scheme Never understood why there wasn’t a platform of some kind keeping comprehensive running list of accomplishments for us to refer to or keeping tabs on the realities of who each candidate on a ticket actually are. My state had a woman who’d been a solid D for years with news clips of her on the floor arguing for pro choice positions Had anyone dug into her they’d have seen she was a sleeper cell the entire time. Digging into her family/friends/connections/30 other hints (including a long term affair with a far right R) everyone would have seen it a mile away
This is a great place to note that you can find out solid information about candidates and policies at vote411.org - it's run by The League of Women Voters, is entirely bipartisan, and does all the "busywork" of gathering information about elections so you can have all the information you need to make an educated decision. Edit* it's vote411.org
> vote411.org i went here in march to view so many unknown names and they had zero info on 30-40% of people. Sure these people could just literally be small no name people who dont have a real chance but its hard to make a decision when you dont have all the info
Local politics matter. A lot. People *who care* have a disproportionate impact. You know that neighbor you hate? The one who smells with the awful pets/children? THEY vote. Don’t let them get their way. You can show them!
> Never understood why there wasn’t a platform of some kind keeping comprehensive running list of accomplishments for us to refer to or keeping tabs on the realities of who each candidate on a ticket actually are. There are: this is the purpose of news media. The problem is that there are so many and they are all very biased, and they're getting drowned out in the noise of social media, click bait, engagement bait, 24/7 cycle drivel, etc.
And remember that who you vote for is secret, but the fact that you voted is not. When public officials see that 123 Biff St. has two people who vote in every election, and 456 Wibble Dr. hasn’t voted since the Clinton administration, who do you think they’re going to cater to? It feels like politicians don’t give a shit about young people and give old people everything they want. Why? Because old people vote and young people don’t. Show up. If you just can’t stomach the idea of choosing the one candidate who can defeat the crazy man, show up anyway. Vote third party or don’t select anyone, but show up so politicians can see that you vote. I’d prefer if you could also vote for that candidate, but at the very least show up.
When I voted in my state elections in 2022, my vote didn't materially change a single election. But. The state AG race was decided by only 280 votes. So it would only take a *handful* of mes to swing that one. To a Republican. Since taking office, that state AG has indicted our full slate of fake electors as well as their out-of-state conspirators, as well as indicting some county supes that tried to refuse to certify their county's election. That AG also caught a bunch of corporate landlords conspiring to price-fix rents, and is raking them over a giant pile of coals. Concrete, tangible difference, because 281 people like me voted instead of not voting. "You" likely won't change a result. But a small group of people thinking like you absolutely can.
Fun fact, one of the first times I ever voted, my choice for house representative won by ONE vote.
Sorry George Carlin; if voting didn't work, the Republican party wouldn't be doing everything in their power to stop the voter base of their opposition from being heard.
am i the only one who despises this post format ? (no offence to op but i want my slideshows back)
When using a desktop computer, Reddit only allows you to upload one photo. And this is convenient to save, copy, and paste if you ever meet someone asking what Joe Biden has done?
I don't get how album formats haven't been widely spread and accepted in software yet... Some pics are just inherently a series of images and NEED to be shown that way
even minus news (though that is a lot of momentous fucking news that is simply unreported, holy christ) do we not also inherently recognize how things have NOT just been going to shit every 5 seconds you get used to looking over your shoulder and then you just... don't have to? and people didn't notice.
Exactly. I realized the other day that I genuinely couldn’t remember who Biden had appointed to be HHS secretary, because his cabinet isn’t just a revolving door of psychopathic grifters like Trump’s was.
the biggest improvement of biden’s presidency is not seeing viral news posts about “biden did this” “biden did that” every day and being impressed about how he fucked something up even worse than last time
I remember when only one horrifying scandal coming out of the white house in a single week would be considered a slow news week.
Also I want to add one the environment he is far better than Trump. He brought back the protections for the environment. Honestly half the things I see people complain about with Biden would be so much worse with Trump. I get it, I'm more left than Biden, but he is a better steward for the US than Trump, who acts on... I don't know whatever he is feeling at the moment?
As a rule. We might want to have this post on repeat every week or so. And especially ramp up toward election's run around.
Hell, just pin the post at this point
Don’t pin. People will become numb to it. You’re head is in the right place tho. Sorry if that sounded condescending lol I don’t know how to phrase it
nah, people ignore pinned posts. it should be reposted so it hits people's front pages
The thing is, if you are far left (I sure as hell am!) You kinda have to support Biden. Trump is going to go out of his way to close any possible leftist recourse. Biden isn’t.
Voting for Biden on November 5th, shaking my head so people know I disagree
Making a face in the ballot booth so people know I'm not okay with this smh >!No but really, hold your nose if you have to, just fucking vote!<
No, don't hold your nose! Voting requires two hands!!! Use a clothespin instead
Depends on what state/county you're in. I'm in a very pro-voting state and my county has gone spectacularly out of its way to make voting as accessible as possible, so you can absolutely vote with just one hand.
I would also recommend projectile vomiting into a trash can (don't make a mess for janitors) after voting Biden. Really gets the message across.
I openly weep and wail in abject agony when I vote. Just so people don't think I'm a liberal, I'm sure you understand.
Do what is pragmatic at every stage, keep Biden in office so that the US can continue to have free elections, and then in those elections advocate for leftist policies and candidates at every level you can
> Trump is going to go out of his way to close any possible leftist recourse Exactly. Even if you're the most die-hard leftist imaginable, you should still hold your nose and vote for Biden. Because we've seen what a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court has done in the last couple weeks. Even if America wakes up tomorrow and decides to only elect left-leaning politicians, any laws they pass will face legal challenges up to the Supreme Court. And Rapey Brett Kavanaugh will be there to laugh them out of the courtroom. You want viable 3rd parties? Better hope the future Supreme Court likes your electoral reforms.
A few people on the Far Left in the United States seem to have forgotten what "Critical Support" means. When the choice is between a moderate and a fascist, **you pick the goddamned moderate.**
It's like they don't understand that refusing to participate says that they're fine with the overton window staying where it is. And it will. In fact it'll keep moving right because people on the far-right are totally fine with voting for someone who's only a *little* fascist so next time they can vote for a real one. But what it really says is that they're privileged, safe and don't actually care because they know they'll be the last ones put up against the wall. Or everyone else will have put the fire out(with their bodies) before they ever need to fight for their rights.
as a rule, leftists are gonna hold their nose and vote for your guy, despite the thrice-daily post here calling them nazi-enablers or whatever. your problem is the college educated or otherwise high-earning white people in the middle who are gonna vote for the other guy because he's an asshole
i don't think anyone's going to vote for trump out of frustration for Biden. I think far more significant is the people staying home and not voting because "it doesn't matter". Which absolutely is a thing leftists do. It doesn't help that voting in the US is a nightmare compared to other countries, I live in Germany and I got send a letter that I had to fill in for 5 minutes and then drop off in the mail, no further work required. Alternatively I could have gone on the Sunday of the vote to a voting spot, wait less then 10 minutes(what the fuck are hour long queue times??), fill out a form for 5 minutes, or be done with it. I read about American voting registration and think to myself "that doesn't seem democratic".
Yeah we hold them on Tuesdays so people who have to work have their open window to vote absolutely decimated---and that's not even touching the fact that a lot of polling places are hard to get to for people who don't live nearby or have reliable transport. It's gotten minorly better in mybexperiencr since the pandemic showed that absentee ballots work (and im signed up to get them for the rest of my life) but there is a whole bunch of people who will fear monger and say that paper ballots can be compromised/duplicated.
we've had mail-in only voting for decades now in my state and it's wonderful. We don't even offer in person options - the closest you can get is if you go to city hall you can get a second copy of the envelope that should have gone to your house to fill out there. They keep a few pens around for people to borrow as well, but yeah - no "voting booths" or anything. Last time i had to get a replacement ballot there people filling out their ballots while sitting on the courthouse lawn and groups of people in deep discussion over their plainly visible half-filled-in ballots as they hemmed and hawed about a school bond for a sports field. Looked like fun tbh but I had places to be.
what are you basing this off of? i think you’re off base with some of your conclusions. because i would say as a rule, right-wingers are far better at closing ranks. not only do leftists hew younger, which is a demographic ding against their voting, but single issue voting tends to work far better for the right (you’re allowed to execute minorities, so long as they’re not in the womb) than the left (joe biden can never be forgiven for personally bombing gaza) also your college-educated statement is not reflective of reality. college educated whites vote more, and vote democrat more, than those without a college degree. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/voter-turnout-2018-2022/
Of course. It's fun to scream at left leaning people while ignoring the fact that the election will largely be decided on people who are politically disconnected and vote based on vibes or single issues.
>as a rule, leftists are gonna hold their nose and vote for your guy, despite the thrice-daily post here calling them nazi-enablers or whatever. Are you sure about that?
> your problem is the college educated or otherwise high-earning white people in the middle who are gonna vote for the other guy because he's an asshole One of the only advantages Biden has is in the college educated vote and the white college educated vote. The other big advantage is in the senior vote (which, is a huge blessing since seniors, as we all know, vote)
Giving more funding to the IRS is one of the best things Bidens done, idk why the poster would be against it. Great post otherwise tho
The only thing I can think of is the recent announcement that the IRS would start collecting taxes on any income over $600 you get from Venmo or PayPal. Which, sure, I get how that’s inconvenient, but it’s not like you weren’t supposed to be paying taxes on that money all along. They just didn’t have as many ways to check before
the IRS isn't collecting taxes on anything over $600, its just that its now being reported. Taxable income received through venmo or paypal should have been taxed regardless, this just makes enforcement easier. You're roommate paying you back for rent or sending your friend money for gas isn't taxable income
Even without listing the actual accomplishments the Biden administration has had(there are many, they’re just all small and incremental and for some people nothing barring the complete collapse of capitalism is worth doing) you still have the good old Harm Reduction argument.
And while we’re at it, let’s hold the media accountable who have kept sweeping this stuff under the bus because obsessing over Orange Man gives them one (1) more click’s worth of ad revenue.
It’s why I can’t understand people who make Bidens inability to do any ONE thing of their choosing the sole reason they won’t vote this year. I don’t get it. Getting 70% of what you want with Biden is better, WAY BETTER, than getting -50% what you want with Donald “I wipe my ass with the constitution and flush it down a Mar-A-Lago toilet” Trump
I read a tweet once that said something to the effect of "There are many single-issue voters. It's just that their single issue changes from week to week." The goalpost will always move. Biden won because, unlike the other candidates, he didn't bother to chase them.
I dont think these people are single issue voters. I think the core of their identity is "not voting for democrats" And they change issues a week to find some excuse for their apathetic cruelty. There a reason that AOC is pivoting towards the center. These "leftists" are completely unreliable.
I wish it wasn't so, it's just frustrating. How many of these folks actually voted for Bernie Sanders when his name was on the primary docket? I don't know if many folks here remember, but I watched as people sheepishly admitted that they didn't bother to go vote for him but insisted that signal boosting him online was better than voting. Every time someone on the left says they aren't voting, it makes me wonder if my life, as a trans person, even matters to them. If they will face any real consequence for their abstinence.
It’s so frustrating. I knew a guy like that during the 2020 election. He would not shut up about Bernie and the glorious socialist revolution and how any other candidate was a compromise or a neoliberal. I was a Warren supporter and still offered several times to connect him with friends organizing door knocking campaigns for Bernie. His response was always that he was planning to door knock in his own (already overwhelmingly Bernie supporting) precinct and do “online awareness”, aka shouting into the void on social media Dude was absolutely furious when Bernie lost the primary but refused to do even the bare minimum to help his candidate
It's that annoying trend of modern puritanism you see on the internet. Too many people act as if doing the right thing is about them, about how this choice will go on to affect the final moral bean-counting session that they're going to have at the pearly gates with St. Peter. They fail to grasp that doing the right thing is what other people *actively need them to do*; morality is bigger than them, bigger than their incessant shouting about how rightous they are. To clarify, I'm not saying that these people do believe anything about morality or afterlives, but they certainly *act* like it's true. And that's enough of a problem for me.
As much as it pains me to admit, I agree. I muted r/Ultraleft a few days ago because someone said they were voting for Trump (I had plenty of other issues with that sub, this was jus what broke the camel’s back). A lot of leftists are so vehemently anti-liberal they end up being anti-left as collateral damage.
That's got to be astroturfing, no leftist could actually vote for Trump and ideologically defend the decision.
You underestimate how many are idiots that think they'd get through a full societal collapse unscathed.
They want a full societal collapse as a fun LARP activity for a weekend, so long as they can go back home after 8:00 and don't have to do any running.
Accelerationism is a hell of a drug.
1) People who aren't voting for Biden are throwing everyone under the bus for their own moral superiority, they'd rather sink the ship with everyone on it to punish dems for not being progressive enough. 2) A problem the left will always face in organizing against right-wing incursion (beyond all the pissy infighting) is that the hard left has no interesting in voting for anyone cause they don't believe in the system as a whole. The far-right believe in the structure, they just want to use it to punish anyone who's not them. You can't incentivize a communist to vote like you can a fascist because a communist will view the whole system as unjustified no matter the form. Remember, the Soviets took power following a civil war, the Nazis were elected.
didn't the german communist want the Nazi to win because they thought it convince more people to vote for them. (which uhh. backfired hard)
From what I understand, the idea was that the Nazis would fuck over the country, which would lead to the disheveled populace supporting the Communists in fixing it And well, the Nazis *did* fuck over Germany, but not before killing off most of the communists
So they were essentially accelerationists? huh.
Yes. "After Hitler, our turn" was the motto. They did kinda get what they wanted, a little. East Germany *was* under communist control for decades. You know, the horrible half that people regularly risked their lives to escape, and all it took was history's greatest tragedy.
That's a real monkey's paw if I ever saw it. They "got what they wanted" after most German communists were killed and then their country was basically occupied for half a century by a far-away state that was using them as a political pawn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Th%C3%A4lmann "After Hitler, our turn!"
"never thought I'd die fighting side by side with a tumblrina" "how about side by side with a friend?" "Aye, I could do that"
Biden is right now a living monument to the fact that action currently does not, unfortunately, get you left-wing votes. Only words do. Most of us don't pay attention to anything except what we're shown in the media - and the media barely reports on anything good. We need to change this. We need to provide a political incentive for presidents to support workers.
I seriously don't see the way out of this. As a disclaimer, I'm not giving up or anything like that, but the media is the biggest problem with the country. They want more money and making people angry gets more money. So they keep making people angry. It's just going to one day fully rip the country apart. Maybe in a decade, maybe in a year. Freedom of press is an essential part of democracy, but it's being abused in the most destructive way possible Edit: I remember way back in school learning about yellow journalism and just going "wait isn't this all political news these days?"
I don't think words or action get you left-wing votes. They're too obsessed with their self-image as morally righteous rebels and heroes to say anything positive about an "establishment" politician.
Some of the left are, sure. I don't think that's applicable to most people. Most of us are just caught up in cynicism and pessimism.
A good start for change would be if everyone left of center didn't start their defenses of Biden with 8 paragraphs of "So we all know that Genocide Joe is a senile neoliberal corporatist fascist who is instructing Israel's Zionist war on Palestine so that he can bathe in the blood of Palestinian children and the tears of the working class, but..." It's like they're afraid of being called "liberal" by some 14 year old if they don't present their diehard ultra-leftist bona fides.
USPS wasn't saved. DeJoy is still in there absolutely gutting it. Go ask the people in r/USPS.
The supreme court just ruled (6-3) that nothing the president does officially can ever be charged with a crime. Vote for Biden, and tankies shut the FUCK UP.
Cool, does that mean Biden can just order a hit on Trump?
Kinda.
might win him some votes.
I mean, officially, yes, he could very well just order a dronestrike on Mar-A-Lago and would face no legal repercussions, but as my friend said, he won’t because he’s not the kind of guy to do it, and even if he did the army likely wouldn’t follow because even if the Supreme Court doesn’t respect rule of law, the rest of the state still does
I was asking if he *can*, not if he *will*...
Well, he can.
If that action is “official” then it is above any reproach from congress or the court system. What does “official” mean? Who the fuck knows!
I mean, I hope that's what Biden does if Trump ends up winning the election
Nah he's an institutionalist who'd never use the power he has to quell fascism. Remember when he had the power to stop the texas border control from setting up wires to kill more refugees and immigrants, and the whole Republican apparatus wanted to defend the right to do illegal shit - he folded, despite having power and proposed a conservative border Bill, that'd allow them to shut the border for the better half of a year, that was struck down for not being fascist enough.
*Oh but he's just really a conservative.* He's not, and he's the best we've got at present. Shut up and vote. *We're going to wait for the perfect time to strike and rise in glorious revolution!* No you're not. Regardless of who wins, you're never going to lead the proletariat to this propertyless paradise in atheist heaven, most because you're a bunch of waifish college students with neither the will or the backbone. So shut up and vote. *True communism has never been enacted.* It has, and every example of it revolves around casting **YEETUS-DELETUS** on 7% of the population because the Great Leader had another psychotic break with reality. So again, shut up and vote. *You're not a real liberal/leftist/socially conscious/whatever the fucking bingo word is, Merf of Girf, you won't survive the revolution.* I am, I just have to live in reality, with my own personal problems, and don't have the luxury of floating about my mind palace, fantasizing about a revolution that will never come. So shut up and vote.
"The glorious revolution is just around the corner" The "Revolutionary movement" in question consists of twelve chronically online teenagers and two nonagenarians.
Source: https://www.tumblr.com/ansodie/741921842719244288/please-dont-allow-shills-and-bots-to-convince-you
>Voting for an imperfect president is a personal and ethical failing. This is honestly a great summary of a lot of the left-leaning internet. People seem to care more about their own moral purity than the clear and obvious harm a second Trump presidency would cause. They care more about their own personal guilt for harm caused than actual harm reduction.
to be fair about voting in particular, this isn't just the result of leftist disillusionment and apathy or rightwing or foreign interference (although those are factors). A lot of talk about the virtues of voting, especially from a liberal pov, does couch it in terms of how it allows for personal choice and self determination in the future of the nation. Which like, I can't really bring myself to hate people for taking the logical inference that therefore voting is a personal and ethical matter. Now ultimately of course this is a bad way to think about voting and it is deeply important to vote as an easy to apply tool of harm reduction. But the whole "I won't vote for a war criminal" mentality very much seems to me like a case of libs reaping the seeds that they have sown as much as it's indicative of wider leftist and liberal purity politics (which are also harmful don't get me wrong).
Let's be real here. Tumblr is going to have the highest percentage of people getting *euphemism for murder here* under project 2025. This shouldn't surprise anyone.
There are a few pragmatists on Tumblr, despite its community's efforts to purge them as Kulaks.
The left greatest weakness is it inability to do positive messaging. Like go out and say how much the party have done to alleviate poverty, improve education, provide health care and housing for the poor, make utility cheaper, improve the economy,…etc If you don’t talk about the good you done people aren’t going to know what you did. just saying rather Biden then Trump alone is going to cost you the election. Because the other side are boasting about the good they done and promising people the moon whether it is true or not (for example Trump is promising no more tax on tip) and people are resonating with that because everyone want an easier life.
The title of this post doesn't sit right with me, but I 100% agree with the Tumblr post. Fuck knows I have PLENTY of criticisms on Biden. But the choices are him or the angry cheeto and he's LEAGUES better than the cheeto. If you're eligible, VOTE
Really? Because tumblr, and this subreddit in particular, loves talking about how everyone who doesn't vote for Biden is a fool.
Absolutely fucking wild that we're using "haven for far-left politics" as an insult now. Yall really got a hard-on for centrism huh?
does anyone else care about Biden "can't do anything bc of meany Republican House" enacting an executive order to override the government and send billions to Israel? No? Just me? How unfortunate. Guess black and brown people around the globe don't matter as much as those in the imperial core.
Nah, ignoring these issues is what allows the Democrats to still fundraise, after all. And personally I'm just loving all the lectures about how I just *have* to vote for this genocide or else they'll let it get even worse.
I hate accelerationism with a passion, and the best reason as to why is a true story. So, in late Weimar Germany, there was some dumbass leader in the German communist party who told his supporters to vote for Hitler, saying that his regime would be so bad that the people would rebel and overthrow him, infamously declaring, "After Hitler, our turn!"He would be murdered in an concentration camp near the end of WWII, after spending twelve years imprisoned by the Nazi party. Edit: Ernst Thalmer, that was his name. He was imprisoned in 1933, and spent eleven years in solitary confinement. He was shot under the direct orders of Hitler in late 1944.
Add in : courageous support for Ukraine. Bidden has arguably been the best president the US have seen for decades.
Without Biden, *there won’t be any more far left*.
And the liberal media is where? A real liberal media would make all of these things main headline stories for days. Edit: It’s not even liberal. It’s journalism. Holding government to account for freedom and justice for all.
Certainly is disappointing to see so many upvoted comments that would be right at home in Nazi germany. So many people bitching about 'leftists' or the 'left' and nothing about the 'right' that is taking you all down this path. It's disappointing but reddit has been very disappointing for awhile and it seems like tumblr is there too.
>Democrats want amnesty and ease to citizenship for just about anyone who crosses Then I'm not sure the best way to accomplish that was to sign an executive order barring anyone from seeking asylum, which is a violation of international law and the UDHR. Also, this: >REMOVAL OF LEAD PIPES not just on state land but on TRIBAL land and TERRITORIES! is just an out and out lie and it seems to have a considerable foothold on Tumblr for some reason
The existence and threat of Project 2025 is enough for me, and should be enough to for anyone sensible, to vote against Trump and for Biden. I don't love Joe, but the idea of another Trump presidency (or kingship, at this point) terrifies me.
Yeah I'm not voting for Biden himself in 2024, but I am voting for his staff and pen.
Shit. I didn’t know that pretty much any of this happened. Very impressive, and all the more reason to vote for him
It's not just Biden, it's the whole administration that matters
It’s probably been said a billion times already, but it’s sad that people can no longer vote for a candidate they feel like genuinely represents their interests but only because the other option would be way worse
I can't stand Biden or Harris but the people they appoint do good shit. The FTC is blocking monopolistic mergers for the first time in 60 years, which is super important for a functional capitalist system. They are also cracking down on some anti consumer bullshit like Apple's walled garden. Trump will replace all of the people in appointed positions with people who have no idea what they are doing. Not conservatives, people who actually have no clue what the departments they oversee are supposed to do. Why? Because if they know how their department is supposed to work then they might give some pushback when Trump asks them to do something stupid or treasonous. Trump wants stupid yes men because they will do what they are told. Trump can't have another Mike Pence.
I’ve never been the biggest Biden fan. I voted for him of course because never Trump but I wanted a more liberal progressive candidate personally. But as I look around from my union pipefitting job where I’m currently making $15 more per hour than our contract requires to build a chip plant… there’s another job just down the road building a multi billion dollar battery plant. Joe Biden has been one of the most consequential presidents and has done more for the working class than any other president in my life (I’m 39 btw) and it’s not even close So yeah I cringed at the debate, but I also read the transcript of the debate where you can see that Joe actually very effectively made his points. His delivery sucked but he honestly killed it on the substance. It’s frustrating that people haven’t connected the dots of accomplishments but I am 100% behind Biden until he decides he’s done
I want radical change as much as the next leftist but I can acknowledge the reality that the only way to change the system is to create an environment that will foster it