And yet people keep telling me that Biden needs to lose so that Democrats can be “taught a lesson.”
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Remember when they tried to be sneaky with the “walkaway” shit before the 2018 midterms? 😂
Or they’re accelerationists who think a dictatorship will wind up in a civil war, and the “true” society, whatever their concept is, will be able to rise from the ashes.
“First Hitler, then our turn”
Actual slogan of the German Communists under Thalman
I mean the social democrats had a similar slogan:
“Governments come and go. […] After Hitler, we come to power! It will once again be the German republicans who will have to clean up the mess. We are preparing for that day!”
- Karl Hölterman, the leader of the democratic militia „Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold“, 1933
Fuck Trump, but tbf people shouldn’t be allowed to be in office if they could die tomorrow from old age.
It’s hard to understand for a non American, how it can be a Race between these two and only these two. This two party system seems so absurdly stubid. Not that we have it figured out anywhere else much better, but still.
If we had Ranked Choice voting, we’d likely have a much more diverse candidate pool. It’s not a perfect solution, but it is better than what we have now
And trying to convince people to vote for someone else just increases the chance of the worst of the two winning.
It’s technically NOT a two party system. However the two major parties so dominate, that it’s rare for a third party candidate to get elected to any major office.
I think the biggest difference is we’re not a parliamentary system that encourages coalitions. Whoever wins, wins.
The bigger issue with third parties is that none of them actually bother to run anyone at a local or state level. If they started to grow their power and voting base normally, bottom-up, they’d have a lot more success than just sticking up a Presidential also-ran every 4 years and maybe a congressperson here or there.
I mean, any president can die in office to be fair, regardless of age, hence we have a vice president to take over in such a case
Last American president to die in Office was actually youngest American president ever.
Isn’t Trump only like 3 years younger? By yhe end of his term he’d be older than Biden would be at the start of his.
Ah yes! Enlightened Centrist and Libertarians. They will always vote GOP no matter how horrible the candidate is with some shit reason to not vote Democrat. OR they will vote for some numbnuts third party candidate with an equally shitty reason.
The common talking points these days are either, “DeMoCrAtS aRe FaScIsTs, ToO!” or, “DeMoCrAtS nEeD tO eArN mY vOtE!”
And I’m sure the next generation will thank them for taking an ideological stand right as Fascism is trying to take over. /s
Democrats are fascists, too
Special emphasis on “too”, of course
Too many Democrats are to be sure. But not all democrats. Sanders and others have shown the way to fix this. The biggest issue is that we need younger people involved and running. In my state many Republicans run unopposed for several offices. As bad as it sounds. I would reflexively vote for any Democrat over a republican knowing nothing about either of the two.
We’re already seeing the beginnings of that with various candidates, but I agree that we need it to happen more rapidly.
The issue, in a twist of capitalist fuckery, is that running a campaign is massively expensive, and the barrier to entry is often too high for the people who should be running for office. Thankfully, there’s orgs helping with that, but it’s still an uphill battle.
They can be. At the state and national level to be sure. But even with zero budget, running someone against a Republican vs letting a Republican run unopposed. We’ll win infinitely more times just by trying. It should start with smaller offices. And work up from there.
Also, outside of presidential election years. We should donate to a group or groups that back and fund Democrat opposition to Republicans locally. Even if we have to make those groups ourselves. At the national level they’ve largely given up on many states. So donating to them often does little at home.
Democrats need a new younger bench. And this is a way to fix both the age and fash friendly issues at the same time. Perhaps then we can start to address things like getting money out of politics etc.
Forget running, they need to be voting.
Sanders lost both primaries due to Millenials and Zoomers being so allergic to turnout that they even turn their noses up at their own guy in the primary.
This is easy win territory for young voters, the gap between current performance and just matching their share of the general population alone would push the DNC significantly to the left, let alone if they started showing up with the easy dominating share they could take if they spent half the effort turning out for the cause that they do painting signs and tweeting about it.
We act like Democrats actually doing something to earn votes is impossible.
Not at all. But it sounds like you think they haven’t done anything.
I think that Democrats appear very weak right now because they’re not taking the drastic steps that are needed in order to fix a lot of the existential threats that America faces.
I truly believe that we cannot engage in capitalism as we are currently and still hold on to the planet in the face of global warming. And I don’t see anyone in US politics or even global politics willing to make the drastic changes needed to literally save for the planet.
So no, I don’t really think they’re doing what they need to be doing right now, and it’s disheartening.
Centrist Democrats take the very idea as a greivously offensive blasphemy against all they hold dear.
Don’t vote Democrat, vote third party I hear! Me, I’m like well with first past the post voting this is impractical and could help empower fascists to take over, but let’s see what options we got.
/opens box of third party candidates, before gently closing it and walking away
Yeah no, Biden still best option, these guys are nutters. It makes sense though, a sensible candidate would run in the democratic primaries, rather than hurting their own purported causes by running in the general in a first past the post election. It’s why you saw Bernie Sanders, an independent, running in the democratic primary, and not out there helping to siphon votes to fascists by running as a third party in the general against Biden.
Anyways, let’s focus on continuing to empower politicians that want to improve our voting system (usually has been democrats, though with an exception in Alaska). This starts at the local level, but we’re getting more and more federal offices now with ranked choice voting. Once you have that, then better quality third party candidates will follow, knowing they can fairly safely run without harming their own causes.
Biden can be the best option for you, and it can still be imperative that we vote third party. If you think the dems and repubs are ever going to give up FPTP, you’re insane.
State ballot access is a big deal that can impact local elections as well.
I show up to vote against Brownback and in support of abortion. Then I vote against every incumbent and to fire all the judges.
Unfortunately, there are few leftists that push the same narrative, too. And all because Biden (or Obama, or Hillary) are not the pretty pony they think they were promised or something.
Point of fact: Clinton’s centrists were so upset that they didn’t get their very first choice in 2008 that they formed a PAC to try to get McCain/Palin elected. And they’ve been screaming “no matter who” ever since.
I have no special affinity for either of the Clintons. However, it cannot be denied that there is a certain type of leftist (often very loud, and probably the minority, thankfully) that behave like petulant children when they don’t get their pretty pony, whoever that is.
Don’t get me wrong - I’d like that pretty pony, too. I just realize that even if people don’t love Hillary, she’d still be better than OJ (Orange Jesus) and so once the primaries are over, voting for donnie to really stick it to the man, or sit out, or vote for some completely unserious party like the Green Party is not really teaching anyone the lesson(s) that the people stamping their feet think they are.
OJ represents a very existential threat. Just because he flubbed the RW agenda the first time around doesn’t mean he won’t succeed in destroying America if given another chance.
Don’t get me wrong - I’d like that pretty pony, too.
The only thing you want is unquestioning worship of the party from everyone to your left.
LOL, I only vote for them because I have to. What is the realistic alternative? Unless we have something like ranked choice, voting for Green or staying home or writing something in is just a vote for Republicans.
And you only choose to constantly belittle anyone who isn’t 100 percent ecstatic with everything the party does because you want to.
I do worry that Biden will lose though. He was far from a popular candidate to begin with and his support of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians has made him even less so. In many ways the best outcome might be for him to die in office prior to the election or for him to lose the primary. It would hurt the Democrats to have a non-incumbent running, but possibly less than running Biden. The real wildcard though is if Trump will even end up on the ballot considering his legal issues.
I do worry that Biden will lose though.
Good. Everybody should think this. Thinking Trump can’t possibly win is how he won in 2016.
We need to behave as if it’s a real possibility, even if you feel optimistic about next year.
We need to behave as if it’s a real possibility, even if you feel optimistic about next year.
Party leadership should also be doing this and doing what they can to win voters. Instead, the only message I’m hearing is “if you breathe so much as a word of discontent, it’s because you’re a Russian troll who wants Trump to be dictator for life.”
100% this.
It would hurt the Democrats to have a non-incumbent
If Biden were not on the ballot next year, the Democratic candidate would be Kamala Harris. No mainstream Democrat would challenge her in 2024, the optics would be horrible.
Mmm, I doubt it, even other dems don’t like her very much right now
I’d want Gretchen Whitmer to go for it,
Doesn’t really matter if she is well liked, no other Democrat will challenge her in 2024. For starters, it is too late to get on the primary ballot.
I feel like in most cases “the incumbent croaked” would suffice as an excuse to get some names on the board, also, maybe Kamala turns out to be the second coming of LBJ, so we’ll get some pretty good social programs everyone’s gonna forget about eventually, some significant expansions in civil rights, but also entanglement in an unpopular conflict, venturing a guess I’ll say defending Somalia Eritrea and Djibouti from invasion by Ethiopia.
Israel is unpopular enough, but being on the side of a dictatorship and a failed state that tries to force its control onto a breakaway that self governs at least better than its former fellow countrymen, all in the name of international law and order, feels like the kind of conflict Kamala would be involved in, and that folks would have misgivings over, most because “why are we sending our troops to defend a dictator?” and that select group everyone loves spouting off how you should withold from voting over it because something something respecting national sovereignty as well as the clear results in favor of independence in a fair referendum run by Ethiopia is colonialism just like how not letting Russia eat neighbors because something something little russians is colonialism.
I feel like in most cases “the incumbent croaked” would suffice as an excuse
Primaries aren’t run by excuses, they are run by rules. There are state laws regarding who can get on a ballot, Biden/Harris qualified, and Whitmer did not. Which means that when the primaries roll around, Biden/Harris will be on the state ballots, and Whitmer won’t. Which means that throughout the primary season, Biden/Harris will be racking up delegates who are loyal to Biden/Harris.
If anything happens to Biden at this point, his delegates will vote for Harris at the nominating convention. Why? Because they were chosen specifically for that purpose. You only get to be a primary delegate for Biden/Harris 2024 if you are a strong supporter of both Biden and Harris. Specifically if you support them a lot more than Whitmer, Newsom, etc. If you have doubts about either Biden or Harris, then the Biden/Harris campaign will find someone else to be a delegate. All this means Whitmer has no chance at becoming the nominee as long as Harris is still around.
As for the rest: yes, Harris might be a great president. But most people who want a different Democratic candidate do not realize that she is the only alternative for 2024.
The way that talking point gets pushed unusually hard by an unusually dedicated few using the same stupid arguments looks an awful lot like the kind of psyops campaigns I’d see when I was on Reddit during the Trump presidency.
The real long term solution is changing how we vote. Star Voting or some form of Ranked Choice. That’s how I respond along with https://fairvote.org so, in case some impressionable soul happens along, they aren’t taken in by such silliness. I encourage others to consider doing something similar.
We already learned that lesson - in 2016.
People have no idea how to move the overton window.
My Roman Empire is remembering how the shitheads screamed and yelled denying responsibility on the day Dobbs came down.
Was grocery shopping with my grammy and had to pull the most hemmeroid passingly determined poker face in history to not break out into cursing them and their obvious waste of what privileges they live with to be in the position of treating this like it’s teaching the DNC a lesson.
Fucking Priv Shit Vote Karens, every last one of them, “Take me to the party’s manager right now or I’ll let the fascists take away even more of your rights!”
Why can’t democrats run a better candidate?
Because the party isn’t going to defy the incumbent president. This should be obvious.
It’s not obvious, please explain why not. He’s worse for their chance of winning.
The why not is that he wants to run again and he’s the president. Why do you think the Democrats would say no to him? He’s the president.
Those reasons are total dog shit
What do you think happens when you tell a president no? Do you think he says, “okay then, you know best.”
In a functioning democracy or in the United States
They all ran before the 2020 election, people mainly liked Biden. (I voted Bernie). The time to get a better candidate than Biden was then, changing things up would be a huge risk for Democrats and would help Trump (R’s can’t easily say Biden is insane and take their away their rights, unlike a new candidate which they can say is the bogeyman). This is the exact same reason Trump ran basically unopposed for his 2nd term, its generally the best idea in the US’s system vs picking another candidate. If you care about how “bad” Biden is, then vote in the next general and help out the best candidate.
They can and I wish they would, but it’s too late this election. Anyone else would have two weeks or so to get on the ballot and get name recognition and get people to like what they’re doing. Not really sure that’s possible.
Biden needs to deliver on at least one campaign promise - be a 1 term President, and drop out of the race now, so we don’t risk the election.
His ego, nor the desires of his donors, are not worth sacrificing democracy.
Your wish is granted.
Is Lemmy really loading whole images when loading a site, even though I can’t enlarge them without actually going to actual image source? What a good way to waste data.
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The Inflation Reduction Act was a big deal internationally, but I feel like you and I have already talked about it, so I don’t want to rehash it.
For everyone else’s safe, I’ll just say that even though it isn’t enough, Biden still achieved a historic level of funding for sustainability with the IRA, to the point that it forced European countries to pass similar legislation so their green energy companies could still be competitive with US green energy companies. I would’ve preferred to see legislation like this 15-20 years ago, but the second best time is always the present.
Only on the internet:one side of the argument posts a lengthy list of facts, and the response is simply “fuck all”
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unsourced images on a random post in the fediverse
Bottom right of the image literally reads: “List source: whatbidenhasdone.wordpress.com”
The site isn’t as thorough with sourcing from there, but they have a blog post with various sources cited, and their twitter account is full of sources for their claims.
No I mean a source that is easily and clearly placed in front of me that I can still complain about not being the “correct” sources. /s
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The man has kept plenty of campaign promises. Pretending he’s done nothing for the American people at every level is just dishonest. People have the right to express bullshit if they choose, and I have an equal right to call it out.
Like which things in particular? Biden has done things, and having an image with BS undermines his actual accomplishments.
Wait, you not only want him to be a one-term president, you don’t even want him to finish his term? We get President Harris until 2024?
Your ability to fly has come at the cost of your reading comprehension I see.
Or I wrote that before your edit. You do know people can see when you edit a post on Lemmy, right?
I’m not op, you’re not helping your case lol
Ok, I wrote it before OP edited it. Either way, I wrote it first when it said Biden should stop being president and now it’s been edited to say something else.
I’m not sure what you think my “case” is.
Non English speaker: inevitable means it will happen no matter what. They way i see it, its used wrong here correct? It should maybe have been ‘increasingly realistic’ or maybe ‘increasingly plausible’ but inevitable assumes that voting for someone else won’t stop it from happening
The title is a bit clickbaity, but the subtext is that if he is elected, dictatorship is increasingly inevitable.
And the ‘increasingly’ modifier further shows it’s only a potential outcome.
The author isn’t the most self-aware… Robert Kagan was a Republican strategist until 2016, he’s an interventionalist neocon, thinks the GOP “lost it’s way” rather than contributed to this by design.
I agree. I think that if Trump is elected and puts an end to democracy as we know it, but it won’t be a dictatorship of Trump, alone. Trump is but a mortal man. And whoever replaces him will be worse.
One of the many examples of how English is manipulated and massaged to mean whatever you want it to mean. A more accurate phrase they should have chosen is “increasingly likely”.
Technically, I’d say “increasingly inevitable” is a meaningless phrase. “Inevitable” is an absolute - an outcome either is, or is not, inevitable. Like they say, “you can’t be a little bit pregnant”, outcomes cannot be a little bit inevitable, or somewhat inevitable, or mostly inevitable, so the degree of inevitability cannot be increasing.
However, I think most native English speakers would not think twice about it, and would read it as something like: “a Trump dictatorship is approaching inevitability.” That’s how I read it, at least.
This is just the usual polarising fear mongering bullshit. Even “increasingly plausible” is a stretch.
Maybe the democratic party should focus more energy trying to understand what is that that makes so many people even considering trump.
When people turn the other side into a one dimensional caricature they just ignore the real world problems that make them lose elections.
It’s only inevitable if we do nothing
So pretty much inevitable then. :(
Kind of like Sandy Hook and Uvalde. Welcome to America.
As a non American I can’t understand how anyone could vote for Donald twice.
As a free-thinking human being, I can’t understand how anyone could vote for him once.
When you see his opponent it becomes easier to understand.
No, it doesn’t. In any way.
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As an American I can’t understand how anyone could vote for him once.
As a Canadian, I can absolutely understand how someone less informed in politics and (rightfully) angry at the political establishment would vote for Trump in 2016 just to flip the bird to Hillary. Americans need to understand why he won to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
I apparently have difficulty empathizing with people who aren’t paying attention to what they’re voting for (or against).
After seeing how the super delegates worked against Sanders, and how blatantly undemocratic our process of selecting candidates truly is, a lot of people fell into the trap of “fuck it, burn the world down then”. I know a lot of people reacted that way when the Republican party’s obvious rigging of the 2012 nomination worked against Ron Paul even though the votes were tallied in some states that he was the actual victor, but the derailment of his campaign by announcing Mitt Romney as the winner did enough damage…even though the Republican party chairs for several states had to resign due to the obvious false declarations and ignoring of the votes counted in primaries happened.
The real problem is the lack of confidence in our democracy and the rampant apathy that works against constructive progress.
After seeing how the super delegates worked against Sanders
Especially because he was almost guaranteed to win against Trump, but they know where the money comes from and decided to go with Hillary, who was historically unlinked as a candidate. I think this ought to have demonstrated that real change cannot come from within the Democratic party and that they are not willing to be the left party people wish they were, they’re part of the downward spiral. (And yes they’re better than the GOP, always have to get that in for the concerned voters out there.)
lack of confidence in our democracy
It’s funny how this idea of “free and fair elections” has recently come up in such a historically corrupt system, it’s true that elections today are better than they’ve ever been in this respect, 2008 onward were incredibly tight on this. Seems like people forget how the 2001 election was stolen. Historically it’s almost a joke how bad they were. It was routine for busses to drive around picking up people and dropping them off at voting stations in exchange for a bit of money. It hasn’t even been 60 years since everyone in the US could vote! At first you basically needed to be a landowner and even produce from your land to be able to vote. The men’s suffrage movement was like a century before women’s suffrage.
I’m really glad you mentioned some of the progress, while it’s not ideal, it does remind me that we ended the Gilded Age, and we can continue to confront the robber barons of our time. In US history we’ve already had a few near misses where we almost went the road the Romans did by giving a wealthy person absolute authority. We have to stay aware and be ever vigilant.
That’s really when America as it exists today was created too, between the Civil War and WW1. Often glossed over in the popular mythology of America.
Americans need to understand why he won to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
It’s been estimated that 13% of Trump’s voters were Obama voters. The degree to which this impacted his victory is debated, but this group is almost invisible in the way Trump is understood in the popular discourse, which is almost entirely determined by… Trump’s own spectacle of rhetoric and the feedback it generates. The degradation of civic institutions and disenfranchisement is a major factor, experiencing this while you’re exposed to political marketing like, Kamala Harris doing a happy and smiley scripted bit where she tells children if they’re “authentic” they will succeed, not only does that not connect with the reality of people’s struggles but it’s a slap in the face to them.
I don’t. What was there to be mad at Hilary about that made people want to vote for a child raping, tax fraud committing, racist crook?
You have to understand that most people don’t pay that much attention to politics. They see a woman who embodies everything they hate about the US government establishment, and they see a guy who is raging against said establishment. If Dems had let Bernie win Trump would have been crushed.
I was working at this business owner’s home. Smart, genuine, kind guy in his mid-40s with a beautiful “nuclear” family. He said he was going to vote for Trump because his sister in law worked at one his properties and she spoke well of him. That was it. That’s how a seemingly respectable upstanding well-to-do member of the community chose the president of the United States. Or, at worst, that was the reason he felt compelled to tell others.
People in the US don’t understand what political ideologies are and literally vote for someone based off of “I’d like to have a beer with that guy!”.
My in-laws voted for him twice. They are pro-life, and that’s all that matters to them. Otherwise they support progressive policies like single-payer healthcare. But when it comes to abortion, they will vote for a literal anti-Christ to make it illegal. Funny that they are Catholic.
People who say they are pro-life will vote for the most pro-death policies, it’s crazy.
The cruelty is the point.
Its not funny. Its ludacris.
Your in-laws sound like uninformed rubes.
They kind of are, no college education and they don’t take the time to self-educate. Their support for single payer healthcare is something that both me and my husband have been working on with them for a while. I don’t think they are completely lost - they never showed the kind of hate I’ve seen from other Trump supporters. So I’ll keep trying.
So they’re going to vote for the guy that had an abortion?
If murder was legal, and somebody who was known to have committed murder was running, and you were confident that person would make murder illegal, and you were convinced that their opponent (who may have never committed murder themselves) would actively encourage more murder, maybe even pay poor people to commit murder, which candidate would you vote for?
I can’t follow this argument. Try to be more concise.
Their decisions are logical based on their map, which is grossly inconsistent with the territory. Better?
This is exactly their reasoning. To a tee.
Trust me, we’ve tried to reason with them. It’s maddening because they are otherwise mostly reasonable people, just ignorant politically and scientifically.
They’ll vote for him a third time. Believe me, folks. *accordion hands*
As a non-American I can’t understand how Bernie wasn’t voted in decades ago.
DNC sabotage his campaigns
If there’s anything the last few years taught the world, stupid people are far more numerous and far more stupid than we thought.
There are graduating seniors in high-school this year. That group of unregistered voters needs to be coaxed to register, and vote. They need easy, step by step directions. They need to understand their new power of citizenship. They can be tried as adults. They should know who the sheriff is. They should know its an elected position. They need to learn this shit, and most likely it’s not gonna happen in school. Please ticktock or whatever. Make it viral.
I still don’t understand why people have to register to vote. Everyone should automatically be registered to vote.
I think you know the answer.
Honestly I don’t
I live in a country where everybody who is entitled to vote, gets a vote in their mail box and a dedicated place where they can go and vote. They can even send in their votes before hand or vote in the local library.
I don’t see how one side or the other or any can benefit by low voting percentages
Republicans do better in elections with low voter turnout because old white people vote at disproportionately high rates.
But it has always been like this no? Have Americans ever not had to register to vote? Why cant all just be automatically registered to vote?
Republicans are currently making it harder for left-leaning populations to vote, by closing polling stations in urban areas or opposing vote-by-mail. Automatic voter registration is being actively resisted. That is “why”.
Voter registration became a thing in the 1800s to limit the voice of immigrants, adopted state by state.
Oregon first, and about a dozen other states since, have made registration automatic when you get a driver’s license or state ID.
So yeah it’s pretty much always been like this.
Central registered of all citizens with ID-number. I’m pretty sure your nation has it, as does mine. So the government knows where you live, and where you can vote. If you move these things are automatically updated. So it’s easy to make sure everyone can vote in the “correct” ballots ect.
None of this is true with the US
But they better vote the way we want them to vote. /sarcasm
Perhaps we should have a way to flag opinion pieces.
Is anyone honestly confused as to whether or not it’s an opinion piece? I find that very hard to believe, but I guess you never know…
Yeah LOL. It’s just sooo over the top. Garbage like this I expect on Twitter. Gotta filter the noise on lemmy too I guess.
If you’ve ever wondered why no one killed Hitler on his rise to power, now you know.
The main difference is, in 2023, we know how Hitler rose to power. In 1933, Germans didnt.
Yeah, but that’s like… almost a 100 years ago. Completely different. SlashEs
I think that is a bridge too far for many reasons. First off I hate the Cheeto. He is a mudstain on used panties from a crackhead pornstar.
However, we have Hitler in recent history. We have many forms of media that they did not have to see how it’s going with everyone else. And let’s not forget that Hitler was smarter than Trump ever will be.
I don’t glorify Hitler lightly. He was a force that needed to be stopped and so does Trump. But that is were the comparison ends. Nazis became so huge because people were afraid of what would happen to their family if they didn’t. Here we will fight the morons back. Stop giving this man so much power and admiration. He’s a conman. A shitty leader. And a dumbass.
And let’s not forget that Hitler was smarter than Trump ever will be.
Not really. Hitler’s (supposed) “genius” exists in the same way Trump’s does - as propaganda and nothing else.
I didn’t call Hitler a genius. I called him smarter than Trump. Trump copies him. He at least (for the most part) came up with the strategies to inspire the changes in Germany. Even though they were shitty as fuck.
I didn’t call Hitler a genius.
Fair enough - you didn’t. But calling him smarter than Trump is still a stretch. Hitler wasn’t very smart at all. You don’t have to be smart to serve the interests that puts you in power… which is the only real function politicians serve at the end of the day.
Fortunately for the US, it’s actually very difficult to be a dictator in the White House - the US president is a cog for those “interests.” He takes his orders from them and not the other way around. That’s why Trump became so ineffective once he stepped into the White House and became isolated from his adoring MAGA crowd.
What should we do about it? Other than vote and try to talk people out of voting for Trump.
Basically, this coming election will be decided by the margins because almost everyone who follows politics–at all–knows who they’re voting for already.
Think about the number of people who follow politics and then understand that those people are already not the demographic that will likely decide the outcome. It’s the people who are surprised they Joe Biden and Donald Trump are on the ballot that matter.
It isn’t worth trying to pressured persuade either the right or the left. What we need is to activate and engage the non-participating section of the electorate. This is hard, but achievable. It’s people who work multiple jobs and don’t have time for politics that need to know it matters if they vote. Civil rights are not a given and 2024 will be hugely consequential.
Take your friends with you on election day! Register for vote by mail and bug your friends too! Take about it and don’t leave easy points on the table. Yes the options are terrible. Yes one of them will make the possibility of improving it ever infinitely more difficult.
The people saying it doesn’t matter do not understand what they stand to lose. It is so so much harder to build something than tear it down and our imperfect institutions will not save us. Politics matters and the luxury of not caring, will lead to co-optation and the loss of rights that are easy to take for granted now.
Target reluctant republicans that don’t like Trump but so far are only willing to abstain. I’m pushing hard for them to send the strongest message they can by voting for Biden. I think if we plant enough seeds they may go for it in the privacy of the voting booth, even if they won’t admit it.
It is possible, my kermudgen grandfather began voting blue in 2016 because of Trump
Technically it’s spelled curmudgeon, but your spelling makes me think of Kermit as a grumpy old frog-man so I think I prefer it 😆
T’is not an inaccurate description of ma gramps
That’s it. That’s the best we have short of organizing mass mass protests and raids. Which definitely isn’t going to happen.
Maybe Trump will have a heart attack before the election…
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What’s interesting is that if there really was a “deep state” that works like the radicalized right wing imagines, it begs the question - why didn’t this so-called “deep state” find a lone wolf/patsy like Oswald for OJ (Orange Jesus)?
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I’m stealing that
I’d rather he lives the rest of his life in prison, personally, and completely cut off from any kind of mass media platform.
Young people need to register. Help them!
Fight disenfranchisement and jerrymandering. Fight voter suppression. Be loud and get in the way of people doing bad things.
yup, vote, and call out any of the children larping revolutionaries who refuse to vote
Fuckin’ privs drive me up the damn wall. They act like they’re taking some noble stand for the palestinian people, meanwhile me the actual fucking palestinian am staring down the barrel of having to go without my Keffiyeh in public lest I get beaten, called a Sand N****r, and told to be grateful the bastards who did it to me didn’t bring a rope, all on the back of their militant refusal to lift a finger in solidarity and vote against Trump.
These so called allies of my people seem to like me much more as a potential martyr for their cause than as an agent for my own.
Don’t you guys have book depositories any more?
As long as there’s a royal family and house of lords…
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This is stupid fear-mongering horse s*** that ignores all the steps Americans are taking to fight against Trump being elected, and ignoring that they voted him out 3 years ago.
Stupid b*******.
People took steps against him in 2016 as well. And voting him out previously gives no guarantee of anything.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/
Polling is bullshit, but to the degree that it isn’t, it isn’t looking great. This isn’t some guarantee that Trump will lose. The boomers that vote republican do so EVERY election. The people who vote against them aren’t so reliable in comparison.
You’re on the internet. Censoring yourself makes you look childish. Just cuss. Also, it’s not fear mongering. The GOP has announced their intentions if they win.
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So go fill your gaping ignorant armchair with another short floppy bamboo pole
That’s just uncalled for
It just looks ridiculous, doesn’t it? Who would take them seriously?
If you read the article, the author is not saying Trump winning the general election is an inevitability, but that him winning the nomination is inevitable and so is his rise to dictatorship if he wins the general. He never says Trump winning the general is guaranteed, and allows phrases that part as, “he could win the general”. All of those things are true baring unforseen circumstances.
Also, honestly that sentence would have been a lot funnier not censored.
Right, and instead of presenting the facts in an entertaining and sincere way, he writes a deliberately false and misleading title and article that bolsters conservatives and is intended to scare liberals.
Unproductive, fear-mongering b*******.
Which bastards are you talking about?
Please point to where the GOP has said they intend on installing a literal dictatorship. Please remember how many executive orders President Biden signed in his first 90 days in office as well.
Notice no one has actually answered the question, nor have they addressed the EO’s. How do you rule like a dictator in a representative republic? Sign more EO’s than any other pres had prior, totally wiping out everything your predecessor did. Last I checked nothing’s been proven that “TRUMP” caused, ordered, or even suggested your little so called “insurrection”. Saying something doesn’t make it true. But keep trying.
I remember January 6th insurrection when Trump was in office
if you think that was an insurrection… you know what never mind.
Do you just forget that Trump almost succeeded in an insurrection and is now allowed to run as president again? How are you able to do that?
TDS is real.
It indeed is. Everybody who forgot what Trump did are truly deranged.
what did trump “DO” exactly. line it out for me. you seem to know. give specifics.
He instigated an insurrection and tried to overturn legal election results. How specific do you need to go?
Again? Jesus.
you know you can swear on the internet right?
Some instances run profanity filters.
It’s a good piece and I think the analysis is largely accurate. But there’s one thing I think Kagan missed: Trump isn’t the only would-be dictator who could take power. He lists DeSantis and Haley as the closest competitors to Trump within the Republican Party, but he doesn’t point out that even if, by some miracle, one of them becomes the party nominee, they would assume the very same dictatorial powers Trump is threatening to wield. Neither of them is going to defend democracy when offered the reins of tyranny, and both could easily hold power for decades. Trump maybe has a single decade at most.
The problem isn’t simply Trump wanting to be President for Life. The problem is that the path has been cleared for any Republican to assume that role the next time one is elected. Project 2025 won’t work for Trump only. The next time we have a Republican President, expect it to be the last time we have a fair election.
Not to run interference for those shitbags cause most of them are just as evil but I wouldn’t say they all equally threaten democracy. For one I’m not sure their base would allow a woman to be dictator lol even if she won due to institutional fuckery
Anyone who thinks she wouldn’t try is deluding themselves. They’re both cut from the same cloth, but they’re not afflicted with dementia yet.
No, none of the other GOP candidates have anything even remotely like Trump’s grip on the base. Without that none of the above can happen. Trump got where he is through a long series of steps that Kagan details in the piece. There is no world in which some other candidate steps in and immediately plugs into the same kind of power that Trump has amassed as a result of Republican cowardice. Every one of them would have to start over with consolidating power in a party that’s swarming with amoral power-hungry grifters.
Well, bezos, it’s because you don’t actually care about a dictatorship as much as you care that your money pile gets bigger! What are you yelling at me for shitbird? You guys have the money n power! If you’re counting on my broken ass to fix the world you’re in deep shit
Bezos’ pile of money is so big if he got out today his great-grandchildren will have no fucking idea how to spend all their money. He has no reason to care what anyone fucking thinks until they start breaking out the forks and knives.
I mean other than the fact that money will not save them in a destroyed society or world. Why do you think they argue over the best way to control their security teams, shock collars or limited food? Because they only have as much power as they have control and it will slip from their grasp if they do fuck all with it and let it burn around them.
Billionaires will be fine. They have built their doomsday bunkers and they’re waiting for the dictators to genocide everyone else so they can crawl out into the sunlit depopulated paradise.
To be eaten by wolves surely. I just wish i could be alive to see it
It’s fun that you think Bezos takes any interest or part in the day to day workings of the WaPo.
Stop sucking Trump’s cock, www.washingtonpost.com. There’s nothing inevitable about Trump but lies, treason, and bullshit.
As with Napoleon, who spoke of the glory of France but whose narrow ambitions for himself and his family brought France to ruin, Trump’s ambitions, though he speaks of making America great again, clearly begin and end with himself.
As the author keeps comparing Trump to Napoleon and Hitler, I can’t help but wonder if maybe the US is due a conflagration. At what point do we admit that the American experiment returned a null result?
In the cases of France and Germany, the answer was violence. Oppression has never been defeated with pacifism. If history is our guide and conservatives are our oppressors, soon we may have to make some very difficult life and death decisions.
Conservatives have already embraced violence as part of their ideology, which I think makes the path out of their oppression more clear.
Oppression has never been defeated with pacifism.
I was taught that Gandhi helped India defeat the oppression of the British Raj with pacifism.
Is that not the case? I mean I wouldn’t be surprised if Power taught me peaceful protest works every time.
as Orwell stated:
“As an ex-Indian civil servant, it always makes me shout with laughter to hear, for instance, Gandhi named as an example of the success of non-violence. As long as twenty years ago it was cynically admitted in Anglo-Indian circles that Gandhi was very useful to the British government. So he will be to the Japanese if they get there. Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.”
Pretty sure two devastating world wars were a major factor.
I was taught that Gandhi helped India defeat the oppression of the British Raj with pacifism. Is that not the case?
You couldn’t have Martin without Malcom and you couldn’t have Ghandi without Ghadar.
I think it’s more that human societies are very rarely stable across 3 or more generations. The US has had a number of major crises through its history, it’s definitely due for another. Repeating the dead line about a failed experiment is kind of needlessly deaf to that history.
All you can do for now is stand up and fight it.
At what point do we admit that the American experiment returned a null result?
Probably when the commerce clause meant the fed can regulate shit you do in your home with your own body.
But even failed experiments give data. I’m a fan of the bill of rights, save for a few niggling details.
Are people really going to vote for a 80’ish year old would be dictator? For notionally a 4 year term? And no coherent succession plan?
He got more votes after people knew exactly who he was. I don’t think he’s lost many of them the more ‘out loud’ he gets.
Actually if you go by percentage Trump basically won nobody new, he just picked up more votes total because vote by mail made the poles more accessible to more folks who would have voted for him anyways.
What changed was that people weren’t fucking around and voted solidly against him, giving Biden an absolute majority of the popular vote.
One silver lining is a lot of them died from COVID.
Yes.
Shit website
Paywall
Bezos
Good thing the archive was posted with it.
https://ghostarchive.org/archive/MEbuN?wr=true
Kagan has many problems, but that doesn’t make him wrong here.
