I don’t like Biden either, but anyone with half a brain knows there are two choices in the 2020 election. If we had a sane voting system, voting third party might be worth it, but as it stands, no one but you knows your favorite candidate exists and unless you want to become their campaign manager that will still be true in November. Even if you did, and even if you convinced two thirds of the people who would otherwise have voted for Biden to vote for your chosen candidate instead, Trump would still win because half the country voted for him and your guy only got a third. If you vote third party you might as well stay home.
Not voting isn’t going to stop the genocide in Gaza. The US will continue to funnel them arms no matter which candidate wins this November. Trump practically campaigns on how much he hates the Jews and he’s publicly told Israel to “finish up their war”. He’ll also make life a living hell for anyone who isn’t a straight cisgender male back here at home.
A vote for a candidate is not an endorsement of them or their policies, it’s a statement that you like their policies more than the other guy’s, and “sticking it to liberals” and “refusing to support genocide” (that’s not what voting for Biden is doing, by the way – a vote for either candidate is a vote for genocide and a vote for neither is an endorsement of both) is not more important than keeping the furthest right politician America has ever seen out of office.
How incredibly privileged do you have to be to see an entire national election as what will happen in the Middle East and ignore Trump’s campaign promises to wipe transgender Americans off the map, and further, to not realize that the same thing will happen in the Middle East regardless of which candidate wins?
I hate Biden as much as every other leftist here. But I’ll still vote for him because Trump is worse. If there’s a single bone in your body that cares about the lives of your trans friends you will too.
Step 1: defeat Trump Step 2: help reshape Democratic party
Because the fact is, if we don’t do step 1 first, we’ll have our work cut out for us the next four or more years just being back in ‘The Resistance’. Which you know isn’t going to make the Dems more liberal, it’s going to pull them to the right as more dissatisfied Trump voters finally peel off.
On the other hand, the more resounding of a defeat we can dish out to the GQP and MAGA, the easier it will be to send them into the wilderness to regroup politically so we can focus all of our energies on the Democratic party.
We defeated Trump in 2020. Nothing changed and Biden spent his entire term catering to liberals and moderates.
And republicans and fascists and corporations and Wall Street… hmmm but he did almost cancel a lot of student debt, but actual trying to cancel most people’s student debt was “too high”. No cracking down on predatory lending or anything. Plenty of other countries have free college, but its just too damn hard in the worlds richest country, you know jack.
Earn the vote Biden.
He can’t do it because Congress is too divided because you didn’t fucking vote.
Who didn’t vote? What senate races were reasonably within reach that people didn’t show up for? Same question for the house.
Me when I don’t understand what the house and senate are.
Sorry if I am missing your point - did you think he’d cater to conservatives?
Lol! I expected him to make material compromises with the millions of progressives and leftists who held their nose and voted for him. The fact that you seem completely unaware of these factions Democrats depend on to win elections is just… a perfect example of how out of touch liberal and moderate voters are. They can’t win elections without our votes. They need to start acting like it.
Okay so you’re saying he isn’t liberal enough I guess. I am pretty far left myself and would of course love more but I would argue that he’s also gotten a lot of pretty great leftist stuff accomplished.
And while we should absolutely hold his feet to the fire to pull him further left, saying “earn my vote or else” with the ‘or else’ being Trump, is not a very practical threat. Like a cut off your nose to spite your face kind of stupid.
If you want to see the things you care about set back another four years OR MORE than sure, don’t vote for Biden this year.
I’m not trying to tell you what to call yourself but if you spend all your time and energy arguing against leftists instead of moderates and liberals what exactly makes you left? Call yourself whatever you like but your actions are indistinguishable from a moderate or a liberal.
🙄Oh please, do tell me what material leftist victory was made by Biden. A bunch of corporate handouts? Not leftist. Passing the IRA? That was the BBB stripped of everything leftists and progressives were excited about. Maybe you’re so delusional you think blocking a rail strike is a leftist victory. Or maybe you think shipping weapons to a country committing genocide is some kind of leftist victory. Or raising the defense budget. Or forcing federal workers back to the office. Or setting Yellen and Powell on a war path against American workers.
You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about.
The stuff I care about was already held back four years with Biden.
Yeah I’ve heard this plenty. You realize this cuts both ways right? Moderate and liberal voters refusing to compromise with leftists and progressives is every bit the same. Why are you trying to hold progressives and leftists to a different standard?
I’m arguing with other leftists because I have hope that I can help them make the right choice strategically while countering the rampant rightwing disinfo which like it or not, that’s what you’re parroting.
Again, you’re indistinguishable from a moderate or a liberal. You talk like one, you act like one, you vote like one. Regardless of what you believe you’re not doing anything that would accomplish anything we’re fighting for.
Abstaining from voting this election will drive the leftist cause backwards so not accomplishing anything would be much preferrable.
Fuck that, pass electoral reform so people can vote 3rd party with no spoiler effect and leave these dinosaur political parties in the past where they belong.
Do you think it’ll be easier or harder to get electoral reform passed if Trump is elected?
I think that the threat of losing to trump is the most powerful leverage progressives and leftists have at getting actual reformation of the party, and this election is the democrats race to lose.
So right now everyone who is pissed at Biden or the democrats, should be letting their anger known and be as loud as possible about it
Agreed.
Either moderate and liberal voters along with establishment Democrats and Biden make a big pivot or this will go down in history as a lesson: do not fuck with labor.
Except step one is repeated every. damn. time.
Its never time to reshape the Democratic Party. If the democrats win, it will be too early to fix the Democratic Party for millions of reasons. And four years pass and every campaign promise is ignored, and all of a sudden it’s back to 1. Beat the new threat to “democracy” 2. Fix the Democratic Party… ad nauseam forever.
It’s never too early to help shape the Democratic party, absolutely do it now. But it’s a long process and if you can’t see how it has changed in the last 20 years already I don’t know what to tell you. And beating Trump is priority #1 if we’re going to continue on that path.
We can’t do that if people don’t vote actual leftist in the primaries because “commies won’t win the general”.
Bc boomers have strangeholded our govt for decades. Its convenient that now that theyre dying off this is the shit we get to try and elect the actual genocidal maniac and not the dinosaur keeping to the same foreign policy the US has kept for 70 yrs in order to keep our other allies from thinking we will abandon them the way we did the Kurds or Ukraine.