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Biden was lip stick on a pig. Trump is cutting a pig open.
As usual, mass propaganda turns the world black and white, and divides people exactly into two groups to make sure they never unite.
By the way, you can acknowledge that both sides are made up of the worst scum human history has ever seen and vote for the “lesser evil” at the same time! You don’t have to, and you probably shouldn’t let your vote influence your entire personality and/or belief system.
at best is dark gray and black. there aren’t any acceptable candidates. no one is perfect, but come on. how hard is it not to have neoliberal war criminals?
Totally the same. Biden picked Deb Holland for head of DOI and attempted to make an earnest apology for the US’s genocide of Natives via boarding schools.
Tronald Dump did exactly the same thing and cut $300 billion from food assistance that includes Indian country, which are basically third world countries with very little access to food, clean water, housing that isn’t a makeshift sheet metal, or healthcare that could prevent life long disabilities and/or premature death.
Slow fascism vs fast fascism. More money to cops, more drilling, more selling public land, more building a boarder wall, more genocide, more pardons for bad people, more keeping “permanent” tax cuts for the wealthy, more inability to actually make anything better ever.
At least with fast fascism some people are fighting back, but not hard enough to stop it.
People are fighting back but not hard enough. What a wild take.
Yes, both of the sides that aren’t interested in fixing wealth inequality, the single most impactful trend, which is required to be fixed to fix many other problems, are the same.
The inability to force the rich to make meaningful concessions is a fatal flaw for both parties
they are a ratchet,
Dems are hell bent in maintaining wealth inequality, while conservatives just want to funnel more inequality into their pockets. then democrats forget that they have the power of fixing things and maintain the new status quo.
Do not glorify Biden. Go back to Obama if you want an actual worthwhile role model. Biden was 110% on board with Bush in going to Iraq and spent the last 20 years of his career aggressively trying to break social security. Fuck boomer Biden.
I would say Obama is even worse than Biden as a role model to glorify.
You can draw a direct line between Obama’s fellating of wall street and the rise to power of MAGA. He was elected on a mandate to punish the bankers and utterly failed at this task, he failed to enshrine Roe Vs Wade, and started a few wars. Combine this with other events like the management of Bernie Sanders’ first attempt at the presidency, and you have a spectacularly inept democrat party that lost all credibility/appeal with swing voters.
Taking the current politics at face value, Trump would have 0 appeal if the democrats had a reasonable management of the border, if the democrats had actual economic politics instead of identity politics and didn’t bend the knee to the military industrial complex as much as republicans did.
Which wars did Obama start?
I might have misspoke: it would be more accurate to state that he got the US involved in wars, rather than starting them. More specifically, he’s criticized for getting the US in five wars and saber rattling with Iran.
So…
Afghanistan that Obama inherited from W., 2 wars in Iraq Obama inherited from W., training Syrian troops (who eventually did win) as a result of the Arab Spring and Assad gassing his own people which Obama did not start, and countering Yemen’s Houthi aggression which could really be argued that Obama did too little to counter as we are still dealing with it to this day with Iran aiding the Houthis…
Iran has been a problem for the US since the Carter administration, can’t really say Obama started that one either
Still unclear which if any of these conflicts Obama involved in
Sometimes it is best to be on the right side of history by being involved in a military conflict.
Being involved in a conflict does not automatically make it a bad thing
I don’t really feel like rehashing all the ways that the Iraq/Afghanistan war were disastrous
training Syrian troops (who eventually did win) as a result of the Arab Spring and Assad gassing his own people which Obama did not start
You need to read about Timber Sycamore. Assad did a lot of bad things, but it’s mental to imply that it was worth investing in Al-Qaeda affiliated militias to overthrow him. The new leader in Syria had a $10* million bounty on his head before rising to power in Syria, he is a leader of a splinter group of Al-Qaeda.
The Assad overthrow is not the pure-wholesome western win that you think it is. Sectarian minorities have been ethnically cleansed by these Syrian rebels now in power.
If you think that this is a success story from Obama’s admin, I’m afraid there’s no point discussing any longer.
Directions unclear
Is it because the CIA was involved that you automatically assume it was bad or that Al-Qaeda is the same organization it was 25 years ago?
25 years ago? The guy was wanted as a terrorist with a $10m bounty in 2017, the fuck you mean “25 years ago”. The bounty was rescinded because he overthrew a government seen as hostile by Israel and the US.
Are you just ignoring the article I linked describing mass killings of Alawite? Are you trying to defend those guys?
At least he really pushed back against the ongoing genoci- oh wait, no, he did the opposite of that.
*Jimmy Carter
He was the guy who knew what needed to be done decades beforehand and was ousted by the mechanations of the neocons. I wonder how much could be different if Reagan wasn’t able to make that deal with Iran to win the election.
i once tried to go president by president in Wikipedia wondering how far I have to go before I find one president that didn’t commit war crimes.
i gave up,
Biden had one (1) job. And that was to save the union from fascism. He misunderstood, appointed Merrick Fucking Sit On His Hands Garland because of vibes or some shit, and then fucked around. Now we are all finding out what it is like to live under fascism. Thanks Biden!
Yeah. Fuck him.
Insofar as the president is, by nature, a flawed and pressured human being, I generally try to make allowances for poor decision-making, outdated thinking, and political maneuvering (requiring even speech to be measured and often untruthful about intent or feeling - if not outright lies about the facts) both around the electorate and elected officials. It would be unfair to expect miracles of even the best men, much less mediocre compromise candidates of the sort which generally succeed in American politics.
But Biden made a series of unforced errors, and by what became increasingly obvious as immense hubris rather than simple miscalculation. He very well may have lost American democracy (or what amount of democracy we had) to a fascist demagogue, and a remarkably stupid and incoherent fascist demagogue even by the already-low-standards of that job, and it’s very conceivable that even unfucking ONE of Biden’s many mistakes could have made all the difference in preventing that cretin, considering the closeness of the election.
Fuck Biden. His name is mud.
Garland would have been on the Supreme Court if not for Trump, it was thought Garland would come after Trump for revenge over it…
Lol no
I’m pretty sure they wanted Trump to run again because they still, for some ungodly reason, thought they’d have an easy win against him in 2024.
Genocide
Genocide Joe is the liberal hero
Yeah we need to not make Biden look like he was perfect and only good, it’s very easy to illustrate how much better he was than Trump without ignoring the bad.
Meh.
IMO, the problem is that Dems aren’t focusing on the economy in the correct way. Yeah, Biden did some good things. But you’ve still got massive wealth inequality, high rents and home prices, venture capital firms buying up small companies and jacking prices way the fuck up, executives raking in huge profits and salaries while laying off workers, etc. Dems keep saying, “the economy is great!” while working class people–the vast middle class in the US, which includes mid-level white collar jobs–are feeling like they’re working hard for less. Ever since the crash in '08, jobs have been less stable, and people have been turning to gig work to make ends meet, or to have anything extra in their budgets. Sanders is the only left-leaning politician that’s really banging on that drum.
Dems used to be out there running for good jobs for hard working people, work with dignity that you could live on. But they’ve been ignoring their roots for the last 40 years, and have been bought and sold by corporate America. The liberlization/globalization of the economy [EDIT] has largely been a disaster for working-class people, as they’ve been forced to compete against lower-wage workers, while the capitalist class gets even larger profits. (OOH, the liberalization of America’s trade policies has resulted in millions of people outside of the US being able to live in something other than grinding, abject poverty.)
In addition to that, Biden’s debate performance was a fucking disaster, and made it very, very clear to everyone that he was absolutely not fit to be president. Harris should have put some distance between herself and Biden, but she couldn’t, or wouldn’t; she was suggesting that we continue the same policies that are squeezing the working class, rather than calling for systemic reform.
Meanwhile, Trump was promising that he’d make foreign companies pay, and that he’d bring good jobs back. If you’re a low-information voter that doesn’t understand how tariffs work, and don’t think about the logistics of bringing all the manufacturing back, then this sound great.
Meanwhile, you’ve got the whole right wing media machine telling people–mostly men–that they’re right to feel screwed. And yeah, they are. It’s just that it’s not ‘libs’, women, typical immigrants, etc.; it’s corporate profiteering, trade globalization, the loss of power from unions, importing highly-skilled labor to displace higher-paid American workers (e.g., H1-B abuse), outsourcing everything, etc.
If Dems want to win, they need to get serious about good jobs that pay a living wage for middle America, putting a choke-chain on corporate profiteering, and rebuilding the power of labor.
They won’t; sponsored by the big capital, they are not capable of providing a large systemic change without losing the platform to speak on.
The issue is systemic, and Dems are not fit to solve it. Third party, funded by the regular people, is the only way forward.
They won’t; sponsored by the big capital
Yes, but that doesn’t mean they can’t get away from it. Sanders managed to run very strong presidential primary campaigns, twice, and almost all of his funding was from individual donors giving his campaign under $100 each.
Dems could do this, if leadership had the will.
3rd parties can’t, or they can’t yet, because none of them have put in sufficient work at a grassroots level yet to consistently win places on state legislatures, much less federally.
Don’t forget:
1-Enabled genocide against increasing opposition from his base. 2-Didn’t go after Trump for treason. 3-Didn’t go after price gouging, giving Trump a massive gift for his campaign. 4-Refused to step down despite clearly being unfit for a second term.
Biden did have a fair number of accomplishments during his term, but each one of these failures outweighs all of them combined.
3-Didn’t go after price gouging, giving Trump a massive gift for his campaign.
I agree with your other points, including the fact that he lost the fucking Republic to fascism through his deeds resulting in his overall legacy being an abject fucking failure, but the tools by which the president could, even purely theoretically, go after price gouging are extremely limited. And political concerns with the ever-fickle and reactionary US electorate would make direct presidential action even of that limited sort of questionable wisdom even for a presidency as motivated on the issue as one headed by Sanders or Warren (assuming the makeup of the rest of the government remained roughly the same).
I agree, though I’m starting to think that we’re being and limited by our own minds here a little. Look at how much raw power Republicans are exerting now, to much more evil ends, and they’re fine doing it. I think if Dems actually grew a spine, many would follow. A reactionary electorate can go both ways, since it’s mainly acting on vibes/spite/etc. Most believe nothing ever happens anyway, which is why they tell you to relax when the MAGA breaks key institutions. So I think some direct presidential action in a good direction would be good. Let the pundits scream all they want, they’ll call him a communist baby eater anyway.
PS: I hope that was coherent, I didn’t proof read it and I haven’t had my coffee yet.
To some degree, I do agree that the spinelessness of Dems works against them.
But on the other hand, Dems have a VERY different demographic than the GOP does. And the Dems have spent the past 30 years building the ‘adult in the room’ narrative which traditionally plays well to the actively voting segment of that demographic, and going for “Fuck the rules, we no longer believe in them” would likely not energize much of the base, and disillusion them the same way many left-wing voters were disillusioned in 2024 by the Harris campaign’s unwillingness to trumpet any firm ideological position.
Ultimately, I think Dem strategy, or lack thereof, is a contributor to this whole debacle - but the fundamental problem is that there’s not really a ‘winning coalition’ that’s evident at this point in American politics. Chasing swing voters by vibes instead of ever-increasingly-milquetoast policy might be marginally more electorally successful (though massively better for the country’s policy), but as unlikely to be the desired silver bullet any more than mainstream Dem attempts at shit like ‘country over party’ or ‘return to normality’ at changing the overall result of elections.
Our electorate is fucked, ideologically incoherent, low-information, and infected with deep, cultural-level maliciousness and tribalism. God knows how we dig ourselves out of this one, but however it might occur, I’m almost certain that it will happen at the grassroots, changing the electorate first and the strategy second (changing the electorate’s outlook, resulting in winning elections and being able to implement rational and useful policy), rather than vice-versa (winning elections and then changing the electorate via implementation of rational and useful policy).
Makes sense, but I have a question though. Wouldn’t the tribalism work in the favor of the “fuck it” approach? Since it would be targeted at Trump and his cronies. Dem voters tend to be all in on locking up Trump. And also, thinking towards more radical things Biden did, like pulling out of Afghanistan and strengthening the NLRB — those would technically be outside the typical Dem comfort zone, but I haven’t seen many Dem voters take issue with that.
Where I’m going with this: I don’t think voters really want this visionless triangulation approach Dems keep doing. I think the DNC wants that. The consultant class, the “it’s his/her/their turn” types. Jim Carville types and other Clinton era fossils who are afraid to call Republicans weird because they value bipartisanship above all else. Not to mention literal controlled opposition rotating villain types like “Manchinema” and now Fetterman. Those guys want compromise, but I actually think voters want a fight. I think they can see plainly that Republicans are going low and don’t actually want Dems to go high like Michelle Obama famously said — they want Dems to go lower and beat the GOP at their own game.
Again, all the tribalism and spite and brianrot, those are very conducive to a more aggressive approach rather than this “let them discredit themselves” crap. The latest polls favoring AOC, the Fight Oligarchy crowd sizes, the dismal disapproval of the Democratic Party as a whole, all these show that people are aware that the “adult jn the room” days are over and it’s a fight for survival. I’ll give you that once things hopefully get back to normal, they’ll start their finger wagging again, but right now? I kinda doubt it. If anything, the less vocal hashtag resistance is more a sign of people being tired, disappointed, and resigning themselves to the idea that nobody is fighting for them anymore and they just have to make do and keep their heads low because that’s how you survive fascism.
Disclaimer: not American, I’m from across the pond but I follow US politics closely because it affects us as well.
Makes sense, but I have a question though. Wouldn’t the tribalism work in the favor of the “fuck it” approach?
We’re back at the “GOP and Dems have a different core demographic”. There’s not a massive as-of-yet-untapped tribalist voting bloc waiting for the DNC to ratchet up their rhetoric.
Where I’m going with this: I don’t think voters really want this visionless triangulation approach Dems keep doing. I think the DNC wants that. The consultant class, the “it’s his/her/their turn” types. Jim Carville types and other Clinton era fossils who are afraid to call Republicans weird because they value bipartisanship above all else. Not to mention literal controlled opposition rotating villain types like “Manchinema” and now Fetterman. Those guys want compromise, but I actually think voters want a fight. I think they can see plainly that Republicans are going low and don’t actually want Dems to go high like Michelle Obama famously said — they want Dems to go lower and beat the GOP at their own game.
I agree entirely. Like I said, the strategy, or lack thereof, of the Dems is a contributor to this entire debacle.
Again, all the tribalism and spite and brianrot, those are very conducive to a more aggressive approach rather than this “let them discredit themselves” crap. The latest polls favoring AOC, the Fight Oligarchy crowd sizes, the dismal disapproval of the Democratic Party as a whole, all these show that people are aware that the “adult jn the room” days are over and it’s a fight for survival. I’ll give you that once things hopefully get back to normal, they’ll start their finger wagging again, but right now? I kinda doubt it. If anything, the less vocal hashtag resistance is more a sign of people being tired, disappointed, and resigning themselves to the idea that nobody is fighting for them anymore and they just have to make do and keep their heads low because that’s how you survive fascism.
I think you vastly overestimate the appetite and appeal of conflict for most American voters at this point in time. We run in extremely left-leaning circles here in Lemmy, but while there’s general dissatisfaction with the Dem party, a majority of voters want it to stay the course or become more moderate rather than radicalize. And while that’s pig-fucking stupidity, it’s… well, we play the hand we’re dealt, not the one we want.
My point about abandoning the long-standing pandering to suburban professionals and other unplugged moderates who crave civility politics wasn’t an endorsement of the Dems continuing the ‘adult in the room’ strategy, only suggesting that there are definite and serious electoral costs to changing the strategy, and that prior experience does not engender confidence in harnessing the ‘anger’ of other Dem demographics as a means of increasing electoral success.
Changing the strategy means telling the Dems, as a whole, ‘the party doesn’t need the support of the suburban middle class; progressives will make up the difference’.
And while I agree that attempting to further shore up the suburban middle class is clearly not a winning fucking strategy, progressives - even for progressive darlings like Sanders - simply do not command the votes necessary to change the electoral balance in this country, as things currently stand. It goes back to the core point I made - that the fundamental problem is we lack a clear ‘winning coalition’ more than that we lack a winning strategy (though we do also, clearly, lack a winning strategy as well). There’s no strategic silver bullet that the DNC is just ‘missing’, or too corrupt to adopt. We’re in a bad fucking position, and changing the electorate is probably more useful than changing strategy (though there’s nothing stopping us from agitating for both, I feel it’s important to emphasize that changing strategy alone is not going to be anything but kicking the can down the road - I remember the triumphalism of the successful strategy of the Obama years and how that fucking panned out)
The reason for Republicans corruption is literally the power they have. If Democrats took up that power, it wouldn’t fix anything. Then we’d have two equally corrupted unanswerable parties. Running roughshod over us.
Anyone who thought anyone at that level of government could or would save them has only fooled themselves. That level of government has never and will never represent us. Literally, look to the times it sort of seemed like it did. Like the new deal era 100 years ago that did a lot to exclude Black’s and minorities. Then realize that even that little bit was an exception and an outlier.
Nothing would be materially different had Sanders won. Because he wouldn’t have had a base of legislative support etc. He would have had better rhetoric if that’s all that mattered to you. But in terms of what he could get done. It wouldn’t be much different. When you vote for a president if you aren’t voting for anyone to fix something. You are voting for someone to manage the damage and trying to keep it from getting out of hand. That is all.
No president will ever save us. The only ones capable of saving us are ourselves. People have been so complacent. That we have sleepy octogenarians, dying in office. Generally running unopposed. That’s on us. Yes the National Party will fight against us. They’ve always been the enemy. It’s only right for them to fight against us. It’s wrong that we haven’t been fighting back against them.
Breaking things by not following the rules is easy. All Democrats can do right now is threaten to … Also break things, hoping Republicans would back down. But that only helps them.
I don’t mean break things so much as push things and not back down the instant some parliamentarian disagrees. I want them to put goals above process, if that makes sense. And obviously to have actual good goals.
Liberal voters liked Biden so much the emulated him by doing nothing to stop Trump.
Your thinking of the fake “progressives” that did nothing on election day.
I don’t know if two is exactly Fair. I would say more importantly that that he appointed Merrick Garland a fucking useless milk toast. That Garland didn’t go after Trump. I’m okay with the president not personally conducting investigations and trials.
lol it’s milquetoast and that gives me hope for Lemmy not being entirely populated by bots right at this moment
Eh, same difference. I very much doubt he appointed Garland without knowing exactly what he’d do (or, more accurately, not do).
That’s never really the impression I had from him being appointed. I don’t think that much thought really went into it. I think it was more of a kind of a stunt/ fuck you to the Republicans for not letting him be on the Supreme Court. Kind of a see we’re going to use them since y’all wouldn’t. Which I think they regretted later. So I guess what I’m really saying is it’s Obama’s fault lol.
- when everyone is price gouging and the high prices stick, that’s inflation, which Biden did go after.
Glorification of the badies, because the worst came to power…
He only did genocide like a smol bean 🥹
Too bad Biden will be remembered for his greed and wanting a second term just to doom us to Trump’s second term. All the good he did will be wiped out over the next 4 years.
Why not add a third party here?
Because there haven’t been any 3rd party presidents :(
Yep hence I support the underdogs. Choosing the least worse is still worse.
Ironic since all of those bills were heavily cut down to gain “bipartisan” support and then Republicans still refused to vote for them, classic Democrat move. Kinda like how he gave up the race to Trump and then went on a photo tour with him like they’re buddies (which is pretty massive evidence for the Uniparty theory imo).
Ironic since all of those bills were heavily cut down to gain “bipartisan” support and then Republicans still refused to vote for them, classic Democrat move.
They were heavily cut down to gain the support of ‘moderate’ Dems whose support to pass them was literally indispensable. The Senate was literally at 50-50 for the first two years, and 51-49 for the next two.
