2 posts out of however many is margin of error. The vast majority of your posts are biased against Biden and Democrats. I don’t know why you left Reddit - you had a steady income stream from r/Conservative and The_Dingus before it was shut down. You really should just fuck off back to Reddit.
Sure I'd rather vote for someone with Bernie's politics but that's not on the table right now. I'll happily vote for Biden over literal christo-fascism and the destruction of our democracy any fucking time.
When people we won't vote against literal fascism because the alternative isn't their ideal candidate then ya. Republicans have no reason to not choose a dictator as their candidate next time when the dictator this time has a legitimate chance of actually winning.
What needs to happen is for the Republicans to lose so abysmally that they see this shit isn't going to work and they restructure and kick out the crazies.
Anyone thinking about responding to this poster, please look at their post history so you know what you're getting into with regard to ANYTHING even tangentially related to Biden.
True for the OP too. There's definitely an element on some of the Lemmy communities that seems to exist only or at least primarily to push negative Biden prop (or barring that, anti-US prop in general). I checked Reddit recently for the first time in months (kind of like going to Walmart--avoid it like the plague, but sometimes you just can't), and I was genuinely astonished at how little anti-Biden content was present by comparison.
I'm voting for Joe in November, and you should too. Joe's administration killed non-competes, flipped the procedure for airline canceled and delayed flight refunds (i.e., pro-consumer), and pushed back the exempt employee loophole--and that's just the news from this week. He's an awesome president without even considering that the other side is composed entirely of criminals, Russian assets, and fascists.
That actually relieves me. Like, people going, "I won't vote/will vote 3rd party" seem to not realize that if Biden doesn't get in, Trump will, and he not only would push genocide MUCH more, but also WILL destroy the electoral system to stay in power and avoid jail.
Hell, Project 2025 leaking proved this
So a good reminder that the Fediverse is being echoey helps the fear some
Like, people going, “I won’t vote/will vote 3rd party” seem to not realize that if Biden doesn’t get in,
I think people saying that are well aware a 3rd party vote means a second Trump presidency. Most are saying that in bad faith. The posters posting it either have no plan to vote third party, or they're not even US citizens (as their posts would suggest they are) and they're not allowed to vote anyway.
I just had to block them. Don't even need to see the username to know who it is. Engaging with them and even the OP here is nothing but a carnival of bad faith arguments.
Yeah. Dude is a pretty well known right-wing propagandist. This is evident in the fact that they have nothing critical to say about anyone or anything on the right. They’re clearly here to spread propaganda to those that are disillusioned with the system.
A non vote for Biden from someone who would have voted for him is a clear boon to Trump.
They know this, and be they’re hoping everyone else doesn’t.
(This comment will be removed by the mods once the rest of the bots report it enough)
The above commenter is a well known Hawaiian Pizza lover, he's the absolute worst. /s
Stop being paranoid about the mods they're actually pretty fucking reasonable.
Why don't you just respond to the article. This poster has a habit of posting controversial articles that are critical of Biden's actions but America is a fucking democracy and we can have an adult discussion about his flaws.
Having those conversations makes it more likely people will vote for him - compared to just muzzling everyone and saying "he's so perfect" because we can fucking see his flaws. Silencing discussion drives down voter turn out and low voter turnout is how asshole GOP folks keep getting elected. Also those anti choice church goers are going to blindly vote for the adulterer - so we need to overwhelm the idiot factor.
I’m not paranoid about the mods. I’ve dealt with them first hand on this shit.
Discussing flaws is one thing, flat-out suggesting people NOT vote is another.
No one is suggesting anyone stifle discussion. Nor is anyone saying he’s perfect. But doing nothing but spread ant-Biden shit is clearly one showing their true colors. If we’re going to be fair, and expect fairness in others, let’s actually be fair. And when others aren’t showing that fairness- they absolutely should be called out.
If someone wants to accuse me of being an anti-Trump liberal- and base said accusation on the results of my comment history… I’ll agree with them, because my comment history is rife with anti-Trump rhetoric.
But if another posts nothing but anti-Biden rhetoric, and their comment history shows nothing but- should we just…. Pretend there’s no agenda there?
It's an important fact, but hardly a major or unique case. I know I've personally never felt like any of the candidates in any of the elections I remember were great, just "good enough" or "better than some of the alternatives," I certainly would've replaced them if I could.
Looking at some recent primaries
Back in 2020, Biden only had 51.7% of the votes in the democratic primaries. That made him by far the biggest single candidate, but that also means that almost half of democrats would have probably been happy to replace them with one of the other 4 candidates if they could (though they would have disagreed on which of the 4.) Most of them would still go on to vote for biden despite him not being their first pick.
In 2016, trump won with 44.9%, again the biggest single candidate, but that means that 55.1% wanted not trump. Of course most of that majority still held their nose and voted for him in November, but the majority of them probably would have been happy to replace him at that time if they could.
2008 was really fucking close for the Democrats, Obama beat out Hillary with 48.1% of the vote to her 48%, and the remaining 3.9% voting for various other candidates, that means that the majority (51.9%) of people wanted a candidate other than Obama. Same year, McCain won his primary with 46.7%, so again the majority did not vote for him but for various other candidates.
And I think it's pretty safe to say that in just about any election throughout history, voters would like to replace the opposing party's candidate if they could, no surprise there.
A really big news story would be if the majority of the party not only would replace their candidate if they could, but were actually in agreement on who they would replace them with. If 6 in 10 Democrats said "We would like to replace Biden with this one specific other person that we all agreed on" then that would be big news.
I vote Republican (apparently I'm the only one on Lemmy) and I'm part of this percentage. I don't care for either candidate, but both sides are going to vote for their candidate, because both sides have the "anyone but him" mentality.
But, that's what the Left wants...it literally wants a 100% Liberal/Democrat system. Even Republicans know that there needs to be balance, and we're okay with Democrats and some liberal ideologies...but the Left? Hell no...they literally want to wipe out all Republicans and Conservatives. Just look at the opinions on Lemmy and Reddit? Lol...
You proclaim to be so certain of what this monolithic boogeyman left wants despite claiming to not be a member of that group and at the same time represent yourself to be a member of the equally monolithic "right".
I'm literally wasting my time talking at you I think at this point because you have no ability to comprehend reality.
This is one of many problems with primary voting, but it still works. The DNC elites clearly wanted Hillary to win in 2008, and they wanted Bernie to get far fewer votes in 2016 and 2020. But the reality is there's not a lot of situations where they'd actually reverse a primary vote, if nothing else because the backlash would be so extreme they'd be guaranteeing an election loss anyway.
I mean, not just America, the entire world wishes you had gotten your shit together for this one, but land of the free/home of the brave really is just a bumper sticker slogan I guess.
This community by far has the worst takes on US politics
Even people on the meme sub understand Biden isn't some magical deity who is going to save us from the literal incarnation of satan.
Why are people even remotely surprised the incumbent supporting a genocide is not popular, and that any opposition must be russian trolls or chinese propaganda.
All the way up till 2024 democrats were furiously protecting Biden. Shutting down any critism of him. Now it's election time and all the discussions they refused to have for the last 3 years are at the forefront. Shame they waste their energy defending the presidential elect rather than vetting the better candidates. Like thats never blown up in their faces.
Except for the fact, of course, that the Democrat primaries have never been more democratic. But let's not let the facts or history get in the way of the narrative!
I don't know if I would label it "admitting," but rather just being aware of history. Parties didn't start having votes until around WWII, and after all of the hand wringing after the 2008 and 2016 primaries, Democrats voted overwhelmingly to dilute their power even more.
Making 2020 the most democratic primary for Democrats ever.
Well, I mean it's a lot of effort rigging things so they don't look completely janky. Debbie Whatsername-Smith was done worn out at the end of 2016 making sure it was Her Turn.
Watching the media lose its mind in 2020 when Bernie won Nevada, and candidates abandoning their campaigns like rats fleeing a sinking ship when he won California, really makes me think it was more than just DWS in 2016 fucking with things.
Also, whatever you do, don't google "Shadow Inc Acronym Iowa Primary" or trust anything this news article says about the caucus process because its fine, everything is fine, democracy is actually very healthy and normal in this country, and anyone who says otherwise is a Russian bot.
Democracy is perfectly fine until my candidate loses, at which point democracy is dead until late September when mid-terms start ramping up, and then suddenly democracy works again and we need to get ready to vote in 2026.
Democracy is perfectly fine until the candidate that loses refuses to accept the results, tries to retain power by force, then continues to try undermine faith in democracy for 4 years and is somehow still the frontrunner for his party.
Gore’s VP (Joe)? I don’t remember all of the details, but that was legitimately a contested election by the numbers, not by a sore loser. Won the popular by a decent margin but lost the electoral. It was by a slim enough margin to trigger a recount. As far as contested elections go I thought that could have gone a whole lot worse.
that was legitimately a contested election by the numbers
Not according to the incoming Republican administration. There are still conservatives who flog that election to prove how little Democrats care about democracy.
I’m not sure I get the comparison here.
If Gore had squeaked out a win even in the face of abundant ratfvckery in Florida and Ohio, Republicans would have insisted the election was a fraud in the same way they insisted Clinton stole the election in 1992 and Carter in 1976 and Kennedy stole it in 1960.
Because this is a partisan issue, there's no real clean line between legitimate victory and election theft from the perspective of the partisans themselves. And because both sides routinely fight dirty (Nixon was as aggressive fucking democrats in southern Illinois as Kennedy was in fucking Republicans in Chicago), it is often difficult to talk about a clean race when the reality is more often that one person or the other lost in a dirty knife fight.
It’s not though. Even though we’d prefer a different candidate, everyone who isn’t a complete moron has at least agreed that we’re gonna stick with Biden because he’s better than the alternative and it’s not even close.
62% of the voters seem to think it's a worthwhile endeavor. You're probably right in the sense that democrats couldnt find a progressive candidate if they came up and kicked them in the ass.
The last time the Democrats did that was Ted Kennedy challenging Carter. Even with a historically unpopular president and a well-known challenger he still lost.
I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but our government is dysfunctional and incumbents are not successfully primaried.
Before primary elections became the dominant way to pick a nominee, party leaders were more able to either shut down challengers or smoothly pass the nomination to someone else. Notably, four incumbents who were denied the nomination in the 19th century — John Tyler, Andrew Johnson and Chester A. Arthur — had been Vice Presidents who rose to the Presidency following the deaths of their predecessors, perhaps suggesting they’d never won their parties’ full support in the first place.
Then
In the 1952 Democratic Party presidential primaries, President Harry S. Truman was challenged by Senator Estes Kefauver. Truman lost the New Hampshire primary to Kefauver and dropped out of the race shortly after.
Also
TIME reported that McCarthy’s surprisingly strong showing in the New Hampshire primary was a statement that was “as much anti-Johnson as antiwar,” citing a NBC poll that found more than half of Democrats didn’t even know McCarthy’s position on Vietnam. Less than a week after New Hampshire, Attorney General Robert Kennedy jumped into the race. Then, on March 31, Johnson announced he wasn’t going to run for re-election.
As TIME reported in the April 12, 1968, article on Johnson dropping out, “So low had Johnson’s popularity sunk, said one Democratic official, that last-minute surveys before the Wisconsin primary gave him a humiliating 12% of the vote there.”
It should be noted that Ford nearly lost to Reagan in 1976
He racked up 1,187 delegates compared to Ronald Reagan’s 1,070, which was barely more than the 1,130 he needed to secure the nomination.
And Kennedy nearly beat Carter four years later
Carter won 36 primaries that year, but Kennedy’s 12 victories included important ones in New York and California, and he didn’t concede until Aug. 11, 1980, at the Democratic National Convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
In another historic race, William Taft was nearly edged out by Theodore Roosevelt, who went on to place second behind Woodrow Wilson in 1912. That gave Taft the dubious distinction of being the only incumbent to come in at third place in a general election.
The RFK brand name carries a lot of weight among boomer voters. This looks less like coordination by either party and more like a dimwit failson cashing in on his name brand before it expires. He's raised over $72M in his Presidential bid and has numerous friends and family on his campaign payroll.
My man is an absolute money fountain for the consultancy class. Not as lucrative as the comically overpriced Bloomberg primary bid, but definitely worth the grift on his face.
Bloomberg was a NYC Republican who thought he could Moneyball the Democratic Primary by focusing all his efforts in a few big states. Biden wasn't running as a moderate candidate in 2020. He was running as a conservative democrat. The moderates - Warren and Klobacher and Buttigieg and Harris - never managed to triangulate a winning position between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.
