I’m sure you remember that this logic was being thrown around by certain anti-Hilary voices the last time around?* It hasn’t aged well thus far. How much longer can we really afford to entertain thought experiments like this one?
*(Not attempting to cast any blame here on anybody for Trump winning 2016. My point is current situation demands that anyone who cares about anything good at all should be “all in” to defeat any chance of this abomination continuing.)
You literally referred to the “folly of voters” and that they “fell hook, line, and sinker” for the media narrative.
It is pretty clear that Biden’s resurgence was due to voters finding the endorsements of people like Val Demings and Jim Clyburn persuasive. Their narrative wasn’t about electability, but about how Biden as president would better understand and serve their communities. That in turn was not based just on a list of proposals, but on years of working with Biden and understanding how he works with people and makes decisions.
Sorry- wrong universe.
So, next to the worst response. What’s up with the Yang supporters? How much more does 45 have to do/screw up for people to figure out we need to stop this from getting worse, not double down on the dumb?
it has nothing to do with my own personal excitement. it has to do with the larger issue of voter engagement and the democratic party compromising away their values for a largely unsuccessful strategy. i absolutely recognize the gravity, which is why i had commented that we should all do what needs doing to get trump out of office, i.e. vote for biden. but, again, incrementalism, the idea that change comes in small steps and that’s somehow a sober ideal, literally kills people every day. look at trump and republicans in congress. they have become, on the whole, less moderate, more radical, less willing to meet in the middle. for them, this had been a winning strategy. democrats have responded by ceding more ground. this is not a victory for progress or democratic principles. and at the end of the day, a political party without clear principles is just an arbitrary granfalloon. mlk said “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” this is an oversimplification at the very least, but perhaps even a fantasy. things can get much worse. they have gotten worse. worldwide there has been a revitalized trend toward fascism. there are many people who believe that sanders was the best path forward for progressive/democratic ideals and i happen to be one of them. i’m also very concerned that joe biden will not get the votes to do the job. so, no, while i’m hopeful, i can’t get excited. but you’re right, it’s not about me. my original comment was that “nobody should be excited about this.” if you are, you’re missing the bigger picture.
I may be wrong, but I think semantics are at play here.
I think I get your meaning: voting/having to vote for Biden doesn’t inspire excitement (strong feelings of enthusiasm and excitement) in progressive voters. Neither does having to cast a vote for the less bad of a paltry 2 choices, once again.
On the other hand, I think what @anon21100188 might mean is something like: if this election and the urgency of ridding ourselves of the pathogen in the white house doesn’t excite (i.e. give rise to strong feelings, not necessarily good ones) us, then we must not be paying attention.
I think it’s clear that for most of us here the agenda and persona of the current administration excites many emotions—disgust, despair, rage, depression, paranoia (speaking for myself if not others).
Again I could be wrong, but seems like we’re more on the same page than not.
Well, I don’t vote in the US, so what I write here is purely from an outsider’s point of view…
Last elections, Clinton had the highest number of votes, but the particular US presidential voting system made it so that Trump won anyway. He did so through focusing on specific states and focusing his campaign on taking advantage of the wrath a large number of people feel against the Democratic Party decade-old ways.
Sanders was a potential new start whereas Biden is business as usual (hence the way the DP power that be fought tooth and nail to make sure Sanders didn’t win the primaries).
Of course, there might be changes because of the covid crisis, but apart from that, I fail to see why these elections should be any different from the 2016 ones.
Your posts indicate otherwise.
Right, which is why I said that their vote was foolish. You’re the one that’s characterizing my statement as some sort of critique on their judgement as a whole. But really, this is a petty thing to fixate on when the main thrust of my response was questioning why criticizing Democratic primary voters is off-limits, but is apparently perfectly fine when we’re talking about Republican voters. Or, to capture a general theme of this thread, voters who supported Sanders but will choose not to vote for Biden in the general. I’m not personally in that camp, but I understand why people may feel like they can’t support someone who directly contributed to between 100,000 and 1 million Iraqi civilians losing their lives, as well as possibly being a rapist.
I agree that vote scolding in general is not a productive use of time, but why is it that someone who criticizes Biden voters from the left is a problem, but it’s perfectly fine to do the same thing to people who don’t want to vote for Biden in the general? The latter practice is far more harmful and dangerous, as the outcome is not yet set and that time could be better spent making empathetic and reasonable arguments to convince people that Biden actually does deserve their vote.
As for the endorsements, yeah, absolutely they made a huge difference in South Carolina and Florida, but I’d have to see some analysis to support the idea that they were more influential than the electability argument in places like Michigan. If that evidence exists, I would appreciate you sharing it.
You would need to look at whether Biden does better in those swing states than Hillary did to make that assessment.
He certainly does in several swing states. He does in mine - PA. But as important is - is Trump doing worse in these swing states. Indications are that he is doing worse in PA, FL, WI, AZ, CO and NC.
It is possible to be unhappy at the way someone voted without scolding anyone. However, in the case of both Trump voters in the general, and Biden voters in the primary, the most reasonable explanation is they came to a conclusion that that was the best choice for them based on some kind of inner dialogue. Just like the rest of us. To assume that they were just led by the nose by the media is condescending. You can argue that they were given false facts, but I don’t see people who dismiss the NYT and CNN as fake news then turn to Jacobin as obviously better informed than people who dismiss the NYT and CNN as fake news then turn to Fox.
If that evidence exists, I would appreciate you sharing it.
Moi? I’m not the person who started making strong assertions that people voted for Biden for illegitimate (or foolish) reasons.
It is easy to dismiss Biden as someone nobody could possibly support just on his own merits, but that would be rather naive. Biden has been around a long time, and has the friendship and respect of many people in politics. You don get that by being a political zero.
How many people are going to die for this victory? Forcing people to crowd into a tiny number of hugely overpopulated polling places was the exact opposite of what the state should have been doing during a global viral pandemic.
I don’t know. Should the voters instead have stayed at home? The Wisconsin GOP’s insistence on these dangerous voting conditions is part of their ongoing advocacy for voter suppression; by braving the conditions to come to the polls these Democratic voters might have made a real dent in that suppression going forward, not only by the important election of a key judge but also by demonstrating that such suppression doesn’t always work.
i’m not certain how, but feel free to misinterpret if that works for you.
The State GOP should have allowed absentee voting. They were literally attempting to kill people for political advantage.
Um… no. It’s not. But thanks for signaling that you’d like to throw my rights under the bus to get what you want… another 4 years of trump completely transforms the courts, including the supreme court to the far right. We can fully expect that any progress made by women and people of color in having equal rights to white men will be nearly nullified.
Biden is not my first choice, or the best choice or even one of my top choices, but he will at least stop the slide and appoint more centrist or liberal judges who will defend the core principle of equal rights under the law. I really do not want my bodily autonomy to be a sacrifice for men on the left, so I’m willing to keep pushing for the progressive changes we need from the grassroots. if you’re not willing to do the same, then it’s clear you don’t have all of us in mind.
Wisconsin does allow absentee voting. What the GOP disallowed was emergency extension of the voting period. While I agree that that should have been permitted as well, I am also going to view this as a victory against them, without trying to make any judgments about whether the pros outweigh the cons.
This is absolutely true. But responsibility for it can’t be laid upon either of the candidates being discussed in this thread.
I’ve already defended my assertions several times in this thread and linked to polling data that supports my analysis. If you’re uninterested in sharing evidence that supports your claim that two endorsements were more significant than the media blitz pushing the “Biden is electable” narrative, that’s fine.
Obviously I don’t think Biden is a political zero, that wouldn’t quite square with my argument that the media and Democratic leadership worked to present him as the best viable alternative to Trump.
As for being condescending, yeah I realize I came off that way, but I’m not terribly concerned about that here. Obviously my messaging would be different if I was trying to convince an undecided voter to support my candidate (which is a strategy I hope all of the people in this thread gasping at the temerity of potential voters considering not voting for Biden also follow), but that’s not what’s happening here. I shared my frustration with the outcome of the primary and why I thought it happened. If people want to debate alternatives to that analysis that’s probably a productive use of time, but chiding me for being mean to some abstract persona just feels silly.
“People are complex and vote based on their thoughts” is almost a tautology, and while true, it doesn’t really amount to a substantive critique of the arguments I’ve been making.
Vastly different dynamics at work in Trump v. Biden than there were in Trump v. Clinton, for one. Trump benefited in 2016 from the right’s decades long campaign of painting Hilary as untrustworthy, Machiavellian, elitist, hypocritical, etc.—simultaneously a way of demeaning her as not embodying traditional white, middle-class feminine traits. Trump’s base in particular but also apparently many swing voters clearly voted based on a belief in this narrative, or some other variation on this kind of misogyny.
Comey’s October Surprise amplified this narrative at a crucial moment.
There will be other, different dynamics at play (who knows what the impact of Covid will be?), but not the anti-Hilary hysteria.
