The amount of people here calling themselves ‘far-left’ and regurgitating republican talking points is insane.
Going from calling Biden too old (which isn’t wrong but he’s still the best viable option) to defending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seamlessly.
(which isn’t wrong but he’s still the best viable option)
Whoa, hey now I very much object to the certainty of this claim.
Yeah, David Axelrod, senior Obama strategist credited with Obama’s successful elections, Obama speech-writers and communications director, and now numerous long-serving Congressional democrats disagree but, totally the best viable option despite poll after poll showing he’s massively down and Biden’s own current campaign strategists reporting they see no viable path.
If your ship hit the iceberg and is taking on water, any other nearby vessel is a better alternative. At worst, it’s in the same condition. At best, it’s not fucking sinking. 75% of likely voters say Biden is too old to run and Democrats have a better chance with someone else at defeating Trump.
Disclaimer: we need to jump ship now but I’ll vote for a corpse over Donald Trump. I just think we’ll lose if we stick with Biden and the data shows it.
Then the Democrats can pick someone else NOW and rally behind them. This constant undermining of Biden while not providing a good alternative and promoting them is just hurting Democrats chances to save democracy. This is irresponsible on such an obvious level I have to assume they are trying to lose the presidency.
It’s all about pressuring Biden in time before his nomination is locked in by the delegates. The moment that happens, this ends for better or worse.
If you’re going to pressure an incumbent into dropping out you can’t lead with “we’ll figure out who the nominee is who can beat Trump eventually”. You come to the board with a game plan and evidence. Calling for him to step down is fucking sabotage without all of that.
There’s a Catch-22 here. Anyone who announces they’re willing becomes persona non grata and nonviable, for stabbing the current candidate in the back before he’s stepped down. But why would he step down if he can only be pressured if viable candidates have announced against him?
Which is why Harris, unfortunately, is most likely to nab the nomination. She’s in just the right position to imply that she’s ready to step up without saying anything that would lead to her being seen as ‘not a team player’ and troublesome for the party.
Anyone who announces they’re willing becomes persona non grata and nonviable, for stabbing the current candidate in the back before he’s stepped down.
None of this should have been done in public. Democrats calling for Biden to step down 1 day after the debate are idiots. This is internal party politics and while it would have leaked, it wouldn’t have been democrats blasting their own party leader in public. They should have figured out who was the most popular, got a backup, got their support, and then went to Biden’s campaign with their evidence. Then if he refused to step down, they maybe could do so in public. Or just wait for the pundits to trash Biden on their own instead of adding to it.
Division this late is the game is damning. Also Democrats are fair-weather supporters to a T. 1 bad debate and they throw the sitting POTUS under the bus? Yeah he looked old and made mistakes. But he isn’t a fucking fascist. It’s just unbelievable when Trump has been shitting the bed 24/7 for years.
The problem is there have been rumors of this kind of backdoor objection going on for a while now. I dismissed them as gossip at the time, but now that Congress members have gone public, I’m more inclined to believe them. These members going public, including a Senator, sounds much more like desperation after exhausting the quiet options.
It’s just unbelievable when Trump has been shitting the bed 24/7 for years.
It is deeply unfair that the Democratic presidential candidate must show exceptional performance, while the fascist presidential candidate can skate by shitting his pants and demanding his followers shit themselves in solidarity, but we’re appealing to two different demographics.
I think you’re looking at this all wrong. All data points to an inevitable Biden loss. Once you accept that, then the question of the alternative almost doesn’t matter.
The problem is that you cannot in good conscience say that an 81-year-old with THAT debate performance is truly the best Democrats have to muster. If true, then that’s fucking sad.
Now, I’ve written many write-ups, and now data supports it, showing that any alternative including Harris would fair better. Win? Not necessarily. But have a better chance? Absofuckinglutely.
- A Harris path is better.
- An open convention is to me even better with solid reasons for why, if you’re interested.
Biden has to willingly step down, the Dem leadership made it clear they won’t attempt to force him. Progressives can’t try to force it either or they will be excised from the party and simultaneously blamed for the inevitable loss.
Biden hasn’t held a full cabinet meeting since last year, so 25th amendment probably not happening either.
And so, ramping up the pressure on Biden to do the right thing by stepping down is the only viable option at this time. It sucks, but this is the bed Biden and the DNC made to lie in.
I’m not sure I’d put much stock in modern polling.
A study suggests the debate had very little impact, but even if it didn’t, historically, changing candidates this late hasn’t worked out.
https://boingboing.net/2024/07/10/impacts-of-the-presidential-debate-far-overestimated.html
Discussion aside, wtaf is boingboing.net? I’m even hesitant to click that link.
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Reliable pollsters are accurate albeit snapshots in time.
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Aggregate reliable polls even more so.
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Nate Silver’s algorithm is over 90% accurate in its prediction model across thousands of races over the years.
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Cook Political Report is the gold standard.
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Even internal polls reported by democratic Congressional campaigns as well as the President’s team themselves admit they’re behind.
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They were 10 points up at this time in 2020.
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If you aren’t going off this, what ARE you going off of, vibes? In one breath you say don’t put stock in polls, then point to an outlier? I mean, what!?
So you can’t comfort me saying that when Biden should’ve come out 1 step ahead from that debate, he is not maybe only 1 step back as he has been for ages, but possibly 2 steps back.
How do you not know boingboing.net?
Anyway, that’s not the source, but Rawstory doesn’t allow ad-blockers, so I linked that synopsis.
https://www.rawstory.com/rs-exclusive/biden-debate-2668724330/
None of those, including my link, is accurate enough to really matter, especially this far from the election.
Thanks. Yeah I genuinely never heard of that site in my life. Seems like it’s been around since forever, too.
To be fair, it used to be a much better, more relevant site, which I only remember because I’ve been around since forever too.
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Unfortunately, historically, a split like this is unprecedented. By coming out against Biden publicly, Democratic congressmembers have forced the issue, and it’s not going to result in Biden remaining our best chance, even IF he would have remained our best chance had they remained publicly silent.
Axelrod’s jobs sound like he pretty much retired from active politics
Why is Trump still attacking Biden so hard?
Because Trump is scared shitless of him.
Trump is scared shitless of everyone. That’s what it is, being a paranoid thin-skinned narcissist with a brain rotted by stimulants and venereal disease. I wouldn’t trust Trump’s take on electoral calculus, for or against.
He wasn’t scared of Bernie.
Because Bernie never came close to getting the nomination.
I’m a two-time Bernie voter. But what I wanted the outcome of the primary is different than what we got.
Which was why Trump was fighting for Bernie to run against him.
Did you expect Trump to hype up his political opponent?
He fought to run against Bernie because Trump knew Bernie would be easy to beat.
If Biden is as easy to beat as some say why try to push him away?
If Biden is as easy to beat as some say why try to push him away?
Biden is the presumptive nominee. If Trump didn’t attack his prospective opponent at every opportunity, he would be, and as ridiculous as this is to imagine, even stupider than he is now.
Trump has suddenly began attacking Kamala in speeches. It’s quite clear GOP agree Biden is their easiest opponent, too.
Ok, we’ll see what happens and re-visit this conversation in a couple months.
We’re both just speculating right now anyways.
Well that feels a bit like goalpost moving, but sure I guess we will for better or worse.
Do you understand what goalpost moving means?
In a couple months we’ll know what happened, the stuff we’re speculating about right now, and we’ll know who is wrong and right.
How is this goalpost moving?
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You say: “But Trump is still talking about Biden!”
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I say: “Actually his latest speeches have begun targeting Kamala directly”
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You say: “okay well maybe he is, but we’re all just speculating!”<- moving the goalpost
Do you at least understand how this sounds? Conviction, followed by being demonstrably wrong, then hiding behind speculation.
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Trump just enjoys being mean and Biden is currently his opponent. When given the choice between shutting up and cruising to a victory and screaming nonsense(while cruising to a win because his supporters are objectively incredibly stupid people) he’s gunna choose screaming nonsense every time.
Fuck Biden but never Trump.
To be fair not many people want to fuck Trump.
Boebs would probably take him to a dark theatre though.
Unfortunately, Biden may have lost too much support from his own party at this point. It’s probably necessary for him to step down, regardless. You don’t get Congresscritters of your own party calling for the presumptive nominee and incumbent to step down unless it looks godawful going into the election with the current ticket.
It’s probably going to be Harris if he is replaced, which I’m… not thrilled with. But Blue no matter who. I’ll vote for Biden if he’s on the ticket in November - I’ll vote for a fucking potato if I have to in order to oppose fascism. But he very well may be an electoral liability at this point, not a boon.
He’d be stepping down into the void. The primaries are mostly over. It’d just be the DNC deciding for themselves who the candidate would be. That would NOT please most voters. It’s typical for an incumbent to be the nominee for a second term. It’s not typical for a party to just decide who the candidate would be.
It’s probably going to be Harris if he is replaced, which I’m… not thrilled with.
If that’s who they choose they need to decide now and start talking her up, even if Biden doesn’t step down right away. We are past primary season. And honestly, she’s fine. Not good fine. But she’ll lose to Trump. Not for any part of her own merit or policies, but because America is a sexist, racist country and I do not have any confidence in them electing a black woman. Maybe is she was popular or charismatic like Obama was but we haven’t really seen her do much.
If that’s who they choose they need to decide now and start talking her up, even if Biden doesn’t step down right away. We are past primary season. And honestly, she’s fine. Not good fine. But she’ll lose to Trump.
Unfortunately, while I share some of your reservations, I think the ball’s in motion. We can let it roll (pick a new candidate) or get crushed by it (stick with Biden and have the millstone of defections hanging around our necks the entire election season), but either way, it’s going where it’s going. We have to deal with it as best we can, not deal with it the way that we would’ve, say, two months ago, before this went down.
I’ll vote for neoliberal dementia grandad to try to stop fascist dementia grandad, without hope, just to be able to say I did what I could to minimize harm.
That said, if you don’t see the writing on the wall that our constitution and government has run out of road, cannot be repaired, is too corrupted, is basically a puppet of the owners of our rigged economy that works against most of us and humanity’s future for a quick buck, and we need a new constitution and nation based in punishing and limiting greed/sociopathy and rewarding cooperation, then I don’t know what planet you’re on.
Even IF we miraculously manage to keep squeaking in Neoliberals to stop the fascists, the Neoliberals agree with the fascists that massive economic disruption for the sake of OUR ONLY HABITAT isn’t acceptable, which means this new climate will continue to worsen at an accelerating rate.
I’d rather not scapegoat vulnerable groups as we fry, which is why I’ll keep showing up, but this is water pumps on the Titanic, the outcome of accepting this framework is still drowning, just at 2:48am instead of 2:42am.
That said, if you don’t see the writing on the wall that our constitution and government has run out of road, cannot be repaired, is too corrupted, is basically a puppet of the owners of our rigged economy that works against most of us, and we need a new constitution and nation based in punishing and limiting greed/sociopathy and rewarding cooperation, then I don’t know what planet you’re on.
You could have said that at any point in the last 200+ years, and it would have been just as true.
Hopefully your optimism is correct.
It’s a mixture of optimism and cynicism.
Things are bad, but also, they’ve always been bad. The fight is hard, but it’s always been hard. We’re a hair’s breadth away from ruin, but we’ve almost always been a hair’s breadth away from ruin. People are suffering terribly because of stupid, poorly constructed bullshit and won’t let it go, but they’ve also always been doing so.
And yet within all that, sometimes, through great effort and sacrifice against the status quo, good things happen. And sometimes, great things happen. We have to believe that they still can happen if we fight for it.
At the same time, we have to recognize that many before us have fought insufficiently hard, or fought their hardest but still got screwed by circumstance, and DID fall into ruin. We have to recognize that as a possibility as well.
That being said, I would fucking dread a constitutional convention held at this point in time, regardless of the rules by which the population apportioned representatives to draft it.
It’s unbelievable to me that someone outside of China would honestly defend Xi JinPing’s policy. I mean, look for the first Chinese expat in your country. He/she probably has some dark story about illegal secret cops trying to bring him/her back home because of a Winnie the poo post on Twitter.
Talk to a citizen of your country and they’ll be even more candid.
Xiren Zhao went straight in on how even her dyed in the wool party loyalist grandfather still gets sketched by some of the shit he knows the CCP has gotten up to.
No, no, you see, it’s Both Sides Just As Bad, and the UN doesn’t know what it’s talking about when it details the horrendous details of the Uyghur Genocide. Besides, have you BEEN there, LIBERAL? What do you know? /s
I know a chinese person who is still sort of brainwashed (Very patriotic, still very skeptical about a lot of the stuff the west says about China, etc) and even they dislike Xi Jingping
I had a Tankie yesterday tell me that earning capital is a feature of communism.
It honestly made my week.
Learning about Nazbols really helped make it clear.
Why won’t liberals just let me eat my theater beans?!
What on earth are theater beans?!
I was referencing a fake quote that did the rounds awhile back:
“‘I spilled baked beans all over myself watching Cars 2 in theaters & a black teenager shouted ‘this n***a eating beans’ & everyone laughed. That’s when I decided to become a Republican.’ Donald Trump. People Magazine, 1998”
Wow, that zero upvote anonymous reddit comment sure is relevant to talk about.
For real. For all we know, the guy from the screenshot probably just got exhasperated on an online discussion and just wished for nuclear holocaust for the other person to shut up.
How many examples do you want? Or will no amount of evidence change your mind that this is something that happens, because you don’t actually care, you just want to defend fascists?
Oh, I don’t deny that it happens. I just don’t base my beliefs around reacting to random internet weirdos, like the person in the comment seems to be doing, and as you seem to be doing with them, ironically enough.
What I do base my beliefs on is evidence. It’s very funny to call this meme “evidence,” it’s literally just one random person on some random place getting mad and saying shit. I could literally go write a comment on reddit, like, “As a Biden voter, I love drowning puppies,” downvote it, screenshot, and I’d have exactly as much “evidence” of what Biden voters believe as what you’ve presented.
Also, obviously the claim that I “defend fascists” is completely baseless and can be disregarded, because again, evidence.
I just don’t base my beliefs around reacting to random internet weirdos, like the person in the comment seems to be doing, and as you seem to be doing with them, ironically enough.
Oh, yes, I turned against genocide and ethnic cleansing apologia because of internet weirdos, not because I think those things are bad.
It’s very funny to call this meme “evidence,”
I didn’t call the meme evidence, I asked how much evidence you wanted. The meme is a joke about a well-known phenomenon. I’m sorry you misunderstood that.
Also, obviously the claim that I “defend fascists” is completely baseless and can be disregarded, because again, evidence.
Oh? Would you like me to dig up evidence there? Because I remember you quite distinctly engaging in apologia for tankies and doing Ukrainian genocide denial.
In fact, weren’t you involved in denying the Uyghur genocide too?
Oh? Would you like me to dig up evidence there? Because I remember you quite distinctly engaging in apologia for tankies and doing genocide denial.
You said fascists, not tankies. And what I did was say that I haven’t seen sufficient evidence regarding a claim of genocide. Needing to see evidence before I believe something is not “genocide denial.” Also, I believe I’ve been told by you and people like you that supporting genocide isn’t even a deal breaker, even when there’s plenty of evidence for it. I don’t agree with that, because I’m anti-genocide, but it’s pretty rich for you to try to get on your high horse with that.
It’s rather impressive how many layers of “not using evidence” you’re on at this point.
You said fascists, not tankies
Yes, fascists. Or would you like to tell me how ethnic cleansing, genocide, totalitarian repression, repression of worker control over industry in favor of state control of industry, and an anti-democratic hero cult of death is actually True Socialism™?
And what I did was say that I haven’t seen sufficient evidence regarding a claim of genocide. Needing to see evidence before I believe something is not “genocide denial.”
Oh, I’m sorry, was Bucha not enough for you? What about the mass evictions of Ukrainians, or the kidnapping of Ukrainian children? Colonization using Russian citizens? Any of this ringing a bell?
Silly me, it’s only a genocide if it’s done by people you don’t like, like democracies. When a fascist state like Russia does it, it’s actually completely okay.
Yes, fascists. Or would you like to tell me how ethnic cleansing, genocide, totalitarian repression, repression of worker control over industry in favor of state control of industry, and an anti-democratic hero cult of death is actually True Socialism™?
Much as it seems like you’re clearly interested in a good faith discussion based on facts and evidence, I’m afraid I’m gonna have to pass.
Much as it seems like you’re clearly interested in a good faith discussion based on facts and evidence
Silly me, I must have imagined all of that in all the regimes tankies play apologist for. I must have also imagined the mass murder and ethnic cleansing of Ukrainians as well, since you don’t believe in that genocide either. Bucha was a false flag, right? What’s the latest talking point on the kidnapped Ukrainian children? Summer camps, is it?
People like to complain about horseshoe theory, but these kinds of situations happen so often! I wonder if it’s something inherent to the authoritarian personality type — an inability to objectively examine one’s own beliefs, maybe? Or inability to consider one might actually be wrong about something?
A desire to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions. The same desire that makes them worship strongmen and authoritarian regimes, and why everything that happens is the fault of some conspiracy.
It actually is an observed phenomenon that Authoritarians exhibit a lot of behavior consistent with the Dark Triad of personality traits, (Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy)
It’s also an observed phenomenon that they are all completely unable to be taken at their word when they try to express what they believe to others. People who rate low or moderate on the authoritarian scale tend to say it’s best to be seen as not very authoritarian, but people who score high say it’s best to be seen as moderate.
Even the most supposedly upstanding principled conservative inherently is lying about what they actually believe and making up being a middle of the road kind of political thinker because they know damn well they’d catch shit for what they actually believe.
And that’s why Trump is their Messiah, he sells the promise of being able to finally forget their shame. It’s why I keep saying that Trump campaigns on making white folks think they’ll get to say the N-Word again, and on making their kids start coming to Thanksgiving again after they went NC for how obvious it is what they wanna be saying about the crime reports when the 6PM news comes on, yes even if the shown accused aren’t black.
Do you have any recommended reading about this? I’d like to learn more.
The Authoritarians is IIRC the most recent book written on this, Innuendo Studios isn’t exactly reading but also covers a lot of this.
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Hey.
Finland here. Socialism is pretty fucking great.
How’s it going in America, the bastion of capitalism, where there is no parental leave, limited sick days, at-will firing, cities are overcrowded with human excrement from homeless people who still have actual jobs, for profit prisons forcing people to slave away for years because of mandatory minimum sentencing, and all that other good shit?
Communism might not work until we get to a Star Trek style utopia, but socialism definitely does. Capitalism doesn’t have a monopoly on market economies.
Market socialism is just the same thing as capitalism, just with less poor quality products, good labour laws, no horribly massive income inequalities, etc.
But no you go on ahead and defend capitalism as an ideology, I’m sure you’ve read the literature on the subject and know what you’re talking about.
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I’m not saying you’re necessarily defending it even if I think you’re wrongly equating capitalism and market economy.
I just feel that for the most part, basically the “Red Scare” made people think that the only thing that’s an alternative to capitalism is full blown communism, which implies that all market economies are capitalist, which they aren’t.
I’m not blaming you — I’m blaming some of the implications of the language you’ve used. There is a difference.
Yeah, there’s a lot of good things about Finland when comparing internationally, but I can tell you, there are some rather bad things as well. While “first amendment auditors” in the US are sometimes annoying as fuck, we honestly need a little bit of that type of spirit here. We’ve got authoritarian issues. Honestly.
https://harvardpolitics.com/nordic-racism/
I’d just like to live somewhere else for a while, maybe that might give me a newfound respect to licking some boots or something, as currently respecting the Finnish police- and justice system in general is a very nauseating idea indeed.
My point is that adopting socialism would make the poor richer and the megarich poorer, and if it’s just socialism, a “market socialism”, not a “communism”, if you will, then nothing would really change for most of the people. Well, nothing would change to be more negative at least. The megawealthy would still be rich, but they wouldn’t be as disgustingly rich as now. Homelessness or hunger wouldn’t exist. But still a lot of people basically consider “socialism” to be a curse-word?
Some Tankies have told me more than once that Cuba and China are on the path to communism and the fact that they get more capitalist every day is proof of that somehow.
While I don’t disagree with your main point, to my knowledge Finland is still capitalist, it just has a robust safety net, regulations, and workers’ protections, like most of Europe, and unlike much of the US.
Yeah, a lot of people think that, and they’d be wrong.
We’re a social democracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy and supports a gradualist, reformist and democratic approach towards achieving socialism.
Learn to separate your notion of “capitalism” from “market economy”. Capitalism is to market economy what cancer is to cell growth. It is that, but it is a malignant form of it that will never ever function in long term, and it’s very clear to anyone who objectively looks at it. Infinite growth on finite materials is literally impossible.
From the very source you used, the very next sentence:
In practice, social democracy takes a form of socially managed welfare capitalism,
Yeah I’m pretty sure that wasn’t there the last time I read about that.
It’s a highly contested article, because people hate admitting that socialism is better than capitalism.
But when you look at the ideologies prescriptively, socialism is about the welfare of everyone in said society, while capitalism is about accumulating capital, at whatever cost. These are mutually exclusive objectives.
Thus, it’s unerasonable to say that there’s a “form of capitalism that isn’t capitalism but actually is more like socialism but it’s not actually socialism it’s just well managed capitalism”, because capitalism by itself is unmanaged. Capitalism seeks to get rid of any regulation. Capitalism seeks to have the most profit for the least cost. This ideology conflicts with making good products and treating your employees well.
There’s no such thing anywhere as unrestricted capitalism. Even the US, the very center of the modern capitalist movement, isn’t “purely” capitalist. If if was, it wouldn’t have socialist policies like the antitrust laws.. But it has to, because without those, the economy would collapse, because capitalism is self-defeating, just like cancer..
The issue is not the broader idea of communism, but the idea that making a fascist state will lead to communism, as MLs believe. We’ve quite clearly seen that doesn’t work. It just makes fascist states.
