Thanks Dems for doing jack shit about abortion bans, trans bans, the cost of living, the drone strikes, global warming, COVID.
Might as well just call them Blue conservatives. The outcome of voting for them is much the same.
Dirt Owl with one of those doctors' reflex hammers, meticulously tapping every possible lemmy lib struggle session topic and standing back to watch.
I'm here for it
Biden has been demonstrably, measurably worse on covid than Trump. If I had to vote for one of them today, and I was going to do it based solely on “who is going to get less people killed?” I would vote for Trump, and that’s fucking horrifying.
The bar was buried 6 feet underground along with hundreds of thousands of people dead from covid, and Biden still didn’t clear it.
The argument that Biden is worse on covid than Trump has the built-in assumption that Trump would have done more about it in its second year and beyond than Biden did. That's honestly a ridiculous assumption. There was always an expiration date on covid mitigation measures and it was always soon. It's not like Trump would have had any more incentive than Biden to demonstrate his pandemic management skills after the election, he would have been out there declaring victory over Covid just the same.
The difference is when Trump said we don’t need masks, or that we don’t need to quarantine as much, or to test less people, everyone who wasn’t one of his freaks was furious. When Biden does the exact same things the liberals go “Yay COVID’s over 🙂” and the Trump freaks continue complaining about the “lockdowns” that hardly existed and ended years ago
They literally just ignored the problem and pretend its not there
If I had to vote for one of them today, and I was going to do it based solely on “who is going to get less people killed?” I would vote for Trump, and that’s fucking horrifying.
I'm not sure this holds up if you speculate on deaths in other countries. Trump still fights a proxy war with Ukraine (probably more of a chance of deeper U.S. involvement) and does all the other background horrors of imperialism. I'm 50/50 on whether he'd pull out of Afghanistan. He'd probably try to start a war with Iran for a third time, and maybe that time it would happen. Could easily go with major force against Niger, too.
I'm 50/50 on whether he'd pull out of Afghanistan
My man what are you talking about, Trump was the one who decided we were pulling out of Afghanistan and set a date, which Biden pushed back. I don’t think Biden would’ve left Afghanistan if Trump hadn’t already agreed to
I remember that, but Trump isn't exactly someone who will let a little thing like a commitment stand in the way of what he's feeling in the moment, is he?
I could see him following through, I could see an advisor saying "uh we need six more months" until he loses interest.
I will never vote for a republican (or a democrat), but I think the argument can be made that things were better under Trump because liberals pretended to actually give a damn about various societal problems and did take action to help people (masking for instance). The instant Biden set foot in the White House, they switched to pretending that everything had magically become perfect and that anyone who raised an eyebrow at the mass death surrounding us was literally insane and just helping Trump.
You have to wonder what might have happened if Trump had managed to stay in the White House. With Trump, you get civil war. With Biden, you get WW3.
Ultimately that’s the thing. The difference is when Trump did evil things, people got up in arms about it. When Biden does it everyone happily goes along.
More people died from covid in the same period of time after Biden took office compared to Trump before. Biden lifted the mask requirement on transit. Biden ended the public health emergency. Biden allowed Medicaid to kick people off again, and SNAP and unemployment to reduce payments again. Biden ended free covid testing. Trump said “less tests = less covid”, Biden made it policy. Under Biden, it was decided that employers cannot be held liable for giving their employees covid. Under Biden, the government stopped tracking covid cases in the same way, leading to more spread and worse information.
Biden declared the pandemic is over, when it is not.
yeah you absolutely can be worse than that, as they pretty clearly explained in their recent comment just above you here
which i personally think you should take a look at instead of just throwing ableist insults around
I mean, they are blue conservatives. American politics are horribly skewed to the right, so your options are between conservative-lites and literally Nazis lol y'all are fucked.
Anyone else is unelectable, according to... my "Shadow, Inc" Iowa Caucus App projections.
Even if he's a staunch anti-unionist, he'd still be considered "the most pro-union president in history", because the bar is located fifty floors below the basement of my deep sea research base at the bottom of the marianas trench, and all he has to do is not directly give the order to massacre a group of striking workers on his first day to pass it.
Not really even… I wouldn’t even call Truman the most pro union president or whatever (he might also be the worst president? it is so hard to choose), but he tried to seize the steel industry away from its owners to avoid a strike… because he saw the industry as responsible, not the union… he also vetoed the taft-hartley act and refused to use it to break the strike
The cool and logical thing to do would have been to nationalize the railways, but that probably never even occurred to a single democrat politician
don't forget biden's historic health care expansion (for victims of havana syndrome)
I’m not keen on defending democrats, but there would absolutely be a federal abortion ban right now if Trump had been re-elected.
Our government is in extremely bad shape, one federal election isn’t going to fix it.
Roe v Wade was overturned under the Biden administration, idk if you missed that.
You do understand that this happened because of the supreme court, and not because of Biden, right? And the supreme court was able to do this because of Trump. Could you explain what Biden should have done to protect abortion rights on a federal level?
Surely! Here’s a small and incomplete list of things he could do, at varying levels of usefulness and ease:
An executive order legalizing abortion nationwide
Pack the Supreme Court
Move the Supreme Court justices to lower courts and replacing them
Simply ignore the Supreme Court, as several presidents have done in the past (Andrew Jackson being the most notable)
Get his fucking party in order and pass a law legalizing abortion back when he had the majority in both the house and senate
Open abortion clinics on federal land nationwide, claiming new land to do it on if there’s none available in a needed location
Threaten to drone strike Clarence Thomas
Withhold highway funds from states that ban abortion
An executive order declaring banning abortion a felony, and then arresting every politician who implemented a ban
Call for a general strike until abortion rights are re-established
Personally sanction governors of states that ban abortion, freeze their bank accounts, seize their companies, all the shit we do to foreign leaders we don’t like
Call for people in states that ban abortion to burn down their state capitols
Joe Biden is the President of the United States of America, the most powerful empire the world has ever seen. He’s not a powerless smol bean. If he actually wants something to happen, there’s a long list of ways to go about it. If something does or doesn’t happen under his watch, that is his responsibility.
I've always been saying that if it were two Republicans that had held up every Trump legislative priority, Trump would have been bullying them every day until they acquiesced, but Biden allowed Manchin and Sinema to do exactly that and acted all powerless.
Isn't it odd how the Presidency is only weak when it comes to Democrats passing their own platforms?
Oh my god, can you imagine if it was Ted Cruz and Mitt Romney holding things up? Trump would’ve had them killed if McConnell didn’t do it first. But the republicans don’t have that problem because they actually keep their members on the party line where it matters
so do democrats. what you're seeing is not them failing to keep their party in line. this is their line.
Fair point, I should say the party line democrats claim to have.
Of course. But one also has to question if the Democratic Party line is one of rotating villains. I don't think it's conscious, but Democrats probably felt like they do keep their members on the party line because large chunks of their sitting representatives are openly hostile to progressivism, so Manchin isn't "out of line" to them.
Liberals will huff about him and Sinema, then turn around and excuse their actions because they're from West Virginia and Arizona, and "can't" be like "coastal dems" if they want to be re-elected to which I'm just like "then what use are they to you?"
Biden could literally declare them unlawful enemy combatants and have them shot. He's the president of the united states of america he can do whatever he wants.
He can drone strike the Supreme Court. But that will be saved for random children in one of the many countries that the US is occupying 🙄
He could have packed the court. Have you ever watched The Alt-Right Playbook Series? I think it does a good job of explaining some of the reasons why the democrats are mostly useless. It doesn't get into the problem of both the Ds and Rs being capitalists, but it does explain how Ds wag their fingers and Rs just keep doing wild shit anyway.
Yeah because we should totally trust that the guy who spent 99% of his career opposing reproduction rights just couldn't do anything to stop the supreme court from overturning Roe
Yeah, seems like Biden just let it happen because even if his position changed publicly for the 2020 election, what he believes behind closed doors never changed
I get the impression no one in the senior dems actually cared about abortion. Pelosi saying it wasn't important, multiple failures to pass legislation. The unforgivable acceptance of fash scotus' lies when they said they weren't going to overthrow roe. They've never done anything to protect abortion on the national level, and the simplest explanation is they don't give a shit.
Oh yeah,
%I still remember
picking an anti choice VP in 2016The Dem strategy on abortion was always to campaign and fundraise and do nothing material.
Its still their strategy, but it was their strategy, too.
Ugh. Tim fucking Kaine. "Vote for me and we're one heartbeat away from a catholic fanatic taking office!"
there would absolutely be a federal abortion ban right now if Trump had been re-elected.
There will be a federal abortion ban in another few years, half a dozen Dem Senators will vote for it, and if you suggest they should be recalled or primaried out then you'll actually be on the side of the Republicans.
Doing an insanely small amount better than the other slave master is not a good thing. "They stabbed me five times, but the other guy would've stabbed me seven!".
Sure, please vote for five-times-stabber instead of ol' seven-timeser, but by gods neither are worth defending in any sense.
You’re right, Trump’s half-measures on covid were much better than Biden’s no-measures.
Edit: I think I missed a key word in your comment and thought you were genuinely saying voting for the lesser evil is good, my bad
Depressing how this comes back here every few years like the ongoing history of american politics doesnt spell that out. It's like people spent 7 years forgetting everything we talked about last time
well, it's either the guy who's terrible or the guy who will adopt the terribls guy's policies in 7 years
based and bourgeois-democracy-is-not-democracy pilled
Death to America
Typing :Hindenburg: really ought to do something here
That's the problem. We don't have a liberal party and a conservative party anymore. We have a conservative party and a regressive party
The democrats were always a conservative party, it's just that the republicans shifted to a mask-off fascist party around 2016.
A liberal party is bad on its face. Better they show exactly what liberalism truly is than mask it better. When the dems where a "liberal" party they did fucking Vietnam
The democrats are as bad as the republicans, they just use different methods
The Democratic Party just represents another faction of the bourgeoisie. They only “support” different social issues to opportunistically appeal to a different voting blocs, but they have little or no intention to truly do anything. The only constituency they serve are just a different group of capitalists. Once you understand this, that all bourgeois politicians don’t represent you at all, US politics and policy decision making becomes crystal clear.
Its less cruel to vote Blue, so you shuld still do it. Its whats called harm reduction.
I'm specifically pissed because they haven't reduced harm
Which, to the best of my knowledge, he can still cancel with a signature.
Yes but then the loan companies would be upset! And we all know democracy is when businesses have more say in politics than the people
Covid is over! One of my friends can't taste half their food, but covid is over! Just like Roe.
Harm was reduced, by not increasing it as much. Be real, the usa is fuckt, you cant expect magic silver bullets.
Declared the pandemic over. Removed most, if not all economic and healthcare protections for affected by the pandemic.
Still have immigrant concentration camps, just rebranded.
Billions wasted on trying to create a forever war for Russia.
Half hearted attempt to reduce college debt.
No attempts to protect abortion or LGBTQ+ rights.
Paltry environmental protection policies. Awful response to climate disasters that have gotten worse due to climate change.
I could keep going, but you get the point.
I'm going to keep going lol
Meddled in the rail unions' contract negotiations, then he and his party broke their strike after his corporate-friendly PEB's agreement was rejected by the unions. And no, the crumbs that were thrown at the rank-and-file after the fact does not make up for it, no matter how many flowery press releases from union leadership get pushed out there.
Opposes universal healthcare, doesn't even want a public option (but sure as hell campaigned like he did!). Likely not going to hear a peep about healthcare in the lead up to 2024, and this is with an ongoing pandemic that's already taken the lives of over two million people and disabled tens of millions more.
Wants more cops and more funding for cops after sucking all of the oxygen out of the Black Lives Matter movement and neutering all of their demands. Favors more surveillance and more privacy invasion.
Doubled down on Trump's immigration policies, sanctions on Cuba, and saber rattling over China, blew up Nordstream, bombed Syria (really, Biden's entire foreign policy has been and is astoundingly inhumane and terrifying, even for a US ghoul).
Continued to retain or has re-hired plenty of Trump (and Obama…and Bush) appointees who have demonstrably awful track records.
Weak-to-no leadership even within his own caucus that has resulted in failures to raise wages, build infrastructure, strengthen regulatory powers, or combat an openly corrupt Supreme Court (plus, he's rewarded the so-called obstructionists: Manchin and his family get pipelines and favors and special perks, Sinema gets to sit at the BBB negotiating table); that ended up doubling childhood poverty after spending a year touting its reduction by only half for some reason; that led to countless unnecessary deaths from nixing all sorts of programs and protections from a pandemic he pretends doesn't exist even harder and even more callously than his predecessor.
Above all, is simply Reagan in a blue tie, who is to the right of Reagan on several issues, more senile, and ultimately serves the entrenched power of capital and bourgeois interests that are destroying the planet. On its face, that should be enough for a leftist to hate his guts, but I also think he's a racist piece of shit, a sex pest, anti-labor, a serial liar, and an all-around slimeball and shitheel, and I base this on his entire miserable life as a politician, which has seemingly been memory-holed ever since Super Tuesday.
None of the above is "harm reduction," and the diminishing returns of using the specter of a Republican doing worse only reinforces my belief that the Democrats are aware that there isn't any effective distance between the parties other than aesthetics and won't do a thing to change that perception, seeing as we get Republican policies regardless of who's in office.
The vaccine was supposed to end the pandemic, but when not enough people got it to hit 80% immunity or whatever, liberal governments around the world were just like "uh, we pretend anyways?"
Also, I do think that marriage rights have been federally protected in legislation after ROE was struck down and they eyed going after gay and interracial marriage.
Still, I'd of course like to see him using federal land in red states to provide abortion access.
That said, I do also think things would be worse right now if Trump had remained president.
It's not a sterilizing vaccine. It slightly reduces the chance of infection but it mostly just reduces the chance of hospitalization and death. The current vaccines cannot stop the spread of the virus.
The actual language of the "marriage protections" just lets the states do whatever they want. It's not real protection.
The text of the Respect for Marriage act expressly prohibits states from denying same sex couples from marrying.
So like, hey books about you are getting banned from schools but at least you can complain to your same-sex spouse about it ./s
Word. I'm in Colorado and there have been a lot of refugees coming in from Florida and Texas. : |
Don't forget the recent decision on that baker that didn't want to make a cake for a gay couple's marriage. The SC ruled in favor of being able to decline service to LGBTQ+ people on the basis of freedom of religion and free speech. Something that could easily be abused to repress the queer community.
I don't think any of us here are pretending that things under Trump would be fine, instead we question the merits of the argument of harm reduction under Biden.
Just because I can point to a few examples of how things aren't worse, doesn't mean there aren't still things happening. Biden or Trump, the Supreme Court's makeup wouldn't be different – Ketanji Brown Jackson wouldn't be on the court, but she only replaced another liberal who otherwise could have held on another 4-8 years I think. These rulings would have happened no matter who was President, but they'd be in addition to everything else the Trump Administration does on its own (and I don't even mean kids in cages, since that's still a thing, I mean things like how he wants to be able to directly control most government agencies and fire public sector workers personally).
The way I see things, it's a sound political strategy for leftists to vote for someone like Biden and then use his liberal failures while in power to further radicalise people. IE, "yeah, he's not gonna sign a national abortion ban or attack Critical Race Theory, but he also won't expand the Supreme Court in order to protect these positions in the future". I'd rather radicalise people by pointing out the failures of a liberal than by defending me and my friend's literal existence from a fascist weaponizing every government agency against me.
All im saying is, that not voting blue means it wont be better it just gets worst. with no chance of it beckomming better.
Losing any leverage and bowing to the dems won't give you the chance of things becoming better
DO NOT try to fight mitch mcconell on the astral plane. he is TOO STRONG
Can you help me win over some voters on the fence? I tried explaining to my coworkers that Biden cutting their food stamps by more than half was harm reduction and good for the soul of the nation, but they just won't donate $50 to the Beto O'Rouke alderman campaign
If he cant agree that people like Ron deSantis are Fashists, im sorry i wish i knew how to help. If he can recognise Fashists why would he not want to vote against that?
Voting as part of an ongoing, multi-faceted strategy of civic and social engagement is fine. Especially because there are times where it directly leads to positive outcomes, like state Constitutional amendments that check legislative power. Voting can instead be a method of organizing, where after the election you keep together and continue to be activists in more direct ways.
Ballot questions are under attack by Republicans in many states because they're the last remaining avenue for many political causes in the states that they've all but made themselves the single party dictators of.
Its sad how so many leftists have given up on voting, cause its not quick and sexy and all the choices suck. This pessimistic outlook gives the right more power and is so preventable. Voting for the lesser Asshole, dosnt hurt (to much).
Absolutely. Like, we should vote for the exclusive reason that a Democrat won't vote to pass a national abortion ban in a world without Roe v Wade. Democratic governors aren't ordering their CPS agencies to rip trans kids away from affirming parents or purging the state university system of leftists.
I'm just a dude, and I've done more to elevate workers than Biden. I'm not voting for him, ever. Sorry.
Hey I still vote every year, now I just write in cooler candidates like Fidel Castro
