The line Joe Biden used to put into nearly every big speech — “I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s future” — is a long way from what he says in private now.The line Joe Biden used to put into nearly every big speech — “I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s future” — is a long way from what he says in private now.
These days, multiple people who’ve spoken to him over the last year say, Biden often punctuates conversations with: “You think we can actually come back from this?”
The 83-year-old Biden continues to feel out a post-presidency that may prove to be one of the shortest in history and is already one of the most complicated.
There are days when Biden is heartbroken, indignant or in disbelief about what is happening as President Donald Trump — the man he defeated in 2020 — returned and moved not just to tear down his accomplishments, but to dig in with petty insults like the autopen photograph he put in Biden’s spot in the “Presidential Walk of Fame” installed at the White House.
I’m torn. Do you think what you are doing is more like the ‘Tu quoque’ fallacy or more of a ‘red herring’?
‘Tu quoque’ would be like, because we think you did thing X, your argument about A or B is invalid.
‘red herring’ would be like, instead of engaging the actual claim (that the campaign lost for strategic reasons), you’re trying to drag the conversation onto something about personal preference, which doesn’t answer the strategy argument at all.
Or it could just be an appeal to hypocrisy / circumstantial ad hominem, where you’re implying I don’t have standing to make the argument (or that my argument should be discounted) because of what you assume about my personal behavior.
Any which way, it doesn’t do anything to detract from my claims.
You said basically, “We told you so!” and I wanted to know who the “we” was. You said the “we” was independent media. So from that, I took it that you are included in the independent media. You’re also complaining about Harris a lot, so that lead me to believe that you didn’t vote for her as well. It could be that you voted for her, but you can see why others didn’t, that’s why I’m asking. I’m not pulling anything, just trying to see where you’re coming from and if you’re an American.
The perspective that Biden/ Harris needed to shift her position on Gaza, and as we approached November 24, that they needed to shift this position to win the election was in practically every political comment for almost 2 years before the election, and not just on Lemmy. Youtube, reddit, instagram, and especially tiktok; wherever you went on the internet, this argument was being made, consistently and regularly, on political content.
This was especially true for more left-ish media, where almost all of the Democratic or leftist aligned media, recognized and covered the tragedy which was Israels genocide in Gaza much more extensively than other media. If you were a potential Democratic voter, you were assuredly far more exposed to the recognition that there was a genocide in Gaza, that it needed to be stopped, that the administration wasn’t doing anything to stop it, and that neither the Biden nor Harris campaign made even the slighted overture that they would stop it in a future administration.
“We” is anyone, commenter or content creator (or journalist, if you aren’t into the whole brevity thing). People were ringing the bell that if Biden/ Harris, and later Harris/ Walz didn’t change their positions on the genocide in Gaza, they would lose the election. I consider myself to be a part of that contingent.
As long as people continue to blame voters for something that was a controllable mistake on the part of Harris, which was well known and well communicated for being a mistake at the time it was being made. Its important to keep bringing the focus back to the only party with sufficient agency to have made a different choice.
Only Harris had the agency, as an individual, to make a different choice to change the outcome of the election. It was clear they were losing the election by continuing to support Israel over Palestine. My comment history is right there. I was full blown coconut-pilled as soon as Biden stepped down. And as it became clear that Harris wasn’t going to take the opportunity to shift on Gaza, it was urgency to move the candidate became paramount. It was obvious that the Democrats would lose the election on the issue of Gaza as early as November of 2023.
Whether you or I personally did or didn’t do is beside the point. I’m making a claim about how incentives and strategic choices produced an outcome, and that claim stands or falls on the evidence about the system, the candidates, the actual election that happened, not on any individual’s behavior. When you make it about individual behavior, your whole ass is showing. You are trying to distract from actually valuable conversation about what it would have taken to win the 2024 election for Democrats.
The argument was made in social media areas that are tailored specifically for you. This is going to sound snarky, but I sincerely don’t mean it that way. Even a 5 years ago, algorithms were tailoring your feeds.
For me personally, trump was a huge threat and he’s turning out to be worse than I imagined. I wasn’t seeing any Gaza stuff, because I kind of thought we would be more concerned about not having nazis in the white house.
You weren’t seeing any Gaza stuff? And you think that makes you a more responsible form of voter?? There was an international genocide case and regular reporting about domestic political groups lobbying Biden/the campaign/DNC to acknowledge it.
Also, you were literally here. Where Gaza material and it’s threat to the election were being posted about.
Clearly one of the two of us had the correct ability to take in and process information to develop the understanding that with Harris’ position on Gaza, they were going to lose the election. You didn’t see it as a priority or a major component of their electability. I did. So you got this wrong. And that signal was clear as early as November of 23, when it was clear that Israel was going to conduct a campaign of extermination. Like you said, you didn’t think this was a priority.
If you saw getting Harris as elected as being the top priority for stopping fascism, and missed this critical signal, you might consider that it is you yourself who is living in a social media blinkered reality. It sounds like you missed the most important signal of the election. And like, come on. We know this isn’t true. We know how much you were on lemmy at that time. We can go read your comments and posts from November 23 to November 24. I know you saw the signal. Its not that you didn’t see the signal, its that you chose to ignore it.
And that signal wasn’t only present journalism and social media. It was also present in polling data. Biden had been drowning among Democrats on the issue of Gaza for the end of 23/ 24. And beyond polling data, but there were quite literally political movement who got these data into election results. Did you miss the entire “undecided” movement? And I know you didn’t. You are a politics and news junky. You see and read everything.