I am 1,000% going to vote for the Democratic nominee in November, because I don’t want the world to end. I just want to make that clear because I know some people may be rightly suspicious of this type of post, for oh you know the reasons.
But after reading this excellent Ezra Klein editorial and watching the better-than-excellent Jon Stewart show on the topic, I’m actually somewhat convinced that maybe another nominee would be better. Like Klein I think Biden’s done a fantastic job so far. Just, someone else might do better in the election, and beating Trump in the election is pretty important.
So, what can I do? I’m about to vote in the Democratic primary, but his two primary challengers don’t seem likely to spark victory either in the primary or the general. Voting for them seems unlikely to change anything. And I am nobody of importance to call up the DNC and tell them to put up another candidate.
So what can I do? Is there anyone else who feels this way?
Vote for Biden anyway. The magas won’t change their vote, so splitting it on your side doesn’t help.
It’s not the system we want, but it’s the system we have.
We don’t get to decide who the Dem nominee is when the current President is a Dem who will be running again.
What we can do is urge our representatives to pass legislation enacting ranked-choice or STAR voting, which would cause the parties to put up better candidates as their nominees if they want a chance of winning.
There’s zero reason not to vote for someone else that you agree with more in the Democratic primary (assuming they didn’t cancel the primary in your state like they have in many).
What are the two outcomes? Either Biden wins the nomination, and maybe eeks out a win against Trump, or you get a better nominee who is more fit to win the general due to both Trump and Biden having basement level approval. It’s not exactly a win-win, but it doesn’t hurt anything either, especially when the incumbent is as unpopular as someone with 90 something felony counts. Literally anyone running in the dem primary would be better than Biden in a general.
Unfortunately, the chance of the nominee being anyone else is pretty slim, short of Biden having a sudden and severe medical issue. You can lodge a vote for one of his challengers in the primary, but it’s little more than a protest vote - not that that should discourage you, but looking at it realistically. Most of the theoretical candidates being put forward to replace Biden have the very, very small issue of not actually running in this election, and that’s kind of a pre-requisite to win an election.
Yeah. I looked up who Biden’s challengers are for the nomination, and the productive impact of voting for either of them, I think, is 0.
Ezra Klein’s article (posted interestingly enough by a user I’m fairly well convinced is a total troll/shill) had a big part in convincing me, and he listed plenty of Democratic “talent”, but none of them really seemed all that compelling in terms of maybe being president. Maybe Gavin Newsom.
Gretchen Whitmer, Wes Moore, Jared Polis, Gavin Newsom, Raphael Warnock, Josh Shapiro, Cory Booker, Ro Khanna, Pete Buttigieg, Gina Raimondo, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Chris Murphy, Andy Beshear, J.B. Pritzker
While I think there may be a more viable candidate running, I’ll vote for the more popular one, rather than risk splitting the vote.
It’s worth voting for who you like in the primary. Sometimes it has an effect even if the nominee isn’t changed. The administration and Democratic party leadership is more than one person.
I have my criticisms of Biden but voting for Trump or a 3rd party candidate this election is not tenable if you want a semblance of a Democratic Republic to exist in the US.
Trump has already been on record saying a bunch of fascist shit like that he’ll root out political opponents if elected and that he’ll act like a dictator on day one.
That’s a very sweet request but it’s time for you to wake up. The DNC and GOP work together to make sure that you will NEVER escape austerity. They don’t represent you. They represent the oligarchs that strengthened their grip of electoral politics over the past 40 years to the point of completely and totally co-opting all of us. Ever wonder why the Dems never were able to codify Roe v Wade despite having supermajorities for 6 (non consecutive) years? They don’t want to but they want you to think they do.
Hell, the DNC has been hoping for a low turnout this time because it would favor them. As George Carlin famously said before things were even close to this bad, “it’s a big club and you ain’t in it.”
The only semblance of hope is to wrestle control of local governments and hope it somehow trickles up to the federal level. But, IMO, things are hopeless when young fresh faces can get into Congress saying all the right things then they suddenly start being all buddy-buddy with Nancy Pelosi and voting in favor of genocide.
Well aren’t you just a breath of fresh air.
Bernie Sanders was an avowed socialist who came within about 10 feet of the Democratic presidential nomination. He’d have won the general, too (assuming he didn’t get assassinated which is not guaranteed). We’d have had a socialist as president who spent and still spends all his time railing against wall street and the US’s imperialism.
Yes there are a lot of crooked people in the DNC who tried to kill his chances, and ultimately succeeded. That one time.
But the point is he came pretty fuckin’ close and your reaction is to yell MOPE MOPE MOPE YOU NEED TO MOPE MORE in my face.
People who fought for real change, civil rights movement Indian independence American labor movement fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, would FUCKIN KILL to have it as easy as progressives in the US do. No, it’s not automatic. What do you want, a “make politics better” lever that’s right in your living room so you don’t have to get off the couch?
Ask Navalny’s parents if they’d rather be up against the DNC
You fuckin defeatist
You’re adorably naive. Bernie is a democratic socialist. He would be considered a centrist in any Scandinavian country.
He was cheated badly twice. If you can’t even start from that basic accounting of events, I don’t know why I should even engage in a conversation with you.
Vote harder, guys! 🥴
Edit: You even admitted that they’d have assassinated him had he gotten elected!
EXACTLY.Then you bring Putin into it! 🤣🤣🤣. Can we stay on the subject of the US? Do you think I’m a Putin supporter? 🤣🤣🤣
Stop being naive.
Ghost of Martin Luther King: So let me get this straight. You say the WRONG people? Are in CHARGE?
You: Yeah man. It’s a bitch.
Ghost of Martin Luther King: Fuck, man. Just give up. It’s the only way. Throw in the towel, and make sure you whine to people on the internet about how it’s hopeless. Like, at every opportunity. “You’ll never escape” “things are hopeless” and so on. And, make sure you cloak yourself in a self-serving mantle of wisdom, and talk down to people, and act like what you’re doing is helping. And just like that… all of a sudden, things will get better.
You: Wow I’ll do exactly that
This will be my last message to you. I hope you got what you were looking for from this interaction.
(Edit: I would have thought this was obvious, but my point about Navalny was to add one more to the list of people who have struggled to make things better against odds that were about 5-10 times more insurmountable than anything faced by progressives in the US. That’s a situation you could a lot better describe as “hopeless,” although in the long run it’s not. But it should throw into a lot sharper relief how much less difficult and dangerous it is trying to work for change in the US. Nothing about Putin; the focus was on Navalny.)
The douchiest possible reply. Thanks for the great conversation.
Did you upvote yourself? Twice?
