Sorry this is kinda political. Is there an asklemmypolitics group this would be better for? I’m hoping not to get into the libs vs progressives political debate we see everywhere on here… Just want to know what people are actually looking for.
Non-US guy here. I don’t get why there’s a choice whether to vote for him or not, when you know the alternative is Trump.
It’s clear Biden isn’t a great option, and there’s probably plenty of reasons not to want him. But is any of those reasons gonna get better in the next 4 years when his opponent would win?
Not everyone wants to vote strategically. Giving a candidate your vote is a form of endorsement. If I was a US citizen, I’d vote for Biden, and try to convince all my friends to do so, too. But I also understand the people who can’t bring themselves to vote for a guy supporting a genocide, no matter what the alternative is.
They’re basically saying “fuck it, if the system won’t give me a choice to vote against genocide, then I’m not participating in that system.”Vote for the mediocre guy who won’t stop funding a genocide abroad, or don’t vote and watch your rights get stripped, the EPA get demolished, and the funding for Israel increased.
This is no longer an election about voting for the candidate that makes you feel good about your choice, it’s a vote for our own collective survival.
But I also understand the people who can’t bring themselves to vote for a guy supporting a genocide
If people have this view, then they should be even more concerned about a Trump second term. I’m sorry, this is unacceptable and it’s exhausting seeing it repeated on this platform. It shows a clear lack of understanding on how we’ve made progress in this country and a concerning misuse of emotion over critical thinking.
Modern governance has always been an uphill battle. Don’t throw away progress, as little as it may be. It’s still progress and gaining an inch every day is almost always better than going back a foot. It may take years to get that inch.
If we want change, start local and work up. Campaign for the people who see the world the way you do and fight for them. Organize. Not voting is by far one of the dumbest and most un-American thing you can do.
The problem is, not voting is as far as they’ll actually go towards “not participating in that system”. They still want all the benefits that they get from the system.
So it becomes less of a politically motivated action and more of just a tantrum.
That’s what irks me the most, when people act like abstaining from an election is a grand act of protest that will change things for the better. I understand the reluctance to vote, but that should never be accompanied by a reluctance to act.
I’m not participating in that system
No, this is a lie they tell themselves. Not voting isn’t not participating, because participating means making a choice for who will be president, and doing nothing is a choice. Not voting is equivalent to saying “I don’t care” or “I like both candidates equally”. People who don’t vote are participating, they’re just saying that they don’t care who gets elected.
Yes, obviously stopping Trump is the priority. But, that’s not the point of the question. Imagining Biden actually did have to earn your vote, what would he need to do?
What makes it clear that Biden isn’t a great option? It really annoys me that such a progressive administration in a very divided government is somehow not measuring up to the ever changing goal posts. The only perfect candidate to vote for is yourself, everyone else is a compromise.
The goalposts aren’t changing, for Leftists Capitalism itself is unacceptable and genocide is off the table. Biden meaningfully moving against either would garner more leftist support.
Like his many attempts to push back against corporations? Or do those not count?
What attempts? Minor pushbacks certainly count, but don’t actually threaten Capitalism.
For real, we’ve got the first openly pro-union president, we expanded NATO, student loan forgiveness, actual infrastructure funding, the first administration to openly push back against Israel during war time, all of that in only 4 years. He is the most effective president of my lifetime and I am happy to vote for him again.
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Unions oppose/opposed NATO, especially autoworkers.
Are you thinking NAFTA? I’m not sure unions have much of a position on NATO.
Tens of thousands of dead kids, and he’s sending more bombs.
Mass graves of people buried alive with their hands bound, and he’s vetoing resolutions against Israel in the UN.
Bombing food trucks and the crowds surrounding them, and he’s making excuses for them.
Famine set to kill most if not all people in Gaza, and he keeps sending bombs.
Ok, so to be clear you only started opposition to Biden since the Israeli invasion of Gaza after October 7th?
I can understand the belief that Biden has been deficient in his response, despite the innumerable competing interests any administration would need to juggling. I had similar issues with Obama’s handling of ISIL, however I also had no better idea of how it could be handled better.
That attitude only leads to worse and worse candidates in a spiral to the bottom
That’s assuming there will even be candidates in the future.
In previous elections, I would have agreed with you, but Trump has already tried to destroy democracy once. I honestly don’t think that democracy will survive a second Trump term.
What if the “democracy” we think we have is actually just oligarchy putting on a show… And the only way to really get a democracy is if we fight for it, and Trump gets the fight going faster so we can get to democracy faster? Just a hypothetical, not advocating for this. Obviously a violent revolution would suck, especially considering the US was literally designed to make peaceful revolution relatively easy, but I think those designs have been crushed at this point… By the oligarchy
What if a revolution in the US caused a global economic collapse?
We tend to think of potential revolutions in the same way as the US Civil War, or the French or Russian revolutions. The problem is that a civil war would be much more like the British Civil War, and most people know very little about the French or Russian revolutions.
A Revolution or Civil war wouldn’t have 2 times. It’d have a dozen. We can’t agree on what the future of the country should be now, how would we in a Revolution? There would be Revolution, counter-revolution, a civil war where the sides shift every 6 months. And you know how other countries try to influence us now, with Russia interfering with elections and China manipulating companies? That’s with the full strength of the Federal government attempting to stop it. Now they’d get to do it with an extremely vulnerable, fractured country.
Add on to that that those other revolutions involved world powers, but in a far less connected world wide economy. The fall of the US looks less like the French Revolution, and more like the Bronze Age collapse.
I think it’s too soon to write off the US as irredeemable without revolution. The last time we had a brush with Fascism taking over the country, we got FDR and The New Deal. If we can avoid this brush with Fascism, we might get another chance at turning things around.
I feel like Bernie was our shot at a new FDR… And the establishment was able to quash that. I hope we can still do it, but it feels like there’s very little hope for a non violent way to get to actual democracy
We’ll end up Balkanizing, then we can try again for something better
and Trump gets the fight going faster so we can get to democracy faster?
How exactly do you think authoritarianism will lead to a collapse, and how will that collapse lead to democracy somehow winning out? Allowing fascists to take over just means we now live in a fascist society. When Germany turned fascist, they didn’t magically break up and become a shining example of democracy. It took serious external pressure for that to happen. Revolutions usually just change the power structure among those who were already in power-- they don’t suddenly grant power to the little guys. Even if, by some miracle, the US went full Nazi and didn’t just stay that way but somehow immediately collapsed, and hundreds of thousands died in a giant civil war and/or WWIII, and we don’t nuke each other off the face of the planet so hard it’s unrecoverable, you expect democracy will be the result? Why? How can you be sure?
TL;DR: Voting for a fascist won’t cause a collapse and a collapse won’t result in democracy, with any degree of certainty.
PLEASE actually think these things through instead of just throwing out ideas like this, because if people start to actually believe this we’re going to be in an INCREDIBLY dangerous situation (moreso than we already are!) and the entire world will suffer for it.
There’s a good chance you’re right.
Few of the shitty things Trump was doing have actually stopped under Biden.
Kids in cages?
- Was allegedly happening even before Trump and it’s still happening now
Reproductive Rights?
- federally gone and state-by-state dissolution continues
Student loan debt?
- hah
Trans rights?
- sooo many states are making great progress in their initiation of a genocide against trans people
Edit to add: A point in Biden’s favor was the Inflation Reduction Act which included some teeth to chase tax-dodging billionaires but Biden’s boner for genocide convinced him to remove all those to pass an “aid” package for Israel
Heard it all before, you will hear it again
If we’re right I hope you step up to accept your blame in this
That sounds like it has to get worse before it can get better. Having trump would create motivation to improve things for getting a better candidate next election, something like that?
Doesn’t sound like a great option either. It’s not like there’s a ‘good’ option, just a ‘slightly better’ one.
People have to realize that things can get worse before they decide that it’s time to fix them instead of just treading water
Wrong. What leads to worse and worse candidates is the United States’ stupid ass voting system. That needs to be fixed.
A step into the right direction would be to not vote for the one party which massively profits from that.
That’s not how it works in practice. When a candidate wins, they’re established as a benchmark for what’s popular. This means candidates are more likely to be close to their position, but a bit left or right. This is called the “Overton Window” and it establishes what people talk about politically on the national stage.
When Trump got elected, he started expressing opinions about LGBTQ people, vaccines, etc. Everyone was then forced to argue around those points for 4 years. When Biden was elected, we started talking about unions, corporations, Israel and Palestine, etc. If you take a look at the EU, they’re talking about things like corporate gatekeepers, universal healthcare, and banning Nazi rhetoric.
By electing people who are progressively more and more to the left of the current democratic candidate, we can shift the Overton Window to begin talking about things like housing, UBI, corporate monopolies, etc. But it’s a gradual process, so we have to be persistent but accepting if it doesn’t all happen immediately.
Literally just has to stop funding to Israel wherever he’s able, whether it’s using his veto or directing the State Department to delay aid or make disbursement more difficult. He needs to publically condem the genocide like every sane person with two eyes has been able to do for months. No more blocking UN resolutions, no more calling student protestors antisemitic, veto the The Antisemitism Awareness Act etc.
He needs to do what people have been demanding since the very start of the genocide. Do what people were saying when they voted Uncommitted, what students are saying when they protest; stop giving Israel a blank check, stop pretending to criticize them"behind closed doors", stop funding genocide and carrying water for a fascist right-wing government.
He needs to do it now, the longer he delays the more people die, the less likely he is to get people to vote for him.
Bingo.
He’s already got my vote. He’s by zero means perfect, but I live in a swing state and cannot throw out “meh it’s terrible, but good enough considering” because it’s not perfect.
Here’s some things he could do to make “meh, it’s terrible but” into just “good”:
- Put any kind of pressure on Israel.
- Expand the Supreme Court.
- Executive order giving the NLRB Sectorial Bargaining at the Federal Level.
- Force the FCC to regulate data collection.
- Go back in time and allow the railroad workers to strike and threaten nationalization if the hedge funds that own the railroads don’t play ball.
I hate him, but him losing is an existential threat to many people I care about (many who are already suffering under republican state legislatures). It will do nothing for Gaza either.
I am bitter that this is the state of things.
Spot on!
Stop funding genocide.
Stopping genocide would be fantastic, for starters.
Pushing for workplace reform like workplace democracy, mandatory unionization, nationalizing industries like Healthcare, and so forth would be incredible, so getting started and getting the ball rolling on those would be much appreciated.
IMO, there is a single issue of any relative importance right now, and that is the genocide in Gaza. The longer Biden does nothing about it, the harder it will be to earn my vote. Already at this point, simply stopping all aid yo Israel is likely not enough. I would need to see the US voting for sanctions against Israel in the UN, for war crimes charges against the Israeli government and IDF command. I would also accept a decapitation strike on the Israeli government, and a UN peacekeeping force deployed to the region.
Combine all the great lakes and rename it Optimus Lake Prime.
A total ban on life vests. Learn to swim nerd.
Invade England to continue what we started and dumping their tea in their ocean for a change.
Abolish the 3rd amendment.
Mandate all cruze ships must be equipped with cannons.
Stop making the secret service a secret (we all know).
Come out as a closet juggalo. Whoop whoop biden in the house.
Give Nicolas Cage the Declaration of Independence (not the bees)
So, depressingly, he already has it. He’s the only candidate running so I have to vote for him if I’m going to vote at all.
Of course… But imagining a world where he actually had to earn it… What could he do to actually earn your vote?
Universal basic income and free Healthcare. Or 100% tax on anyone with more than 1 million dollars and any corporation with profits of more than 1 million dollars.
If any of those options were on the docket I’d Jan6 the election to make sure it happens.
How did you decide on $1,000,000? That seems very low.
How would you set up the UBI? Safety net, living wage, thriving wage?
UBI means everyone gets a set amount of money every month, no matter what, from what I understand
That’s my understanding too… I meant OP personally. What level of UBI do you support?
While I have my opinions on it conceptually, I’ll be the first to state I don’t have the know how to build it. I do know that $1k a month would give me a life without stress or burden and $4k a month is more than I could spend responsibility. So ideally between those. Maybe calculate the cost of living in an area annually and just give that.
Imagine voting for someone who didn’t earn it. Partisans are stupid people.
Stop sending money to Israel, or forgive student debt, or vehemently support RCV and reformation of the electoral college and restricting stock trading by members of the government.
Make me eligible to vote. That’s about the only thing he CAN do.
(I’m Canadian)
US can most definitely pull this off
On that day, it becomes the new norm
do a little actual marketing/advertising on the things he actually has accomplished.
and he has done stuff.
So he already has done enough to earn your vote. In that case what was it he did that earned your support? (Besides not being Trump)
I’m not American but The Inflation Reduction Act is the biggest climate bill that’s been passed ever. It has plenty of flaws, but it also has a lot of long term positive consequences, that can’t be easily undone when the administration changes.
The problem with marketing is that conservatives will make a huge deal about it. It’s better to keep things lesser known so that they actually happen.
Other than stopping the support for Israel (for reference, besides the obvious humanitarian issues, the US government is throwing a massive amount of our tax money in weapons they are effectively giving to a foreign country that doesn’t really seem to like the US a ton), stop the stupid tariffs on solar panels and other renewables. Yes, the CCP is obviously flooding the market with cheap renewables, and they probably aren’t the most ethically made, but we’ve had decades to throw money at renewables and frankly, it seems we haven’t really bothered much. If you really want to fuel the domestic renewable market so much, give out insanely huge subsidies to them (like the CCP has been doing for years) and invest in the next gen tech related to them. I get we are currently in a trade war, but we also need to meet climate goals and without China it doesn’t really look like we will even get close. Not trying to be a China shill or anything, just facing the issue that it mostly seems like this is just going to be a net negative for the climate.
I would also say he’d need to make sure those subsidies actually went to innovation and growth and not just in fat cat’s pockets.
Honestly, just make them large enough to attach a lot of attention and eventually audit with actual punishments for gross misuse. If they could actually attach those punishments, some other stuff he’s passed (like the electrify America charging stations) would be far more effective. Not gonna lie, he kinda sadly still has my vote as he isn’t Trump. That being said, if Trump were to croak tomorrow, I think it would be a pretty safe bet that Biden would lose a lot of his polling power and some other crazy might actually have a chance to win. Actually publicly doling out punishment for those massively mismanaging funds and generally making life harder for the public would probably make him pretty popular though (at least for a bit).
do literally anything that suggests he’s thinking about people’s wellbeing rather than some lobbyist’s agenda for 5 seconds
Stop funding a genocide
Abolish the police
Abolish prisons
Abolish the military
Reverse course on climate change
Open up the borders
Drop all student loans, pay back previous loans with interest
Free college
Drop the TikTok ban and replace it with a data privacy law
Cancel all defense contracts
Do any one of these for real and I’ll vote for him. But I have my doubts…
You should probably also ask this in [email protected].
It’s an interesting case because studies have found that there are certain core issues where if a candidate doesn’t match their stance on it, voters are unwilling to engage with that candidate’s other policies.
Stuff like abortion, gun control. Genocide looks like one of those issues.
