Biden shared a stage tonight with the only man he can reasonably defeat in this election. I think I should announce my candidacy, I could run on a “my dick can get hard without pharmaceuticals” platform.
Braggart!
I’m more worried that he won’t win the election rather than he will win it. I don’t think the debate changes anything about that, people are likely still going to vote who they were going to vote for. He is the not Trump vote, and it’s just as important as ever if not more important to vote not Trump.
I’m European so obviously anti trump (I’ve learnt a lot about politicians that used similar rhetoric, had a different personal cult around them, also tried overthrowing the state - history repeats when not learning from it) but damn, Biden was bad. I’d still vote for Biden simply to avoid trump, but I fear he has no chance to get >50% after that performance.
The democrats hopefully see the writing on the wall and replace him before it’s too late.
Thankfully, he doesn’t actually need to win the majority vote (look up the electoral college if you’re curious/horrified), unfortunately that fact mostly benefits Trump.
It may already be too late to replace him. It would definitely be risky. And it’s not gonna happen unless Biden himself says so. If he runs against whoever the DNC were to pick to run against him or would guarantee a Trump win.
What’s riskier: Replacing him, or keeping him?
Problem for dems is that it’s way too late to replace him now. They had to accept reality last year and run a real primary. Instead they waited until the last moment, and now there’s not enough time for somebody new without an existing voter base to start campaigning.
It’s over. It was honestly over long ago, it’s just playing out in slow motion.
It will probably continue to play out for another thirty years at least. Increasingly horrible, so at any point “eight years ago” feels like back when things were sane, except we lost our minds decades ago already.
Sorry we’re the nation equivalent of DJ Khaled; we think we’re “suffering from success” but in truth we actually are and we don’t know it.
There’s no way Biden can win. According to polls, he’s losing all the swing states, and that was before this debate took place. The DNC is going to give us Trump because they are elitist and don’t actually care about democracy.
The conspiracy theorists all say Joe is supposed to step down and Gavin Newsom somehow is added to the ticket which then will win. These conspiracy theorists also say that candidates are selected in advance by the powers that be and it’s all pagentry to deceive the gullible masses. If this is true, the “outcry” of concern may be a part of the plan.
Californian here: I’d rather have Biden than Newsom. The man is a snake. He’s a snake man. Human snake. 🐍
I am not saying I like him. It’s just what the conspiracy theorists all say, that it’s a done deal and he’s already selected. If it were up to me, I’d vote for ChatGPT.
Actually, the other way around. We keep on compartmentalizing, Trump can lie all he wants and nothing happens, but Joe stutters and it’s a national disgrace… How can you compare one without including the only alternative?
The fact that the democrats have selected such a terrible candidate that Trump has a running chance for the third time in a row and that the US as a whole has selected two awful candidates for possibly the most important job in the world, that is a disgrace, and it is shameful.
Republicans accept a post-truth society where everything is someone’s propaganda, that the federal government is out to get them and that the union would be better served as a union of state-level republics. Democrats still believe in the existence of a ground truth and want a union with centralized control (i.e., they are Federalists). Like the Federalists, the Democrats are backed by wealthy financial states (New York, California) as opposed to more rural/working-class states (Alabama, Ohio) and support heavy industrial subsidies (Biden’s IRA, CHIPS) as well as weak state governments.
This is a fundamental difference that explains a lot, actually. The role of government has always been to convince populations to pursue the policy goals of the elite. The foundations of representative democracy involve choosing which elites’ policy goals to follow. The Republicans want to follow state elites (to borrow a Chinese proverb, the mountains are high and the President is far away). The Democrats want to follow federal elites.
Here’s the real problem. The US gets to choose between a career politician and a career businessman (swindler, by definition). Who represents the working class? Who represents the people who actually built America’s economy?
Nobody represents the people, but that’s not a new problem nor, in anyway, a new thing in this Trump era
My biggest fear is that the USA always gets to chose someone who does not represent them at all but at least had the notion that we need a planet to live in
Trump is a man child and will see the world burn out of petty spite. And us, in the rest of the world, would have to still live with those consequences
So back to the debate and the choice between Biden and Trump… Sure Biden is a terrible option, like chosing to get cancer… But Trump is like chosing to be gang raped, shot and left for dead in an open sewer and here we are pretending the 2 bad options are somehow the same
Every American election for /years/ was coke v Pepsi. Not sure when it became coke v battery acid, nor why so many people are like “well I don’t like cola so maybe it will be okay to drink battery acid” and why it is that the Democrats still want to run coke when America has made it abundantly clear we’d like to be offered the chance to drink SOME CLEAN FUCKING WATER JESUS FUCKING CHRIST
Exactly right
Can you actually explain the difference between the options and reconcile the fact that Hillary and the DNC purposefully elevated Trump behind the scenes (entire “lesser evil” rationale is a farce)? Thx!
My biggest fear is that the USA always gets to chose someone who does not represent them at all but at least had the notion that we need a planet to live in
That’s the part you’re missing. People are legitimately asking themselves “If these two people are my only choices and won’t improve my quality of life do I want to keep living?”
But again, maybe Biden is the status quo which is not great I admit, but Trump is torture then death… How is that even a “close” call to make?
Again you are not fully empathizing with people’s experience under… whoever for the last 20ish years. Some “young” people who are now in their 30s and 40s never really recovered from the financial crisis. Each day is already torture working a dead end job with shit pay where customers scream at them only to return to a tiny apartment with rent creeping up every single month.
It’s not a matter of empathy… If each day is torture under status quo, how is going under a regime promising to make it worse a better option?
You’re trying to trump despair with reason bud. Doesn’t work like that.
You know it is pretty bad when a bunch of CNN commentators think he got smoked.
CNN got bought out by right wing media a little while ago iirc
Doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
Think? They know, we all know. The world knows. The proof is in the pudding. People have been saying it. Biden is NOT capable of existing independently (needs assistance just for directions), much less of being a president.
He was weak but they couldn’t adjust his mic levels? That was weird.
What if that was the max?
Then turn it up to 11
The fire alarm has been going off for 5 years and they’re just now noticing the fire.
Yeah, while the republicans have basically openly moved to reactionary and fascist politics, thus implicitly accepting the status quo is over, the influential parts of the Democrats seem to have been clinging completely to the idea that the status quo is what is to be preserved - even though material reality will not make that possible.
Right now, we seem to be in a historical moment, where old privileges are breaking away from a continuing crisis in capitalism that basically has been smouldering since the (late) 70s and kept stable through neoliberal policies thus far. Old privileges being lost results in a reactionary shift worldwide at the moment. It will be harrowing, but there is at least always the possibility of the pendulum swinging the other way - right now, in the coming years, organisation, connecting people, openly presenting radical alternatives to prepare for that moment seems to be the most important work to me.
Would you mind expanding on what you mean by material conditions and fascism in relation to old privileges (don’t know what you mean by the latter)?
So, I am heading to bed for the night, because I have been awake all night and day and the day before to catch the debate - but the short answer is: The decline of the middle class and the petite burgeoisie - which I in this case view not in the traditional definition, but also broader, as all the people owning a little bit of capital i.e. savings for old age in some fond or maybe a house of their own. Also the disappearance of job security and stable work relations.
With it, the conservative “lets keep things as they were” mindset of people who had a decent enough life, i.e. mostly boomers that lived through the economic growth phase of the post-war era, but also younger people dreaming of that time or having profited from it through their parents, comes into crisis. But as this mindset argues from its own experience, it dreams of the past (“Things worked back then, right?”), while missing, that the very same “working” system was what had within it, already the inherent nature that eventually led to it decaying around us. So they need to explain the decline as something caused by an outsider, a malevolent force.
At the same time, this decline of the middle class leads them to try and grasp to divisions that might “save” them from proletarisation - becoming properly dependend on paycheck to paycheck and owning nothing but their own labour power to sell on the market. So, racism for example - if you are white, you might just be spared from the above fate. And you can kick down, targeting all those brown people below instead of punching up - the latter is a lot more risky after all. And the people up above can’t be at fault, after all, you (or the people you heard about from the past) had a great life when those were around, right? It just have to be the “right” people, like you and the people of your nationality/race/religion/other ingroup - often depressingly arbitrary.
This is still a very reductive summary, a lot is missing, globalisation, how it relates to the net rate of profit, how consolidation happens, details about the ideology of our current times. But broken down to it’s basics it can be summarised as such. The middle class is disappearing as a consequence of capitalist development, which leads to them becoming panicky and diving headfirst into ideology.
Well, anyway, good night, hope it was possible to understand what I was trying to bring across in my rambling
Thanks! The increasing difference between material conditions of the upper middle class / petit bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and the often ensuing split of the middle class into these two, is definitely a contention point that allows for quick fascist demagogues to capitalize on. I see that the loss of “old privileges” for the former fortunate middle class allows for admiration of some greater past, which plays well into the fascist textbook.
However, I do think the far right’s success within young males, for example, is a different symptom of the same condition. That young people whose futures are diminished by capitalist exploitation tend towards fascism as their solution, while fully educated about its past and its options, is what baffles me the most.
Maybe I am overlooking something and that is why I did not get your point originally nor that which I described above, but to me there seems to be a disconnect of logic that is exceptional, even when taking into consideration that we are talking about supporters of the far right.
Yes, you raise a very important point that I completely glanced over with sleep-deprived tunnel vision brain. Young males are a group, where ideological factors are a lot more prevalent. A constant barrage of presenting the desirable thing to be succesful - everything from sexual gratification to security in life depends on it - is given to, well, actually everyone, but even today still predominately young males. In addition, the ideological explanation presents no proper “out” that has analytical value: If you don’t succeed, you are just some sort of beta cuck or whatever. How about you buy this course by this YouTube influencer, on how to get money and pussy by changing your own inadequacy, which of course in reality throws the vast majority of their fans into dependence and diminishes any resources they had.
This demand to be succesful, dominant, happy and stoic, weighing on the superego as basically an old dream of success that is becoming more and more unattainable but is still presented everywhere, is also in conflict with material reality. Being the breadwinner of a household where you have a wife that delivers reproductive labour and sexual gratification to you, while you earn the money and keep her dependent? Even with chauvinists that are deep into that ideological prison, households being able to earn enough money without both people working (often even more than two jobs) is not what we are seeing in the present and the future. So, this discrepancy has to be explained in a way, that is compatible with their ideology.
As a side note: parts of the liberal, more well-off “left” (a very relative term here) will basically just give them the answer “well, you are a stupid, low-IQ chud loser, so its your own fault” - basically reinforcing the very “sink or swim, be succesful, if you can’t be, it means something about you is wrong” ideology that creates this whole mess to begin with.
But of course, the answer many will then land on is a variant of my previous post: It worked in the past, right? An outside malevolent force must have corrupted this. It’s the feminists. It’s the Jews. It’s the insert enemy here. That is the core of it again - discrepancy between material reality and ideological demands and dreams within society. Concerning young men, the extreme right also has good illusionary ways to provide them with a sense of being powerful when they are in reality not, through violence that doesn’t threaten the upper classes, and relative privilege within their ideological stratified view of reality.
Ironically, that material reality of proletarisation can even fuel “tradwife” romanticism for some women - basically, the dream of being a loved and loving housewife, being submissive to and dependent on their husband and his income, anything, just to escape the dread of having to work under current conditions without any of the security of the past. (Note that actual submissive impulses that people potentially have as a fetish are a whole other thing in that discussion, but it is relevant, that for some submissive people at least, that can of course also add to the allure of that fantasy, just as the idea of being a breadwinner that has a dependent person giving them sexual gratification and admiration is alluring to people with dominant fetishisations)
The Dems are reactionaries and that is a terrible best option.
You are a hexbear lmao. You suck up to dictators around the world. I dont think we can take your comment serious since you always argue in bad faith.
Ad hominem
You argue in bad faith
Get bent
Yeah, obviously they are the laughing stock here… You should pay more mind to content than affiliations. Even though dbzer0 is a cool admin with a cool community, your comment does not portray you as such.
pay more mind to content than affiliations
That’s not really possible when commenters with certain affiliations are known to be manipulative and participate in bad faith.
Eh, to the extent that Hexbear meme-culture is both prevalent and constitutes as participation in bad faith, that would be true. This was not an example of this, which only serves to prove that the reply was actually in bad faith itself.
Please replace him with Hillary or Bernie or something it would be so funny. They could even have Hillary and Bernie debate for the candidacy 😂
It’s her turn
Shit, I’d vote for her again.
🤣
Good god no. Bernie then any other Dem. Hillary is too much a follower. We need someone with “radical” (sensable) ideas.
Still better than Trump
here
Biden guarantees you Trump. Figure it out bub.
People don’t seem to be coping well with realities of how this works lol
Both didn’t he gig… Did anything really change?
Still slaving for shiiter wagers, with shit infra and piss poor social services.
Rent is higher tho!
Lol /iamverysmart
Smarter than a cohort of individuals insisting that we run a 20:1 underdog.
Sure
Hows that working out for you.
So good. How long I been living rent free bro, 3 weeks lol
If Biden dies and his tombstone is running for president, I’d still vote for his tombstone over trump.
A corporate-controlled genocidal fascist who’s incapable of speaking is the ideal leader under liberalism. Saying mean things destroys democracyTM.
LOOOOOOOOOOOL
I distinctly remember that before I left Reddit, I had some lovely discourse with someone who was absolutely inconsolable over my opinion that Biden was too old for the job. Got called ageist and everything else they could think of.
Trust me, I hate being right.
I had a grandmother who died at 88 but was still sharp until that day she passed. It’s clear Biden needs to retire, he’s cognitively unable to act as a president, the media and Democratic establishment need to stop gas lightning us.
The Democrats knew this was going to happen. There’s no way they couldn’t. And I don’t mean Democrat supporters, many of whom were vehement that Biden was fine like so many anecdotes in this thread recount. I mean the Democrat leadership, who manage his campaign and more than likely manage his presidency. Unlike the public, they have access to him. They have his medical records, the reports of his doctors and caregivers, everything. There’s no way they didn’t know this would happen if he debated.
They might start seeding support for a different candidate into their supporter’s discourse after this, but they will have been planning for this outcome long ago. And when a left-leaning (left from a US Overton window) news platform hosts a debate that shows him up that badly and then publishes commentary like this, you have to wonder if that caused friction with the DNC or if they assented to it.
As the party starts singling out a replacement, the question I hope people start asking is why they didn’t replace Biden earlier? Did they need to wait until the urgency of imminent elections made their new candidate more palatable? And if they don’t replace Biden, why are they letting Trump win?
Here’s the original link in lemmy.ml if you want to see lemmy.world loser ledditors coping: https://lemmy.ml/post/17384440
This whole thing gonna take the U outta the USA
It was good knowing ya, murrica
alarm bells?
wait they didn’t know he was old before this debate?
Apparently millions of people during the 2020 primaries didn’t math long enough to realize Biden would be 86 years old after two terms.
