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this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
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If he's such an existential threat (and he is), why the fuck are they not forcing the geriatric incompetent running on their ticket to drop out? They're sleepwalking into fascism and it's terrifying.
My semi-secret conspiracy theory adjacent theory is it's intentional. That not all, but many, of the Democratic national party is in bed with the same big businesses paying off Republicans, and they're prepared to pull a Hindenburg and install the very fascists they claim to resist once they can no longer hide their betrayal.
I also do think it's primarily a money issue. Some of it might be those donors wanting the two parties to do different things, by basically leading the democrats into their graves.
Because their rank-and-file voters who voted in the primary voted for him. This primary and last primary. And if you want people to leave your party in a big exodus, invalidating their primary vote is how you do that. They learned that in Bernie's race. I voted for Biden, he wasn't the only person to run in the primary, I'll be damned if the "party elite" select some other candidate anyways, why even vote in the primaries at that point? May as well register for the R primary since they at least had more candidates and (so far) appear to respect their primary process so my vote would actually mean something.
One thing you'll notice is that the venn diagram for people who complain about only having "two choices" and the people who don't participate in primaries is nearly a perfect circle. You get an overwhelming amount of choices if you vote in every primary and every election.If you only vote once every 2 or 4 years and skip the primaries, yeah, you get two choices.
No one considers this primary a real vote, or that a vote from four years ago indicates current preferences. If it did, 50% of Democrats who watched the debate wouldn't want him to step aside.
50% of people who watched the debate didn't participate in the primaries. Most people don't vote, and of those who do vote, most don't participate in primaries. Nobody of consequence ran. Literally anybody could have run. They didn't. It's not the fault of "DNC leadership" that nobody stepped up to the plate to run.
FWIW some people did run, Biden wasn't literally the only candidate. I had more than one candidate on my primary ballot and I voted for Biden because he had the best chance of winning the general. In fact, Biden lost the primary in American Samoa. If you swap Biden for somebody else, you've invalidated my primary vote. That's just as much a threat to democracy as anything else.
Yes, exactly. That's why no one considers their vote in the 2024 primary to be a real indication of preference. If you think your vote for a forgone conclusion was some solemn compact, that's a you issue. Votes without meaningful choice aren't meaningful votes.
Democracy doesn't guarantee you'll have good options, just that you have options. The time to express the greatest degree of preference is primaries. It's how the system works. You can be mad about that, but that's how it works. And it's fair, and it's democratic, and anybody can participate in it. And every four years, like clockwork, people come out of the woodwork to complain about how their vote doesn't matter and the two-party system is corrupt and yada yada who never even took the time to vote in the primary or downballot elections. It's equivalent to people who complain that the president isn't getting x done while not voting in mid-terms to secure a congress who can make sure those things actually can get done. Primaries and downballot elections are how to build a candidate's resume and experience to run in a presidential election. Luckily for primary voters, the party doesn't listen to these people, they respect the ballots cast by their primary voters. I don't think they should have run Hillary, but she got the most primary votes so that's who they ran. There is nobody to blame there but her primary voters.
The levers of power are available to people, we just have to consistently use them.
I'm not mad about it, that's usually how incumbent primaries go. No one believes single-contender votes are sacred expressions of democracy though. Maybe no one except you, but as previously stated, that's a you issue.
Biden and the DNC knew that if he was forced to actually debate in an open primary, he'd be weakened as a candidate and would eventually lose to Trump. So they rigged the primary, hoped they could sneak a senile old man through without us realizing, and now they got caught.
The people in power are perfectly content to lose the cycle and try again in 2028. Newsom, Whitmer, etc. are all lining up to run against Trump's VP next cycle since he's term limited. And the reason Biden hasn't been thrown overboard yet is that the other potential candidates haven't decided if they want to throw away their carefully laid plans for 2028 to take a gamble here in 2024.
The only people that truly believe Trump winning in 2024 means there won't be an election in 2028 are the most myopic hyper partisan Democrat voters, and they believe that because it's a useful fallacy for the Democratic elite to have them believe. Because fear is the only motivator they have left at this point. But their actions clearly show that they don't believe it themselves.
One option? Oh my go's, how awful. Terrible way to live your life.
Two options? Oh WOW much democracy. The options! So much REPRESENTATION! Choose your flavourful brand of genocide today!
Your wrong. That's not power. That's trick delusional for being any such a thing. Back in the day it was but everything is now a charade.
Sure, I vote, but it doesn't matter. I know and I know what is going to happen now because of that obvious noose.
I have voted in every primary and general election since I turned 18 in 98, and not one of the candidates I have voted for in the primary has ever won. Sure we get "loads of candidates," and then the party picks the worst of the lot. Then of course there are states like KY and PA where I can't vote in the primary since you have to declare a party, and that's against my religion.
Not even close to what I said, but OK, you'll notice I still vote in the General election, and I can count on one finger the number of times I've voted for a Republican, in the general.
That was the last midterm election when the warden of the San Diego jail was up for reelection, and had stepped down because we achieved the award of deadliest jail in the US. The candidate the Democrats ran was his deputy warden. At least the Republican candidate didn't have a few hundred inmates blood on his hands. I would have voted third party if I could have, but no one else ran.
I hold my nose and vote for the least undesirable candidate I am given. I've voted for RCV multiple times, and I protest homelessness and police brutality as frequently as I can. What more do you want?
I've voted in every primary and local election since the year 2000 and had a Kucinich for President bumper sticker and I still complain about the choices because my preferred candidate has never won. Ever.
Because the most popular alternative is Kamala Harris, but there is no evidence she would do better against Trump.
I stand that Kamala's best chance is to hold the ship steady as is, and then ask Biden to resign in December or January.
There's a lot of racists out there. I feel like if she's at the top of the ticket, she's gonna get dragged down. Biden truly is serving as an effective shield for her. Either way, Kamala is the implicit vote if anything wrong happens to Biden (which I admit is increasingly likely given his age).
It makes no sense for Kamala to rush to the top of the ticket given her position.
Wasn't this always the angle, even when people called his age out last election? The argument was that Kamala Harris would step up, and that Biden didn't want a second term.
Given Harris' recent comments in the press regarding stuff she'd fix "if given power", I wonder if she's even on the VP card this time around? IMO, AOC might be a smarter choice for VP, since the left love her and the right loathe her. She'd bring a lot of younger disenfranchised people back around, and that might be enough.
Biden never any public or official statement about only serving 1-term, in fact when that story started circulating, the official response from his campaign was to say that they were not ruling it out.
This is just preemptive cope to avoid having to reflect on whether the Democratic leadership and its preferred candidates are actually the thing that needs change, and she's not even an actual candidate yet. Kamala's biggest problem is not that she isn't white. Obama was a Black man, but he had heaps of charisma. Kamala has all the charisma of a plate of lutefisk,and people flat out do not like her. She is also irrevocably tied to Biden and his legacy, likely to her detriment amongst the crowds you would most worry about not voting for her because of her not being white.
Most polls put her on par with Biden. Dataforprogress.org has her leading when “fitness” and “strength” are brought into question, but that’s the only poll I’ve seen where she has any lead at all.
Polls of 1000 people are stupid.