John Fetterman says he'll 'never understand' progressives who refuse to support Joe Biden

NightGaunts@kbin.social to politics @lemmy.world – 480 points –
John Fetterman says he'll 'never understand' progressives who refuse to support Joe Biden
businessinsider.com

The Pennsylvania Democrat recalled his time serving as a Hillary Clinton surrogate in 2016, even after he supported Bernie Sanders in the primary.

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Yeah, but you're still going to vote for him, just like I'm going to have to...

We don't really have a choice.

But it's not enough for moderates to count on progressives voting for them in the general, that's not "supporting" to them anymore.

They want our unwavering support and complete refusal to criticize them before, during, and after assuming office.

They've been slowly creeping right for so long chasing conservative votes that they've got the same expectations of their voters that Republicans get.

I think more than a few of the party leadership truly wish Dem voters were more like Republican voters.

We don’t really have a choice.

This is the real problem. Not Biden's age or his actual policy goals and achievements. It's that we know what we're getting and we know we won't be enthusiastic about it.

But ya gotta do what ya gotta do, and unlike last time I'm in a swing state and can't cheekily write in my favorite candidate without ending the world.

Enthusiasm for Obama died down once reality hit too.

There wasn't ever enthusiasm for Biden, though.

Enthusiasm doesn’t lead to anything most of the time. Throughout history the greatest Presidents all had to make difficult decisions that either went against their ideals or were questionable if they had the right to do them. Anyone can run on grand ideas, but once you’re in the seat the unattended consequences are revealed to you, and unless your a monster who doesn’t care, they have to be dealt with.

An example that made me change my mind about some things under the Obama administration was watching documentary series on declassified CIA/FBI counterterrorism incidents. The number of plots they were stopping was overwhelming. And if those interviewed are to be believed those were only a small fraction of the situations they dealt with.

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You have plenty of choices. First of all you can vote for someone that isn't red or blue, second you can take action yourself and do politics on your own

First of all you can vote for someone that isn’t red or blue,

If I wanted to waste time I wouldn't stand in line to vote...

In our political system any vote besides R or D means the same as not voting. Thats just reality, it sucks but it is.

You want to change it? Great, me too. But we do that by being more invested in the current system and electing people willing to improve it.

Its more likely to matter in downticket races, where the total amount of votes is less than the margin for victory in most federal elections.

Sure, we're not going to see a third party president any time soon, but its more than feasible in state and local elections. People just tend to ignore them because they're not as in your face as federal elections. Even though they're often as important as federal elections.

Which has fuckall to do with the POTUS, which is what we're discussing.

No third party in the US has a workable platform and they don’t even try to make one. They do literally nothing. We can argue back and forth about why they are at a disadvantage or why they have no chance blah blah blah, but it doesn’t take any of that.

Don't feed on the propaganda. There's a shitty movie out every month or so who millions go to watch because they get blasted with ads. It really doesn't take much to teach people to vote for someone that isn't red and blue. Drop that mindset and tell everyone to vote for someone else

It really doesn’t take much to teach people to vote for someone that isn’t red and blue.

How do you think that's going right now?

I think it's going good, i may have illuminated someone in this thread plus everyone downvoting will soon realize how stupid and brainwashed they are being and switch their mindset in the future

plus everyone downvoting will soon realize how stupid and brainwashed they are being and switch their mindset in the future

Kanye logic...

I knew it was coming, have fun with that

What state do you live in, assuming it does not have FPTP voting?

I'm from a state that was once a monarchy until people decided to take action against that

So Hawaii..?

Which notably only has RCV for Democratic presidential primaries (where local politicians don't compete) and special elections (since a split vote once gave a seat to a Republican). It's very transparent where the local politicians were willing to draw the lines on pro-democracy initiatives.

We do have mail in ballots and are reliably blue though, so their personal third party vote won't take any effort or change any results.

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Politics is almost by definition something you don't do on your own.

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