Ocasio-Cortez endorses Biden's reelection campaign, sending a strong signal of Democratic unity
independent.co.uk
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, a sign of the president’s strength in uniting his party to have the backing of one of its most liberal members
Old man who vaguely agrees with my politics and is just mildly disappointing or a literal shit filled dumpster fire? Hmmm tough choice.
How is Biden disappointing? Before he became President he gave every indication of being yet another appeasement-oriented centrist, but he's actually gotten a surprising amount done. Biden has ended up being far better than I expected him to be.
Now imagine what he could accomplish if the people in this thread who complain so much actually went out and grassroots volunteered and got some progressives elected in their districts.
Sorry. Too busy making petitions asking others to remove Alito from the Supreme Court to do any actual, useful volunteer work.
If you'd told me we could virtually eliminate Russia's army and remove them as a competitor on the world stage for a couple billion bucks with no american troops in 2020 I would have taken that deal any day.
What has he gotten done that you support?
I'm pretty disappointed in the Inflation Reduction Act that actually prints a trillion more dollars.
We need inherent change in the government, we need congress to get off their asses and create good bills. We need to get away from the 4th branch of government.
Not print a trillion more $ that goes to government subcontractors and the top 1%
Well, there is an exhaustive list of everything he's accomplished in his term so far; which is a lot.
You listed a lot of legislative issues there. What should the executive branch do for those issues? Veto the Inflation Reduction Act? Not enact bills passed by congress?
He compromises with the Fascists a little too much for my taste.
I mean he's the only president I'm aware of who just came out and straight called the fascists fascists, and didn't backpedal when the fascists got mad.
But when the alternative is literally putting those fascists in office...
Oh for sure. I'll vote for him. Just mildly disappointed I can't vote for someone I really want.
Yeah...
That's what everyone is complaining about.
And why everyone is more upset at the people running the national party who refuse to let Americans have a primary.
The ones who are willing to say "if you dont vote for this 80 year old who lied to you four years, have fun with trump!".
Do t worry tho, progressives will do what we always do and vote for the lesser evil.
Doesn't mean we have to pretend we like it
Progressive candidates lose elections, which is rather the problem here. There aren't as many of you as your online circles would have you believe
Before I start, let me say that Biden absolutely has my vote, because the alternative is the end of our democracy.
I'll also say he's away better than I thought he'd be.
But here's how he's a disappointment:
He failed to appoint an attorney general that would give us a special prosecutor to go after Trump for the most egregious case of Obstruction of Justice in the history of the country, as laid out in the Mueller report. This was a matter of national security, should have been the first set of indictments against Trump, and should have happened a couple years ago.
Student loans. Our economic engine requires a strong consumer class... Right now two generations of Americans are drowning in debt, and can't buy goods and services from other Americans. It's hurting EVERYBODY. Biden should be aiming to erase ALL student debt. Instead he's taking half-measures that leave the United States still in crisis. And that's BEFORE we talk about how weak his attempt to do this was, from a legal standpoint.
Healthcare. We are still in crisis. The ACA was supposed to be a first step. Instead, it has been the only step, and Republicans continue to attempt to chip away at it. Why hasn't Biden put out a universal healthcare plan? Or at least a public option? How can we ever make progress when he won't even be the standard-bearer for these ideas?
The Supreme Court was captured by fascist theocrats. Any future moderate (to say nothing of liberal) laws will be struck down by these assholes. Why is Biden not talking about packing the court until it once again reflects the values of the overwhelming majority of Americans?
I could go on, but the jist here is that the United States is in absolute crisis, and like Hillary before him, Biden is the "nothing will essentially change" or "incremental change" candidate. Not acceptable during an emergency.
Hasn't legalized cannabis on a federal level and considering his career long stance on the war on drugs, I don't really expect that he ever would support legalization.
Status quo keeps on truckin' along.
Rich keep getting richer. Poor people? Well, who cares about them anyway.
Use the poors as a cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel.
Hey now, the indentured servant class is very important in maintaining quality of life. Of course they care.
Like I get that is what we probably are getting, and fine, he is better than whatever the republicans are putting forward, so I'll vote for him.
But
Come on
I wish, so much, we had a better candidate
You need a better voting system.
Any single-winner system is inherently flawed, which is why presidential systems are just straight-up worse than parliamentary ones. They're by their nature going to be less representative. A system where the president is largely a figurehead is far better, along with a legislature which is elected proportionally using something like Mixed-Member Proportional, Single Transferable Vote, or party-list PR.
But failing that, the bare minimum to call your system democratic is to use Instant Runoff Voting. First Past the Post is just straight-up not democracy. It's a farce. The idea that two candidates with similar views both being very successful actually makes it less likely that either will win is an obvious complete failure of the system. (And, fwiw, you could have IRV presidential elections for a powerful POTUS while also improving congress by making it proportional, if you want to go a step further than just making Congress & President both using IRV, but not as far as the fundamental constitutional change required to make the president a figurehead.)
And how do you expect us to do that, revolt? Because it turns out elected officials are reluctant to make significant changes to the system that elected them from which they profit handsomely.
Suspending reality, it would be interesting if enough progressives moved to states like Wyoming (pop 580k) and the Dakotas (780k and 890k) to move them blue. Then vote in progressive senators. For reference, NJ alone has a population of 9.2m.
If that could happen It would be great to link senators to state population.
I agree with you but it'll never happen. That would require a constitutional amendment and that bar is so high it can only be cleared under the threat of national revolt (like when the voting age was lowered, or prohibition was repealed). States would not be so eager to give up their power, and three fourths of them would have to agree.
I don't know how you achieve it, but if you haven't got at least IRV, then electoral reform should be the top issue people push their elected representatives for. As I understand it, some states have already done it in some elections, so it's not like it's impossible. Without a functioning democratic system, you can't ever get good outcomes on the things that actually matter. And with FPTP you don't have a democratic system.
A parliamentary system with fully proportional representation would be best. The US is big though, so I think an electoral threshold of 4% may be needed. That, or require parties to fulfil the below condition before being able to participate in elections.
• They need enough support through party membership from the area's population, as a % of the latter. On counties, this would be about 4%. On a state level, that would be 1%. On a national level, 0.25% would be enough.
You might think, why lower with each level? But the larger the population size is, the smaller the membership can be while remaining representative. This also stimulates smaller parties since now they have a chance to actually grow.
Electoral districts also need to be thrown away -- counties, states, and the entire country, are where the elections get held in. Because of proportional representation, it doesn't matter however you were to divide up areas: 25% of votes on one party means 25% of seats.
Lastly, force the Democratic and Republican Party to break up into separate parties with each no more than 20% of all seats. Or tell the parties that putting through with proportional representation as an agenda point will give them more votes. The Dems can argue, "One man, one vote", the Reps can argue "America NEEDS to keep it Great! Vote the Dems away, get Proportional!". Both should have this as agenda point.
I also think it critical that the supreme court of the US isn't 7 judges. It worked for a country with 2 million people, but you lot are a country of 300+ million now. You need something like 100 members, and make the supreme court appointed by the judges themselves, who are chosen by multiple random ballots themselves.
The US Congress also could be expanded. Make the House go from 435 to 500 members, and the Senate to 250. They need to be updated for a big country.
It also makes it harder to manipulate politicians, since there are far more needed to bribe.
I have a whole writeup, if anyone is interested. I think that both Dems and Reps and anyone else can find themselves in it.
I have absolutely no problem with such a threshold.
Okay so here's a really controversial take. I think the problem with the SCOTUS actually stems from there being too many rights enumerated in the American constitution. I should note that I'm not a legal scholar, but I've read a lot of opinions from non-American lawyers who have explained this viewpoint, and it makes sense to me.
Where I live in Australia, our constitution is largely uncontroversial. It doesn't say what rights people do and do not have, but really just lays out the basic functioning of our democratic institutions, like how elections work, how Government works, how the Commonwealth interacts with the States, etc. Rights are left to Parliament to implement. This has the interesting difference from America in that it means that our High Court decisions are largely far less political than SCOTUS's. Because the High Court of Australia doesn't get to make the inherently political ruling of deciding how to interpret individuals' rights as laid out in the constitution. By putting the right to bear arms in the constitution, SCOTUS is inherently given the power to decide what should be a legislative matter of how much people are allowed to own guns. It's what lead to the morally-good but legally-nonsense decision that lead to Americans having the right to abortion*, which itself stopped the legislature from ever feeling like it needed to do its job in relation to abortion protections, which is in turn what made the disastrous outcome of Dobbs possible.
This is, obviously, something so deeply ingrained that it would be basically impossible to change. Americans view their constitution almost like a religious text. Even though some of the founding fathers supposedly thought a constitution is something that should be basically rewritten from scratch every few decades, Americans view it as written in stone and as something that must not be changed except perhaps to enumerate more explicit rights. But fundamentally, a less politicised constitution would lead to a less politicised judicial system, which would allow each branch of government to do its part without encroaching on the others like they currently do.
I'm with you on increasing the size of the legislature though. 2 senators per state is far too few (and makes it impossible to reasonably add in a proportional system on a per-state basis). I have much the same feeling about my country. I'd like to see our Parliament almost doubled in size, especially if we were to move to a more proportional system (we currently have a proportional Senate, but use IRV for our House of Representatives).
* legally nonsense because if you look at how SCOTUS justified it in Roe, it just doesn't make sense, legally. Somehow the right to an abortion is derived from...a right to privacy? That doesn't make sense. And it makes even less sense when you consider that the right to privacy itself is somehow derived from the right to due process and equal rights under the law.
My only real misgiving with Biden is age, but I do still agree. With how crazy and dangerous Republicans have become however, we can't afford to take any risks. We don't just need to beat them, we need to beat them by the largest margins possible. We need to send a sharp condemnation. Biden's incumbency advantage is indispensable for this.
The problem is really that the whole system is fucked up.
Elections being about "the lesser evil" instead of voting FOR what you actually want is just horrible - no wonder so many people are losing faith in democracy over there...
Biden was a clear "best choice" instead of a "lesser evil" for me. I think he's a great guy doing a great job.
I want someone who wouldn't have greenlit the Willow Project in the Arctic. We are way past making compromises in the climate emergency.
I am literally a climate lobbyist. I have a meeting with a republican rep in 2 weeks. His stance is that climate change is probably real, but is undecided on if humans cause it.
That's what we have on the other side. That's a MODERATE position for the other side right now. Compromise is the only way we're gonna make any progress if we can't get them out of office, and majorities are tough to come by
Approval of drilling projects is an executive decision. The president doesn't need to compromise with anyone in making those decisions.
What exactly has Biden done wrong? He may not be as crazy left wing as you'd prefer, but really I don't see why so many on the left are saying he's so bad
Although I think Biden has overall done a good job I am disappointed that they're running someone who is 80 years old. I would also like to see a general shift to the left, but at the same time I realize that the increased political division in the US makes this unlikely in the near term.
Giving up the incumbent advantage at a time like this is short sighted at best, and destructive and dangerous at worst.
People always have some reason ready to roll out when telling you to settle for some shitty candidate you don't really like. I'm done with it. I compromised on Joe Biden to save America from Trump. I compromised in every election for my entire adult life. Now I'm voting for people I actually like. If the US is collectively dumb enough to go back to the GOP then we deserve the consequences of that choice.
You can call that selfish if you want but I've been waiting 35 years for the compromise candidate to be the one from my camp and there's always a bunch of armchair poly-sci experts coming out of the woodwork to explain why that would be irresponsible in the current political climate. Well too bad, I'm not voting for the geriatric anymore.
Must be nice to be a wealthy, single, white man who knows he won't suffer under a Trump admin.
Fuck the rest of the country, right? And our overseas allies.
Like I said, if America is collectively dumb enough to vote Republicans into power after everything that's happened then another 4 years of a boring Democrat isn't going to fix that problem. If we're headed for some sort of collapse I'd rather deal with that now rather than later. Call that what you like but it's not my way of doing things that got us in this mess in the first place so you'll have to forgive me if I don't put much stock in your "keep doing the same things and hope something magically changes" approach.
I personally believe someone in the Bernie Sanders mold has a better chance of pulling in moderate voters than a Joe Biden does.
I really don't understand this attitude after how far the entire country backslide under Trump after 2016.
Like, I get it, I felt the same way in 2016 and pissed away my vote, but you've got to realize how counter productive this is after how much more fucked everything got in four years right? Assuming you aren't leaving the country, you do have to live with the consequences of another Trump presidency and further erosion of your rights.
Ribbit
Thanks for the pointless reply. Next time just downvote and spare people from having to read "I disagree with you" but in dumber form.
This comment will stay in the negatives, but anyone who is looking at this objectively knows you're correct. They just don't like it.
It's getting downvoted for the "crazy left wing" part, not the "what has Biden done wrong" part.
He ran on getting kids out of cages and there is still a giant open-air prison for refugees on the border. He busted the railroad union. Those are two pretty big issues for the left. He's further right than Obama, and probably futher right than Nixon, if you compare their platforms. Fighting fascism by moving further right is a really bad way to fight fascism.
Because he's ancient. He's a half century older than the majority of the voting population.
Biden has been great. The most transformative policies in 80 years. Great for the world.
dafuq are you on about? Do we already have political shill bots on here?
How is RFK Jr. the primary opposition? I know he wasn't, but it feels like he was put there by the dem establishment as a threat. When I'm feeling like I would support any other democratic candidate to run in place of Biden, this barely younger absolute crank leans in and goes 'anyone?' Ah fuck, let's go dark Brandon... if i have to... I guess.
Hahahahahaha, no. He's been entirely enabled by those on the right and their hangers-ons in the podcast dork-o-verse. He's an entirely artificial candidate that only appeals to the fringe 5% or so that would have otherwise voted for Nader, or Jill Stein, or Kanye West.
Don't lump Nader in with those kooks. He would have been a decent president. There's no way he could have won, but he would have done the job fairly well.
I think he was actually bankrolled by Bannon and the like. I'm not sure why they thought a far right loon like RFK would weaken Biden. Like you said, his candidacy feels like a purposeful Biden advertisement.
Because they fundamentally don't understand how left-leaning people think, which means they don't understand what we want in a candidate. These are the same geniuses who convinced Kanye to run for president in 2020 because they thought he'd peel away the Black vote from the Democrats just because he was Black. (Did I mention they're all racist AF, too?)
Newsom? I guess? Though I suppose he will run next cycle when his term as governor is up.
Yeah, the Democrats really fucked up by uniting against Bernie in 2020, and Warren fucked up by not getting behind him.
So we're stuck with Biden, who aims too low on all our critical issues.
But it's vital to understand that we ARE stuck with him. There's no path to victory for anyone else in the party.
So it's Biden or ... A fascist takeover of the country.
Easy choice.
Painful. But easy.
Well that’s unfortunate. Wish we could find someone other than an old fucking white guy to represent us.
The fact that someone like Biden and Bernie exist in the same party tells you how awful the 2-party system is.
Bernie has said some really nice things about the Biden Administration.
Too be fair - the Biden administration isn’t all bad and I think when they do something good we should acknowledge that so that maybe they keep doing good things. That doesn’t mean I don’t think there are better options, though.
You can hope for better options, but it says something that the Progressive leadership doesn't see a reason to challenge Biden in the primaries. And as some didn't like hearing, the Progressive leadership has found Biden to be an ally in passing significant legislation. The problem of moving forward isn't the Presidency, but Congress.
I wish more people understood that. Biden might be centrist, but every single progressive policy that has come his way he has endorsed. He would go even farther to the left if we had the right Congress.
I agree with all that - but the presidential candidates do a lot of heavy lifting in congressional elections. They can help drive voters to the polls and get more progressive candidates the attention they deserve. Biden isn’t getting anyone excited to go vote.
Yeah, it says something. It says they'll be blackballed by the party if they dared to challenge the incumbent.
I mean, it's not that hard to. Even simply coherent sentences are like ambrosia after the previous administration, and Joe's got actual things to say on top of that.
For real. Even as a white guy, I’m tired of this shit as well. Wish we could get someone younger and more progressive on the ballot. It’s time to get those old ducks out of office. They have no grasp on how shit really works these days.
I'm hoping for Newsom 2028. In the meantime, Biden will probably be infinitely better than the alternative in the general election.
What specifically do you like about Newsom?
I like how Newsom fought to deregulate zoning in California, and I think we need such deregulation nationwide.
Single-family zoning is a blight on this country.
He's got a great smile.
I agree, but generally a party will back a sitting president of that party, additionally division of the Democratic party is what caused trump's election in the first place.
I wonder if she's being groomed to be the next candidate. I would like that a lot, but what the Democratic needs right now is unity, because the Republican party is very divided.
She's probably being groomed for House leadership. She has a relatively safe seat and seems willing to put the work in being a good representative. However, to do that, she needs to build the caucuses that she is in.
If the Democratic party needs unity when the Republicans are divided, when exactly would dissent ever be acceptable? Seems like this is just a pitch to always be unified, which in turn means never challenging the party establishment.
The system has been formed that way intentionally. That's one of the huge issues with our election system actually
She understands that we are under attack by a global RW fascist insurgency. Keeping the GOP out of the WH will save democracy in the US and around the world. Any GOP winner would stand back and allow the russian terrorists to take Ukraine and beyond.
Ribbit
100%
Did anyone expect anything different? I don't recall incumbent presidents ever having a real primary.
Jimmy Carter did-- Ted Kennedy challenged him for the 1980 presidential nomination. The result was them doing so much damage to each other that the ultimate winner of the primary (Carter) came out battered and bruised, giving Reagan the edge he needed to win the general. And we all know how well that worked out for the planet. (Spoiler alert: horrifically.)
That was the opposite tho...
That was "moderate" party leaders trying to sabotage a progressive at any cost.
That fucked America up reeeeeeeally badly. But the people who decided to do it got what they wanted: an excuse to tell voters that progressives can't win.
Wait, what? I thought Jimmy Carter was considered really progressive for his time. And Ted Kennedy wasn't some perfect progressive hero, he had some pretty major blemishes on his record like Chappaquiddik. So I always saw it as more pointless infighting than any kind of centrist-vs-progressive showdown like 2016.
Then again, my parents were in high school when all this was going down, so my knowledge is obviously pretty limited, lol.
Which is why he got a primary challenger...
From Ted Kennedy, who was also extremely progressive for his time. 1980 was progressive vs progressive (which is part of how Reagan was able to win so decisively in the general, by portraying himself as being a centrist-- even though nothing could be further from the truth).
https://lemmy.world/comment/958758
I already had this conversation 14 hours ago, I'm not having it again.
Who is the moderate and who is the progressive in this?
Carter is our most progressive president since FDR...
The "moderates" were the ones running the party that allowed a primary...
I thought my comment was pretty clear, but hopefully that's clearer
Not everyone's American and not everyone knows history from 42 years ago of foreign countries.
It's pretty clear from context.
I mean, things like primary challenger and stuff like that aren't really terms non-Americans are familiar with. I also wasn't quite sure which of the two people I didn't know was the progressive one.
The kicker to this is that Kennedy was also super progressive. The whole statement doesn't really make sense to politically engaged Americans either, it was just a "The Party allowed a progressive to challenge a progressive". Ted Kennedy was a powerful enough politician that the party didn't need to allow him to run. He was basically royalty (brother of John F. Kennedy) and an untouchable institution in the state he represented. Carter had really terrible approval ratings (28%) and Kennedy had presidential ambitions.
This. Look how angry people still are about the DNC's percieved favoritism towards Hillary in 2016. Imagine the backlash if Bernie had been flat-out barred from running in the primaries against her. Now imagine Bernie's last name is "Kennedy", and it's less than a decade after JFK and RFK were murdered.
Yeah, the DNC basically had no choice but to let him challenge Carter.
It's really not.
Also, OP's ignoring that Kennedy was also a progressive hero, too. The primary was progressive vs. progressive-- which is part of the reason it's remembered today as the poster child of pointless infighting that did nothing but benefit the opposition. I've literally never heard anyone here in the States have OP's take on the primary until this thread.
Reading it again the confusion is in Canada the party leader is basically the PM candidate.
I guess in the US the president is not the party leader. Without that knowledge, you don't know what's going on.
Ted Kennedy, champion of the moderates, is very much not a self-obvious implication.
I explicitly said the problem was the party leaders allowing a primary.
Sink two progressives in one blow, and hope you get a moderate in 4 years.
If Carter did 8, Kennedy would have likely been president next, maybe for another 8 years. Moderates were losing the party. Having a republican beat a weakened Carter let them tell voters that the party had to move right and that progressives couldn't win.
In Canada the leader of the party is basically the PM (Prime Minister) candidate. One and the same.
So reading those words would mean that the PM, who is the party leader, would have had to allow a challenger. (which isn't how it works here, but anyway.)
Biden wasn't my first choice in 2020 and I really wish he was younger, but he has done extremely well as President so far. If he wins again and stays healthy, I have almost no concerns he will continue to get things done.
People don't understand the importance of this endorsement. AOC is considered as the next generation. Most 16-24 yr olds agree heavily with her and would identify closer to the left.
If Democrats play it smart, they could hold a majority for 10-20yrs. We are seeing swing states lean more blue than red ( Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Arizona, and Virginia). This is a huge problem for Republicans bc they always relied on these states to combat large democratic states.
The issue is that this might not matter much in the short run anyway. Democrats have been playing well at the national level, sure, but they don't seem to notice that Republicans have figured out that state sovereignty means they can just have fascist fiefdoms rather than coast-to-coast national-level fascism. I don't see Biden or Harris putting their foot down on a state if shit gets real bad - hell, Florida literally passed a law allowing CPS to take kids from out-of-state parents and nobody at the national level so much as said boo about it.
Believe me, I understand Republicans have gerrymandered a lot of states but those states are fighting back. Look at Minnesota, they have a democratic majority for the first time in years. They have been pushing progress programs left and right that benefit everyone.
My point is that Democrats should stand united behind Biden. This will show everyone that they have two goals, combating corruption and pushing for legislation to better others' lives. If they attack a red state then Republicans will use that for years. It will feed into the "they're coming for your guns" crowd.
Democrats need to continue pushing progressive reforms and nominate a good candidate in 2028. Win more senators' seats and flip the house back. Then go after corrupt judges.
The fact that the majority here is okay to settle with a mildly dissapointing 80 year old, just so the other "evil" side doesn't win is a bit disheartening for the state of US politics and democracy.
And this is comming from a politically shithole country I am born and living in.
Trump has all of Bidens issues AND he's a fascist idiot. Trying to say he's in any way better than Biden just shows either how uninformed you are in American politics, or you think people like Trump are attractive candidates. If it's the latter you may want to take a look at the type of people who, in your own words, are making your country a "political shithole".
Thank you! The "evil" in quotes is what did it for me. We don't need the quotes. Trump and their side right now has no redeeming qualities and shouldn't be in charge of an airport Starbucks. This isn't a choice between slight differences in policy, this is "do you want to vote for nazis, or no?" Oh, I know about Godwin's law, how boutcha google that and see how he feels about it.
She wouldn't win, at least not yet, we've got to drift more to the left as a country to have an election she'd become President in. And if not Biden who? Who should run for President that has a chance of actually winning the election? It's easy to piss on them selecting Biden, but no one else is a viable option. You want more younger options to vote for, run for office yourself, get your friends to run for office, can't vote for young left leaning politicians if they don't freaking run and win elections.
“Good choices” don’t exist bro it’s just shit or less shit. My life is gripped with pessimism and I’ve never been happier
/s
You know that the "evil" have no idea what he's doing half the time right? He has zero clue as to what he is actually doing. He is saying a lot of shit but in reality he has no idea what the fuck is going on.
Trump is one of the few presidents that actually has no idea of how to govern at all. If that don't scare you then I have no freaking idea what will.
At least Biden understands the political prosses and how things work. And also he don't take cases of files with him so he can brag about how the US had plans to attack Iran..
Well said. Really embarrassing, but still leagues better than the other option.
aintthatamerica.mp3
Why the scare quotes? They actually are evil. That's not hyperbole. So, yeah, I'm ok with "settling."
Age notwithstanding, any incumbent president in the last 50 years would be absolutely overjoyed to run for re-election with Biden's record; tons of new blue-collar jobs, strong economy, relative lack of major fuck-ups or controversies or other drama except manufactured RW ragebait. Basically everything swing voters want and nothing they don't want.
Nor is there any real reason to fret about base turnout, given that liberals will view the Republican candidate winning as apocalyptic and show up simply to vote against that person, however disappointed they may be in Biden and whatever performative statements they make about their votes not being guaranteed.
Pretty much the only negative for Biden is age, but that is a pretty big negative.
The campaign needs to see to make Kamala Harris digestible. More than with most campaigns, the way she is viewed is immensely important due to Biden seemingly able to keel over at any moment.
They could also replace her.
In fact there's a pretty good argument that they ought to pick their strongest 2028 candidate - which is almost certainly not Harris - and Biden should secretly promise that person that he'll resign after the midterms in order to get them to agree to join the ticket; the odds are pretty strong he doesn't make it through 4 years anyway, and this way there'd be a solid plan in place when he finally runs into whatever medical setback forces him out.
They'll avoid the problem in favor of short term benefit. Any belief I had that the Democratic insiders had a long-term masterplan went out the window with how little they've done to pump up Harris. I don't even want her to be an eventual nominee, but I thought they'd be purposefully building her as the trusted heir apparent. Instead they just dumped no-win issues on her while making her mostly invisible in the administration's wins.
That sounds like what happened to every vice president we've had in my lifetime. And that's close to 6 decades now.
Yeah, but there's a real difference when that VP is a Joe Biden or Dick Cheney who didn't really have an expectation to be the heir apparent, and when the president is old enough that not finishing a term is a real possibility. There's an uncomfortably high (though still low) chance Biden actually has to be replaced on the campaign trail, and while that's never a good thing, it's a lot worse when you've saddled your VP with tasks like solving immigration and getting voting rights passed when she never really had the power to do either of those things. "Eats shit on tough issues so the president doesn't have to" is a valuable service from a VP, but not if you want people to be ready to accept her at any moment as a drop in replacement.
So you're trying to talk about two different things and joining them together. On one hand being the heir apparent, and on the other having the president keel over.
Biden was absolutely the heir apparent. If his son hadn't died he would have ran, and our country may have been on a much different course than it's been for the past 6 years. For many of us, the idea of Cheney becoming president because of health reasons was pretty damn scary. For both bush terms!
Speaking of heir apparent, George Sr was definitely not considered qualified to follow in Reagan's footsteps. He actually called Reagan's policies voodoo economics.
In any case, if the president did have to step down hypothetically in 2 years, Kamala Harris is not going to appear any dumber than any of the other VP s we've had in my lifetime. She would be a placeholder until the next election, just like any of the others would have been.
They're intimately related because keeling over can happen in close proximity to an election. I never viewed Biden as heir apparent for Obama, maybe others did, but it didn't matter because there were plenty of other choices and he'd still have a full primary cycle to be tested and discarded if he ate too much shit to be elected. I'm not even sure he would have beaten Clinton if he ran.
If Biden keels over 1 year from now, we're in deep shit, and his chances of doing so are MUCH higher than other recent presidents. Pretending that Biden has the same negligible risk of leaving office early as any other president is the whole problem with their approach.
If that's the biggest negative, that's not so bad compared to all the other possibilities.
Not only is he old, but he's pretending that doesn't matter. I think that's pretty disingenuous.
The only major fuckup was the failure of student loan debt cancellation, and the pullout from Afghanistan. But arguably the latter wasn't his fault, as it had been put in place before he was in office.
Military-wise, the pullout of Afghanistan was a huge success. The Russians lost 535, the British lost 16,000. On top of it the United States evacuated 250,000+ civilians in 3 weeks who were never part of the pull-out. Many think of it as a failure but it was the largest humanitarian airlift effort in human history. If there was a fuckup it occurred in 2020 when Trump told the Taliban they can have Afghanistan. That is where everything fell to pieces.
Well, not to mention, Afghanistan had a few other knock-on effects on the, um, former Soviet Union.
During my government-paid vacation to Afghanistan, those we fought against were mostly Iranian or Pakastani, not actual Afghani people. If we did run into an Afghani it was usually a teenager. Given I was there in 2008 and 2012 and not in 2020, the feeling that any pull-out would be messy was already present. The locals didn't believe we would ever leave, we told them in 2012 we didn't think we were the right culture to help them out of the darkness and that we wouldn't stay forever. The United States never invested in Afghanistan, Congress blocked all grain shipments despite military intelligence showing it would result in farmers growing opium. I know for many Americans the only view of the nation was war images, but those of us on the ground saw more than that. The Afghani culture is really cool, they are the best horsemen I have ever seen, deeply caring and understanding. They also are a broken people who don't view themselves as a nation but as tribes of people. In the end those I met and spoke to were very interested in western culture and we fostered a great relationship. The largest problem they faced was foreigners from the West and South bringing war to their villages and forcing their strict religious rules on them.
I do believe that Afghanistan will never recover, India or China are going to exploit the nation for it's resources and leave nothing for the people there. Maybe either of those nations will run the Taliban out, but it won't be anytime soon.
That's an interesting perspective, thanks for sharing it.
It's only my perspective from what I saw around the Parwan Province of Afghanistan.
If there's one thing the US will do, it's get you hooked on drugs. You can be an army vet or a small country and it's just the same.
That, and stabbing the rail workers union in the back.
Actually, most of them ended up getting their sick days anyway in the end, due to the combined efforts of Biden and Bernie: http://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620\_IBEWandPaid
Holy shit, I guess I missed that news because of the reddit debacle. That's fabulous news.
From abroad at least Biden seems like a very poor candidate. As he's chosen to stand again the dems have little choice but get behind him or risk a devisive primary season splitting the party.
But the republicans look set to select a very poor candidate too. It says a lot about how broken US politics is that were probably going to see a rerun of the last election with two elderly candidates battling it out in a deeply divisive and particularly polarised election.
The election will basically come down to how many people don't like Donald Trump. That's not great.
Why?
Man, screw Biden. I would rather vote for AOC
Ranked voting needs to happen otherwise it will always be democrats vs republicans most of the time.
I wish. Ranked voting would be phenomenal. It's obviously more democratic. Makes no sense not to have it. But politicians are dirty corrupt pieces of shit.
I think we'd need a parliamentary system to end up with anything more than 2 parties being relevant. The 2 party system is sort of hard-wired into the way the house and Senate work. Ranked choice could have some cool effects on party primaries, though.
Also, the two party system can be broken quite easily if any state switches to proportional representation. If a third party wins even a small number of congressional seats, it could make them the kingmaker in a divided house.
Agreed, RCV would essentially mean that the primary is part of the election.
Is this not the case in the US? Sorry for not being up to date on this as I don't live in the US.
The US Constitution specifies that each state must elect a senator and house of representative, must send electors to the Electoral College for President. It does not specify how.
As such, some states have ranked choice voting. Others do not.
Ah I see. It's so weird how it works. Why not federate it so those laws are the same all over? I guess it's a reason for it but in my eyes it sounds very ineffective.
Also the whole electoral college sounds like s bad idea i guess. But it's also a "safe guard" i guess?
Going a bit OT on this one.
Because that would require a constitutional amendment. The GOP would lose the most so not a single red state or GOP senator or congress member would vote for it. Amendments take a 2/3 majority or a constitutional convention, which requires 2/3 of the state governments to agree to it, which is even harder to pull off.
Thanks this was very informative!
When the country was founded they needed to convince the state governments of a bunch of different states to agree to unify as a single nation.
At that time state governments had more power and influence on the federal government than they do today. Senators were picked by the state government, not popularly elected as they are today, and it was left to the state governments to decide how they would conduct elections and select delegates to represent them in the Electoral College which is the actual body that picks the president.
I would rather vote for a bird. Yes. Birds should govern the US! Imagine. To all seriousness AOC would have lost by so insanely amounts. Let's hope she and more of the liberal parts of the democratic party gets tractions. Getting young people in those positions would be great.
Ha, look at this guy thinking birds are real.
It is not?! https://giphy.com/gifs/despicable-me-minions-gif-qdDO6hTcyeDks
Keep in mind that the more power we give up to conservatives now, the less likely it is that you'll ever have a chance to do that further down the line. Aoc is backing the future of the world right now, but also her political future. The last conservative presidency did a LOT of damage to this country, if only by installing the justices who would go on to overturn Roe V Wade. She doesn't want to see more of that damage, and neither do you.
"we're under a fascist insurgency and we must ensure that the GOP doesn't gain the White House, this is why we must vote for a politician who refuses to do anything to prevent this insurgency from gaining strength like expanding the court or making abortion available on federal land and who refused to use their constitutional authority to prevent giving the House GOP any concessions on the budget/debt ceiling"
wtf is happening. This is a - rep for AOC in my eyes. She realizes the fucker is real old right? Elect someone younger please.
Its not like she has a realistic alternative. What do you want, a split democrat ticket going up against the republicans ?
I'm an ideological purist and I'm voting for Jill Stein! This won't backfire in any way!
AOC is being smart/practical. Is Biden anyone's first choice on the left? Fuck no. We can have some more ideological purity when the choice isn't between milquetoast and literal fucking fascists.
Biden wasn't even my third choice in the '20 primary. That said, he's one of the most legislatively accomplished presidents in modern history. Still zero chance I'm going to be excited about voting for him in '24, but who has a shot at beating Trump right now? is maybe the guy that already did?
I'm just tired of living in a country where I have to hold my nose and vote for the worst democrat, because the worst democrat still in no way comparable to the awfulness of even the best republican.
I agree with this sentiment, but how long must we wait to vote for actual exciting, progressive candidates? It feels like we've been "holding our nose" for decades now, and each time we vote for the "lesser evil" they become more emboldened to ensure that they always have power.
Given the data? 2032 the least. 2028 if millennials and Gen Z voted near 100%. I recall a study that points to only 2-3 red states if every single eligible millenials and Gen Z voted.
I think lots of Democrats could beat Trump, but none of them could beat Biden in a primary. He's the incumbent and he's just not disliked enough for people to abandon the sitting president.
Definitely. Again, it's just practicality. Too much at stake that's why the only ones feigning towards a primary challenger are doing so in bad faith. Also, re: dislike, I really think Biden just doesn't get enough credit. I definitely thought he wasn't the man for the job in spite of voting for him in '20, but he's pleasantly surprised me.
He's pleasantly surprised me, but taken some pretty unforgiveable actions (breaking the rail strike, Title 42) and still isn't the man for the job (continually reinforcing norms while conservatives ignore them for advantage). This is better than I expected, but still not great.
But he's the guy we have and as much as I wish it was someone else, there's no real path to changing that. If AOC endorses Kamala Harris in '28 we can start to talk about her losing her fight, but the people talking about primarying Biden are just detached from reality or, as you said, bad faith actors.
Absolutely not, but I wouldn't mind a primary
It might be a minus. in your eyes, but look at the other candidates we have for the Democratic Party. None of them are anywhere near as appealing as Biden. I'm saying that as some one who voted for Bernie in the primary before, and would flock to vote for AOC. And no, Marianne Williamson is not who I want for president given some of her questionable history though I would happily vote for her at a local level if the other person is a conservative or even a moderate.
Anything else would do nothing but make chaos, it's a really bad look if your own party doesn't back you anymore. Same with the VP, a president dropping their VP would also be a really bad look.
Cry all you want about "old white guy" but for this election he's the shoo-in. Yeah he's too old, I think so too, yeah I want a real progressive. But damn it all, he's done pretty great stuff and damn the democrats for not shouting about it more.
For a party to primary their own president, that would signal nothing but weakness.
I appreciate that we were on the precipice of fascism and still are scarily close to the edge, Biden was absolutely the right person and has done an ok job, all things considered. But he was past his prime in 2020 and he’s well past his prime in 2024. And Harris needs to get the boot too, she’s been absolutely worthless in a position that’s gotten more prominent these past two decades. If it’s Trump v Biden, I’ll absolutely vote Biden, but I’d vote for a rabid squirrel over Trump anytime, so that’s not saying much.
Well no shit, who else is she gonna support, the anti-vaxxer with a grudge against Fauci?
Isn't she eligible to run herself now? Things can absolutely get worse but can we try to have some imagination? Sigh
At least make her VP so when Bernie becomes a Force ghost, we've got someone on the inside at the top.
what if he already is a force ghost 0_0
I was there for the sparrow landing moment at the Moda center, back when. Literally 100ft from the podium (on the clock), and after that sight? I gotta say: I wouldn't be surprised.
Man that would be something. VP, then two consecutive terms at president.
To run for president you need to be at least 35. She is currently 33. This is the same for VP.
AOC does turn 35 on 10/13/24, one month before the presidential election
Let's fucking go, sick and tired of geriatric candidates.
How is the best case scenario Joe Biden? ♫
They really gonna make me vote for Joe Biden ♫
Biden is pretty unambiguously awful, and only looks good against any Republican. AOC is doing the right thing here, but long-term we have got to get rid of these cobwebheaded oldsters and move on to the next generation, or the generation after.
When we do, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would be a good choice.
I don't agree, but I'm objectively curious why you hold that opinion.
Which opinion, sorry. There were a few in there... :)
AOC is a great choice, but Biden is far from awful. Certainly not ideal, but let's be reasonable.
Biden is awful, from a left perspective, and I'm of the left. I imagine for middle-of-the-roadsters, though, Biden's the yellow line.
Hes outlawed collective bargaining, put it into law that oil and gas must get more land than any renewable energy, accerating climate change with a trillion dollars for more roads and cars. Low wage earners? Never in American history have they been ignored for longer than under Biden. His promise to fix the flaw in the affordable care act that makes sure millions of the lowest earners specifically can recieve no medical coverage? Not even written into a bill to be considered in the first place. Inflation has ran ahead and left people like me behind, my life is worse now than when he first took office.
He's been president for three years.
To what is this even referring?
From here
See also
If you're referring to the Railroad workers, see this comment by BrandoGil
Please post a source indicating any sort of mandate that oil and gas "must get more land".
From here
and
right, but it's been going on for much longer than that, it's just more egregious the longer that is, so now its most egregious under him. Also, no plan to address this in his future as far as he's said, and he wont even work on stuff he has said he would
this is him outlawing collective bargaining. here
And the portion of the Infrastructure Bill requiring Oil and Gas get first dibs on any federal land being leased, go here and ctrl+f for sec. 50265 " ENSURING ENERGY SECURITY" where they outline how at a minimum, tens of millions of acres of federal land has to be auctioned to oil and gas first.
https://youtu.be/EM6jMtG_MB8
After voting against the railroad workers strike, I wouldn''t be surprised if this scab supports whoever's ghouliest democrat they could prop up.
He got more done than we thought. Way better than the last guy and that WMD degenerate.
Yeah, I'm not a Biden fan by any stretch, but he went way more left than team I thought he would, and has been very effective on a number of issues.
I'd rather have almost any other prominent Democrat, to say nothing of an actual liberal, but I can live with 4 more years of Biden. He's the only realistic candidate in the party. No one was going to win a primary challenge against him.