This is a truly terrible take. If I run a restaurant, and it goes out of business, I don't get to blame my customers. If I ever want to run a successful restaurant, I have to look at my product, marketing, and service and figure out where I failed. If Biden loses, then the Dems need to look at where they failed; I'd start with the fact that they chose not to hold a primary when the majority of their own party didn't want Biden to be the candidate.
This is a bad analogy. This isn't like running a business. Voters don't have a lot of choice over the product, they just have their vote. We have two choices (effectively) and some will reject a candidate over a single issue when the consequences are much broader.
You're right, it's not a good analogy. In this country, voting is not mandatory, election day isn't a holiday, and in many states, mail-in voting is not available and polling locations are sparse. Voting is a hardship for many Americans, especially lower income Americans. This isn't like asking someone to go to a restaurant; going to a restaurant is easier and has more tangible benefits.
However, my core point is the same. The most basic function of a political party is to get votes and win elections. If the party can't do that, the failure lies with the party, not the voters.
It's as if a town has the choice of having one restaurant and only one restaurant. We have one that meekly attempted to do right by their customers and fell short, or the other that actively tries to harm some of its customers (often your family and friends).
You only have those 2 choices. You can't get a different restaurant. You're forced to eat at the restaurant that is chosen, whether you helped choose it or not. And yes, you can blame the customers because they have literally only this option, and there is no better choice this time.
Let's fix your fixing of my analogy. Imagine the two restaurants you mentioned exist. Now imagine thinking the people who don't go out to eat are entitled.
And yeah, I know you're going to tell me that elections have consequences for everyone, whether they vote or not, but most people who don't vote don't see it that way. Sure, a small percentage of them are withholding their vote as a protest, but most of them are working class people that are barely getting by. They're not going waste what little free time they have voting for a candidate if they don't think it will help them. So stop trying to shame them into voting and give them something to vote for.
Not saying you shouldn't do the right thing when the choice is limited, but how about the DNC stops putting its finger on the scale for unpopular establishment candidates?
It's clear that the 'safe' choice can still lose, so why not go for the person the base actually likes instead of another centrist wet napkin who appeals to no one?
We couldn't primary Biden in 2024 if we wanted to. Even the unaligned votes that should be a symbol of "hey, you're not pleasing your base" were ignored. In 2028, they'll surely push K-hole as the safe choice because even if Trump dies, you know they'll put his head in a jar to run him again and clearly his only natural enemy is bland centre-right politics.
Biden's appeal wasn't that he was charismatic or brilliant or super-competent.. it was that he was a reasonably sincere, respectable human, and he's proceeded to squander that by failing to handle Gaza gracefully.
Don't tell me he can't do anything. Just run the same playbook we subjected Venezuela or Cuba to, and that would get Bibi's attention.
Biden was the incumbent. When he chose to run in 2024, the decision was made. You don't just throw away that advantage. If the DNC funded an opponent, it would only divide the base.
Case an point - just look around at Lemmy users. There are still a ton of users clinging onto the DNC boycott after the controversy of Hillary getting the 2016 nomination.
Now is not the time to divide further. Now is the time to shut the fascists down before we lose the ability to run any opposition, charismatic or not, in 2028.
You act like this is some big Injustice or surprise. Let me ask you a question. When has any party ever primaried an incumbent candidate of their party. Who were the 2019 republican primary candidates? Are the Democrats doing anything to you. Or are you a victim of your misunderstanding. This isn't a defense of Democrats mind you. It's just unusual that they're always held to different/unrealistic expectations.
Also I think it's important to point out. One of the only people to even remotely seriously push to primary Joe Biden was Dean Phillips. You know the Trump appeaser. Who recently called for New York's Governor to Pardon Trump. Sure sad I didn't get to vote for that man LOL. The fact is everyone knew there would not be and didn't necessarily need to be a primary this year. I hope everyone is ready for 28 though. I'm really hoping for some younger blood now that the boomers are dying out. Honestly I'd like to see Ocasio Cortez make an effort. She's young and might not make it. But she's got plenty of time to work at it and hone her skills.
It’s just unusual that they’re always held to different/unrealistic expectations.
Perhaps they're victims of their branding/positioning.
If a Trump, or even a Romney, says "we can wash our hands of a little genocide in the middle east for political gameplay/economic convenience/religious theories", that's pretty much within what people expect of them. The GOP has had a vaguely evil air since at least Nixon, if not McCarthy.
The Democrats, however, try to present themselves as trying to be on the right side of history. While this is no doubt a combination of cynical "this locks in some demographics" and "social justice is still cheaper than actual economic reform", it means people expect a little higher standards. The bar is unbelievably low here, and he's still tripping over it.
Okay, so Biden abandons Israel tomorrow. Does the genocide stop? Nope because it was always Congress that authorized and controlled the spending and weapons shipment. Mike Johnson and the Republicans will gleefully fund the genocide in Palestine. And on top of that now we've lost all diplomatic influence with israel. They are now all in on the genocide. Worse Biden who's actually made many overtures trying to bring peace actually working with the system and not viewing things through a childish black and white lens. No longer has any pull to negotiate any peace treaties or ceasefires.
Whether or not abandoning Israel completely would slow the genocide anytime soon. It would ultimately increase the killing. Many countries in the region. Would readily attack Israel without the United States to defend it. So the genocide would switch from innocent Palestinians to innocent israelis. I'm not sure how that's a better thing. It's just exchanging alike for alike.
You seem to think this is very simple however. And I'd be interested to get your thoughts on this. Please explain and simple thoughts how you feel the Democrats should handle this. And then explain why them following your actions would have the outcome you claim it will.
Regaining the moral high ground; we are no longer complicit. This is, to a big degree, playing for a domestic audience, and I think it's what a lot of protesters are after. Yes, Congress may ultimately cut the cheques, but I'm pretty sure the administration can find ways to tie up delivery of support in red tape.
Israeli impunity has always been backstopped by the assumption the US would never turn on them. If other countries turn up their nose, it doesn't have the same meaning. Losing American support would be a huge shock to their political system.
Alternatively, we could go to the point and publically declare what everyone knows-- Netanyahu is fanning the war because once it's over, his administration is defunct, and his legal problems resume. We could singularly demonize HIM as a warmonger-- personal sanctions, supporting his prosecution for war crimes, or classic Cold War style encouragement of regime change.
Yes, whatever we do, we piss off Israel, but if we don't take off the kid gloves now, then when? If they finally admit to nuclear weapons by dropping one?
So Bush Jr. had the lowest approval rating for a president that won a second term. He ended his second term with one of the lowest approval rating of any president of all time (just a short and curly ahead of Nixon).
Some detail:
Including George W. Bush
Approval Shifts:
Mean Shift: 1.91%
Standard Deviation: 10.53%
Winning Candidates' Approval Ratings:
Mean Approval Rating: 50.73%
Standard Deviation: 11.14%
Excluding George W. Bush
Approval Shifts:
Mean Shift: 3.60%
Standard Deviation: 9.40%
Winning Candidates' Approval Ratings:
Mean Approval Rating: 56.35%
Standard Deviation: 4.31%
Notice how the standard deviation associated with the winning candidate tightens up significantly with out Bush?
I do publish the results of these analyses, here, on lemmy. However, I just have a day job that has prevented me from doing "the rest" of this analysis. This is only one part of a larger analysis I have planned.
ROFL. Someone known to be VERY biased and anti-democracy, did an analysis….
The results were shocking- SHOCKING I tell you!
Similarly, I did research on socialism. Yeah. I know. Ironic, right? We’re both researching things at the same time? Anyway… The results say it won’t work in America. So…
You’re just incapable of remaining civil when some one calls you out, aren’t you?
Your first problem is you’re extrapolating data from polls.
ROFL!
Polls are incredibly inaccurate. And like your little research project- it’s VERY easy to skew the results in whatever favor you want. How about when you respond, if you think to act like a child and insult- just don’t respond and wait until tomorrow.
Now I’m a child? You seriously can’t speak with civility, can you? I’d suggest you take this seriously. People’s rights are at stake. And if you think what’s happening in Palestine is bad now….
Be prepared for Super Doppler Gyro Genocide 3000 v 2.0.
Because this is where we are. Vote or don’t vote. The genocide continues. You can get it with an extra helping of “fuck the LGBTQ*” and “Goodbye reproductive rights,” or you can help those that are positioned to lose their rights as human fucking beings.
People always trying to push Biden bad. This is the candidate that won. He is popular. This is what the base likes.
Everytime the Dems move left they lose. Happened to Al Gore, he tried to move left after hopefully the population warmed up with Bill Clinton. Bam lost the election. Thanks 3rd party voters. Hillary tried just a tiny little bit with the map room to fight climate change, after hopefully the population warmed up with Obama. Bam lost the election. Thanks protest no-voters!
Imagine what the landscape would be if they won. If you want the Dems to move left, you have to give them victories. Because when they lose, they go to the center to find voters.
Happened to Al Gore, he tried to move left after hopefully the population warmed up with Bill Clinton.
Gore didn't lose. had a proper recount been done (including the overvotes,) Gore probably would have won. SCOTUS intervened and stopped recount of the undervotes and Gore never pushed for recounts of the overvotes (which should have been recounted anyhow by florida state law.)
He became the big climate change guy after he lost.
I’d also point out that he only looks like a big climate change guy now. Back in 2000, the right wing hadn’t gone all-in on climate denialism yet. You could easily find Reagan and Bush people who didn’t think it was controversial.
They need the conservative voters in swing states. Do the Dems in swing states get excited about leftists or progressives? Like in 2016 Hillary had more votes in AZ, NV, FL, OH. I wish Bernie had gotten to the general and I think the EC is a cancer. But I don't think going by popular vote is a viable strategy given that we have to deal with that reality.
Reminds me of when the army tried to simplify uniforms by measuring a bunch of soldiers for data and making an average size medium, large, and small that ended up not fitting anyone well at at all.
Because the DNC is conservative. They don't want a left leaning candidate. That's not who they intend to represent. They represent money. That is all. They will let the Republicans pull things to the extreme right and then they can hang out right of center and now there is no other choice.
Because the base likes centrist wet napkins. I'm not sure who you're picturing as the base democratic voter block but they're not exactly a bunch of radicals.
Yeah I never understood wanting to vote for the "guy I want to have a beer with" thing.
The guys I have beers with are nice enough and funny at times, but I sure as hell wouldn't want them running the country.
I want a boring as fuck, never misses any details, workaholic kind or person running the country. Someone I wouldn't want to have a beer with because all they ever talk about is their job.
Not true, they shifted focus to him for a while so they could do everything in their power to kneecap and malign him when he had a plausible shot at giving them the presidency in 2016, and grabbing them support from a generation of young voters who were for the only time in their lives actually wholly excited to vote for somebody, anybody, who seemed like he might care about them and want to do great things with the awesome power of the American presidency.
He was the most popular politician in America for YEARS after they decided he wasn’t their guy, and is still more popular today than either Biden or Trump.
I want to put a sad emoji here, but I can’t actually find one that is sufficient to convey what I want to express about it
How about the democrats actually run a candidate with just a modicum of character and integrity rather than threatening people into voting for them. It should be easy to win against someone like bush or trump and yet they are consistently close races. Thats on you democrats.
Recasting “you are in danger if you don’t do X” as someone threatening / coercing you into doing X, is one of those little skillful emotional reframings that I was talking about in my other comment. If you watch closely on Lemmy there are like 8-10 of them (all pointing in the direction of “don’t vote for Joe Biden”) that come up again and again.
Yep. And i’m fucking sick of them. Blocking all i see. Ain’t nobody got time for fucking hillbilly polisci 101. They can argue amongst themselves about how voting works.
Look pal, I already explained how the imperialist pigdog state exploits colonial interests with teh GeNoSiDe?! You want me to blanket-characterize all armed conflict in United States of Imperial Genisode history too?!
Fine. They were all puppeteered by telepathic lizards who force us to drink Coca cola because the nanochip bitcoin represses the workers of glorious freedoms.
Which, frankly, should already have been obvious. It’s, like, so obvious omg.
I just like it when he speaks plainly. In circular detatched pastiches of what a normal highly unqualified person might say if they were desperate to sell you a shit sandwich. So inspiring. Bigly.
You shouldn’t block them. You should call them out. Every one of them. As them who they’d run in place of Biden the could win. MAKE them own up to having no solution and watch them weasel out of the discussion.
Never let up on them. Hold them to their ignorance.
Yeah, just don't have time. Besides, i’m not convinced they actually care about facts or reason. I’m sure many aren’t even American, so their hot take about Biden is - not necessary.
Dude I literally JUST explained this, IN THE MESSAGE YOU ARE REPLYING TO.
I have no idea if the Democrats can save the country. Actually, on their own, I am pretty confident that they cannot based on the track record. I am extremely sure that Trump will do catastrophic damage to it, though, which is a different statement.
Their election position basically ‘vote for us or else the orphan crushing party will be in charge’. Not very inspirational and rather threatening if you ask me.
I am pretty interested to see that me and @lolcatnip explaining this tactic, did not do anything at all to deter multiple people from blandly employing the exact same tactic in replies.
This comment is also pretty fascinating, there's a slight but noticeable China through-line to this user's comments to go with the Biden/Democrats through-line.
Gore’s presidency would have been a continuation of Clinton’s, who were aware of the threat potential posed by al-Qaeda. So if/when the now infamous Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US memo landed on his desk on August 6th, 2001 - or the even earlier “UBL [Usama Bin Laden] Threats Are Real" memos from months earlier; they would have been taken seriously and acted upon.
Instead Bush's response was to fob it off disinterestedly, saying: "All right. You've covered your ass"
So yes, learning from earlier failings - a theoretical Gore presidency would have taken these threats much more seriously, and could have prevented the thousands of deaths of 9/11, and tens of thousands of deaths in the subsequent wars.
So if/when the now infamous Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US memo landed on his desk on August 6th, 2001 - or the even earlier “UBL [Usama Bin Laden] Threats Are Real" memos from months earlier; they would have been taken seriously and acted upon.
Acted to do what? Implement TSA in January of 2001? Create DHS inside the first 100 days? Put air marshals on planes by June?
Intelligence knew about the pending attacks, but had no real way to interface with airport security. That was the root of the problem. And nobody was going to solve it until after 9/11 because Congress would not have taken this any more seriously than they took it during Blowjob Gate, when Al Qaeda was taking pot shots at the USS Cole.
The president has quite a bit of ability to set priorities and work assignments within the justice dept and intelligence agencies and other parts of the executive branch. Unlike legislative things, he really can just say “put 1,000 people on this Bin Laden thing” one day and just from that they just go off and do it exactly like he said.
Bush did pretty much the exact opposite, actively refusing to use his leadership position to instruct the people who worked for him to do anything about the threat that they were telling him existed. Idk if anything Gore did would have made a difference, but there definitely is a consensus that Bush fucked up on recognizing and reacting, in retrospect.
The president has quite a bit of ability to set priorities and funding levels and work assignments within the justice dept and intelligence agencies.
If he's a Republican, sure.
But Democrats always have their hands tied.
Bush did pretty much the exact opposite, actively refusing to use his leadership position to instruct the people who worked for him to do anything about the threat that they were telling him existed.
Bush was fixated, laser-like, on Iraq and looking for any excuse to invade. The Al Qaeda memos were treated as a distraction.
However, the theory that he just had a big "Stop Al Qaeda" button under his desk and refusee to press it is naive. There's no real policy Gore could have implemented to stop the 9/11 hijackings that would have come into force between January and September.
At best, he could have brought on a senior staffer who better coordinated between the NSA and the FBI. But even then, you're assuming the FBI would have been in the right place at the right time to act.
Gore, personally, wasn't going to do anything to change the outcome.
“Can sit down and have a beer with him” “Tells it like it is” “I like him ‘cause he’s not a politician”
I wouldn’t be too hard on the electorate, although I 100% agree with the problem description and that counter-educating them out of being duped by these framings is important. But they didn’t come up with the framings. There’s a whole ass science of how to resonate with people emotionally and produce behaviors you want, and professionals have been studying it for over a century now to sell toothpaste and beer and deodorant, and it works. It’s actually one of the primary focuses of hard scientific study in our society, much much more so than addressing climate change. And so, when they turned that whole machine in favor of particular candidates and against other candidates, it’s not surprising that it worked on a whole fuck of a lot of people.
Now let’s start to talk about how “I could NEVER vote for a genocide” and “Here comes the biggest election of our lifetime, just like every other one before that 🙄” fits into that framework…
Tell me you've never had a lengthy conversation with someone who gets all their political news from Tiktok without telling me etc
You could literally nominate a chocolate milkshake or a dead squirrel and they wouldn't know the difference if they saw some meme videos that said chocolate milkshake is gonna lower gas prices
Like a lot of the founding fathers, I think a strong and honest press is one of the key features of a democracy, and without that, it won't function, and people being able to vote won't do a damn thing to prevent the whole thing from turning into tyranny
And hey! Look at our media!
And hey! Look what kind of government we have, oh no oh fuck
That was kind of my point about the whole thing: That skillful manipulation of the voters happens, and has ruined the country pretty thoroughly. I don't think the answer is to turn away from democracy, but I do that think that fixing the media so that people have some semblance of an accurate picture of what's happening is an absolutely urgent issue right now.
It seems a tad ahistorical to suggest that biased media is in any way new.
If anything we are now living in an era of choice where we can choose which approved narrative we’ll take in as opposed to being subject to the local hearst papers outlook.
If control over media gives so much power though, why not change who has that control?
I mean you’re not wrong. The US spent most of the previous two centuries wandering around the world killing and enslaving anyone who made them nervous or unprofitable while the whole “honest” media wrote a never ending stream of stories enthusing about how nice it was that the price of bananas was going down
Then when the internet came along we replaced that with an absolute explosion of viewpoints some of which are honest, some of which are just lazy and pointless, and some of which are manufactured propaganda which shows a remarkable level of effectiveness
But… if you wanna tell me that that’s not the pure step backwards I described it as, I won’t say you’re totally wrong about that tbh
Regardless of all that, yes, I still think making it work effectively and honestly is as important now as it ever was
If media is used by a tiny group to control what people think and new technology allows the same tiny group to reach people with more granularity, is it really a move “forwards” or “backwards”?
If you believe that media is a part of functioning democracy, who should be in control of it?
By “Media” I mean everything. Newspapers, TV, social media, anything that lets people know what’s going on in the world
It used to be like a few thousand independent editors all across the country, then with TV and corporate consolidation it dwindled to basically just 1 corporate viewpoint, now with social media and the internet I think public opinion is more or less up for grabs for whoever wants to spend the most money to influence it (not that different from the later stages of the TV era tbh)
For quite a while now media has been out of “control” of any single grouping; basically that was one of the big advantages of the internet era. But the disadvantage is that real journalism costs money, and modern newspapers don’t have a good business model to stay alive and do it, and modern social media isn’t really configured to be able to keep out propaganda viewpoints, and so the public narrative winding up de facto “in control” of whoever puts more money and effort into distorting it.
I don’t think we should go back to where anyone can have “control” necessarily but it would be nice if real journalism could make money again to be able to do the investigative aspect, and if normal person social media (for the opinion aspect and sharing-news-stories aspect) was community operated and resistant to deliberate propaganda
Best answer I can come up with to your question as I see it
So. That’s why I say community operated, and that the internet was a big step forward whatever its flaws. I wouldn’t consider the Black Panther viewpoint to be propaganda, and yet I think there’s been a pretty consistent consensus from newspapers to TV to modern corporate social media that if the Black Panthers’ viewpoint is on your front page one day, then that’s a problem and we’re gonna have to fix it and probably someone’s getting fired or at least moved around.
How community operated social media can determine the difference between somebody in Akron who thinks Joe Biden is a bum and wants to say so, and somebody managing 59 accounts through a VPN each of which keeps up a steady stream of content including a healthy dose of “Joe Biden is a bum and I want to say so,” I honestly have no idea. In a perfect world, to me. the social media software would contain the judgement that:
the Black Panthers would not be propaganda
an honest Trump supporter would not be propaganda
the guy in Akron would not be propaganda, and
and the guy with 59 accounts would be propaganda.
How to implement that though, I don’t really know.
To compare it to a previous era of media, would you say that someone wheatpasting a bunch of flyers everywhere is propaganda in the same way that the person with 59 accounts is?
I take issue with defining propaganda as only that kind of amplifying a point of view through technology, because that’s a really limited definition that doesn’t fit with the last two hundred years of use and one that almost seems to point at smaller organizations more than large ones but I’m willing to dive into it anyway.
Wheatpasting is great. To me, the difference is twofold. Roughly speaking, you could say:
Honestly presenting the source of what you're putting out is opinion, disguising or being deceptive with it is propaganda
A method that offers 1 unit of influence per person, is opinion, whereas a method that gives 1 unit of influence over the narrative per dollar is propaganda
Like I say, I am fascinated that you don't see a problem with running a large number of accounts to create the illusion of popularity of a certain viewpoint, without it needing to be a persuasive enough viewpoint to gain popularity on its own
I brought up wheatpasting specifically to bring this point up, you said methods that produce more influence based on the monetary input are propaganda. Would you say that lobbying is propaganda? Would you say using any technology (such as wheatpasting) beyond yelling in the street is propaganda?
The reason I ask that last one is because that technology, the printing press, the paste and brush, cost money and produce a lasting effect.
Would you say that the way the Washington post and New York Times exercise editorial control over reporting about Gaza is propaganda?
I never said that I don’t see a problem with running a large number of accounts, we’re talking about weather it’s propaganda, not weather it’s problem or bad.
Partisan News: Presenting Trump’s mostly useless executive order in a carefully crafted way that might lead viewers to connect the dots and think Trump was the one that capped the price of insulin
I have trouble treating even the afp article I linked you to as having a relatively low amount of bias despite the reality that it presents more of the story than even the debunking site snopes does. The reason I don’t like it is that the article itself is very clearly trying to lessen the importance of trump regime eo 13937 (I think that’s the number. I don’t tend to open up a million tabs to verify everything and just type off the dome) to rebut actual republican propaganda about it.
Even though it has the information in there, I don’t like having to turn to counterpunch type stories to chase down proof of the basic facts that I saw play out.
Of course, there’s a real kernel of truth to that propaganda and while I don’t think that trump should get credit for the insulin price cap (which is why I didn’t say it!), I think that’s where you’re getting the idea that my completely factual claim from some other thread that the biden regime shut down the trump regimes price cap before they shut down the cia antivax disinformation campaign.
And I understand why you might be inclined to view things that way. It takes either sober minded and clear eyed assessment or naked cynicism to recognize that eo 13937, however flawed, was fundamentally a good thing and allowing people to suffer for an extra two years by walking it back and not funding it, allowing the drug companies complaints to hhs to result in its ultimate rescintion, while including an expanded version in a giant contentious bill is a fundamentally bad thing.
A clear eyed assessment would simply recognize these things as they are and a cynical minded outlook would see the history of the insulin price cap as a feather industry had assented to years before and both parties had been trying to claim for a while.
The point of all this is to say: it really seems like your gauge for propaganda is more of an us versus them scale than one that has a clear definition.
Our trustworthy, objective media, their cynical propagandists.
Because to do that we need a supermajority in the Senate and no Liebermans, Manchins, or Sinemas. The tools we have to fix things are as broken as the things we need to fix.
Those things didn’t change any of the last times some party had a supermajority. What makes you think some new supermajority would be any different, or that republicans or democrats are any different now?
I mean, my ass is out here trying to get .world to vote psl, but for the democrats a good candidate looks like someone who doesn’t wander off when meeting with the g7, can give a coherent interview without literally asking for their handler, doesn’t have a storied history of creating all the problems the American people experience on a daily basis, is capable of holding their own in a debate with trump (not easy!) and just basically isn’t a fucking McKenzie pod person.
They don’t a bench that covers those positions, but that would be good for them.
Trump has decades of experience working a crowd and flipping the script on people. No matter what you think of him as a candidate or as a person you gotta admit he’s a formidable stage presence.
Notable-er and notable-er. Have you seen his interviews from any point in the last 5 years or so? For example he has a noticeable habit of getting up and walking out because they're not going how he wants them to go.
This thing you're saying is a very unusual thing to say or believe for pretty much any observer of American politics outside a very specific segment. I am fascinated by this. Tell me more. Can you give me an example e.g. of him flipping the script on someone?
He pretty famously made all the other republican candidates look terrible in the republican debates in the lead up to the 2016 election. I’ll get a specific example of flipping the script but I’m surprised to have to pull up receipts for what he’s universally acknowledged for.
Liberals are always willing to call trump a catty blowhard bully but when someone says as much using clearer, more neutral language it’s suddenly something to be dug into.
The man knows how to work a crowd and has genuine comedic timing even in his advanced age. You don’t have to hand it to him to recognize his strengths.
I’m surprised to have to pull up receipts for what he’s universally acknowledged for
genuine comedic timing even in his advanced age
Again: This is not a totally unusual view of Trump among American people. But for someone who's planning to vote for the PSL, who is familiar with ins and outs of flaws in Biden's policies and wants to talk about insulin price caps and universal health care, clearly cares about and follows news... and yet, somehow, to have this wrong a view of Trump like they just never happened to run across a Trump interview that happened since 2016, is weird. It's incongruous. It's a view that's exclusive to people who live in one particular type of media bubble only, generally speaking.
How about this, though. From your history:
If you don’t feel disgusted by this enough: the Biden regime shut down the insulin price cap faster than it shut down this program.
There is only one specific type of media where you might have picked up the impression that something like that was plausible (seen the concept of "insulin price cap" without the corresponding information that Biden was the one that enacted it.) Actually even more specific than the type of media diet that might have given you the idea that Trump is a good debater.
Where'd you learn that the Biden regime shut down the insulin price cap? Want to link me to a story about it? I'd love to learn more. You can educate me on the truth about the Biden regime so I'll realize I should vote third party, and save the country.
My not totally unusual (I can't help but notice that youre dancing around saying "accurate") view of trump is incompatible with leftist politics and also wrong somehow?
go ahead and come out and say what you want to say about that instead of making innuendos.
Snopes on the biden regime shutting down the insulin price cap. that article will go on to say that it was just a temporary pause for two months while the biden regime figured out what trump regime executive orders to allow to continue and that executive order 13937 wasn't going to take effect for another two days.
the snopes article hasn't been updated since january 25th 2021, but here's afp fact check with the details that the executive order 13937 wasn't ever "unfrozen" and implemented and was ultimately rescinded by hhs under biden in october of 2021.
as for the media bubble I live in, it's called knowing a diabetic who gets insulin on part d.
Did you read the whole AFP fact check? You really should. The Snopes article was written mid-“freeze”, so it wasn’t in a position to comment on the fact that Trump’s rule such as it was actually was enacted. Also, the AFP article talks about Trump’s order being pretty small in scope (would have applied to 1 in 11 people who needed it) and not funded from the POV of any individual FQHC, and wasn’t legislation, leaving it in unimplemented limbo even after Biden unfroze the order a short time later, until Biden passed actual legislation which did actually implement a price cap for all Medicare recipients, in the IRA.
Both Trump and Biden took steps to limit out-of-pocket costs for insulin, as did policymakers and legislators at the state and federal levels. But the posts mislead in claiming that Biden reversed Trump's actions.
The cost cap went into effect in 2021 and was unchanged when Biden took office.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which Biden signed into law in August 2022, requires all Medicare Part D plans and certain Medicare Advantage plans to eliminate the deductible for "covered insulin" and cap the co-payment at $35 per month. The measures went into effect January 1.
"What's happening with the Inflation Reduction Act is an expansion of the Trump administration's Part D model, and an improvement in the sense that it's no longer just a voluntary program, but required of all Part D plans," Cubanski said.
What I am innuendo-ing is that you are repeating right wing propaganda here of a pretty low caliber - which would actually be very difficult for you to have absorbed unless you are:
Exposed to right wing media like Fox News and social-media propaganda (the AFP fact check goes into some detail about an Instagram post that makes this nonsense claim)
And, more crucially, not up to speed on actual news, which would have conveyed the story “Trump falsely claims he was the source of the insulin price cap” and not the propaganda version. If you were aware of any news outside the conservative bubble you would have known the conservative telling of it is false.
I.e. you making this mistake is incompatible with you consuming any media diet other than a purely conservative media diet. I.e. I am saying that there is strong evidence that you are a fake leftist, and all this support for voting third party because Biden isn’t left enough and you like all good leftists are not going to vote for him, is exactly what it looks like i.e. lies coming from a person whose actual political alignment is pro-Trump.
It’s possible I guess that you are a real PSL supporter who just happens to watch almost all Fox News, or gets their news from Instagram propaganda and latched onto this one thing because it is anti Biden, or something like that, but that seems unlikely to me.
This is one of the reasons I don’t actually like the afp article. The part you quoted saying it went into effect is from a health insurance lobby think tank employee, and later on the article goes on to say that actually it was never implemented and no one got cheaper insulin from it because congress, the insurance companies and drug manufacturers complained and got hhs to rescind their ruling on its implementation in October of 2021:
Quoted here:
In summary: Trump's order was overturned. But no one had seen cost savings as it was never implemented -- and the number of patients who might have received discounts is far fewer than those who received aid through his voluntary Medicare program.
The extent to which I see Fox News is about an hour or so a year waiting in my local mechanics office to pay for some repair. I’m exposed to msnbc much more frequently every time I visit my neighbors and some family who always seem to have it on when I come by.
I haven’t claimed that trump is the source of the insulin price cap and in my other response to you in the branch of our conversation about how you define propaganda I imply that the industry’s assent to some sort of price cap after Covid is actually behind it, not either party regime.
Now on to the personal attacks:
Feel free to call me whatever you like. I explained that my understanding of this issue comes from being close to a person who receives insulin through part d and would have (they claim and I have no reason to dispute, considering it would mean revealing their income) benefited from eo 13937, not from some media campaign.
When I call some scratched liberal a fascist, it’s because they say something like “well, I have to support the genocide with my vote because trump will do it here!”. I’m paraphrasing, but my point is that what seems like a contentious personal attack from me (fascist!) is actually based directly on the things they’re saying (I’d prefer people are genocided abroad rather than at home!).
When you call me a pro-trump fake leftist it’s because of innuendo and assumption. I told you explicitly why and how I know what I know, that it’s due to personal experience, not media exposure, yet you still in the comment directly responding to that one badjacket me by implying I watch the bad media.
Come on, that’s a deeply unserious tactic to deploy and is especially offensive when you’re trying to have a conversation about propaganda in another branch of this very conversation!
You’re seriously referencing a cropped video from Fox that removed the skydiver Biden walked over and gave a thumbs up to as wandering off. Stop acting like you give a fuck about the country you are so intentionally trying to undermine with your ignorant bullshit.
Dude forget about the misleadingly cropped videos, check out the thread where they claimed that Trump capped insulin prices and Biden shut down the price cap. You are literally talking to a conservative (and one who’s poorly informed enough not to realize that making that claim on Lemmy would be recognized as Facebook-uncle caliber conservative propaganda.)
Hey, want to restart this conversation? I’m interested to hear more about the nature of the justice system in the USSR, and now I’m pretty curious what is your assessment of the Ukraine war.
Al Gore and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. You got the conservative justices because of the electoral college. And because Obama let Mitch McConnell steamroll him into “it’s too close to an election”.
Obama also backtracked from Freedom of Choice Act immediately after entering office, which was a significant blow to the effort of protecting abortion rights.
Do you really think that the fedsoc six would give a shit about a piece of legislation? They were always going to rule against abortion regardless of its legal basis because they are all theocratic fucks. The only thing that is going to save abortion is a rebalancing of the court.
Oh these days never. In 2009 though I think Stevens would've swung with Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Breyer and may have been able to cuck Roberts into a majority had there been a challenge.
Which is absolutely why the federalist society waited until they got their court to start their challenges.
They've got anti trans bullshit for those people now, and they can still get them frothing about states where abortion is still legal to push for a federal ban.
That's the Democrat's only gambit. Never make any progress and keep as much rights as possible contingent on the next election to try to force people into accepting lesser evils.
God Obama didn't "let" him. It was in the hands of the Senate and there was nothing Obama could do. Stuff like you posted is revisionist history, and for what purpose?
On this site it's kinda hard to tell. A lot of people think that voting should just be checking the box beside the name of someone that agrees with them 100% and then everything instantly becomes they want it to be the day after the election.
More the Democrats that make-up the DNC who control the voting menu.
Take the case of Howard Dean. Destroyed electorally by the media in 2004, managed to become chair of the DNC, implements the 50 state strategy and Obama wins big.
Dean was the last Democrat marginally willing to adopt a winning strategy and he was destroyed for it. Democratic Speakers of the House, Party Majority Leader, Whips, Chiefs of Staff all vocally and vociferously against him.
He only won them Virginia which has been Blue(ish) since. He had the party do outreach in North Carolina and flipped it for Obama. His strategy even won INDIANA.
Cross reference the states the conservative cutouts are winning in the primaries with whether or not they are swing states and number of EC votes, then get back to us. In 2016, Hillary had more votes in AZ, NV, FL, OH. What do you want to happen for that shit, bank it on states like WV (+42 R) suddenly flipping blue?
Because there isn't an overwhelming swarm of people voting for anyone who isn't Repub, the Dems have to chase the reliable voters, who are more conservative.
It is the voters who are wrong, by staying home election after election or throwing their votes in the trash instead of pushing against the sliding window.
I don't like the Dem choices but IDK what the fuck else they are supposed to do once the primaries start. Running the candidate who wins with Dem voters in swing states makes sense as a strategy.
Also, we can agree the DNC of yesteryear is (hopefully) gone. I haven’t seen a bunch of bloodless garbage about “better jobs” or what the fuck ever in awhile. Of course that’s in part because the “republiQan lite” approach was a goddamned disaster.
I suspect that for every Manchin and Sinema who took the negative publicity, there are 10 Manchins and Sinemas who didn't have to. They'll cash out when it's their turn. Call me cynical if you want.
Democrats always try to straddle the fence of keeping the status qou and slowly advancing civil rights and worker protection, all the while always protecting corporate interest.
Republicans give ZERO shits about civil rights or worker rights and are balls deep in corporate money, but they keep selling themselves by pushing culture wars and pretending to be "for the people" because "tax cuts"
The average voter is dumb as shit and swallows the Republican bullshit readily because it absolves them of any blame. It's always someone else's fault, the gays, the blacks the immigrants... There is always someone to blame.
So yea... We have two parties, one center right and one batshit crazy right.
Idiots seem to not understand that if you want politics to move more left you have to defeat the far right nut jobs, you aren't going to go left by refusing to vote democrat because they are not left enough for you. You need to put pressure on the Republicans so they have to move back towards the center, then Democrats will be forced to move more left.
But this is already too much text and nuance for the average voter so they'll keep screaming about both sides and "I'd like to have a beer with x..."
Literally more people voted for Gore than Bush. Not sure what you expect the voters to do when they vote and the court just chooses the other guy
Maybe their positions were ok and the massive proven amounts of dark money had an effect? Maybe the obvious and admitted attempt at interference was successful, as they’ve been crowing for years? Nah…must be bad messaging from the dems
An attack on the capitol in 2000 would have been legitimate and justified defense of the nation after watching a Repub SCOTUS decide an election for the Repubs.
