Honestly you guys are fucked, Even if Biden scrapes a win these are going to be the stakes every 4 years until the US turns into a dictatorship. Fuck knows how that's going to affect the rest of us around the world in the long run.
One thing that might save us is if Trump dies without managing to get elected. A sizable chunk of the GOP's base are people who worship him specifically, and if he were gone it might splinter them. But it's hard to know how that would play out for sure. The situation is definitely very, very grim.
DeSantis flopped miserably the last time he tried. The ones that are diehard GOP supporters will indeed flock to whoever is thrown at them, but the GOP has tied themselves to Trump because he has a cult that they rely on to get enough votes to win. It's been 20 years since they've managed to get someone other than Trump elected.
Cults of personality don't work that way. They don't get replacements. They can try, but they're not likely to reach a critical threshold of votes. They may not even reach a House or Senate majority, and Project 2025 can't go ahead at the federal level without all three.
And while asshole despots like DeSantis are a dime a dozen, Trump is unique in his absolute lack of shame or any kind of self-awareness whatsoever. He won't stop, ever, unless someone physically makes him.
Exactly this.
Also, MAGAs are weak-minded followers types. If their leadership falls, they fail permanently. They are still scum, but they are as they have been for years, squirming under rocks...where they belong.
Best-case scenario is when Trump's gone, the MAGAts can't agree on a replacement to get behind. A lot of Trump's base are people who hate the government, including the GOP, and only vote because of him. We'll see what happens with them eventually.
He is indeed a symptom, but he's also something more, a cult leader. You're right that the rot will be there regardless, but the GOP needs every single person willing to support them to vote to stay in power. There are a lot of people who specifically worship Trump, not the GOP.
He's also a complete moron, therefore easy to control. And lord knows there no shortage of fools that'd line up to replace him. No, the problem runs much deeper than Trump.
Yes and no. Do you honestly believe that the GOP likes being attached to him? By all accounts, most people who have to work with him hate him. But they just can't get rid of him. If he were that easy to manipulate and replace, they would have done so long ago, to get a more predictable stooge. No, there's something about him specifically that they need, or at least, they think they do.
It’s the chicken/egg of politics, really. Does Trump represent his base or does his base represent him? Do politicians campaign on the wishes of their constituents? Or do their constituents develop their views based on their politicians?
Regardless of his importance, Trump is very much the enemy, as are the other things you mentioned. Hopefully I'll get the chance to find out just how important he was after he's gone.
Trump won't be so easy to replace - if you want proof, look at how the GOP stuck with him even after he lost an election. No political party has ever done that in modern times. There was a (sorely missed) period where we didn't hear from him for quite some time. You'd think during that time a big, evil organization like the GOP could have found a better replacement that's smarter more predictable, but no, they desperately want his cult for their votes. Replacing a cult leader can be difficult, especially since Trump is such a uniquely horrible person. Usually, the leader has to give their blessing to someone else to transfer leadership, and that's something Trump would never, ever do.
I disagree with this, I think the Republican Party is waning and they’re now in the sweet spot where they have a large enough base to enact a fascist takeover but not enough to win by appealing to the electorate. If they aren’t able to change the rules in their favor in the next couple cycles I think they become further marginalized and lose their chance.
That’s not to say we won’t face a similar problem again after we have a party realignment, but I do think the GOP specifically has a limited window in which to seize power.
As long as corporate capture isn't addressed fascism is only going to get worse. We're angry that our politicians have sold us out. The dim ones will listen to the guy that blames their inability to have a decent life on immigrants, gays, trans,, taxes, regulations, ect.
I agree with you there, but I think the upper class is going to increasingly push their agenda through the democrats rather than the republicans, and I think the republicans though perfectly willing to sell out will regardless lose power if they can’t seriously cement their hold somehow.
Yup, as the weak-willed establishment Republicans realize the insane people can't win anymore, they will turn tail and bail on them. Then the shitty people can go back under their rocks and moderate conservatives can come back into power.
Hopefully the Democrat's constituents can get ranked choice voting through so this doesn't happen again. Then we can get critical thinking education spread and the lunatic fringe right-wing wond be able to live here anymore.
Yes, but at least European countries have more than 2 parties, making them more resilient. It also makes it easier to kick the fascists out of power after they got in.
Fascism is very much growing in Europe as well, but the situation is not as dire.
Not all of the EU. Some countries have managed to recover from a far-right party taking control even, like Poland's "new" coalition that took power back from the far-right PiS. I know it looks rough when you're looking at monsters like Le Pen making gains, but Europe still has a chance.
There's another theory why this is: calling Trump an existential threat is just a dishonest way to try to make people care about voting. They want to win for reasons that have nothing to do with how much in danger democracy is.
just imagine this with other existential threats. "a meteor the size of the moon will crash into the earth in 5 months if we don't do anything. so please vote for the meteor kindly changing course. btw current polls show that the meteor has higher approval rating than I do so please stop that too"
If he's such an existential threat (and he is), why the fuck are they not forcing the geriatric incompetent running on their ticket to drop out? They're sleepwalking into fascism and it's terrifying.
My semi-secret conspiracy theory adjacent theory is it's intentional. That not all, but many, of the Democratic national party is in bed with the same big businesses paying off Republicans, and they're prepared to pull a Hindenburg and install the very fascists they claim to resist once they can no longer hide their betrayal.
I also do think it's primarily a money issue. Some of it might be those donors wanting the two parties to do different things, by basically leading the democrats into their graves.
I stand that Kamala's best chance is to hold the ship steady as is, and then ask Biden to resign in December or January.
There's a lot of racists out there. I feel like if she's at the top of the ticket, she's gonna get dragged down. Biden truly is serving as an effective shield for her. Either way, Kamala is the implicit vote if anything wrong happens to Biden (which I admit is increasingly likely given his age).
It makes no sense for Kamala to rush to the top of the ticket given her position.
Wasn't this always the angle, even when people called his age out last election? The argument was that Kamala Harris would step up, and that Biden didn't want a second term.
Given Harris' recent comments in the press regarding stuff she'd fix "if given power", I wonder if she's even on the VP card this time around? IMO, AOC might be a smarter choice for VP, since the left love her and the right loathe her. She'd bring a lot of younger disenfranchised people back around, and that might be enough.
Biden never any public or official statement about only serving 1-term, in fact when that story started circulating, the official response from his campaign was to say that they were not ruling it out.
There's a lot of racists out there. I feel like if she's at the top of the ticket, she's gonna get dragged down.
This is just preemptive cope to avoid having to reflect on whether the Democratic leadership and its preferred candidates are actually the thing that needs change, and she's not even an actual candidate yet. Kamala's biggest problem is not that she isn't white. Obama was a Black man, but he had heaps of charisma. Kamala has all the charisma of a plate of lutefisk,and people flat out do not like her. She is also irrevocably tied to Biden and his legacy, likely to her detriment amongst the crowds you would most worry about not voting for her because of her not being white.
Most polls put her on par with Biden. Dataforprogress.org has her leading when “fitness” and “strength” are brought into question, but that’s the only poll I’ve seen where she has any lead at all.
If he’s such an existential threat (and he is), why the fuck are they not forcing the geriatric incompetent running on their ticket to drop out?
Because their rank-and-file voters who voted in the primary voted for him. This primary and last primary. And if you want people to leave your party in a big exodus, invalidating their primary vote is how you do that. They learned that in Bernie's race. I voted for Biden, he wasn't the only person to run in the primary, I'll be damned if the "party elite" select some other candidate anyways, why even vote in the primaries at that point? May as well register for the R primary since they at least had more candidates and (so far) appear to respect their primary process so my vote would actually mean something.
One thing you'll notice is that the venn diagram for people who complain about only having "two choices" and the people who don't participate in primaries is nearly a perfect circle. You get an overwhelming amount of choices if you vote in every primary and every election.If you only vote once every 2 or 4 years and skip the primaries, yeah, you get two choices.
No one considers this primary a real vote, or that a vote from four years ago indicates current preferences. If it did, 50% of Democrats who watched the debate wouldn't want him to step aside.
50% of people who watched the debate didn't participate in the primaries. Most people don't vote, and of those who do vote, most don't participate in primaries. Nobody of consequence ran. Literally anybody could have run. They didn't. It's not the fault of "DNC leadership" that nobody stepped up to the plate to run.
FWIW some people did run, Biden wasn't literally the only candidate. I had more than one candidate on my primary ballot and I voted for Biden because he had the best chance of winning the general. In fact, Biden lost the primary in American Samoa. If you swap Biden for somebody else, you've invalidated my primary vote. That's just as much a threat to democracy as anything else.
Nobody of consequence ran. Literally anybody could have run. They didn’t.
Yes, exactly. That's why no one considers their vote in the 2024 primary to be a real indication of preference. If you think your vote for a forgone conclusion was some solemn compact, that's a you issue. Votes without meaningful choice aren't meaningful votes.
Democracy doesn't guarantee you'll have good options, just that you have options. The time to express the greatest degree of preference is primaries. It's how the system works. You can be mad about that, but that's how it works. And it's fair, and it's democratic, and anybody can participate in it. And every four years, like clockwork, people come out of the woodwork to complain about how their vote doesn't matter and the two-party system is corrupt and yada yada who never even took the time to vote in the primary or downballot elections. It's equivalent to people who complain that the president isn't getting x done while not voting in mid-terms to secure a congress who can make sure those things actually can get done. Primaries and downballot elections are how to build a candidate's resume and experience to run in a presidential election. Luckily for primary voters, the party doesn't listen to these people, they respect the ballots cast by their primary voters. I don't think they should have run Hillary, but she got the most primary votes so that's who they ran. There is nobody to blame there but her primary voters.
The levers of power are available to people, we just have to consistently use them.
I'm not mad about it, that's usually how incumbent primaries go. No one believes single-contender votes are sacred expressions of democracy though. Maybe no one except you, but as previously stated, that's a you issue.
Biden and the DNC knew that if he was forced to actually debate in an open primary, he'd be weakened as a candidate and would eventually lose to Trump. So they rigged the primary, hoped they could sneak a senile old man through without us realizing, and now they got caught.
The people in power are perfectly content to lose the cycle and try again in 2028. Newsom, Whitmer, etc. are all lining up to run against Trump's VP next cycle since he's term limited. And the reason Biden hasn't been thrown overboard yet is that the other potential candidates haven't decided if they want to throw away their carefully laid plans for 2028 to take a gamble here in 2024.
The only people that truly believe Trump winning in 2024 means there won't be an election in 2028 are the most myopic hyper partisan Democrat voters, and they believe that because it's a useful fallacy for the Democratic elite to have them believe. Because fear is the only motivator they have left at this point. But their actions clearly show that they don't believe it themselves.
I have voted in every primary and general election since I turned 18 in 98, and not one of the candidates I have voted for in the primary has ever won. Sure we get "loads of candidates," and then the party picks the worst of the lot. Then of course there are states like KY and PA where I can't vote in the primary since you have to declare a party, and that's against my religion.
I've voted in every primary and local election since the year 2000 and had a Kucinich for President bumper sticker and I still complain about the choices because my preferred candidate has never won. Ever.
There's plenty that can be done about the Court. Just tell them no. They made a massive precedent-defying power grab overruling Chevron. If the climate is an existential problem, a constitutional crisis is warranted.
You don't need them to comply. All they can do is write words. If you tell them they're making a power grab and you're not going to just cede power to them, they don't have anything they can do but write more words.
Defying the Supreme Court would set an extraordinarily terrible precedent. This only works if the masses are doing the defying. And it's incredibly risky, as the Republicans would very quickly follow suit
Oh no! A bad precedent. Wouldn't want to have one of those. Surely precedent will protect us from having reproductive rights stolen, or declaring the president a king, or declaring the regulatory state invalid. The fascists are already on the march and have demonstrated they're willing to trash precedent without the Democrats making the first move.
But none of that matters. Is this an existential issue or not? If it is, a constitutional crisis is warranted to solve it. You can't say something is existential and then worry about not doing anything too extreme.
Its long overdue for the Democrats to take some extreme measures. Without the opposing forces we'll certainly not be a republic by November. I'm ready to protest en masse. Shit I'll help plan.
Starting collective action has always been the big stumbling block for the left-of-center in America. Europeans would riot for far less. We need more unions and unions willing to be political to help act as a nucleus for mass protests to say they can't just do whatever they want. People should believe they have power other than just voting or signing a petition.
The Supreme Court made bribery semi-legal, elevated allied presidents to kings, and dismantled the regulations that do most of the heavy lifting to keep our air and water clean. While I concur with many Democrats correct statements about how bad these rulings are, they should be leading people to the streets. Hell, the three dissenting judges should be going before the senate to explain how antithetical to American democracy the most recent ruling is. Stop pretending the system is working when it's in freefall with no correction in sight.
Congress could impeach Justices or increase the headcount to properly balance the Court. Those are the legitimate ways to challenge these rulings based on the checks and balances in our governmental design.
That would require Democrats to vote with high turnout for Senate and House elections.
What exactly is the risk when considering the very real danger the court is doing to the country?
Tolerating intolerance will only take the country in one direction.
They could be subpoenaed into a house select committee to undergo questioning explaining their actions . It would at least be a bold move and have them try and explain their reasoning to an equal institution under the republic?
There is no magic bullet, but you need to return some heat or else go under without a fight. It would also completely unhinge the conservative forces hell bent on a dictatorship.
The odds of anything turning blue in November other than maybe the Whitehouse seems slim. I have no numbers or proof and I am completely stating my opinion, but it seems the dems have targeted defective Republicans and centrists and not people on the left. I'd imagine Republicans that can't stomach Trump are still going to vote red everywhere but the Whitehouse. While the voters further to the left than both our conservative parties will just stay home.
Agreed. The entire House is up for election in November, along with 33 Senate seats.
My biggest concern is the down ballot effects of sizable Democratic abstentions. If Trump wins, he’ll likely have a Republican Congress supporting him.
The mental gymnastics it takes to say they are "insuring it", instead of blaming the DNC and the centrists that shoehorned in an obviously senile old man and refused to primary him when he was 4 years older. Actions have consequences.
And the consequences of forcing forward an inept candidate for your own personal gain causes the entire country to have an authoritarian criminal in the Whitehouse. Luckily you have a bunch of mindless knuckleheads on the internet who blame the people that do not accept the dystopia you put forth instead of blaming the selfish corpo twats that would rather have a Trump presidency than run anyone even slightly left of center. The bar was so low all they had to do is have someone that could speak a complete sentence and they couldn't even do that. They had to get as close to that bar as possible. Fuck the DNC and every sycophant that voted for him in the primaries. This is their fault that we are in this situation, not mine.
I will vote against Trump in November, but fuck this system. I am ready to watch it burn, which is where most of Trumps votes come from, people who are ready to watch it burn.
Unfortunately that burning is going to cause the loss of unfathomable amounts of lives, mostly historically marginalized communities, including women. Probably especially women.
The Constitution does not stipulate the number of Supreme Court Justices; the number is set instead by Congress. There have been as few as six, but since 1869 there have been nine Justices, including one Chief Justice.
Didn't Democrats control the House and Senate for the first few years of his presidency? Looks like they failed to use the time they had very effectively. Why reward lazy behavior with another term?
50 votes that includes Joe Manchin, Sinema, etc in the Senate is not control. The last time they had an actual fillibuster proof majority they passed the ACA, which would have included a public option if they had another vote. And that period where they had control lasted a few months, not years. The idea that Democrats don't pass legislation when they aren't being blocked by the domestic terror cell they have to work alongside is completely ahistorical.
50 votes that includes Joe Manchin, Sinema, etc in the Senate is not control.
With the majority they had, they had enough seats to do away with the filibuster forever.
The last time they had an actual fillibuster proof majority they passed the ACA, which would have included a public option if they had another vote.
Nonsense. They simply would have found a different senator to vote no. Ben Nelson was every bit as instrumental as Lieberman in killing the public option.
I've noticed this a lot on lemmy. People state things as an objective fact that are just completely wrong. They start with a false assumption and built their ideas on that. People seem to have virtually no understanding of how the civic process works.
I agree. It’s maddening. The way I challenge it is by citing sources to debunk the misinformation. Most people just block them, leading to unchecked misinformation for more passive users to read as facts.
That is the way to do it. Plenty of people parrot what they read. I am guilty of it because I can't research EVERYTHING EVER, but I can hear reliable information and spit it back out. If you take the time to post up receipts, people will vomit up your facts and you make the discourse better.
That said, Congress could have changed that during the first two years of Biden's presidency, but the Senate would need to change its rules to get rid of the filibuster to do so, and they didn't wanna.
the democrats had majority control and they still fucked it up by pretending they couldn't change the filibuster rules and they'll find some other way to fuck it up again if we do vote for them.
Sure, just watch the debate and see whose cognitive function is still intact. Clearly, it's not Biden. That was the most embarrassing debate I've ever seen.
Trump hasn't been able to debate past 2004. Every single sentence out of his mouth since before his first 2016 campaign has been either gibberish or lies. I'll take a doddering old man over a pathological liar every time if those are my two options. Not to even mention Trump's extremely obvious dementia and extremely obvious fascist tendencies, racism, sexism, 34 felonies, convicted sex offender, on tape saying he'd like to fuck his daughter, on tape partying with Epstein, on tape committing voter fraud, can't stay awake at his own criminal trial, moans and complains and cries at every little thing that hurts his widdle feewings....
And this is the guy you want running for president?
And everyone around him is doing a great job and not bringing about a christofascist dictatorship ruled by an atheist narcissist compulsive liar real estate millionare...so yeah, the best of two options. I don't care if the face-man is old, I am voting against project 2025.
Trump operated within the lines of democratic institutions. Y'all really throw the word 'dictator' around like candy. I really don't think you know what a dictator is.
making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the with the Covid, excuse me, with, um, dealing with everything we have to do with, uh, look, if…we finally beat Medicare.
and
Look, there's so many young women who have been, including a young woman who just murdered and he went to the funeral. And the idea that she was murdered by a by by an immigrant coming in to. They talk about that.
He's only a threat in so much as they can turn it into political donations. The rest of us, on the other hand, see an absolute menace ready to implement fascism. But Dems are ok with just having scary news articles and no real action.
Biden's speech was infuriating. Just came out and basically said "This is bad. I'm not going to do anything about it. This is just the way it is now so I hope we always have good presidents from here unto eternity. Good bye." and then doddered off stage.
The pompous condescension completely undercuts any point you were attempting to make. I hope I end up the opposite of whatever you are as I get older. Have a great life.
When it comes to the Democrats and* the left* — from the Biden campaign on down to the activists
What's with calling out the left on this, when the closest they get to a leftist organization they take issue with is a climate advocacy group. The left has been pretty clear that Biden is not the man for the moment since the go, and for our troubles, we've been called everything from stupid and naïve, to privileged white people who don't care about insert minority group here (and ignore that not all leftists are rich, white people, there are plenty of POC active in leftist politics, though critics, often privileged white people themselves, do love to erase their existence in the same breath they claim to be looking out for them), to either useful idiots or fully cognizant agitators working on behalf of enemy states. Centrist Democrats and liberals have been the ones trying to tell anyone who will listen that the same old play will not just be good enough, but is actually our only option to win, and they're trying to leave the left to take the fall for their mistake, yet again.
Some of it is political calculation. If the president steps aside, the logical candidate is Vice-President Kamala Harris, but Harris has struggled in office and her poor poll ratings mirror those of Biden. If the Democratic Party tries to sideline Harris and open the door to other candidates through an open convention, they risk alienating her and her supporters and opening up further wounds in the Democratic coalition.
What, risk all four of her supporters? Oh, darn, there go the chances of winning ever again.
Democrats are not going to win with a staid campaign by the usual corporate boot-licking line of candidates they've relied on up until now. The sooner they accept that and get behind a candidate who is pushing for systemic changes on issues that actually resonate with your average Americans and the problems they face in their daily lives, as opposed what matters only to their donors, the better for them this time around. Heck, if they actually follow through and make some of those changes, even better.
there are plenty of POC active in leftist politics, though critics, often privileged white people themselves, do love to erase their existence in the same breath they claim to be looking out for them
you must be a 1st generation american, poor, brown, gay man because you're clearly me since i had the same thought 1/2 the time i engage w a liberal on the lemmyverse. lol
the other 1/2 the time i spend trying to think up of a comeback when they imply that i'm a chinese or russian bot or shill.
I think the immunity ruling of yesterday ended the U.S.'s checks and balances against a King, Monarch, or in more modern terms, the Unitary Executive. Overturning Roe Vs. Wade was the Judicial Branch warning shot.
I predict that in the future the U.S. will have a new revolution, but it'll probably be at least a century away. "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
I'll admit it. I was one of the people who loved it when Trump started rising in the polls. I'm far from a Democrat but I believed that he would be the easiest Republican to defeat. I was so very wrong and my whole view of my country has changed since 2016.
More that he spectacularly failed to even land the words, and gave Trump the high road position. Millions of people saw Trump tell Biden that they should be adults.
They sure aren't. IMO, If Biden doesn't attempt to exercise his new presidential powers, the Dems will be partially responsible for the fascism that follows.
Better to act first than wonder if you have permission. Take the action necessary, let the courts hash it out months later after the election is over. As long as it's an official action, there should be no problem.
It's on purpose. Democrats whole platform is "other side is evil and you'll go along with anything we do." If you mention this on Lemmy, people put their tin foil hats on and call you a Trump supporter. Now we have two fascist parties that we "have" to vote for.
But thank God those people who call me a Trump supporter are also trolling users (of most likely Asian descent) about how evil China is and they should like Biden better than whatever Winnie the Pooh's real name is.
Edit: I just reliazed that Winnie the Pooh reference is more than about the shape of his face. I'm sorry I just reliazed that ,I never put two and two together till just now. I am very sorry about using that.
The Winnie the Pooh reference was because of his overall shape, not just his face. Specifically it was about a picture of him and Obama where the proportions of both leaders were fairly similar to a picture of Pooh and Tigger walking together.
Winnie the Pooh is also Xi Xinping's nickname on Chinese bloggers. It was a way to avoid Chinese Censors and still talk about him without explicitly getting disappeared by the Chinese secret police. It worked for a while, but the jig is up and everyone knows that Pooh is codeword for Xi now.
Its a nickname embraced by Chinese specifically. Its not racist at all but instead its us Americans trolling Xi Xinping by taking an codeword/insult used by the internal Chinese dissenters.
That's very funny. As I brushed my teeth before heading to the office for a few hours, a thought hit's me, "has this meme been racist this whole time?" Thank you both for the explanation. I was over thinking this.
Not a fan of the article throwing leftists and activists under the same bus with the Democratic party. Also rich how the author claims activists aren't acting like it is an existential threat but they are dumb for not endorsing Biden.
