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It means something, clearly. This is only meaningless if enough people in the US are pragmatic and sensible and will vote for people they dislike to keep out a monster... Let me just have a check what happened in 2016 OH GOD OH FUCK WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE
prag·mat·ic adjective dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations.
When they have you voting against something it's all theoretical
There is always the no monsters in politics vote.
Definitely a lot of the things people claim Trump will do are more theoretical than not. But also Trump was actually president so it's not all theoretical, it will probably be a lot like last time. i.e. totally shit.
But people aren't always pragmatic so I think convincing someone to vote for you is a much better plan. Biden is in a popularly contest with a racist, idiotic convicted felon and is still somehow about tied with him. Hate to always bring up the supporting a genocide thing but I MEAN...
Trump and Biden are two sides of same coin. They are not so vastly different as you portend
So many Trump policies Biden continued it almost feels like we live in a satire
I would prefer Mr brain worn wins at this point
They are different on almost every issue
Trump wants to "get rid" of the Education Department, make it easier to fire civil servants (the section F stuff), at minimum become more hostile to NATO and at worst leave, cut taxes for rich people, relax any environmental policies, allow states to take away the right to abortion, and even in Biden's shittiest area, Gaza, Trump seems to think the issue is that they weren't quick enough with the killing and had bad PR. Immigration, Biden has some shitty policies but Trump wants a Muslim ban again.
I could go on. Fuck Biden. Fuck Trump even more.
Biden kind of adopted Trump's economic policy. Except for tax policy
But in every other way, he is vastly Superior.
I usually don't chime in on people's opinions, but I'm curious of your reasoning on this. What positive things do you feel Trump would have given us these past few years or in the next few upcoming years? And I don't know much of RFKJr, mainly because outside of some philanthropic projects, he doesn't seem to have all that much experience in national/international politics to base an opinion on. What would he do that Trump or Biden would not?
Here are a few Biden accomplishments from this earlier Politico list:
All of those are significant things that Trump would have never pursued.
I am very much not pleased with our border situation, though from some stories I've been learning about recently, our border security is still not being quite as racists or murderous as it is in many parts of Europe and Africa. I feel Trump and Co. would have no issues treating migrants worse.
I don't like the blind support of Israel. It is terrible what America passively participates in all over the Middle East, but funneling more into the destruction of Gaza and the Palestinian people is something on another level. But again, Trump would be no better here in any way I could picture.
But we do get continued support for Ukraine, despite all the constant crying from the Right. Ukraine would be left high and dry is Trump were president right now. And I bet all that Ukraine aid would now be going to Israel.
You're entitled to believe whatever you want of course, but I'm curious of how you got to this opinion.
Edit: Fixed list formatting
You can take a million little things and make it seem meaningful but the average position for the American has not meaningfully improved in the last 3 years just like it did not improve under Trump.
One thing I think Trump is better on is his refusal to get involved in a war against Russia in Ukraine. On Israel they are both lunatics.
Sure, Biden is better than Trump. He's passed some environmental laws. Not nearly enough, but 5% of the way there is better than -5% that Trump may bring. Sure.
His infrastructure bill, even watered down, was good for the country and we will see benefits well into the future. OK.
But inflation shot up to nearly 10% under him and the only reason it went down is because of the Federal Reserve's persistent dampening on the economy through interest rate hikes. So now Americans have to contend with higher prices AND higher interest rates making it even harder to buy a home or even just finance a car.
Meanwhile our government is pumping out hundreds of billions of dollars funding wars across the world- maintaining that inflationary pressure while killing countless young men in pursuit of "geostrategic goals". We keep Ukraine barely alive on an IV drip meant not to save them, but just keep them fighting Russia.
Meanwhile Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics shareholders are popping champagne cheering on the end of the world
Biden has went 180 on immigration. Mr "empathetic policy" on campaign is now Mr "expand the wall and have a photoshoot on the border with CBP officers"
Mr "make the Saudis a pariah state for chopping up journalists" on campaign becomes Mr "billion dollar arms deals"
I'm not saying Trump is better than Biden. I like Trump even less than I like Biden. But in terms of life for the average American, the difference is not significant enough to warrant this type of attitude.
"End of democracy" and all that nonsense. Democracy is already dead because we have to choose between two bombs that will wreck us in different ways.
Either way we're inevitably going to war in the Middle East. Either way we're inevitably going to war with China. Either way we are going to let the large oligopolies do what they want with our people. Either way the climate is fucked. Don't tell me 5 or 10% fundamentally matters when in 100 years we have millions of climate refugees.
I say voye RFK just because he's absurd. And absurd is better than the other two choices. Maybe it'll wake up the Dems and force them to come back to reality. The GOP has become a death cult and there is no saving them.
We're headed to war and fascism either way. We're just choosing the manner in which we arrive there. My gut tells me it's the MAGA variety
War with Russia and the Middle East has been going on in hot or cold form for 80 years thanks to dying imperial dreams of old men from back then. These conflicts are still going on from back then with people thinking you can just draw arbitrary borders on a map and call it a day. Ask the people that started these fires are dead to my knowledge. It's just one of the biggest issues that's been passed down in our lifetimes. Our equal contribution to the future will be the environment.
I don't agree with Russia on the Crimean situation, and there are global consequences to how this conflict plays out. I don't think any first world country isn't interested in how this turns out, and Russia's allies aren't really any better to me. I think we have a responsibility to protect Ukrainian soverenty, but we also can only do so much if we don't wish to become active combatants.
I don't think a 5-10% difference is what we'd see between the 2 candidates on environmental issues. One is actively trying to sell off our country to fossil fuel interests and prefers concrete and steel to anything green or blue. Also the lack of any water conservation is going to be a bigger and bigger issue.
When we talk other issues where there opinions are closer, a number of 5 to 10 point positives adds up when we're looking across the board. Especially people more immediately affected by those issues. The poor, the LGBT, migrants, environmentalists, women, and non-Christians off the top of my head will all be much better off without Trump and company.
I do agree about mass climate exodus. Not so much about the wars. Not in an active hot war way. Trump wants to befriend them, all but the Middle East anyway, and Biden and them Dems don't come off hawkish to me.
I'm not ready to pick the nihlism of an RFK vote yet. I get the desire a little bit. Presidential choices have sucked for a long time now. But I'm not ready to make things worse yet on purpose. We still have time to stop fascism before we're in to deep and I'll do that as long as I can.
I try to view it in a zoomed out perspective. Will either president meaningfully make life better?
And for that calculation I take into account a couple things.
A) quality of life for average people. You know- being able to afford your necessities. Being able to comfortably feed your family, pay your rent. Not having to stress about rent money or go into debt when your car breaks down
B) war. War brings chaos. Political and financial instability and average people (who are already not priorities) get put further back on the list. For example right now the US extending the length of Ukraine war is more important than controlling inflation or interest rates. Not to mention public money given to defense contractors that could be building homes for poor, feeding people, building infrastructure, etc
For reference, we have given Ukraine more $$$ (not counting lots of ways military deflates the real number) than Biden's infrastructure bill allocated for public transportation, roads and bridges, and airports combined.
C) and this is my personal bias here. We have 13 million illegal immigrants. People contributing to this country, filling a gap in the labor market, paying taxes, and yet they have to live in fear. Imagine walking around your whole life scared to see a police officer come out from around the corner.
These people have been here decades and every successive Dem promises to do something. All we get is lip service.
If I thought Biden was meaningfully better on any of those 3, I would vote for him.
But I think he's marginally better on A (maybe not because at least Trump was willing to flirt with a psuedo basic-income)
I think he's marginally worse on B (Trump is not likely to start WW3 over Ukraine, although probably just as if not more over Taiwan/Israel)
On c) they are both the same. Biden separates families like Trump. He was using same covid loopholes Trump was using to detain lawful asylum seekers at border.
Sure Trump has more harmful rhetoric but a border wall really does not do anything. Majority of illegals come on valid tourist visas and overstay. It's political theater.
Similar to my home state of Florida. DeSantis & Rubio (may God smite them down) pushed for a law to make it illegal to drive around an illegal immigrant.
Nevermind the fact that Florida has some of the highest rates in the country and that entire industries use them as the foundation (construction, agriculture, landscaping,etc). What happened when illegals started refusing to come to Florida?
They explained the law was symbolic, wasn't actually meant to detain anyone. They don't want real economic consequences. They just want to bang the xenophobic drum. It's absurd.
Absolutely with you on the horrible treatment of immigrants in general. It feels like we should give the Statue of Liberty back to France if it means nothing to us anymore. It is really vile, especially with so many acting like this is a Christian nation when they uphold none of the values, especially concerning how to treat those less fortunate. We became a great nation by accepting everyone and letting them have a chance to prosper, and I don't feel that magically changed in my lifetime.
My understanding is much of the Ukraine aid is not literal money, but rather donations of obsolete military supplies, like old planes and old ammo reserves, so it's money that has been spent decades ago, and instead of scrapping it, we send it to them to do their semi-proxy war for us. I feel this is a much more honorable fight against Russia than the Red Scare things of yesteryear, but I'm not old enough to have first hand perspective on it. I know I don't like what I do see of the Putin regime though.
I'm middle class, white, and CIS, so no president affects me that much, but many of my friends aren't in the same situation, plus I have empathy, so even if I can't relate to people, I still want the maximum net benefit for them.
Most of us probably aren't old enough to have much experience with traditional limited presidential power, so it seems like the president should have more to do with laws and the economy, etc, but they really shouldn't be involved in that stuff. The economy belongs to the Fed Reserve, because they're supposed to be experts. Congress is supposed to make laws. With Congress rapidly swinging between who controls it or such tight voting margins, it's no wonder we don't see meaningful change. It makes it hard to go full no-compromise when that compromise is mandatory and sabatogey by nature. The polarization sucks, but it's there until we fix that.
I think Trump is a criminal that should be locked up, and while I'm not tickled pink by Biden, he's done less bad things than anybody other president in my life I can think of, as sad as that is.