I don't know what was wrong with Joe Biden. It's hard to imagine that they ever would have asked for a debate if this was the way he is normally. We've seen him recently holding press conferences and giving speeches and he seemed to be fine. They said he had a cold so maybe he really was on drugs — Nyquil or Mucinex or something that made him seem so shaky and frail. Whatever it was, it was a terrible debate for him and if he does stay in the race (which is almost certain in my opinion) the campaign is going to have a lot of work to do to dig out of the hole that was dug last night. The media smells blood and they are circling like a bunch of starved piranhas.
. . . For some odd reason, moderator Jake Tapper told Trump in the beginning that he didn't need to answer the questions and that he could use the time however he wanted. Trump ran with that, essentially giving a rally speech whenever he had the floor and was unresponsive to the vast majority of the questions. He made faces and insulted Biden to his face, at one point calling him a criminal and a Manchurian candidate. If anyone had said 10 years ago that this would happen at a presidential debate they would have been laughed out of the room.
After the debate when most of the country had turned off cable news or gone to bed, CNN aired its fact check. And it's a doozy:
It sure would have been good if even some of that epic litany of lies could have been checked while people were still watching. The decision to have the moderators sit like a couple of potted plants woodenly asking questions about child care while Trump responded with irrelevant lies was inexplicable. Why did they even bother to ask questions at all? They could have just run the timer and let the candidates talk for two minutes each about anything they wanted. It probably would have been more enlightening.
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Do you think it’s worth it to help the democrats win rather than build an alternative and show them where to shift their platform towards?
As long as the US has a two-party system where the third-party mechanically ONLY acts as a spoiler candidate - see Ross Perot for Bush in 92, Nader, Stein, whoever you want to fucking name… whichever THAT 3rd party candidate is most closely aligned with are the ones that get screwed the most.
Voting third-party is about as stupid a fucking thing you can do outside of not voting at all.
Voting third-party is the worst kind of dipshit gesture - like raising your middle finger to flip someone off while a helicopter blade is spinning inches above you. Voting 3rd party means you effectively give another vote to the candidate you want the least.
If the US had ranked-choice voting, then voting for a 3rd party would make sense, but both parties know that this helps them stay in power and so as long as they keep it the way it is, our ONLY choice with a demonstrably positive outcome of any kind is to try and fight super fucking hard in the primaries and hope to God that we can squeeze someone through before dark corporate PAC money missiles or the ring-leaders in the DNC recognize what they are before being able to stop them.
It’s how we got AOC, and a few others from the squad… and it’s how we were even able to see Bernie get to push Biden just a TINY bit more left than Biden would have been otherwise.
If you want to tell them to fuck off… then show up and volunteer and phone bank and knock on doors for the best candidates you can find DURING THE PRIMARIES.
If someone really awesome makes it through to the general… then great!
But if they don’t, hopefully they were strong enough presence (thanks to brave volunteer supporters who wanted to say “fuck you” to the shitty party leaders) to force the right-leaning Democratic members to lean a little bit more leftward than they otherwise would have been (like Bernie helped make Biden do… as much as he could).
Right, stick to what's not working, voting Democrat. 🥾👅
I hate both parties, but I understand what the rules of this shitty game are.
I’m am not living in a fantasy world where doing what feels the most like “sticking it to the man” (but is just an excuse to be lazy and ineffective rather than doing something hard like volunteering to help the campaign of whoever is most closely aligned with my positions in order to push them more toward the future I want) is what results in the most tangible benefit to my interests overall as a voter.
Sorry but opposing genocide and imperialism overrides all other interests, IMO.
Right. And the republicans on their best day would be doing any genocide and imperialism more than even the worst neolib on their worst.
Remember the embassy in Israel was moved by Rs. The Rs got us in to Afghanistan. The Rs got us into Iraq. The Rs caused the Great Recession. The Rs caused the US to have an even more terrible response to COVID, indirectly leading to the preventable deaths of a million people.
Voting for ANYTHING that gives the Rs more power is objectively a more terrible thing.
Again, shitty, but real world.