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Good to hear, but if you weren’t voting to oppose obvious fascism before, you’re not a very good/informed citizen.
Most Americans aren't good citizens, so if you actually want to beat fascism, being able to win over disconnected voters is a huge deal.
Yes, most people are not informed. But they sit back and watch an old, crooked, politician call another dude an old, crooked, politician. It was a joke. And while us nerds sitting here in a political sub can say that's dumb, even though we know Biden wasn't ideal hes better than the other option, the truth is most people were just sitting back and laughing at how ridiculous the situation was.
I hope everyone gets that. I have voted every election for the last 20 years but I was struggling to get myself to vote for a guy that couldn't even talk. I was pretty pissed off at the DNC for trying so hard to hide his medical problems and just say "Well, at least he's not Trump! If you don't vote you're a fascist!" ". Taking action to correct it gets rid of that bitter taste in my mouth and I am sure it does for a LOT of people that were NEVER going to vote. While Kamala doesn't inspire huge waves of grassroots support, at least she isn't embarrassing and she returns legitimacy to the office.
Shaming people is an absolutely awful way to convince them to change their ways.
When the threat of fascism isn't enough -- what else is there?!
Recent events indicate that "better candidates" is the answer to your question.
Like progressives have been saying for years.
This is why they stopped teaching 'civics' in middle school.
This is why I keep repeating "vote for the administration, not the candidate". Just look at the damage the Trump administration circus did futing the shit show that was his term. Now look at the good that the Biden administration has done in its term. Harris would likely keep a large portion of the team.
The only real deep blemish on the Biden administration has been its support of the Palestinian genocide. If Trump was president, he would has encouraged Netanyahu to be far more brutal. You can also kiss Ukraine, human rights, and democracy goodbye under a Trump second term. But sure...don't vote.
Vote for the administration AND JUDGES!
we've had a front row seat to what happens when idiots don't vote (for Hillary because butterymales or whatever) because they're too focused on the personality of the candidate... Who picks the judges matters!
Alito and Thomas have both signalled that they'll retire if Trump wins. I find forcing them to either remain in a job they both clearly dislike or get replaced with a judge who'll reverse the harm they've done to be pretty motivational.
Hope they fucking croak from the stress of being investigated by the DoJ.
For sure. I throw judge selection under administration. The President doesn't know any of these judges, they are presented to the President by the team the President put together.
This is how it is done in Australia by our High Court. A judiciary panel shortlists the candidates and the Government usually takes the first on the list - conservative or liberal government, doesn't matter. The selection isn't politicised - the most qualified gets the job.
Our high court has a reputation for annoying governments from either side.
I wish... Our system is the heritage foundation chooses whatever judges align with what they want to accomplish, spend 2 decades calling liberal appointed judges "activist judges that want to legislate from the bench" and then hand the Republican president a list of activist judges who will legislate from the bench because everything Republicans say their opposition does is projecting what they actually intend to do...
I hate that it works... They do it first so when you push back on what they are doing it looks like the childish "no you!" argument so it immediately defuses any resistance...
Yep. Trump pulled his judge picks right off the wish list of extremist judges the Heritage Foundation hand-picked for him. It's sickening how many judges he got to appoint, on top of getting to choose 3! 😭 SCOTUS justices (one of the seats was stolen by McConnell).
Of course one of those judges was Aileen Cannon who after delaying the classified docs case against him as long as possible, finally went ahead and tossed it out completely on the ridiculous grounds that there shouldn't have been a special prosecutor for it.
As a professional circus performer, please don't bring us down to their level. Most of us are bleeding heart communist hippies, and circuses take a TON of coordination to run.
The only real deep blemish on the Biden administration has been its support of the Palestinian genocide.
Definitely the biggest, but not the only. Two others that stand out to me are his breaking of the rail strike, and his border policies.
But of course, this all comes with the caveat that all of this, under Trump, would be unimaginably worse
Biden got the union workers their largest demands after ending the strike. People are stuck on the headlines immediately after ending the strike and apparently missed this fast follow a few weeks later IIRC
Congress broke the strike with a veto-proof majority, Biden didn't have much choice in the matter.
At least Biden was able to negotiate and apply pressure to get most of the demands met for the rail workers after the strike was prevented. The unions were largely grateful for the administration's efforts on the issue.
If Trump were pres we'd probably have troops there helping with the genocide.
We definitely would be helping out Russia against Ukraine.
Look what happens when the party listens. Maybe they'll keep listening if they see this works.
Maybe Biden stepping down heralds the tipping point away from arrogant, ineffective, conservative gerontocracy within the Democratic party and toward a more progressive future.
The other danger to avoid (again) is the assumption that because polls and news looks good for a candidate, a single vote won't matter, which results in a lapse of not voting. Repeat a few million times. Lead suddenly gone.
Vote, even if everyone is claiming it's a solid win. Vote as if your vote does matter, don't even debate if that's true or not.
And vote blue to the bottom of the ticket! Let's take the whole government and then push them hard to fix this broken system!
Local is always as important, if not more, than the Presidential race. Midterms as well. In a world so highly interconnected and real time, we should be so much more democratically inspired, and yet apathy reigns.
and yet apathy reigns.
Part of that has been a directed effort. Oil lobbyists, russian and chinese bots, other corporations, etc all have a vested interests in spreading disinformation and doomerism to encourage apathy.
God, progressives suck. Conservatives vote. Every election. Doesn't matter what the polls say. Doesn't matter what the weather is. Doesn't matter who is running. They fucking VOTE. That's why a small minority is able to run roughshod over the interests of the majority: the majority doesn't fucking vote!!
That's because their party reflects their voters' will. More than two-thirds of Democrats said that they didn't want Joe Biden for a second term, but they forced him through the nomination process anyway, without any challenge or debate. Meanwhile, the Republican party elites didn't want Trump on 2016 or 2024, but when their voters chose him, they accepted it. They didn't make back room deals with the other candidates to make Jeb the nominee, like the Democrats did for Biden.
And then Democrats convinced Biden to not run for a second term. Sounds like the party did in fact listen to the voters' will, and that's being reflected in the excitement that we're seeing across the board.
And you know what? I wish Republicans made backroom deals. I wish they recognized Trump was a significant threat and aligned to go against him.
No. It isn't. And no, it doesn't.
They vote no matter what. They vote even if they hate the candidate. Even if they hate the platform. They vote out of a sense of moral obligation that progressives entirely lack.
Their party works against their interests. I know it, you know it, and anyone who looks at it critically for half a second knows it. And yet they still vote.
There was that interesting research ten years back about the pillars of conservative and progressive morality. I seem to recall conservatives having five nearly universal core values, while progressives had only three of those. Conservatives value tradition and loyalty on an equal level with eg fairness and truth. Liberals still value tradition and loyalty, but they are not core values, and so things like truth take a higher priority. Conservatives literally don't care about the facts when they feel like their loyalty is tested.
Their party works against their interests. I know it, you know it, and anyone who looks at it critically for half a second knows it. And yet they still vote.
I didn't say their party reflects their interests, I said it reflects their will. Sure, the Republican policies screw over the working class, but Republican voters want candidates that will blame their problems on welfare recipients and immigrants, and they get it. They want religious zealots who will merge religion and government, and they get it. They want regressive social policies, and they get them. Meanwhile, Democratic voters ask for universal healthcare and get Mitt Romney's healthcare plan. They want the BBB plan, with universal pre-K and the expanded child tax credit, and they get an infrastructure deal.
Republicans tell their politicians what they want, and their politicians go out and get it, or at least try. Democrats tell their politicians what they want, and their politicians tell them why they can't have it. That's why turnout is different.
I get very frustrated when I see a few voters clinging to their "uncommitted" status even now. And the ones who do this often look like the kinds of people that the Trumpists will put into camps if he gets re-elected. Stop acting precious about it and commit to the obvious choice. The election is not about you, it's about the future of the country and whether or not we want to embrace or reject fascism.
I’m incredibly suspicious of anyone who still calls themselves uncommitted. And I’m convinced that anyone who makes that claim is more likely to vote for Trump or to not vote at all than to ultimately vote for Harris. If someone is reasonable enough to end up voting for Harris in November, I highly doubt they’re genuinely undecided about it now.
My best guess is that they’re just afraid to admit that they’ve already committed to Trump.
If the choice isn’t clear as day, maybe they’re nocturnal.
I have heard irl from a few of us who moved out of the us, that they are now going out of their way to register to vote. So, that is a lot of hope, anecdotally.
In politics it's the opposite of "devil you know". It's why Congress flips so much after a presidents first election.
People know Biden know, and the more people know Biden the less they like him.
I don't think Harris will be great, but there is a chance she will be. That's enough to get a lot more votes than Biden.
If she hits the ground running we could even gain seats in 2026 for once. But she can't just "look into" shit to run down the clock. She needs a list of shit they can accomplish, and how many votes in Congress to accomplish each.
Be totally upfront about what we can do, and actually try to accomplish what we can do on day 1.
People will remember that come midterms.
Campaign finance reform to stop unlimited money into politics and voting rights protections would be a huge win. If election day was a national holiday, that's something people would feel.
The former sounds like an impossible get, but it would be a huge huge win. The latter sounds like something that she could actually accomplish.
That's funny, I see it the exact other way around. Since the Supreme Court declared monetary contributions are essentially a form of speech, campaign donations have been protected by the first amendment. This is difficult to overturn, since it's a SC ruling based in the constitution itself. Any law trying to say otherwise could be declared unconstitutional and completely struck down by this even more extreme court.
Main workaround I see is mandating more thorough transparency to at least be able to track it all. There's probably other strategies too though.
A federal holiday just takes a bill through congress. Won't be an easy one, would be filibustered for sure. But possible.
All they have to get the gen Z votes is create an anime featuring Kamala doing cute chuckle stuff, expressing her love for venn diagrams and doing other geeky stuff. done.