This doesn't really make much sense when you remember that in 2020 Biden turned up to the first primary with a majority black population (South Carolina) and steamrollered everyone to such an extent that it effectively made everyone else bar Sanders pack it in there and then.
Looking at age, in that SC primary Biden won black voters aged over 60 by 75%-9%, black voters aged 45-59 by 62%-15% and black voters aged 30-44 by 44%-22%. Sanders actually won black voters aged under 30 by a narrow 38%-36% margin. So really his popularity with black voters scales with age in more or less the opposite direction to what you claimed.
That very well be how southern democrats vote, but I don’t *think* it’s representative of how others perceive him, at least here a bit further north. I know quite a few older black people from Baltimore that voted Republican, purely out of knowledge of pre-VP Biden. I could be wrong, but in the groups of people I’ve been around… democrat support has been waning for a long time. Call it dissatisfaction with the current state of blue cities, call it dissatisfaction with Biden, call it whatever you will… but I’ve been noticing a red tinge to a historically blue city over the last several years. It might not be reflective in the polls yet, but
something is happening where people are waking up and realizing that the Dems don’t necessarily have their best interests at heart, and at-best, pander to them come election season.
Dude did I not earlier express my extreme skepticism over these loons conducting a successful "civil war"?
I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about a sitting president literally trying to rewrite the rules so he can't lose elections (like other despots around the world have been known to do). He called up polling places trying to pressure everyone from governors down to polling-place workers to lie about the ballots, tried to pressure his own VP to throw out the results, and when all that failed he tried to get his followers to take the capital by force.
You boiling the whole thing down to just the shaman guy is just plain asinine.
See, I can’t help but write that off as being a sore loser no different than the recount bullshit of the early 00’s election cycle. Acts of desperation that ultimately failed.
Boiling it down to the faces of the people that actually stood up for Trump isn’t meant for me to be asinine, it’s meant to show how asinine it is to fear these people… and that they exist on both sides. Remember how comical it was when Kathy Lee had that decapitated Trump head cake? Everyone had a good laugh then, but, that was still no closer or further than those idiots parading around with those shoddily constructed gallows got to actually eliminating someone from a position. If anything… their actions have made it HARDER for someone to overthrow the government, since quite a few of them have been given hefty sentences to send a message. People are going to think twice before blindly marching off to the rallies, and then the polls, and ultimately, the district.
While I agree with the premise of your post wholeheartedly, you can't ignore the cosplaying fools either, because they are unhinged, gun toting assholes. Remember what Trump said about them at the rally. He didn't care about them carrying firearms and to let them in.. because they weren't here for him. That's the danger here. Those are brainwashed idiots with a cult leader willing to let them run amok and legit HANG his VP for not committing a Federal crime for him. They are just as dangerous, but in a different way.
They are dangerous because they are the same kind of idiots that will shoot themselves in the foot removing their gun from their holster, but not because they are meticulously calculated extremists. We’ve seen how disorganized they become when their claims are shot down. We’ve seen how disorganized they become when their leadership is disrupted. David Koresh stood a better chance of organizing a mob for this kind of task, at least he knew how to control his people. The best you can expect out of Trump’s crowd is a bunch of illiterate fucks misinterpreting his misinterpretation/manipulation of the constitution. Dangerous, but manageable, as we’ve seen.
I mean... we saw two dramatically different takes. One suggesting to inject bleach into your body and blaming China vs one working with science to come to an fundamental end to the pandemic. I think there's a right way and a wrong way for sure.
Yeaaah, but, without diving into the whole Covid thing… we all were fed a lot of conflicting information all across the board. That’s why I’m so quick to say it didn’t matter who was president at the time, because nobody else seemed to have all the answers at the time either. We couldn’t solely rely on the opinion or decision of a single individual, president or not.
He actually didn't run on the student loan thing. That was Warren and Sanders. He actually was very against it. He only said he wanted to AFTER they dropped out to help pick up the people voting for them. It was another example of Biden flipping beliefs to whomever gives him more. Plus, as a person who fell victim to predatory student loans, I was all in for the forgiveness. But they could never get that to pass short of Dems having a supermajority. Republicans know the interest from those loans are a HUGE piece of the Washington income. What they NEED to do is fix private student loan issues. One of my private loans was for $15k. I've had been paying it consistently, after working out "deals and arrangements" with Navient. Know how much I have left on that loan 20 years later? $40k. Tell me on WHAT planet is that sustainable? And doing that to hundred of thousands of student every year for decades? THAT is the problem they need to fix. But Republicans will never allow it. Hence the courts slapping it down.
I stand corrected, then. If anything, that’s worse than if I was right from the start. Fuck those pandering pacifist politicians. Student loans shouldn’t be a question, especially in fields we
need more of. I don’t think an elective degree should necessarily be free, but essential stuff like STEM? C’mon, looking out for our future generations should be common sense on both sides of the aisle, and the fact that it’s not is a problem.
Because companies like Sallie Mae and Navient pay the Republicans a fuck ton of campaign money... like the NRA.
Special interests in politics… another problem for another day.
I'm not saying you should excuse Biden for anything. I've clearly said the opposite several times, absolutely hold him accountable. I'm saying either Biden or Trump will be president next term. It doesn't matter how lousy they both are, that's the reality. I would rather have somebody besides Biden as president for soo many reasons, but if my only other option is Trump, then that's not acceptable.
Nothing you have said about Biden is a reason to let Trump be president.
I completely agree it's a shitty situation and it never should've gotten to this point. Biden should've said from the start that he was only going to do four years and let somebody else run. But it's the situation we're in, and even if both candidates are bad, we still need to acknowledge and vote against a candidate that will be downright disastrous.
I definitely agree that he shouldn’t have sought a second term. It’s a wonder he made it this far.
No, not generally speaking as a character or person. Do you think they will be equally bad as president for the next four years? Do you think the policy they would enact and rhetoric they would spew would affect the nation equally?
It’s hard to say right now. There are a lot of factors that’ll decide if we end up with 4 uneventful years from Biden or 4 messy years. It really all depends on how well the rest of the government plays with him during that time, and what campaign promises he doesn’t follow through with this time around. He has lost a good deal of support from some of his base voters, as has Trump with his on-the-fence voters. Unfortunately, I don’t think any of us can predict how these next 4 years are going to play out with the state of affairs here and internationally.
On the flip side… if we get 4 years of Trump, I fully expect there to be a lot of scorched earth, and a push to more of an isolationist state whilst backing the wrong people setting up an international shit show in the future.
I don’t really see a positive outcome unless people start working together and stop dividing themselves up. This country
had so much potential if we had just embraced the duality of man and worked together to find a common ground, but you and I both know that the climate is set to never allow that… at least in our lifetimes.
I have to disagree with you there. One guy told people to refuse to accept that the virus was a threat at all, discouraged effective and harmless mitigation actions (like masks), and touted dangerous and ineffective remedies (like eating horse medicine).
…and positions on all of those have changed on a large scale since, both his and others.
No matter what the president did, it would still have been really bad, but Trump caused so much harm that it cost him the election. (IMO he would have won a second term if not for that.)
Agreed. Blessing in disguise, maybe.
Biden did everything he could to keep his student loan campaign promise, but was shot down by the supreme court. He's still fighting to forgive loans for as many people as possible. Recently it was announced that Art Institute students will have their loans forgiven.
That’s probably why he’s fighting so hard, because if there are art students getting their loans forgiven and not civil engineers or doctors, then we’ve got a problem of pandering going on here… since a good chunk of art students are going to be liberally-minded and democrat voters.
I'm not sure what his original promise was for non competes, I didn't realize he campaigned on that. The only exception is for highly paid executives, so even if he promised to get rid of them entirely, I'm personally fine with the results. Unless he also promised something else besides simple getting rid of them?
That I’m not sure about.
It takes time. They've been working on it since 2022, but there are a bunch of steps it had to go through. You're hearing about it now because it's made it to the final step.
Anyway, my point again isn't that he's enacting perfect policy, it's just that he is tangibly helping people who need it, and you said he was not helping anybody at all.
But since you want to discuss nuances of policy and I said criticize him all you want: I'm personally surprised about the rescheduling thing, considering one of the first things he did was fire any staffers who tested positive for pot, which was really shitty.
It takes time, or
timing? There’s a difference, and I think it’s the latter.
You don't believe what? That Trump told repeated lies about the election being stolen? That other politicians have started repeating those same lies when they lose elections fair and square? That people's whose job it is to certify elections were refusing to do so based on those lies? That people are losing faith in our elections being fair? Those are all things that have already happened. It's not speculation or fear mongering. Maybe you're objecting to my saying somebody will be successful in stealing an election eventually. I'll grant that's only speculation at this point, but the fact that people are trying so hard is worrisome. I hope you're right and nothing will ever come of those attempts, but that's more likely to be the outcome if we take the threat seriously.
That people lost faith in the elections. If anything, I think this served as a reminder to all the importance of it. Those that complained about mail-in ballots might turn up now, those that thought their votes wouldn’t make a difference might get involved after how close it was for a while. I could be hopelessly optimistic, but I think we’re going to see a more substantial turnout this time around, and it’ll result in more of a marginal victory.
It's not about the Jan 6 mob. I agree, they did not stand a chance of actually preventing Biden from becoming president. If anything, it's good that the lies escalated into that, because it demonstrated just how dangerous those lies are. The House had a whole bunch of people refusing to acknowledge that Biden had won until their lies directly affected them and put their safety at risk. After that, they finally did the right thing.
It demonstrated two things:
1. You can’t take everything your perfect leader says at face-value.
2. Actions have consequence.
Those are two things that crowd seemed to have forgotten leading up to that event. All they did was drone on the same points, make an ass of themselves, and for what? Felony records and prison time at worst? Mocked by shitheads like me on the internet for looking silly at best?
The point is a politician who would incite a coup should not be in power. If he's willing to do that to stay president, what else will he do? If his tactics work or at least don't result in negative consequences to him, what stops other people from trying the same thing? What will our democracy look like if nobody believes election results are accurate? That's the real problem, the undermining of our election system in general. Jan 6 just demonstrates how effective his lies were in convincing people.
You’re not wrong, but there
is a very real flip side to this. Call it the boy who cried wolf, for simplicity’s sake. What happens if we do find ourselves in a position where undermining the government is required and we kneecap ourselves from doing so because of this? That’s the argument that a lot of people on the right have a hard time explaining, but are actually closer to agreeing to the left than they’d like to think. Even if Joe Biden isn’t the devil, even if Trump isn’t a saint sent from the
bronzed oranged gods, what happens if we find ourselves in a situation where people are afraid to stand up and fight because of what happened on the 6th? An authoritarian government only has one side, their side. It can come in any form, but the most likely form is the one that’ll ease into power by making people complacent, not the one who seizes by force and starts things off with chaos. Sure, it sounds very tin-foil-y, but it’s certainly not outside the realm of possibility considering the wild shit we’ve seen, no?
This is an unpopular opinion, but I personally don't think people who rushed the Capitol because they believed Trump's lies are bad people. They're dumb for believing an obvious con man, and they do need to be punished to send a message so nobody tries that again, but their hearts were in the right place. If you truly believe an election has been stolen, you should go storm the capitol and do everything you can to prevent an illegitimate president from taking office. (People who participated when they didn't believe Trump had fairly won are another matter, of course.) They are a symptom, not the source of the problem.
Agreed, and that goes in line with what I said above.
The stuff you said about protestors rioting in your city is bad too, of course. If it wasn't caused by somebody actively undermining our elections, it's not really related though.
It’s still a byproduct of the same thing, on a much smaller and much more isolated scale. Look at the election history for Baltimore city and the controversy that surround each mayor for the last couple decades. Nothing but self-serving democrats that promise hope and change and leave people angry and pissed off at the world around them. I’m one of them, and look at how despicable I think the government is.
I'm still not following this. Candidates drop out and endorse another candidate when they feel they won't win precisely so they don't split the vote or prevent people from voting for another person in their same party.
Are you saying Bernie split the vote with another candidate in the primaries and that caused Hillary and Biden to be the nominees, when otherwise a better candidate would have won? If so, with who? I don't remember any serious contenders besides Bernie and Hillary in 2016. I feel like he lost because the DNC was committed to Hillary and didn't want him to win. (Shame on them. IMO Bernie would've won against Trump.)
Honestly I have no idea who even ran against Biden in the primaries, there was too much going on at the time for me personally to follow it.
I’ll just come out and say it, Hilary was the party’s choice, but I think Bernie was the better fit for the people. Same goes for him over Biden. If those two didn’t get the push they did, and people got behind Bernie’s principles since they were more in-line with democratic values, we would be having a totally different conversation right now.
…
Phew.
