Democrats suffer from a condition that I've come to call "Democratic Realism," named after Capitalist Realism. No matter how much they get their shit kicked in. No matter how badly they do. No matter how little they accomplish. No matter how badly they look or do in debates. Democrats always believe, beyond a shred of doubt, that they'll win elections without trying. Not because of their own merits, but because they're just the only "real" choice; they simply can't fathom anyone willingly voting for their opponents.
Hillary barely campaigned in the "flyover states" that she needed to win because she couldn't be fucking bothered to actually try. It wasn't worth the effort to try and persuade people she thought of as her lessers. And the DNC just went "well, it's obviously her turn. She's been waiting for the chance at the presidency for 20 years now. We should go ahead and let her be president." Because that's the mentality. They don't have to "win" elections. They just pick a candidate and they get to win, because there is no "real" alternative. That Bush and Trump won don't indicate that, yeah, actually, you do have to fight for the people who are voting for you, otherwise they'll vote for the schmuck that appeals to their basest and most venal instincts. Those were just flukes...right? And you don't have to inspire confidence and admiration in others, because they should just recognize how smart and accomplished and inoffensive their candidates are, and that they're told to vote for them by people that are smarter than they are, so they should just shut up and do it.
It's a party driven less by any kind of ideological goals and more by a pervasive sense of smug, impotent, lazy egotism. And, yeah, they'll get a shitload of votes in the elections because the alternative always seems to be someone who is one goose-step shy of a literal Nazi. Biden will probably even win the popular vote. Y'know....just like Hillary did...
Good essay. I don't know if you remember after Obama won in 2008 a bunch of democratic party apparatchiks came up with this idea of "the coalition of the ascendant" and that they pretty much had the government locked in for a generation, due to support that would never waver for them amongst immigrants, yuppies, tech bros, etc. They didn't need the working class anymore and the Republicans would be the minority party for many years.
Two years later the democrats were wiped out in the midterms.
The coalition of the ascendant concept is kind of insane when you remember for a moment that the popular vote is kinda worthless in winning elections. The electoral college is structured in such a way that conservative whites have a larger share of the electorate relative to their minority peers. It doesn't matter if you're a lock for California and New York (enclaves of coastal elites and minorities alike) if you lose the entirety of the South, Southwest, and Midwest, enclaves of...the opposite of those things, really. This 538 article on it has links to other discussions related to this and represents a fascinating look into the relationship between popular votes and electoral votes. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-difference-2-percentage-points-makes/
Of course they didn’t. They literally had every establishment democrat coordinatedly drop out of the primaries in exchange for cabinet positions to throw their support behind Biden when Sanders started winning the primaries in 2020. Like, it’s been clear they’d learned nothing. And thanks to the idiotic two party system, they got rewarded for that maneuver with the opportunity to say “we told you so! Look, we got trump out of office!” And when they lose this time…they won’t learn a goddamn thing. Again.
luckily, they won't have to learn a thing if trump wins, because MAGAts will stack the odds so much in their favor that no dem will win a presidential election in many years. yay project 2025!
They think they don't have to, they just have to keep you scared enough of the GOP that you'll vote for them out of terror. It's how Biden won the first time, after all.
You misunderstand the dynamic. Most GOP voters are going to vote and are going to vote for the Republican, regardless of how awful that Republican is. Voting is a civic duty and party above all are kinda core ideas for them.
Dem voters are a lot more flighty in general. Any barrier to voting no matter how small (even having to rise from the couch) impacts Dem voters more than GOP ones.
There are more Dem voters than GOP ones except maybe in very red states. It's about turnout - US voter turnout is God awful and it's worse among Dems than GOP.
That's why the debate was so bad for the Dems, because it's not about whether or not it pulls voters to Trump but about what it does to Dem turnout.
I see, sorry for misunderstanding. I've also heard about the problem with voting turnout. As a European, the whole US voting system just seems kinda obscure in general. Although, to be fair, the right party voters are also way more likely to vote here than the ones from other parties.
I would vote for a wet sandwich before I vote for Trump, but Jesus Christ, it would be nice if the democrats fucking tried.
why should they? you're going to give them what they want from you anyways in november and multiple novembers into the future; there's literally no reason for them to ever bother.
Remember when a bunch of people didn't vote because the Democrat candidate was a piece of shit? And then trump won? And then the democratic party said "oh wow we should put up actual candidates instead of decrepit neolibs" except they didn't because they didn't learn shit.
Why doesn't anyone call him out on lying about running for a second term? I very vividly remember hearing him say in 2020 that he would not seek reelection and yet here we are.
Yeah, I don't get it. I was confused and not happy when I saw he was running again. He could've gone out like a heavily watered down LBJ, instead he's going to be forever remembered as the lost nursing home patient who wandered onto the debate stage. This is an unmitigated disaster, and the only way forward I see now is have Joe step down and let Kamala be the president. I'm not excited for that prospect, but I assume she can at least win a debate against a potted plant.
I upvoted you just now. They'll just convince people it was everyone's fault but Biden & the DNC if he loses and we'll be right back to a mediocre candidate in the next election.
There was a show primary but candidates were essentially stonewalled from participating and voters browbeaten for not supporting Biden, which is why only wackos like RFK Jr are the only other people who ran.
Up until tonight, there really was little point. Biden already beat Trump, has the incumbent advantage, and has had a successful term. I'm still not convinced that replacing him suddenly this late is even remotely a good idea unlike a lot of people seem to be
Not American, but a furby surrounded by Biden's team would still be preferable to Trump to most people, so I'm not sure this changes much. Americans around here seemed to mostly be in the "hold your nose and vote for Biden" camp anyway. Not sure how representative that is.
And remember how they made a big deal about Bernie's age in 2020? They asked for medical records, and even after getting letters from two or three doctors, that wasn't enough. It was like the birthers all over again: when they got what they asked for, they moved the goal posts and wanted the long-form documents.
Meanwhile, not a peep about Biden, who is Bernie's junior by fourteen fucking months, as if that made all the difference.
And then, four years later, it wasn't an issue anymore. Just run the guy again.
On top of that, the DNC would condescend to anyone left of center about electability.
I see your post is missing the required 20,000 word essay in how the Republicans are worse then democrats... thus you are a secret Russian Republican antisemite!
I do love having to give a 2 paragraph disquisition of caveats about how I didn't vote for either major party candidate in 2016 or 2020, before I can make literally any comment on either of these people or the current state of US politics, lest I be downvoted into oblivion or accused of being an evil Repub shill.
Ironically when we do this on Lemmy we are qualifying ourselves to a cohort of mostly people who didn't vote at all, or aren't even Americans.
The only word salad moment(as of 15 minutes ago when I just had to turn it off) was near the start when Biden just kinda trailed off saying random words.
It was him showing America how much he cares about women's rights, equality, & democracy. So much he's willing to put us at a significant risk of losing those things for decades if not longer. God, I can only hope something causes Kamala to become the candidate or he steps aside for someone else.
Kamala would 100% lose. Her campaign didn't have a single victory in 2020, and she was one of the first to drop out. If the Democrats had held a primary, we might have found a candidate that could beat him, but as it stands now, our best hope is that Trump finally finishes eating himself to death before the election.
That was certainly the worst of it, but it didn't get much better for him, he fumbled over a lot of his delivery. It was much harder for him though, he was using facts and figures while Trump was just saying whatever lie popped into his head.
I think that's the biggest danger with Trump. Even though he's less with it than Biden, what comes out of his mouth sounds more coherent if you're not concerned with the facts of the matter.
I was a bit concerned with Biden when he would say the wrong word or trail off, but at the end of the day it's less about who the president is and more about who they hire. I really wish the DNC had ran a different candidate.
Yeah, this is pretty painful to watch. Trump is a piece of shit, but he's way more forceful and even somewhat coherent. Meanwhile, Biden's just above a whisper and is somewhere between stuttering and rambling.
If this Biden feeling ‘jacked up’, I shudder to think what he’s like when he’s not. He’s not doing a great job of spruiking his own achievements and his answers are devoid of stats or figures - likely because they weren’t able to bring notes in. He’s sadly making trump look more coherent and lively by comparison.
The whole malarkey shit they are trying to push like it's a great image is so fucking dumb, it would be cute if my grandpa in hospice said it but it's fucking incredibly out of touch when the president of the United states says it.
Just imagine for a short ... Biden takes drugs. AND still has the better answers to all our problems than this un-drugged (?!) 3yo mind in a slightly younger body. Wouldn't THAT be a real game changer? Shouldn't DJT then too use drugs? No?
Lol I KNEW HE WAS ALREADY DEAD!! That picture was taken in the cooler fridge where they keep his body in storage in-between sessions of weekend at Bernies style puppeteering.
I can't believe I have to vote for an actual corpse...
The conspiracy theorists all say Joe is supposed to step down and Gavin Newsom somehow is added to the ticket which then will win. These conspiracy theorists also say that candidates are selected in advanced by the powers that be and it's all pagentry to deceive the gullible masses. These people would also say Joe's bad debate performance was part of the pagentry. Just remember this post later.
If only. Dude looks and sounds like he's about drop dead. I cannot begin to express how enormously frustrated with the democrats I am.
This is our choice. Come November I have no choice but to vote for this mumbling old man.
I would vote for a wet sandwich before I vote for Trump, but Jesus Christ, it would be nice if the democrats fucking tried.
Yep. Same boat.
Democrats suffer from a condition that I've come to call "Democratic Realism," named after Capitalist Realism. No matter how much they get their shit kicked in. No matter how badly they do. No matter how little they accomplish. No matter how badly they look or do in debates. Democrats always believe, beyond a shred of doubt, that they'll win elections without trying. Not because of their own merits, but because they're just the only "real" choice; they simply can't fathom anyone willingly voting for their opponents.
Hillary barely campaigned in the "flyover states" that she needed to win because she couldn't be fucking bothered to actually try. It wasn't worth the effort to try and persuade people she thought of as her lessers. And the DNC just went "well, it's obviously her turn. She's been waiting for the chance at the presidency for 20 years now. We should go ahead and let her be president." Because that's the mentality. They don't have to "win" elections. They just pick a candidate and they get to win, because there is no "real" alternative. That Bush and Trump won don't indicate that, yeah, actually, you do have to fight for the people who are voting for you, otherwise they'll vote for the schmuck that appeals to their basest and most venal instincts. Those were just flukes...right? And you don't have to inspire confidence and admiration in others, because they should just recognize how smart and accomplished and inoffensive their candidates are, and that they're told to vote for them by people that are smarter than they are, so they should just shut up and do it.
It's a party driven less by any kind of ideological goals and more by a pervasive sense of smug, impotent, lazy egotism. And, yeah, they'll get a shitload of votes in the elections because the alternative always seems to be someone who is one goose-step shy of a literal Nazi. Biden will probably even win the popular vote. Y'know....just like Hillary did...
Good essay. I don't know if you remember after Obama won in 2008 a bunch of democratic party apparatchiks came up with this idea of "the coalition of the ascendant" and that they pretty much had the government locked in for a generation, due to support that would never waver for them amongst immigrants, yuppies, tech bros, etc. They didn't need the working class anymore and the Republicans would be the minority party for many years.
Two years later the democrats were wiped out in the midterms.
The coalition of the ascendant concept is kind of insane when you remember for a moment that the popular vote is kinda worthless in winning elections. The electoral college is structured in such a way that conservative whites have a larger share of the electorate relative to their minority peers. It doesn't matter if you're a lock for California and New York (enclaves of coastal elites and minorities alike) if you lose the entirety of the South, Southwest, and Midwest, enclaves of...the opposite of those things, really. This 538 article on it has links to other discussions related to this and represents a fascinating look into the relationship between popular votes and electoral votes. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-difference-2-percentage-points-makes/
I never thought of it like that, well written.
Yeah, I think you've got a good handle on it.
You smoothly worked philosophical theory into the conversation. Subtle.
They won't until they absolutely have to.
Which at this rate is fucking never.
Thought they would have learned something from that whole Hillary and Sanders debacle. But I guess not.
OR… they don’t give a fuck either since they’re all on the same corporate payroll
Of course they didn’t. They literally had every establishment democrat coordinatedly drop out of the primaries in exchange for cabinet positions to throw their support behind Biden when Sanders started winning the primaries in 2020. Like, it’s been clear they’d learned nothing. And thanks to the idiotic two party system, they got rewarded for that maneuver with the opportunity to say “we told you so! Look, we got trump out of office!” And when they lose this time…they won’t learn a goddamn thing. Again.
luckily, they won't have to learn a thing if trump wins, because MAGAts will stack the odds so much in their favor that no dem will win a presidential election in many years. yay project 2025!
“You’ve convinced me, now make me do it”
You are seeing what 80 years of worldwide violent repression of leftist ideology have culminated in.
Fuck the boat, I hope we all drown.
They think they don't have to, they just have to keep you scared enough of the GOP that you'll vote for them out of terror. It's how Biden won the first time, after all.
Democrats do not need to make us scared. The gop does it themselves.
And they're right. I mean, Trump's a waste of oxygen, so why should anyone vote for him?
You misunderstand the dynamic. Most GOP voters are going to vote and are going to vote for the Republican, regardless of how awful that Republican is. Voting is a civic duty and party above all are kinda core ideas for them.
Dem voters are a lot more flighty in general. Any barrier to voting no matter how small (even having to rise from the couch) impacts Dem voters more than GOP ones.
There are more Dem voters than GOP ones except maybe in very red states. It's about turnout - US voter turnout is God awful and it's worse among Dems than GOP.
That's why the debate was so bad for the Dems, because it's not about whether or not it pulls voters to Trump but about what it does to Dem turnout.
I see, sorry for misunderstanding. I've also heard about the problem with voting turnout. As a European, the whole US voting system just seems kinda obscure in general. Although, to be fair, the right party voters are also way more likely to vote here than the ones from other parties.
why should they? you're going to give them what they want from you anyways in november and multiple novembers into the future; there's literally no reason for them to ever bother.
Remember when a bunch of people didn't vote because the Democrat candidate was a piece of shit? And then trump won? And then the democratic party said "oh wow we should put up actual candidates instead of decrepit neolibs" except they didn't because they didn't learn shit.
not only did they not; but they cock blocked a popular progressive candidate from running; twice.
And then spent the next several cycles systematically forcing anyone who supported him out of the party.
You can't pin that on the voter because not voting for the democrats is effectively voting for the republicans. It's a problem of the two party system
Why doesn't anyone call him out on lying about running for a second term? I very vividly remember hearing him say in 2020 that he would not seek reelection and yet here we are.
never saw this. citation requested thanks
Yeah I remember it.
Google's right there when you're done being obtuse.
I dunno about you guys, but I didn't believe it for a second when he said he was going to be one term. Shame on him for lying, even if it was obvious.
Yeah, I don't get it. I was confused and not happy when I saw he was running again. He could've gone out like a heavily watered down LBJ, instead he's going to be forever remembered as the lost nursing home patient who wandered onto the debate stage. This is an unmitigated disaster, and the only way forward I see now is have Joe step down and let Kamala be the president. I'm not excited for that prospect, but I assume she can at least win a debate against a potted plant.
Kamala is literally the only person in politics who would be a worse candidate than Joe...
In B4 you get down voted for not liking either candidate.
It's not a controversial take at all.
On Lemmy it is...
Every single time I say I hate Trump and Biden and criticize the 2 party system, I get down voted to hell.
I upvoted you just now. They'll just convince people it was everyone's fault but Biden & the DNC if he loses and we'll be right back to a mediocre candidate in the next election.
This is the choice that was forced onto us. The Democrats could have had a Primary and instead they chose this for us.
They didn't have a fucking primary? Jesus. (I'm Canadian)
There was a show primary but candidates were essentially stonewalled from participating and voters browbeaten for not supporting Biden, which is why only wackos like RFK Jr are the only other people who ran.
Oh. I had wondered what had happened to the 18 month shitshows from previous election cycles.
Up until tonight, there really was little point. Biden already beat Trump, has the incumbent advantage, and has had a successful term. I'm still not convinced that replacing him suddenly this late is even remotely a good idea unlike a lot of people seem to be
Three years I've been hearing vague rumours he was what I saw tonight. Trump is your next president. My condolences.
Not American, but a furby surrounded by Biden's team would still be preferable to Trump to most people, so I'm not sure this changes much. Americans around here seemed to mostly be in the "hold your nose and vote for Biden" camp anyway. Not sure how representative that is.
They had a primary, did everyone suddenly forget all the Palestine protesters that abstained from voting for Biden in the primary?
I didn't, but I don't think the dems gave a shit about them to begin with.
Most countries Primaries don't exist at all. Getting to choose who represents a given party is a luxury.
tbh it's mostly just a gimmick to excite voters, not just a luxury. The Party still basically picks who the nominee is.
I keep squeezing my eyes shut and trying to will myself into the timeline where Bernie won.
All i can think is 'imagine if Bernie was 10yrs younger...'
Libs in 2016: I love Bernie, it's just too bad about his age
Libs in 2020: Biden has a stutter. Don't be ageist.
Libs in 2024: We had no idea!
And remember how they made a big deal about Bernie's age in 2020? They asked for medical records, and even after getting letters from two or three doctors, that wasn't enough. It was like the birthers all over again: when they got what they asked for, they moved the goal posts and wanted the long-form documents.
Meanwhile, not a peep about Biden, who is Bernie's junior by fourteen fucking months, as if that made all the difference.
And then, four years later, it wasn't an issue anymore. Just run the guy again.
On top of that, the DNC would condescend to anyone left of center about electability.
I see your post is missing the required 20,000 word essay in how the Republicans are worse then democrats... thus you are a secret Russian Republican antisemite!
I do love having to give a 2 paragraph disquisition of caveats about how I didn't vote for either major party candidate in 2016 or 2020, before I can make literally any comment on either of these people or the current state of US politics, lest I be downvoted into oblivion or accused of being an evil Repub shill.
Ironically when we do this on Lemmy we are qualifying ourselves to a cohort of mostly people who didn't vote at all, or aren't even Americans.
This is hard to watch.
If it does what he showed tonight it needs to go back to r&d
Cold, Jack.
This meme might not age well. Biden doesn’t look so good in the debate so far.
Yeah, he is getting the shit kicked out of him. Trump is spouting insane lies, but Biden is stumbling over his words on every response.
The only word salad moment(as of 15 minutes ago when I just had to turn it off) was near the start when Biden just kinda trailed off saying random words.
And when he said he beat medicare
What the fuck was that.
It was him showing America how much he cares about women's rights, equality, & democracy. So much he's willing to put us at a significant risk of losing those things for decades if not longer. God, I can only hope something causes Kamala to become the candidate or he steps aside for someone else.
Kamala would 100% lose. Her campaign didn't have a single victory in 2020, and she was one of the first to drop out. If the Democrats had held a primary, we might have found a candidate that could beat him, but as it stands now, our best hope is that Trump finally finishes eating himself to death before the election.
I imagine that Kamala could at least win an argument with a potted plant, which is more than you could say about Biden at this point.
That was certainly the worst of it, but it didn't get much better for him, he fumbled over a lot of his delivery. It was much harder for him though, he was using facts and figures while Trump was just saying whatever lie popped into his head.
Trumps replies seldom had any connection to the thread/question posed by moderator. he was simply waiting for his turn to ramble a gish gallop out.
Yeah, it reminded me a lot of the Carter/Reagan debate, only if Carter had a massive concussion.
And yet Trump still sounded more cognizant even if he was lying.
Because he didn't have to be careful to make sure he was right. He just said whatever anyway
I think that's the biggest danger with Trump. Even though he's less with it than Biden, what comes out of his mouth sounds more coherent if you're not concerned with the facts of the matter.
I was a bit concerned with Biden when he would say the wrong word or trail off, but at the end of the day it's less about who the president is and more about who they hire. I really wish the DNC had ran a different candidate.
Yeah, this is pretty painful to watch. Trump is a piece of shit, but he's way more forceful and even somewhat coherent. Meanwhile, Biden's just above a whisper and is somewhere between stuttering and rambling.
If this Biden feeling ‘jacked up’, I shudder to think what he’s like when he’s not. He’s not doing a great job of spruiking his own achievements and his answers are devoid of stats or figures - likely because they weren’t able to bring notes in. He’s sadly making trump look more coherent and lively by comparison.
Staying hydrated is known to increase performance.
Good old dihydrogen monoxide.
Up there as one of the most dangerous chemical compounds in the world, near 100% fatality rate.
The whole malarkey shit they are trying to push like it's a great image is so fucking dumb, it would be cute if my grandpa in hospice said it but it's fucking incredibly out of touch when the president of the United states says it.
They can't deny that he's older than dirt, might as well lean into the cuter parts about that fact
When do we start fetishizing his cute wittle ear hair
If you insist on being the candidate, Joe, please take actual drugs before debates. As many as you can.
Just imagine for a short ... Biden takes drugs. AND still has the better answers to all our problems than this un-drugged (?!) 3yo mind in a slightly younger body. Wouldn't THAT be a real game changer? Shouldn't DJT then too use drugs? No?
i wish he was on drugs; maybe he would have done better.
Politics is so team sports, they even think performance enhancing drugs are a bad idea.
It will be fun to see if the media will try to spin it as him looking good tomorrow.
Clearly they should have pumped him full of unicorn blood and stem cells.
Biden needs that pure old Colombian cocaine.
Ask the CIA for some.
They've got plenty, so if they're not just handing it over they must want Trump to win 😂
If I had the Death Note both Trump and Biden would be having a heart attack right now.
I would worry about how little room there is in that thing.
I can write pretty fucking small.
If the point of taking drugs is to "enhance your performance" then Biden took every drug he should NOT have taken before that debate.
HOW IS THIS REAL!?!?
Biden, the RAVE Act guy, selling water? This empire is so fucking cooked
oh my reddit lois this is so wholesome chungus
skibidi joe, can you get me a beat?
Killerbean!
truly a modern classic
Absolutely. It's one of the more memorable videos from that time.
You'll get this CD over my dead body. That's good I was planning it.
The fact that thus is a real product...
Lol I KNEW HE WAS ALREADY DEAD!! That picture was taken in the cooler fridge where they keep his body in storage in-between sessions of weekend at Bernies style puppeteering.
I can't believe I have to vote for an actual corpse...
Funny how we laughed at Trump holding a glass with two hands.
*bottle of water
https://youtu.be/sTqTFnzkaJU
https://youtu.be/K2rgyOkqoaQ
Guess we were both right
The conspiracy theorists all say Joe is supposed to step down and Gavin Newsom somehow is added to the ticket which then will win. These conspiracy theorists also say that candidates are selected in advanced by the powers that be and it's all pagentry to deceive the gullible masses. These people would also say Joe's bad debate performance was part of the pagentry. Just remember this post later.
Gavin Newsom doesn’t even seem to be all that popular in California. I have no idea why people think he’s a winner.