Who should Biden worry about more? Getting the left wing of his party to nominate him, or getting the general electorate to the polls in November? It’s a no brainer calculation.
Who should Biden worry about more?
I think those 726k Trump voters are still winnable if Biden can just move a liiiiittle bit farther to the right.
I mean, the Democrats have been screwing the actually Left for decades now so…
If y’all actually voted, Democrats would care about you more. The Left is fickle and the DNC knows it.
If y’all actually voted
Didn’t Bernie Sanders win the California primary in 2020? Seems like he’d need a lot of leftist voters to pull that off.
The Left is fickle
Once bitten, twice shy
Meanwhile, on the Right: “once bitten, BITE HARDER”. So they win elections while you run away.
So they win elections
There’s a couple of levels to this. On one level, I think conservatives do - in fact - deliver some promises. If you like twelve lane highways and ranch style suburban homes and ground beef that’s cheaper by the pound than broccoli? Good news. When Republicans take office, you can consistently bank on getting a couple hundred dollars worth of tax cuts, as part of their multi-billion dollar tax cut package. If you’re in a religious organization the party favors, you can expect all sorts of kickbacks via Faith Based Initiatives and
ParochialCharter School Vouchers. If you’re a bigot, your governor will inflict all sorts of misery on minorities and the LGBT community. Police will parade through the streets in giant military convoys, showing off all their latest gear paid for with inflated budgets.On another level, I think they get a certain amount of psychic agony inflicted on them while Democrats are in office. Right-wing news functionally terrorizes their own viewers until their guys win, and this creates a kind of pavlovian response. If you don’t want to see wave after wave of disturbing images on the TV, elect Republicans.
I think Democrats are mastering the latter, while neglecting the former. And that’s why you’ve got folks on Lemmy shitting themselves in horror over a future Trump administration, without really having anything tangible to look forward to under a second Biden term.
Democrats deliver plenty but messaging is awful. Biden has canceled $138 billion in student loan debt. Billion. That’s with him using whatever executive resources he can after Supreme Court obstruction. Where’s the news articles on that? You see people on this very site saying he promised to forgive student loans and then abandoned that promise (while gleefully laughing and twirling his moustache, because he just loves being evil).
Democrats deliver a lot more than Republicans. Republicans scuttled their own border security deal because they didn’t want to give Dems a win.
Biden has canceled $138 billion in student loan debt.
Biden is administering a policy going back to the Reagan Era of 20-year sunsets on student loan debts. The new debts he’s cancelled are in the billions, not the hundreds-of-billions. And this, in a pool of over $1.6T. I know a few people carrying student debts. None of them are applauding Biden right now. None of them are seeing their debts cancelled.
Democrats deliver a lot more than Republicans.
Democrats will tell you they delivered $800B in Medicare spending in 2023, when they just signed bills to cut physician pay by 2%/year. They publish walls of tiny-text claiming credit for everything from the Civil Rights Act to the latest private uptick in new clean energy infrastructure and get angry when you notice how the former has been gutted and the latter has nothing to do with their latest round of legislative/executive policies.
Trump put his fucking name on the stimulus checks he sent out in 2020.
Biden put his name on sunsets to the Child Tax Credit three years later, with some campaign promises to renew them (if Dems can retake the House AND the Senate AND Joe Manchin/Kristen Sinema don’t block anything) maybe some time in 2025.
The issue is the left is simply not large enough to win a primary. The reason Bernie wasn’t nominated is simple: not enough votes.
Our system is one of coalition building. You either join the least bad coalition for your interests or you have no influence at all.
the left is simply not large enough to win a primary
Quite a bit of what left-leaning voters advocate for is initially very popular. Medicare-for-All has a broad base of support. Rent control is very popular. Increasing Social Security payouts is an untapped political goldmine. The anti-war movement remains a large and largely neglected constituency.
What left-leaning candidates traditionally lack isn’t popularity, but money. What made Sanders such a powerful primary opponent in 2016 and 2020 was his prodigious fundraising abilities. He wasn’t wildly out of line with Mike Gravel or Ralph Nader on the issues, but he commanded 100x their war chests thanks to the outpouring of social media coordinated campaign funding.
Compared to guys like Steve Forbes or Ron Paul or Michael Bloomberg - who also brought enormous volumes of cash to the table - Sanders was able to offer a platform constituents in his own party were quick and eager to rally around.
Our system is one of coalition building.
A coalition requires seats at the table. Which leftists are getting a seat at the Biden table? Not Rashida Talib. Not Cori Bush. Not even Elizabeth fucking Warren.
Coalitions imply equity. What Democrats are demanding isn’t a coalition, its a coronation. Biden wants his voters to bend the knee. (Trump, too). And the folks who buck his commandments aren’t enticed back into the fold with concessions. They’re treated as pariahs and scapegoats and fifth columnists, to explain his plummeting poll numbers.
I reregistered as independent after voting for Obama twice, Hillary, and then Biden.
Far left and far right are absolute lunatics, and the left will demonize you for trying to be centrist. So voting for Trump or uncommitted we go.
Trump calls someone a RINO like every 15 minutes, and he’s far right. What are you even talking about? You should probably go with uncommitted if you’re a single issue voter on whether people called you names for being a centrist.
Some replies have been nice, and then there are some like yours. Did you not read the part where the left demonizes more often for having nuanced political viewpoints?
I noticed that you define 99% of people as the left. Left of whom? Hitler?
A couple figures to aid the discussion. Hot off the presses from todays polling:
Biden versus Trump (up to date as of today):
Biden versus Trump and Clinton versus Trump (X axis is days out from the election):
For edification, Clinton versus Trump 2016 (keep in mind that Trump and Clintons polling numbers in the early parts of this figure represent being in contested primaries):
Another version comparing 2016 to 2024 (but more focused on the period of time before the election):
I don’t find these kinds of comparisons and “latest data points” to be particularly helpful in these kinds of discussions. Voter sentiment is fickle, and how you quantify the “Uncommitted” movement will affect how the data is presented.
We don’t know how the Uncommitted will actually vote in November, though we can be certain at least some will not vote for Biden if nothing changes. It’s a political game of chicken, and it’s Biden’s move.
We don’t know how the Uncommitted will actually vote in November, though we can be certain at least some will not vote for Biden if nothing changes. It’s a political game of chicken, and it’s Biden’s move.
Clinton lost Michigan by 0.2% and it cost her the election. Her campaign opted to not focus on the rust belt and delivered us Trump in the first place.
Biden is losing this election, and I think if a Trump presidency concerns you, its especially worth considering.
Biden can’t afford to lose any voters in Michigan. His policies are working against his ability to gather support in the 2024 election. We can’t wait until after November to have this conversation. It needs to happen now.
Again, if Trump can’t win more than 65% of his own base as a former president, I’m not that worried. The dude has never won the popular it’s and sure as hell won’t this time. He’s definitely lost support. I will place money that Biden will win an even larger popular and electoral vote victory this time.
I would love to have your confidence bro. I really would. I just look at the polling, I look at the messaging, I look at the fervency of the bases, and I don’t have it.
Trumps voters are excited as all hell to vote for him. He’s got evangelicals perhaps literally worshiping him.
I just dont see what you are seeing…
I’ll bet you here and now Biden wins. Save this post.
Saved. Love to gamble.
I’ll give you 1:1 on Biden winning. $20 enough to make it fun?
Also, I’d like to ask for 20:1 on Biden not being the candidate. If you want those odds, I’d also like to bet $20. (you’d be the house, so if I win, thats a $400 payout on you).
We can save this post and then venmo or paypal, whatever is preferred.
Also good with just the first bets or will hear counter odds on Biden not being the candidate.
100% Biden is the candidate. 100% Biden beats Trump.
