“What’s going to happen in this next election? I’m terrified about what could possibly happen, because our leaders matter. Who we select, who speaks for us, who holds that bully pulpit, it affects us in ways sometimes I think people take for granted,” Obama told Jay Shetty on his podcast “On Purpose.”
“The fact that people think that government — ‘eh, does it really even do anything?’ — and I’m like ‘Oh my God, does government do everything for us, and we cannot take this democracy for granted.’ And I worry sometimes that we do. Those are the things that keep me up,” she said.
“The bars are different for people in life. That I’ve learned,” she said.
Without naming Trump, she continued: “Other people can be indicted a bunch of times and still run for office. Black men can’t. You just learn to be good. And in the end, you benefit from that extra resilience.”
If the democrats ran just about anybody but Joe, they’d be a shoe-in.
Brace yourselves for Trump 2.0, everyone. The Clinton lineage must go on!
It’s never going to be that easy. I’m sure each of us can find a candidate we like better but a successful run is more than that:
While I think the President is doing a great job, I’d prefer someone more progressive. However that might alienate more voters than it would attract. I will not risk another trumptastrophe by insisting on more Progressiveness over electable, “progressive enough” and not insane
The age thing does bother me, but I can only dream of doing that well at that age.
We should focus on VP. We want someone in the wings and we want them to build name recognition, and that hasn’t worked for the current VP
So after this, if trump loses and runs again, you’ll be ok with continuing to support candidates you don’t fully align with just to stop the boogie man? What about once trump is gone and the Republicans have some new piece of shit boogieman in the running? What will it take for you to be comfortable voting with the people that you most closely align with?
I never understood this absolutism. I’ll vote for the candidate closest to my views every time, and have voted for third party candidates in the past. But it’s ridiculous to vote based on only one issue
What other choice do some of us have? I would love a centrait president. Like actual centrist. I know going further left that that is impossible at this current point, but even centrist is a super long shot to even win the primary. Bernie can’t even get enough people who support him to vote for him.
So let’s say Project 2025 becomes P2029. P2033. P2037. As a gay man, I need to keep pushing that back. If not, me and my community get even more fucked than we are. That’s when things like genocide start to happen. I don’t get the choice of risking a republican being elected. The only hope I have is either as younger people start getting to voting ages, and older people die out, and religion starts to disappear, that maybe things will change.
It’s either that or I leave. Granted, me and my boyfriend are highly considering it, for multiple reasons. But it won’t be something we can consider. It’s something we will need to do.
Bernie was robbed of the nomination by a last second rule change on the floor of the convention where the votes weren’t even accurately represented in the final decision.
The left keeps moving to the right to try to appeal to voters, while aligning independents. They could stop, and move the far right further left. But dems are too concerned with appealing to the wrong people.
The best you can do is arm yourself and participate in your local elections and communities. At the end of the day you can only completely rely on yourself and those around you.
I don’t disagree, but it also only works out so well for many, many people. Like depending on where someone lives, their community is largely the people they needed to be protected from. I’m lucky in that I live in Portland. A fairly progressive, if not at least performative prgressives, but at least we won’t be the first to go. But since I have sympathy and empathy for people, I would rather it not come to that. Accelerationsm is just sacrificing marginalized communities. And I get you’re not much of an ally, and that’s fine. I’ll take people who don’t care but are willing to let us live our lives. But for the rest of us, I can’t get behind the mentality of just throwing people in the fire and saying “Well I’m just gonna watch over myself.” That’s a part of how things like dictators happen. And once that happens, participating locally won’t be enough, because things like local elections wont be a thing anymore.
I don’t disagree with your logic in general, but Trump isn’t a boogeyman. A boogeyman isn’t real. A boogeyman can’t hurt you. We all saw how Trump ran things. It’s not an imagined threat.
What would it take to be comfortable voting FOR someone and not AGAINST the other one? Easy: ranked choice voting.
I fully support ranked choice and we have mountains to climb in many states before its enacted
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Anyone who votes like that really doesn’t understand the difference between the two at all.
He was popular enough to beat Trump the 1st go round, why would people not vote for him now when the alternative is 4 more years of god knows what fresh hell?
3 years of propaganda, most of their base complaints against Biden arent true, but perception is reality.
Trump is hard lining who he’s going to hurt. They love that
The Dems will still vote dem other than hating Bidens Gaza stance, because they see Trump as awful.
But gerrymandering and shenanigans being what they are, the fight isn’t fair and the GOPs thumb is heavily on the scale.
Because Trump’s approval numbers are higher than Biden’s.
To be clear, I don’t support Trump at all but we have to look at cold hard facts. Biden does not look like a great candidate right now at a macro scale. Democrats have a real problem of loving to self-hate, and they end up skewering their own candidate. The prevailing opinion amongst my friends is “well Biden didn’t do anything”. Personally I find that to be untrue, but that’s the narrative.
The real key is that Democrats lose when voter turnout falls. Biden is not an exciting candidate, and for some people it is an ordeal to vote, and they may not do it for Biden. A lot of people forget this… It’s not that Trump would get more votes, it’s that Biden will get less.
Democrats are formulating a perfect way to fumble this to Trump, and I’m terrified.
The campaign hasn’t started yet. Right now, it’s a one sided conversation. And the polls are all based on people who answer unknown numbers and land lines. It’s a built in selection bias.
Every single election both large and small since 2020 has been heavily skewed to the left. I’m not saying don’t worry, but dont despair. And work on convincing your friends. That’s the single best thing you could possibly do.
I think you’re selling the polls a little short. The good ones have corrected a lot of that kind of bias, though nothing is perfect. And bad polls are always bad polls.
The scary reason is that we need a campaign or conversation to get people away from Trump. The dude sucks. Any president of the past 40 years should have a higher approval rating than Trump.
Though I secretly have a theory that the Supreme Court is going to rule against Trump and kick him off. It’ll give Republicans the exit that they need from him, but they can blame the courts and capture all his followers. All the candidates will run on pardoning him, and they’ll keep that radical part of the party but just redirect them.
Like who?
So Biden is a Clinton now? Is everything you don’t like a Clinton?