And so it begins. Nine months still to go before the next US presidential election and already the Republican party favourite and former President Donald Trump is sending eyes rolling skywards with his seemingly outlandish statements.
And yet they will delight many of his supporters.
Suggesting at a rally in South Carolina that he would “encourage” aggressors (for example Russia) “to do whatever the hell they want” with Nato countries that fail to pay their dues has prompted an immediate slap down from the White House. A spokesman called the comment “appalling and unhinged”, saying it was “encouraging invasions of our closest allies by murderous regimes”.
Nato Secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg has also responded forcefully, saying: “Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the US, and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk.”
But we are going to elect him anyway, because the other guy forgot a thing once. Just like we elected him 8 years ago, because the other one ran her own email server.
You forgot this:
How Clinton lost Michigan — and blew the election
She ran a shit campaign. Everyone likes to forget that part
Everyone also likes to forget that she won the poplar vote. She lost the electoral college, an anti-democratic institution that Democrats seem to think is really important to keep, despite the fact that keeping it often makes them impotent.
It frankly doesn’t matter whether they want to keep it or not. It would take a constitutional convention to change and in the current climate that’s going to go make things worse, not better.
There is one interesting workaround I’ve heard about from time to time, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It’s a state-level agreement where all the participating member states commit to allocating their electoral college votes to whomever won the popular vote nationally. No need for a constitutional convention since the allocation of electoral college votes is in the hands of state governments, they can decide to do this under the existing constitution.
But you need states to agree to that, which runs into the same issue as an amendment does.
You don’t need as many states to agree to it. Just enough to swing the election.
However the states likely to agree are the ones that reliably vote Democrat, and the GOP has only won one popular vote in the last 30 years. So again, it won’t make a difference.
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We can also double the size of the House (if not more). Electoral college votes are distributed according to the number of House districts (plus 2 for the senators of each state). Congress can simply pass that law. This is a good idea, anyway, since it was last set in 1911 with a total US population that’s less than a third of what it is today. It becomes harder gerrymander lots of smaller districts, as well, and it dilutes the effect of small states having outsized influence with their guaranteed 2 senate seats.
Would probably need to build new chambers for the House. The current one has 450 seats on the floor, plus 500 in the gallery that are normally for staff and guests, not elected members.
It’d be nice to ditch the electoral college system altogether instead of coming up with these workarounds.
So what? The popular vote means nothing. Her campaign was incredibly arrogant. She took the entire rust belt for granted and lost because of it.
“Pokemon GO to the polls.” causes me physical pain to think about.
And then used Russia as an excuse and got away with it, as evidenced by the downvotes here.
We’re going to get Trump again (barf) because the DNC insists on running shit candidates and refuses to acknowledge that they are bad, instead insisting that the voters are just too ignorant to understand how good their candidates really are.
Hillary Clinton was a horrible candidate: immensely unpopular even with the Democrat base, running on a status quo platform right in the wake of disappointment with Obama’s failure to deliver on “hope and change”, and acting as if she was somehow entitled to the position.
Biden is not as bad as Clinton in most ways, but is utterly lackluster and feels more like a moderate Republican. His unwavering support for Israel during their campaign of atrocities is despicable and shameful. The fact that he’s totally ancient and losing his mind isn’t helpful in the least. Why can’t we have a more compelling candidate from the DNC?!
This post will get modded down and ignored, as will the incredibly common and widespread sentiment that it expresses, and we will get Trump again as the nation and the DNC acts shocked yet again. It’s so predictable and infuriating.
If we’re going to get Trump again it’s in part because of the absolutely all-or-nothing brook-no-compromise attitude of voters. Like this, for example. Biden’s support has not been unwavering, he’s criticized Israel’s actions. But not enough for you, and so he gets no credit whatsoever for any moderation he might have. And that’s why you say he “feels like a Republican” to you, because someone can only be 100% totally on your side or they must be on the other side.
I’d love for there to be a viable fully-progressive candidate who happened to agree with everything I believe in. I’d also love to have a pet unicorn. When elections actually roll around in reality, though, none of the candidates are going to be perfect. And unfortunately in many first-past-the-post electorates the system is set up in such a way that there are only two viable candidates. So pick the one that’s closest to your views. Push for better candidates in the primary, of course, but accept that you won’t always get everything you want.
All the people critisizing “”“Genocide Joe”“” give me a aneurysm when cosidering their alternative:
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Get out of reddit and take your reasonable pragmatic opinion with you.
Thats what i did. Day one, and im already banned from world news on Lemmy as well now. For calling out russian talking points when they came up.
Then you’re doing it right my friend. Hexbear and lemmy.world are overrun by Putin sympathizers who want nothing more than chaos and the continued decline of western democracy.
So messaging a mod wasnt a good move? xD
Only if your message was “I’m sick of your anti-American Russian apologists. Please ban me.” in which case that was a BDE move.
Close enough?
The most popular worldnews lemmy is on lemmy.ml it is a tankie shit show.
I was on lemmy.world and no difference. Just pure, unadulterated, kremlin talking points at every corner. But dont u dare call em out! I saw someone point out the accidental russian spelling of a word to being swarmed downvotes.
Tankie bitches gonna tankie bitch.
Biden has actually done a lot to restrain Israel but the MSM fails, as usual because outrage sells. Too bad people just run with whatever is on hand.
That’s the thing though. Biden doesn’t represent my views and voting for him to keep Trump out will be interpreted by the DNC as an endorsement of him and a reason not to change their platform to better suit the electorate. I’ve been doing this lesser-of-two-evils thing for decades now and the outcome keeps getting worse. Maybe it’s just a bad strategy.
The platform of “vote for us or we’ll let the other guy ravage society” is not a compelling platform and rewarding them for running on that platform isn’t going to end well for us. This will turn out for us how paying the Danegeld always does.
You’ll vote lesser of two evils in most elections pretty much until the other side starts putting up reasonable candidates. Blaming Democrats for not giving you decent choice just completely misses the point: The Republicans choosing fascism means they aren’t a viable choice. They are removing choice from the ballot, not Democrats. You’re not being forced into anything by Democrats, they are simply running a platform that you should have the opportunity to disagree with, but you can’t, because the other side is fascism.
But let’s take the approach of “not rewarding them” for putting out shitty candidates (that aren’t fascist). Do you think once the fascists get into power, that Dems will even have the opportunity to change? What is your end game, because not voting for the lesser evil is the acceptance and indifference of either evil, and allows the worst evil to win.
The time for that fight is the primary, local elections, and between election cycles. Refusing to participate at the ballot box because you don’t like the choices you’ve been given is counterproductive, not just pointless.
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Maybe it’s a bad strategy, but it may still be the best strategy.
The main point of my post is that even if you don’t like Biden, you should at least be truthful in your complaints about him. If you paint him as worse than he actually is then instead of people holding their nose and voting for him they may just not vote at all, or worse.
Just to elaborate, the only real currency we have with the parties is cold hard cash (where we’re hopelessly outgunned) and votes. Giving away our votes without demanding something in return is selling ourselves short. We will /never/ have any sort of real change or progress if we hold our nose and vote for the lesser of two evils. We will only continue to lose ground as we devalue our votes by giving them away for nothing.
I see what you’re saying and I subscribed to that strategy long ago, but in the long run it’s clearly a losing strategy.
So what’s the winning strategy? Let Trump win instead?
The world isn’t perfect. Holding out for a perfect candidate means never voting, at which point you have nothing to bargain with either.
Go ahead and vote your conscience in the primaries, sure. It’s not such a big deal if you hold out for perfect in those. But in the American election system the actual vote for president is going to be between Trump and Biden. It sucks but you get just those two options there.
There’s a phrase I’m reminded of as it’s used in Australian politics quite often when it comes to our Greens party trying amend Labor legislation:
That is, don’t let your quest for the best possible outcome one prevent you from supporting a lesser outcome. Don’t let wanting a super progressive president prevent you from voting for the mildly progressive president which lets the regressive president end up winning.
I don’t like him in that he’s further down the wrong path than we’ve ever been with a Democrat president. He’s further down that path than Nixon or Bush Sr. Holding our noses isn’t working out for us.
I think that the Democratic Party needs to really grasp that it has to work for its votes and build a platform that genuinely attracts voters instead of talking them for granted. I thought the first Trump incident would drive that home for them, but maybe it will take another. Holding our noses will only tell them that they will reliably get votes as long as they’re not as bad as the other guy.
Getting rid of first-past-the-post and breaking up the stranglehold that the D/R dichotomy has on our government is the best strategy, and is in progress, but it’s slow and resisted by the same parties.
Certainly. But can you get it done before the next election? If not, the choice will be between Biden or Trump.
Maybe a nation of 330 million people only having two political parties was a bad thing after all?
Fuck Putin.
100%, May he DIAF. Or were you insinuating that any opposition to Biden (and Trump) can only come from Russian trolls?
Fuck Putin.
Before New Hampshire’s primary I thought Biden was fucked.
I’m still worried now, but I’m no longer sure we’re doomed.
What happened at the new Hampshire primary? Im ootl
Shit country continues to be shit, doesn’t seem like news anymore.
Not if we beat the drum about him being insane, instead of letting him get away with it as just another wacky thing
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Sorry, but no. You elected him. You don’t get to no-true-Scotsman the responsibility of the American voters for this, enough Americans support this loon that he can indeed win elections.
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What a rigorous and convincing refutation.
How, specifically, did Trump “cheat”?
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I mean, the people did elect her. She won the popular vote, but as I understand it, the electoral college had different plans.
Despite how abhorrent Trump is, what if he actually got elected again simply because Americans are that fed up with establishment politics status quo? Maybe Americans are desperate for change, anything but the same abuse by corporate overlords we’ve suffered since the 1970s, even if we know it’s going to do more harm than good?
Also, if you think the main reason Hillary lost is because of email-gate, consider that your own point of view may be compromised by Republican framing.
Are you going to pretend the genocide being carried out in Gaza is a non-factor?
Biden is not complicit in Israel’s attack on Gaza.
Biden has bypassed congress to sell arms to Israel.
Doesn’t congress know those artillery shells aren’t going to be fired into Gaza? Are they just antisemitic?
https://time.com/6551227/biden-administration-bypasses-congress-israel-weapons-sale/
Biden and most of the leaders of the western world are absolutely complicit and some dumbass on YouTube isn’t going to change that fact lol.
If Trump wins and dissolves NATO, and Russia, China, North Korea and Iran start a massive conflict as an axis of evil, tens of millions, if not a hundred million or more could die. More, if nuclear weapons are used.
Russia alone lost 24,000,000 people in the last war alone.
40-50,000,000 were killed in WW2. And that was with ancient technology, by comparison. Going to Normandy and seeing the endless rows of graves stretching as far as the eye can see shows the incalculable loss of global war, something that must not ever be repeated. Far too many paid the ultimate price to keep evil at bay.
I’m not campaigning for Trump. Sticking your head in the sand and pretending that Gaza isn’t a problem will not help Biden win re-election.