Are we still acting like things are normal? Like this is a normal election with normal stakes? Are we still entertaining some bygone notion of red versus blue? The last three weeks. The last three weeks is why you vote for Biden. No, that's not fearmongering. Trump, and his supporters, and the sycophants he's surrounded himself with, have operated- always- under the notion that when it comes to governance, lack of experience is a virtue and those who are bureaucratically entrenched are THE ENEMY. The last three weeks have finally, maybe fatally, belied the strength of that philosophy. Do I have to enumerate the ways this administration has fucked up this response? I don't have the time or energy. Read the news. Do you want more of this? Because this administration isn't gonna get more nimble. There's nothing in our recent history suggesting that we're suddenly going to see a competent response. I can't wait to see how they respond to the economic depression that crashes down on us like a. Fucking. Tsunami. After the actual pandemic has receded. Joe Biden is old. Joe Biden is white. Joe Biden is entrenched. I get it. Although come to think of it, Bernie Sanders is all that shit too, and somehow he gets a pass. But you know what else Joe Biden is? Experienced. And you better bet your sweet ass he'll surround himself with experienced folks, as well. And THAT'S what we need right now. Experience. Competence. Bureaucracy. Know what we don't need? Yes-men. Plutocrats. Spin doctors. Xenophobes. Take a look at the current administration. This is no longer a choice of red versus blue, if it ever was. This is a choice between whatever we have now and an actual government. And you know what's sad? I, too, have flashbacks to 2016. I remember all these people whingeing about how if Bernie wasn't our man, then there was no point in voting because Trump and Hillary were the same package with different wrapping. And guess what, those people were fucking wrong. Hilariously, tragically wrong. Nobody seems to want to admit that Clinton probably wouldn't have thrown vital tax dollars at an honest-to-god wall between us and Mexico. She wouldn't have separated children from families. She wouldn't have enacted sweeping tax cuts for the wealthy at a time (hindsight twenty twenty, kiddos) when we probably needed to shrink our deficit in case of a national emergency. She probably wouldn't have seeded the courts with the most definitively conservative judges we've seen in our lifetime, thereby casting the future of, say, reproductive rights into doubt (you're calling that "fearmongering?" Really?). And she probably wouldn't have called the current pandemic a liberal hoax," a line which is still making the rounds in circles of conservatives who still resist efforts to flatten the curve. Among other things. So yeah, look back to 2016. But stop it with this "Bernie is the only viable option" shit. It's not helpful. And it's not true. And if I have to hear it one more time I swear I'm gonna go and lick a subway pole and be done with it. There are some sobering fucking reasons to vote for Joe Biden and they go far beyond red versus blue.
Any positive you can list for Biden is true of any of his political opponents within the Democratic party. Just like the last Democratic nominee for President, he comes with a ton of political baggage that can, has been, and will be leveraged against him. I've already committed to a Democratic vote come November. I am not making a 'both sides are the same' argument. I am in the position of watching the party that I want to succeed shoot itself in the head and foot simultaneously, after doing the same thing four years ago. I'm falling in line, isn't that enough?
Man, I hate doing the line item thing, but I'm going to. I fail to see the direct line of reasoning between this statement and your original statement ("there is no positive case for Joe Biden"). So what if a broad swath of the Democratic lineup shared some positives? How does that then translate to "there are no positives for Biden"? Lemme FTFY: I'll demonstrate: Bernie Sanders is a Socialist, and Socialism is bad, mkay? Oh, no! There are vague and unfounded rumors that Biden has dementia! Guess what is a perfectly well-founded fact? Bernie Sanders had a fucking heart attack! And now he refuses to share his medical records! Wonder what he's hiding about the state of his health? Bernie Sanders is a fucking hypocrite. None of this is to slag on your preferred candidate. It is only to demonstrate that there's no such thing as an unassailable frontrunner. You opened with: Nah. The sole reason to vote for Joe Biden is that he plays for the blue team, not The red team. In doing so, you are absolutely making a "both sides are the same" argument. There are no benefits to voting for Biden over Trump? The only difference is the color of the team? Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck. No, it's not. And it's statements like this that demonstrate as much. If the last three years, the last three weeks have taught us anything, it's that messaging matters. Words and ideas, they're like memes, they're like viruses. If your message is "vote or don't, I don't give a shit because there's only one perfect candidate and he's no longer in contention," that message helps shape voter enthusiasm, and ultimately turnout. We saw that last election. And we've seen what the consequences have been. Why are you doubling down on the message? What's the value in ignoring every good reason to vote for the better candidate?Any positive you can list for Biden is true of any of his political opponents within the Democratic party.
Just like the last Democratic nominee for President, he comes with a ton of political baggage that can, has been, and will be leveraged against him.
Just like EVERY nominee for President, he comes with a ton of political baggage that can, has been, and will be leveraged against him.
I am not making a 'both sides are the same' argument.
Is there a positive case for voting for Joe Biden?
I'm falling in line, isn't that enough?
Joe Biden, you'll remember, is the sole reason Obama's thinking on gay marriage "evolved". He was the liberal one in that relationship. Just because we've let know-nothing, do-nothing commies redefine what it means to be a liberal doesn't mean that Biden isn't one. Also, the majority of leaders in the black community supported the crime bill (and attempts to make that not true are just dishonest and historically wrong), so Biden thought he was doing what was right at the time. After all, it was black communities who were suffering under an oppressive amount of crime in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. The crime bill turned out to be a bad piece of legislation, but them's the breaks. My biggest problem with Biden is his age. I'm sort of sick of Boomers on the one hand, but I REALLY don't want Kamala Harris being one breath from the presidency when the president is a senile septuagenarian. If you think he's bad on crime...
The incarcerated are members of our community too. They're certainly not safer in jail and prison than they would be outside. Communities as a whole are also weaker because of mass incarceration. The criminal punishment system is the same as it always was: a racist, classist, ablist mechanism of social control. This is what Biden represents.