Voters want change, but still remain unsatisfied with their options
I’ll take old over criminal or fascist.
Especially an old man just restored a chunk of the social safety net. No, it’s not enough yet, but Republicans are making sure of that.
yeah, satan, the no surprise billing is enough for my vote.
The main fear with an old person is the instability it could cause if they grew ill. But the other two options are guaranteed instability. So I think I’ll take my chances.
Also keep in mind that trump is basically as old as Biden.
And shows far more signs of being old. (The memory recall test thingy is not something given to someone of obviously sound mind,)
Yeah. Strong “one of those things is not like the others” energy to this headline, lol.
Yep!
The thing about an old president is that even if he grows senile, there’s the entire rest of their administration that generally have the same goals in mind as them.
How did that work with tfg and Ronnie?
idk who rumor mk Ronnie is, but presidents assign who is on their team, most presidents assign people who are educated on what they’re assigned to, and most presidents receive advice from those people on their topics of expertise in the first place.
Yeah you found the mobile user. “Most” is past-tense, now. But you know, I’m old so I obviously know nothing and haven’t been around to witness watergate and on.
sorry, can you reword to highlight the issue?
I edited the comment.
I mean to say I don’t know what you mean with this part
Most” is past-tense, now. But you know, I’m old so I obviously know nothing and haven’t been around to witness watergate and on.
I would too, but like, could not limit it to just those three choices please?
It’s the illusion of choice, like one may give a toddler: would you like to have bacon or sausage with your breakfast? It’s the same product, different flavor.
Maybe in the worst funded public school system breakfast ever conceived …
Bacon is a cured pork- usually belly, and typically sliced.
Sausage is a seasoned ground meat… er… product… that might be cured or smoked or not, might be stuffed into casings or not, might (usually, unless specified,) be pork. Or not.
The two products are vastly different. And, in point of fact … Biden and the other two are also vastly different.
You might have had a point if you had said “it’d be like asking if you want cheap sausage or dogs shit.” I’ll let you figure out which is what.
Typical liberal. I’m left of that but thank you for the pedantry. It’s still pork and that goes to the wealthy and corporations, is the point. I’ll let you figure out which group works for the commoners.
I’m leftist too and would love for someone other than old centrist men to run the country but saying Biden and Trump are the same is just ignorant. One is a straight up racist, misogynist fascist who has done irreparable damage to the country, and the other is at least somewhat competent and has enacted policies like the COVID relief stipend and pausing student loan debt payments. Yes, he also is a shill for big companies and should be doing way more. But it does make a difference for millions of people. All you do by treating them as the same is discourage people from voting, and that voter apathy is what got us trump, and could get us desantes. Short of a political revolution, that still is our best way to enact actual change. Plus, those things aren’t mutually exclusive.
Good politician-bad politician ruse imo. It’s not the age so much as the recorded history. That Overton Window is so right, it’s wrong, now.
So what’s the solution? Again, voting is the only real way to get any change done right now, and while it’s minimal, I’d rather have a politician that has a minimal good effect vs none at all. The right thrives on voter apathy, they want you to feel like both sides are the same so they can take power, strip away voter rights, and stay in power - exactly what’s happening in conservative states like Florida and Texas.
Trust me, I want there to be another option, some sort of large-scale protest or revolution. But in lieu of that, the least we can do is make sure the minimal amount of damage is done.
This is actually what I find funny about conservatives. They paint someone like me as way extreme left anarchocommunist or something and its like. This is rediculous. Im just left of center and the party I vote for is just right of center. Your party is the one so extreme you see center as left.
for me its more a choice of do you want sausage in your mouth or up your arsehole.
Why is that the option, though? The majority of people who complain about the choices probably know who they’ll vote for even if it’s not a great choice, but how are these 3 the absolute best our country has to offer? Who’s pulling the strings to force this choice down our throats?
In the end, the fault lies with the structure of the democratic process itself. The system of party delegates who then choose the presidential nominee from each political party, the first past the post electoral system by state (instead of a nationwide popular vote system)… These are all ways to effectively make elections in the US less democratic. Looking back at the founding fathers and which social and economic class they represented, the conclusion is that this supposedly flawed democratic system was implemented by design, allowing them to put a hand on the scales and tip the balance of power in their favour. Compare this electoral system with the representative democracy of western European countries for example, and you’ll see some differences.
The fourth pillar of American democracy, media.
By buying out news media they control the narrative. Now they’re coming for the platforms to control the narrative of public discourse
There’s protection for these things from government ownership, because these are how democracy works. If you control the flow of information (or worse, convince them of false facts), you can warp the consensus in a certain directions
One side is advocating all sorts of crazy shit (much of which they don’t actually want) and spreading easily consumed nonsense to justify it, and the other side is pointing at them and going “this is who will be in charge if you don’t go with us”
This whole thing is a performance - sure, they’re actually competing and have slightly different goals, but all this fighting over social issues is just a way for them to act freely on the issues that actually matter. They don’t actually care about abortion or trans people, they care about the money.
They just use hot button issues so they can give us a choice between people who are going to lie to our faces and screw us over, and we’ll fight each other over them instead of attempting to actually change anything. The effects may matter for us, but no matter who we choose-they’ll win and we’ll lose.
When someone gives you a false choice, the only right choice is to attack the contrivance that took away your choice - we need to take back our media and organize
Who is “they” in phrases like “they control the narrative” and “they’re coming for the platforms”?
Billionaires and corporate overlords.
I feel that it should be pointed out that Trump is also a fascist.
And old
He’s the total package! Like, the kind of package you’d set on fire and leave on a neighbor’s porch.
My grandmother was born in Berlin, Germany in 1938. She watched the Gestapo put a handgun to her grandfathers head and murder him because he wouldn’t give up his grandsons to fight the russians towards the end of the war. Seeing an old woman cry towards the end of her life about the horrors of ww2 and the atrocities of nazis then the subsequent pillaging of berlin by russian soldiers (she witnessed her mother get gang raped by russian soldiers) i find your comment to be ignorant and offensive, Trump isnt a nazi and if he was you would’ve seen him arm his supporters to the teeth with military grade equipment and wholesale murder liberals like it was going out of style
It wasn’t for lack of trying.
For me, it’s like trying to convince a Q person that Trump wasn’t some master of political chess and that he had a secret army arresting politicians left and right, I don’t know if you hear what I’m saying maybe I didn’t explain it right. I just think that if Hitler a man who literally was in jail, could devise a plan after getting out of jail of somehow going from unknown guy who wrote Mein Kampf to having a fanatical army armed to the teeth that I think a billionaire would’ve had an easier time, but that’s just my opinion.
I hear you and I understand you. Remember, tfg wanted to “just start shooting” protesters, redrew a hurricane’s projected path, wanted to nuke the hurricanes iirc, etc. The “adults in the room” did a piss-poor job of whistle-blowing, but my goodness, had they not contained him as much as they did, I’m pretty sure his worst would have looked a lot more dire.
Thank you for an amicable reply that furthers thought. I’m just of the opinion he really wanted to go that way. I’m open to deeper thought experiment, if you want to continue this.
Btw, I am sorry if I came off as dismissive or minimizing of your predecessors’ experience. That’s not my intention and I don’t want to be insensitive. I’m very afraid that if something isn’t done to curb the rightward slide my country is experiencing, we’re going to get there quickly.
We may not agree on everything but i think that ppl need to talk more from both sides and not dismiss the other, ostracizing ppl is wrong, we are all guilty of it, human nature sucks
Criticism isn’t wrong, it can be healthy and productive. How people criticize is another topic. I’m blunt and it comes off the wrong way. I’m sorry for that, I’m thinking it’s because my compatriots and certain neighbors are outright rude and it’s because we’ve so underserved ourselves, academically, financially, and humanitarianly.
Nuking hurricanes is a surprisingly recurrent idea, it’s been around since the 50ies, and is probably the most American thing ever.
Personally I think the Bush administration did more harm with its senseless wars, pointless torture and mass surveillance programs.
And the Biden administration ‘Ministry of Truth’ is downright Orwellian.Trump was horrible as far as discourse is concerned, but actions wise, US policy has been consistently evil. Only less openly so.
Of course I don’t live there, so my view reflects that.I live here on the Southeastern seaboard, and concur!
Not to diminish that experience. But that also started with people laughing at Hitler all over Europe. Just like we laughed at Trump, our luck is that America seems to be 50/50 not 80/20 like the Nazis benfore WW2.
Hey maybe all America needs is extreme poverty for more people to give in to the strong man logic and we ain’t safe.
Your story is moving but the nazis existed before that and before they where in power. Germany was a democracy that became a fascist state. It did not start out with guns to the head. This is what he and others mean when they call him a fascist. Not ww2 fully have taken over fascist but the having barfights with communists fascists before the took over.
I’m sorry that happened to your grandmother but what does that have to do with that? Parent comment says he is a fascist and never mentions Nazis (though he also happens to be one).
Having a grandmother traumatized by the horrors of war doesn’t make you an expert in the politics that started it. Going by your logic, my grandfather fought Nazis in WWII and that makes me uniquely qualified to tell you trump is a fascist that is mostly interested by the capital being a ruler brings him, and that he absolutely endorses the killing of Jewish people and minorities in general, as that bolsters the base that gives him money. Bolstering that base makes them arm themselves politically and personally, giving rise to the current fascist laws being passed in red states and the countless right wing domestic terrorist groups. As someone who would be a target of both of these were I living in the united states, I find your comment to be ignorant and offensive. Trump is a Nazi and you can see him enticing his Nazi voter base to arm themselves with military grade equipment and preparing to wholesale murder liberals like it’s going out of style.
Scathing! I might have chosen to say “a bit myopic ,” as I well-understand the sensitivity around this topic and saved “ignorant and offensive” for an adjacent topic, but otherwise, I’m older and stuck in said red state. I’m quite alarmed at the current state of policy.
No-one said he is a Nazi, just that he’s a fascist. There are multiple different flavours of fascism – it isn’t all literally shooting people in the head and ordering thousands of people into death camps, it can be more subtle and insidious than that.
Also worth mentioning that fascism generally doesn’t start with the ethnic cleansing and mass murder, it starts with things like; scapegoating minorities, being overly tough on crime, and peddling misinformation. It takes quite a few years for the fascists to gain enough power to be able to enact the kind of policies that are generally pretty unpopular among normal people.
Hitler’s first power-grab failed. The Beerhall Putsch was not his first attempt to seize power, iirc.
All im saying is my grandmother witnessed it firsthand and extra part of the story, her mother shaved her head as the russians were pillaging the city so she would look like a little boy cz she hadn’t developed breasts yet, that way the russians wouldn’t rape her cz the russians soldiers were ruthless animals, but war is disgusting
ok so this has nothing to do with trump being a fash
Go check out what UN peacekeepers do in war-ravaged countries, in fact, recall abu ghirab and other US atrocities. Let’s not collectively assume all Russian soldiers are “animals.” We’re all animals and bloodlust isn’t as far from us as we may prefer to think.
You’re excusing Soviet atrocities by saying “what about the US.” Try doing the same trick to excuse Nazi atrocities.
Tankies are disgusting.
I’m in agreement with you and i think we share more in common in thought than what we realize, I am not the poster child of bipartisanship given my history on this website and others however, I’ve always been a believer in freedom of thought and speech as it helps us find common ground and find out what we can easily make progress on in this experimental republic known as the United States, it is important to have these conversations, because hyper partisanship amongst the people leads to hyper partisanship in government which inevitably leads to Civil War. A battlefield of debate is a much easier path than a battlefield of lead and blood. I have read the Bible front to back multiple times and sometimes I feel like a terrible person for the things I’ve said to others online and about my fellow man. I guess what I’m saying is the world is evil and it’s easy to get sucked into that evil; although I think there’s more good than evil in this world. It’s entirely up to you, but I’ve created a community that values free-speech, and when I first opened it three years ago, it was filled with people of all kinds of beliefs, and was truly an enlightening place until it was stolen from me by those claiming censorship was the better alternative to what I was offering. Three websites later here I am and I’m offering you the opportunity to speak freely in a community that I moderate where disgusting personal attacks are not allowed and conversation must be kept civil. Although my instance, probably doesn’t have a lot of liberals in it or or liberal minded people are in. I welcome those who want to step outside their comfort zone and echo chambers are to speak to the other side and see where things go even if we don’t always agree, and things get a little tense, but know that as moderator, I will protect your right to speak freely, and without disgusting hostility, and this rum, even though you will find those that disagree with you, I hope to see you there friend https://exploding-heads.com/c/freeforumfamily
Thanks, I’ll check it out later.
I would rather be on hand with 10 men than absent with 10,000~ Tamerlane It was good speaking with you, take care
Ive read about hitlers rise to power, I actually posted a detailed documentary on it as well, ill share it here for reference, I encourage all of you guys to watch it, https://youtu.be/yWqnnUeD6cw I would tell you to pay close attention to how german ppl felt hopeless before and then hitler promised such good things. And for the record for those who don’t know nazi were national socialists for reference here is wiki https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism But seriously watch the documentary, it’s extremely informative, (also not for nothing but i been hearing nothing but trump is a nazi, his supporters are nazis for 8 years now so im sorry but lets not pretend comments with dates dont exist, no offense)
With respect, I think that’s exactly what’s happening here, and pretending “socialist” wasn’t a part of his plot to attract commoners -volk- is somewhat disingenuous.
It’s the state of politics that the wealthy elite owners of the country absolutely enjoy
Voters no longer vote for who they want
They vote for the best of the worst that is given to them
They vote for the best of the worst that is given to them
Nothing new about that.
I was a lot less worried about Mitt Romney.
Romney was a corporate stooge, but at least you knew it was just going to be more rich get richer shit. This new variety is deadset on torturing people instead of just making them poor.
Not even best. Many people vote purely against the thing they don’t want, rather than voting for the thing they do want.
And low information, single (wedge) issue voters. So many liberals voted against abortion.
This is how the conservative base has been voting for decades.
There has not been a time for ripe in modern times for a strong 3rd party candidate. To bad the whole system is rigged against it.
3rd party, on a national scale, is guaranteed to fail in fptp. The only one who wins in fptp is the least hated (of 2) candidate. 3rd party votes just suck votes that could be voted against that most hated candidate
This isn’t inherently a failure of first past the post, this is a failure of human psychology.
No, it’s definitely a FPTP failure. If you have progressive third party candidate who mostly attracts voters who would otherwise have voted Democrat, it splits the vote. Even if the majority of people voted for either the third party or the Democrat candidate (let’s say 30% each), the Republican candidate would get win even with 60% of people not wanting them.
I suspect you’re thinking of people being afraid to vote third party and thus dooming the third party to lose, but the fallacy of that is assuming that everyone would genuinely vote for the third party over other candidates, which isn’t the case. Articles like the one we’re commenting on are only pointing out the most common belief.
First past the post voting systems prevent viable third parties because of human psychology. Why are we pretending to argue about how we phrase this?
If everyone do preferred a third party candidate actually voted third party, that would change. That’s just another establishment talking point.
That time was 2016, which is why gary johnson got so many votes.
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Fascist, criminal, or geezer.
Ngl I know which one I’m picking (the old fart).
Sound about right.
sample size of 1000 though. you’d think they’d be able to find tens of thousands of people
It’s a pretty typical size for political polls.
A sample size of 1000 means that the results are very likely within 3% of the entire population.
If you instead survey 10,000 people, your results will very likely be within 1% of the entire population.
It’s diminishing returns. For most pollsters, an extra 2% accuracy is not worth ten times the effort.
It’s similar to coin flip math. Getting 6+ heads on 10 flips is not hard. Getting 60+ heads on 100 flips is way harder. Getting 600+ heads on 1000 flips? No way. In fact, even getting 530+ heads on 1000 flips is very unlikely
i guess I dont understand statistics then - how is a survey of 10000 people accurate within 1% of the entire population? sure, there are a lot of towns that size or smaller, but it isnt like they’re traveling there to do the survey (as it’d skew the result).
They don’t survey 10000 people in one town. They try to get a randomly chosen sample of 10000 people, or even 1000 people, across the entire United States.
If the entire United States is 50% men and 50% women, then a randomly chosen sample of 10000 will likely contain no more than 5100 men and no more than 5100 women. A sample of 1000 will likely contain no more than 530 men and no more than 530 women.
Now replace “men” and “women” with “Democrat” and “Republican”, or any other demographic. That’s how you end up with a group of people that reasonably represents the entire United States.
Totally normal “democracy”, working very well. 🙃
At this point, I’d be in favor of just asking 9 first-graders what their favorite single digit number is, and granting the position of POTUS to whoever’s social security number matches the one they generated.
But, given our current options I’d take a clueless old man over a lucid fascist in a fuckin’ heart beat. How is this really being presented as a dilemma? Would you rather have your house a bit too chili, or burn the whole thing down? Sure I don’t like either option, but deciding which one’s better kinda plays out like those cheesy banking commercials.
I’m actually unironically in favour of some sort of Sortition for political positions, or at the very least a proportion of them. Random people would take it more seriously and listen to experts to do the maybe less popular but correct things when not seeking power or re-election.
Same, with the obvious caveat that some vetting would be necessary so we don’t just hand the keys of the country to some Nazi (not that we aren’t electing those anyway, but still…)
It depends on if it’s competition chili or if it has beans.
Its going to be interesting, desantis doesn’t have the support to beat trump in the primaries according to polls thus far and rfk jr (although a breath of fresh air in my opinion) doesn’t seem to have the support to upset biden in a primary (the dnc has announced it won’t hold any debates) popularity for biden is very low outside his democratic voter base and even within that base he still is polling low (not as high as he should be). In my opinion it will be trump vs biden rematch with trump winning cz of the dissatisfaction with bidens first term with the deciding factor being independent giving trump another shot and hispanic voting for trump more than before (i could be wrong but thats my take)
The thing about Trump vs Biden is that they are both known quantities as presidents, and Biden (for all his faults) is simply much more competent.
“and Biden (for all his faults) is simply much more competent.”
I disagree completely, but ill try to leave it at that cz talking politics often gets me in trouble on other instances, all ill say is, i think biden is corrupt and can’t string together coherent sentences
biden is corrupt and can’t string together coherent sentences
I simply cannot fathom that as a reason for voting for Trump, given the choice. Those exact criticisms apply to Trump in immense quantity.
DeSantis won Florida’s 2022 gubernatorial election with 60% of the vote. If somehow Trump isn’t able to run for the presidency it’s a landslide victory for DeSantis v Biden.
DeSantis’ faltering popularity in the GOP race shows that whatever is popular in Florida isn’t necessarily popular everywhere else. I don’t think it’s a guarantee Biden loses to DeSantis, if it comes to that.
There are, in fact, other states besides Florida.
It’s impossible to know that for sure.
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Personally, i think it had to do with his opponent. Everyone said the Democrat candidate was shite.
Heck, I am not even American, and I think this too
wait wait wait. so trump isn’t to old!!!
Wait, Trump is no longer fascist?
Not as fascist as desantis.
Trump had fascist tendencies, desantis is trying it out in practice.
Ranked choice voting when?
Can you imagine the push it’ll take to implement when probably half the country is too uneducated to understand how it works?
