#he thinks that joe biden is just as bad as trump

[altair214]

My father is insufferable

[bedforddanes75]

im not american but some of you guys are just fucking stupid ong what do you MEAN youre not gna vote because you disagree with like one part of what youre voting for. like okay me when im fucking thick

[moonworshippinglesbiandotcom]

when i see yt americans tell black and brown americans to vote for biden bc “trump will be worse” or “trump is extreme right”, i roll my eyes bc where on the political spectrum does joe biden, who is financing and supporting multiple genocides as well as restricting the human rights of MILLIONS of people, fall? yt ppl think that bc he tweets abt roe v wade (which he could’ve codified but didn’t btw) that that makes him left wing

[moonlitlex]

based on the dms i just got i am starting to believe the vote blue no matter who thing this time around is actually a psyop

[kalashtars]

sometimes I truly genuinely forget nuance is dead on the internet and then I have to read people who should be on the same side argue about politics on the internet and I start wanting to bash my head into a wall.

[qqueenofhades]

I think its genuinely fascinating how Biden has somehow become the bad vibes sin eater for the party. I'm seeing people who were doing the whole "voting doesn't matter both old men are the same" pivot hard into voting as harm reduction. The anti voting rhetoric has COMPLETELY lost The Youths on tiktok. People suddenly remember the good things the Biden administration has done but don't associate Harris with any of the things they didn't like. In my swing state volunteers are signing up in droves. People feel ENERGIZED, the vibe shift pre and post Biden dropping from the race has just been insane

Y'know, that is a... good way of putting it. It's also why I'm quite sure that Biden has probably been planning it for a while. I don't think he was intending to step down, and didn't want to be forced out at the drop of a hat, but after he realized that the circus was never going to stop until he did, he did the honorable fall-on-his-own-sword thing and definitely, DEFINITELY spent some time choreographing this behind the scenes. Because while the roll-out has been very smooth, it could just as easily (as many of us were expecting) have been a total disaster, and that doesn't happen without SOME planning. It's also entirely possible that the campaign staff flipped from Biden to Harris are superhuman, to come up with a massive online roll-out, new branding, new signs (they had plenty of 'em in Wisconsin yesterday), new everything, but I'm guessing it's a combination of both. Biden has spent his entire political career being underestimated, and after we literally made a meme out of Dark Brandon juking the Republicans out of their shoes, we should definitely give credit where credit is due in how masterfully he pulled it off.

Because we have had eight years defined by the central question of Whether The President Is a God King Who Should Serve For Life (the MAGAts obviously think yes), the sheer idea of a president willingly giving up his power BEFORE he had to is also novel and admirable. It's sad that this is the case, but so be it. The Republicans also got a heaping helping of Be Careful What You Wish For that was undoubtedly brilliant; they've been yelling for years that Biden is old and frail and can't serve and should step down. Biden went "lol okay" and gave it to them, and now they're fucked.

Aside from that, on the most basic level, it's far, far easier to see the actual difference in the parties with Harris as the nominee, just because it shows that one party is willing to make progress and reflect the new demographic reality and social mores of America, and the other one is not. Now to be clear, Biden deserves an incredible amount of credit for coming out of retirement (he was ALREADY 77 years old when he became president and had had decades of a long and respected career in public service behind him) to fight, beat Trump, and deliver an incredibly successful presidency. He held the line against authoritarianism at home and abroad, he rescued the trashed American economy and managed a world-leading recovery from Covid, he stood up for democracy, he spent four years filling the benches with liberal judges to reverse even some of the Trump/McConnell hack job, he finally passed comprehensive infrastructure investment and the Green New Deal under the name of the Inflation Reduction Act -- and so on. Many of these priorities had been languishing for decades or were completely trashed under Trump, and he could not have done so much in just 4 years without all that age, skill, and experience. Hence why all the Ageism!!! was (aside from being a Republican/media smear job) dumb. He's able to do the job because he has had decades to study. Turns out that makes you actually pretty damn good at it.

Yes, Biden could not do as much as he wanted or originally planned, had to deal with MAGA Republicans and Joe Manchin/Kyrsten Sinema sabotaging him the whole time (lololol Manchin, possible possessor of the World's Biggest Ego and with Trump around that's saying something, popping out of obscurity to self-righteously announce he would not be willing to be Kamala's VP. YEAH ASSHOLE. LITERALLY NOBODY ASKED YOU. NOBODY WHATSOEVER. NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS AT LEAST WE WILL SOON NO LONGER HAVE MANCHIN IN THE SENATE). And yes, Biden made some serious mistakes of his own, because he IS from an older generation and a different style of doing politics/different beliefs that no longer resonate with the younger segments of the electorate. But this old white Catholic guy at the age of almost 80 still managed to be the most progressive president ever, coming in at a moment of incredible domestic and international crisis and getting us safely to the other side, and all cynicism, criticizing, and caveating aside, he deserves an incredible amount of credit for that. I mean that absolutely, and I am very grateful.

As I said, willingly relinquishing that power takes guts, and when Biden saw the writing on the wall that he had to sacrifice himself, he took his time, he didn't jump too early, and he didn't jump too late. On the most basic level, it becomes a hell of a lot easier to make the "both parties are not the same" argument when one is running a (comparatively) young brown woman and the other is still running their loathed felonious old demented orange traitor. Most Americans are not plugged into policy minutiae and details. They look at Biden-Trump, they see two old white guys. When you take one of those old white guys away (who goes in a self-sacrificially heroic manner and in sharp contrast with the coup-happy fascist) and put Kamala Harris in there instead, it generates an obvious jolt. People can see for themselves that there is a real difference that doesn't rely on closely reading news and tracking complex policy, because as noted, most Americans simply don't. The brown first-generation American daughter of brown immigrants is a quantifiably different story from "old white guy career politician," which for better or worse is how Biden was seen, especially the old part. We needed that establishment expertise to beat Trump in 2020; I still think Biden is the only one who could have done it, and as noted, we owe him a great debt for doing so.

However.... 2024 is not 2020, and it is not 2016. There has been this HUGE and unbelievable swing to Kamala because she represents the antithesis of what the last eight years of Trump-induced anger, fear, panic, chaos, and hatred has stirred up. That's why people are so ready to rally around her, just as they were (I daresay) around Obama in 2008, after the exhaustion, chaos, war, and mounting economic misery of Bush. Trump has been out of office for the last four years, but his shadow over the American political landscape has been omnipresent. Now people know that we finally have a real chance at getting rid of him forever, and just as Biden was uniquely positioned to capitalize on that in 2020, so Harris is now. Which is why, however tough it will be, she has a real shot at winning. I can guarantee the Republicans know that, and are shit scared. Because the Black Lady Army of Democracy has indeed arrived in force to Get This Shit Done and I don't know about you, but I found that incalculably comforting:

Yikes! All lined up for Kamala pic.twitter.com/Dt4OCDp7WX

— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) July 24, 2024

This, at the most basic level, is what scares fascists the most, it's exactly what we need now, and what Harris is uniquely positioned to mobilize, along with her gangbusters appeal to young voters:

This is the energy we need. This is what Biden saw and planned for and which he launched us into, and where all that experience and age paid off. This is why people, even people otherwise disengaged, disillusioned, or checked out of the tedious and mind-numbering drudgery and depression of American politics, are responding to it. Because it's easy to understand, it offers hope, and it tells a very simple story that is nonetheless long overdue:

Thanks so much, Joe. Go absolutely waste that orange fucker, Kamala. We got your back.

[batboyblog]

Interesting thing to consider regarding our situation from Magdi Jacobs. She’s been fairly levelheaded so far about all this. The Pandemic really did change us all and how we perceive things.

The constant stressful vigilance we all needed during the pandemic is still in effect from that era, and that’s why there’s such a disconnect between what we see and feel as true:

https://x.com/magi_jay/status/1812531377184653581?s=46&t=9ilK5pqP73XDblTtTbb4Qg

I don't disagree with her, and I know for a fact she also agrees with what I have to say here:

Covid is part of it, maybe it is its own thing, maybe it super charged something that had been happening in slow-mo before

but I think algorithmic social media is breaking all our brains and Covid locked SO many of us inside with it for a year and a half or so where our only "human" contact was through social media and that was NOT helpful

There's lots of studies about social media and anxiety and depression, we know algorithms intentionally put stories/posts that upset you into your feed, we know that social media causes negative polarization.

speaking just of my own experience on twitter over the last two weeks it really challenges your sense of reality, twitter very quickly forms a group think about a current event and it becomes overwhelming, also it destroys any sense of time and prospective, so nothing is allowed to just be bad it has to be THE WORST THING EVER! and from the debate and now Trump's fist pump after getting shot at everything is NOW! the election is not 4 months away with all the events that will take over the news, people are voting just this second and only based on this news story rn! AAHHHH!!! !

by its short form nature twitter makes it feel as if people are having a conversation with you, but your ability to reply and question their statements is limited and I think that makes for extreme anxiety if the group think challenges your understanding of events/reality. So Joe Biden had a bad debate night, sounded bad, looked bad, he was a sick, jet lagged, overworked, old man and looked and sounded like all of that. Oh well, but the group think quickly shifted to "this is the worst thing ever, he clearly has dementia!" and you were bombarded by that over and over, in more and more shrill and condescending tones. And it became very stress inducing because people were seeing something you didn't see and insisting "don't believe your eyes and ears! believe my hot takes!" and you felt like you were losing your mind.

This is one current event but this happens on social media all the time, twitter is bad, TikTok is worse.

I also think for "younger" (under 40?) people raised on reality TV, and more so instagram, Facebook, now TikTok picture and video based social media there's a, life as reality TV show quality, an unspoken performance and need to make our lives seem perfect for an unseen (and not real) audience, and also to be seen as having the right views, but living in quick sand where liking or using anything could become a problem at any point and having to keep up endlessly. I also think this is intensely anxiety producing and also just debilitating, I don't think you can DO anything good in the world with that mindset

final thought: I've said for awhile I think why you see so many people declaring the economy is bad, regularly saying its historically, Great Depression levels bad, when it is in fact really good, as near to full employment as we've ever had lots of great economic indicators is left over Covid trauma.

We all went through a scary, sad, upsetting time in our lives. But because we ALL did if nothing happened to you particularly, you didn't get hospitalized, don't have long Covid, no one you're close with died and you couldn't be there for them, it might feel like "nothing" happened. So people are reaching for a "logical" reason for that edgy, sad, nervous, upset, unhappy feeling they can't get rid of. Normally that comes from economic anxiety, fear of not having enough money, or losing a job etc. So many people are reporting that they think the national economy is terrible while saying they think they themselves are doing well, that their local or state economy (that they see an interact with) is doing good, while the nation is doing bad, somehow. People are spending like they're doing well as well, never had it so good, never felt so bad.

I suspect its because we're all still dealing with Covid feelings, and thanks to social media, the death of common spaces, political radicalization, we never really came together and drew a line under Covid, it just kinda sputtered out and we slowly went back to our lives like nothing happened.

[beatrice-otter]

I really like John Scalzi's analysis of the whole wtfery of this. (I'm not a great fan of his books, I think he's really overrated as a novelist, but his political commentary and commentary on the SF/F world is interesting.)

I think he has a good point about how while the initial panic about his bad performance at the debate was genuine (and if he'd done better, he'd never have withdrawn), but also that once there was panic, he decided how to manage things to maximize Harris' chances at both getting the nomination and winning the election.

Consider that the announcement was made on the Sunday after the Republican National Convention, and after the Sunday morning political talk shows were put to bed, i.e., after the GOP political capital was spent slagging Biden, and when professional spinners would be caught flat-footed by the announcement. Biden’s news was quickly followed by his endorsement of Kamala Harris, which in turn was followed by a flood of endorsements for Harris across the Democratic political firmament, effectively slamming the door on any serious challenge to Harris at the upcoming Democratic National Convention. If you think something like that just happens spontaneously, well, one, bless your heart, and two, you’re wrong. This was a work, a rope-a-dope, and a strategy to energize the Democratic base and to toss what little momentum the GOP had coming out of their convention down a deep, dark hole. And it worked! Harris raised an huge amount of money for her campaign in its first day — $49 million at least, and I’ve heard up to $70 million — and the GOP messaging was in disarray, limited largely to Trump whining on Truth Social, Stephen Miller freaking out on Fox News, and Mike Johnson trying to suggest that the Democrats can’t do that, it isn’t fair. Which is just what the Democrats wanted out of this. ... The current iteration of the GOP has been mask-off racist and sexist for some time, and Donald Trump sets the tone for the party on this score. Be expecting the whole array of nonsense from them, from dog whistles to flat out racist and sexist shit, said out loud, and also all over the former Twitter by Trump’s pet fascists and/or Russian bots. I guarantee you it will be nothing Kamala Harris has not heard before, but you might see a couple of new ones. The GOP outsourced their policy making to The Heritage Foundation with its Project 2025, which is already deeply unpopular, probably because it’s terrible for anyone who is not already a billionaire cryptofascist with a cross fetish. The GOP can’t go after Harris on policy grounds, and Trump doesn’t do policy anyway. So expect endless variations of she’s an uppity black woman for the next several months. ... Also, Biden has manifestly changed the narrative around both himself and his presidency. I didn’t want him to stop running for re-election, but choosing to do so allows for a “country over self” positioning that’s a hugely effective contrast to Trump’s “I’m running to avoid prison and to get revenge” narrative. It also allows a fresh reframing of the Biden administration’s achievements and accomplishments, and positions Harris to say she will continue them. Biden can lean into the whole “Grandpa Joe” thing now, and have it seen as a positive rather than a negative. ... To put it another way, after eight years, we know what the hard cap is on Trump’s support. We don’t know what the cap is yet for Harris’ support. History does suggest that cap is higher than Trump’s.

[raptorific]

I saw your post re: the silver lining to Biden stepping down. I felt relieved to remember that Trump is now the only incoherent old guy in the race. However, the relief quickly subsided when I remembered that Hillary was very well-spoken and polished, if not quite as young as Harris.

Harris fortunately doesn't have quite the same baggage as Hillary, so I'm hoping that will make the difference. What do you think?

*I realize this could sound like I'm trying to agitate, and I'm not, so no need to post if you don't want to.

So, apologies in advance, because I foresee a lot of Words happening in my response here. It's worth getting into because I feel like a lot of what you're bringing up are legitimate fears but also coming more from a place of Anxiety than from an actual pattern forming

First things first, to be clear, my post about Biden stepping aside did not highlight a silver lining in otherwise bad news. Biden stepping aside has been an objective boon to our chances of securing the White House in November. I wasn't saying "this is bad news, but look on the bright side," I was saying "that dread you're feeling is misguided, because this is, in its entirety, good news."

To your point about Hillary Clinton being well-spoken and polished: that's true! She very much was! However, crucially, the 2016 election was not one characterized by a debate over how polished or articulate the candidates were. The reason this can be considered a "shit the bed" moment for Trump is because of a factor that is present in this election, that was not present against Hillary Clinton: in this election, he spent all his time and energy selling himself as the younger, healthier, less senile of the two candidates, and now he's without his primary selling point in the eyes of this election cycle's electorate.

Now, Trump is actually showing signs of severe mental decline while Biden only shows signs of "a speech impediment" and "being over 80" and on a physical level Biden is very obviously much more healthy than him, but nonetheless, through a series of lucky breaks and crafty rhetoric, he was able to sell the public on the idea of Biden being some sort of Corpse Puppet. The reason why that matters is because he successfully sold voters on the concept "someone who is old, who can't get through a sentence, is not fit to be president." That narrative wasn't a factor in 2016, and it is in 2024.

The other important factor to remember about 2016 is the context in which that election happened, and why the dirty tricks and bigotry leveled at Hillary by the right actually worked on the public. Specifically, at the time, we were coming off eight years of a black president, a historic first, who the republicans had spent years and years trying to oust or otherwise discredit, and who was poised to come out of office as a fairly well-respected figure.

Voters have a tendency to view white men as, for lack of a better term, "Default" or "Normal" with no modifiers. Many of the people who voted for Trump were people who had, in reality, no specific problem with a black president, but felt that after eight years it was time to get back to "Normal." They saw Clinton, another huge Historic First as the would-be First Female President, and a lot of them said "no thanks, we just had a president who's African-American, we don't want to switch to one who's Woman-American, let's reset back to a Normal-American (read: White Man) before we do any more Progress, otherwise it'll feel like the world is changing too fast."

There's obviously other factors at play. I'm not denying Clinton had other problems as a candidate, but an overwhelming amount of why she lost was rooted in the electorate's misogyny, and their desire to return to a status quo of a white man-- almost any white man-- with no other Identity Categories, as president. It's why I do think Joe Biden would've handily won the 2016 election, had he chosen to run, but I'm not here to play the what-if game.

It's also worth mentioning, at this stage, that most of the country actually was okay with having a Woman President, and, specifically, with having Hillary Clinton be that woman president-- she received more votes than Trump by the millions-- it was only due to the system-rigging done hundreds of years ago by slavers that he was allowed to become president despite the will of the voters.

So, the reason why this matters: voters tend to like a change, to a certain extent. Barack Obama was largely able to win election in 2008 specifically because he was a young, handsome, charismatic black candidate, who stood in stark contrast to his opponent, an older white guy who just kinda seemed like a redux of the bumbling old white guy everyone already hated as President at the time. Trump won largely because of a pendulum swing away from Historic First Barack Obama being the status quo.

Right now, we've been governed by two Old White Guys for the past eight years, one from each major party. In the 2016 climate, a Historic First, electing a Something-American, was scary and intimidating to a lot of voters. This year, in 2024, we're playing a different ball game: Donald Trump is selling More Of The Same (old white guys who've been in all the elections for the past eight years and who both come across somewhat bumbling) while Kamala Harris is selling a refreshing change of pace (a younger Black and Indian woman who is visibly competent, intelligent, charismatic, and let's not downplay the effect this has on the electorate, attractive).

I maintain that running a female candidate in 2016 was, unfortunately, a political miscalculation. I think that if it had been two straight, christian white guys, the election would've been made about the issues and it would've gone to the democrats. Novelty was a liability for a candidate in 2016. In 2024, "more of the same" is a liability, and novelty could prove the greatest blessing.

Hell, look at how excited people got when Biden dropped out, and suddenly people had something election-related to pay attention to other than "BREAKING NEWS: ELECTION STILL COMING IN NOVEMBER, PROBABLY WILL GO BAD."

To your point about the baggage with Clinton: an important thing to understand is that the Republicans identified her political ambitions as early as the 1980s, and started drafting their "Running against her for President" playbook as soon as Bill was president. They were ready to take her down in 2000 when they worried she'd run, and in 2008 when she was a frontrunner for the nomination, and then finally managed to use it in 2016 when she actually was the nominee. Trump lucked into a showdown with, to re-use a recent analogy, an enemy whose Kryptonite he happened to have inherited.

The misogynist attacks on Hillary Clinton largely worked because they had been thoroughly seeded over the preceding 30 years. Many people, even democrats, really didn't like Hillary, for reasons both Fair and Unfair, and a lot of the people who voted for her were, as the cliche goes, holding their nose and voting blue. A lot of the median swing voters fell hook, line, and sinker for the GOP attacks on her, and either stayed home or voted for the other guy.

As I mentioned in my previous post, they don't have much of a playbook for Kamala Harris. They've done zero preparation for the possibility of her presidential run because they thought they wouldn't have to worry about her until 2028, if at all. They've tried "she laughs weird" but it doesn't really work because people are finding it endearing and because their guy does everything weird. They've tried "she's a childless cat lady" and that offended everyone's casually conservative step-parents and lost them a bunch of support. Trump's campaign has been tripling down on bolstering support of their small but vocal Base, by hammering down on the idea that she's a "far-left radical" but that's just a page out of the playbook they use for everybody, and doesn't really play with anybody who isn't already voting for them.

And, I already hear people typing to remind me not to forget this, they have tried the racist angle, painting her as a "DEI hire" and an "affirmative action vice president," or even claiming she's ineligible to serve because her parents were immigrants. Firstly, again, they're borrowing a failed page from their anti-Obama playbook for that last one, and second, the actually competent republican strategists have been begging the public-facing parts of the party to please stop attacking her on the basis of race and gender, for one simple reason:

Mask-off racism loses you votes. It's why Trump always has to pretend like he cares about "black jobs" and that his problem with immigration is that "Mexico is sending us all their bad hombres" rather than admitting that his problem is just that the people immigrating are Mexican at all. It's why top Republicans spent the past 16 years talking about birth certificates and constitutional eligibility for Obama, instead of just calling him slurs.

You can win voters by saying "we're okay with a black president, but the Democrats are breaking the rules by letting this guy in particular be president, it's not about him being black, it's about him being ineligible." You don't win voters by saying "keep the white house white." The people who that second thing would work on? Already voting republican 100% of the time.

Which is another important reason to have hope here: in 2016, the Republicans were still maintaining the (objectively false) pretense of not being racist. I don't think anything's changed about the Republican party between the Nixon era and today except that now, they say the quiet part loud. They've spent the past eight years systematically eliminating the power-players who maintain the Not Racist masquerade and replacing them with people who will actively say overtly, unabashedly racist shit without pretending it's about something else. It's why the republican strategists keep begging people not to attack her on the grounds of race: it will lose them voters.

That's more or less the short version of my summary of why I think 2024 will go differently than 2016. I hope I'm right. I'm right about a lot more stuff than I'm wrong about, but I'm also wrong about a lot of stuff, so I might not be. Nothing's over until it's over. If you don't want to see a repeat of 2016, go make sure you're registered to vote, and then on Election Day, go vote for Kamala Harris. Either she, or Donald Trump, will become the president at the end of this year. There is no third option that is mathematically capable of happening. If you are legally eligible to vote and physically capable of doing so, voting for Kamala Harris is the only action you can take (including inaction) that can prevent Donald Trump from taking over the country and doing away with any semblance of US Democracy altogether.

We can win this. With all of our help, we will win this. Doomerism on the left benefits nobody but the right. People being genuinely excited from now until November might actually translate into electoral victory.

[tom-hossain-minis]

Holy shit politics tumblr what the fuck. Are there no communists on this site? Or people with memory greater than that of dory from finding nemo ? Does nobody recall every promise Biden not only broke but actively did the opposite of what he said he was gonna do? And I also have to ask, and I’m sorry to do so, but I think it’s important, are you all white? Cause I seen yall saying “your pic friends will suffer” and the way it’s phrased makes me think perhaps yall are not yourselves poc, for the most part. Furthermore, all *my* poc friends are well fucking aware that Joe “I’m against desegregation” Biden is a fucking racist POS, as is his entire administration. Let’s not even get into increased climate destruction, his support for trans people being barred from sports, his general apathy towards lgbt people, his really fucking vile southern border behaviour and policy, his explicit fucking islamaphobia, anti black racism, and anti-Asian racism, his supreme belief in police barbarism, his total economic shitshow these last four years, and finally, something I suspect non Americans literally are unable to fathom, his vitriolic hatred of the rest of the world, and the danger he poses to humanity’s continued survival as a result. It’s true, your political system sucks fucking balls, I pity you for having only one party and not being able to remove your head of state, but don’t you dare tell me that you think Joe Biden is a “good president in most regards except Palestine”. And guess what, “trump is worse” is something I wholeheartedly agree with. But for some reason you Americans have no concept of “saying no”. You don’t have a permanent minimum standard. I can’t understand it, is there some weird part of American culture that says you can’t have a sense of personal dignity, or, dare I say it, a spine? It’s inconciliables to me that every person in the most well off, powerful, heavily defended nation on earth would not only allow themselves to be, in the most shakespearien sense, raped by their political system every four years, but that *some* would revel in it. I genuinely mean it when I say I cannot understand this behaviour. Aren’t you outraged at this treatment? Where is your fury against such degradation? Wouldn’t you fight and work and claw at everything against you until your bones were raw and white and broken rather than settle for this most violating and humiliating of lifestyles, in the hope of something better? Don’t get me wrong, I come from the cesspool that is Britain, and that’s its own thing, but I know why and how the British spirit was so thoroughly crushed so I know why people have given up there, and even then, we not only still have some resemblance of fight, but also a system that at least in theory can allow for some better representation than the American one. Britain has a proud history of rioting when things get too bad, we stole the idea from the French, just like everything in our history and culture, but America never seemed to have the same; is it just too vast a country? I just, really need someone to explain it. When and how were the American people politically lobotomised? And I’m sorry if this is rude or confusing but I really am at a loss. As a scientist I really am dedicated to and obsessed with making the world a better place for everyone, but America, the biggest problem by a landslide so massive it could be its own planet, completely and totally baffles me.

Tl;dr: fuck Joe Biden, I have a sneaking suspicion tumblr is mostly racist white people, America’s very existence can drive a man insane like the visage of Cthulhu

[palmtreepalmtree]

This is honestly still so shocking to me. As a California lawyer, I feel like it's difficult to understate the impact of John Eastman's fall.

Before Trump, John Eastman was a fixture of the California legal community. He was the Dean of Chapman University's law school for years. He was regularly interviewed in local media to get the conservative legal viewpoint, and even though I almost always disagreed with his positions, his reasoning was usually cogent and thoughtful. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for fuck's sake (this is not a thing that stupid, sloppy, or thoughtless people can achieve or do--you can have bad and seriously wrong opinions, sure, but you can't be thoughtless).

I swear though, it sometimes feels like the entire conservative base has been captured by some kind of mania. He continues to insist that his prosecution is politically motivated. Even as his own witnesses collapsed on the lies he continues to peddle:

Testifying in Eastman’s defense was Michael Gableman, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who has stated the election was stolen. But at the trial, Gableman admitted that his own 14-month inquiry into the election failed to prove that fraud cost Trump the election.

Another Eastman witness, John Yoo, a longtime friend and a Berkeley Law professor, testified that Joe Biden had won the White House “fair and square” and that Pence had “unassailable grounds” in refusing to reject electoral votes.

I mean, I guess at this point he just has to go all in on the lie. He allegedly says that his legal fees are going to cost him between $3 to $3.5 million and he's raised something like $500k for his legal defense.

But this doesn't sound like someone who is lying. It sounds like someone in a fucking cult:

[Eastman] said the bar trial was “extraordinary and unprecedented” but gave him a chance to present wider evidence of election fraud than had been previously aired. “It was eye-opening for a lot of people about the amount of illegality that we exposed during that trial,” Eastman said.

My dude, the Judge issued a 128 page ruling that found you guilty of 10 out of 11 counts of misconduct. Exactly what did you expose except your own ass?

Eastman portrays himself as a battling patriot who has been subjected to “false narratives and calumnies.” He said he is the victim of “lawfare,” an attempt to silence unpopular views with legal machinery.

“We are in a rather significant fight, and for whatever reason, I am the lead point of the spear in that fight, and I am taking it on, as I think my duty as a citizen requires,” he said. “We’ll do what it takes.”

My god, someone needs to fucking deprogram this guy.

Anyhow, this continues to be insane to me.

[dappersappho]

I was almost 16 (like my birthday was literally two weeks away) on Election Day in 2008. Not old enough vote yet, I could only hold my breath. After the disaster that was the Bush administration, all I wanted was to see if a Democrat, any of them, could sort things out.

I was terrified that I wouldn’t see that happen because, of all people, the Democrats chose a barely known senator from Illinois, who just so happened to be a black man. Even my own friend group was saying pretty heinous and disparaging things about him. When I called them out, they would say, “Look, he’s just not experienced enough.” Or they were calling him a socialist even though they definitely didn’t know what that meant.

Even then I knew they were a product of their upbringing. In other words, their southern white parents who could vote. My mother and grandmother, both black, were the only people I knew who were openly supporting Obama. Well, them and my English teacher, who was white and a single mother. Nothing gave me hope that it would be enough.

Since Election Day is held on a Tuesday, I would’ve had school the next day and needed some sleep. But it was almost 11pm and a decision still wasn’t made. I tried to turn off the TV and go to bed, but I couldn’t. I just had to know. I had to see it for myself. I turned the TV back on. Five minutes later, Barack Obama surpassed the number of electoral votes needed to win. I looked around my room then back at the TV. This was real. I just witnessed something huge.

Suddenly, I heard my mom screaming from her bedroom across the house; I guess she couldn’t sleep and kept her eyeballs on the TV as well. I ran to her and we hugged, jumped, screamed, and cried. I don’t think we’ve ever seen each other so emotional before. She pointed to the TV, which was showing Obama’s electoral votes continue to rise, and said, “Look at this! 16! You were 16 when you saw this!”

The next 8 years were met with ups and downs. But I never turned on the news or opened social media and dreaded what I was about to see. I was open to learning new things and keeping up with what was going on. It was easy to care about others because I felt at ease with myself and my country. Was I proud to be an American? Debatable. But I wasn’t really ashamed either.

Then 2016 happened. I voted third party because I naively believed that I could make a statement in doing so (I deleted my tumblr account at the time because I kept getting into fights with people who tried to convince me it was a bad idea). That and I thought Hillary Clinton would win anyway.

I felt sick to my stomach. Once again, I couldn’t sleep, but for a different reason this time. I was almost 24, a super senior in college. A friend of mine and my roommate’s spent the night with us. They got more sleep than I did. The next day, all three of us skipped class. We spent the morning together in our dorm with cookies and hot cider. The rest of the day, we tried to avoid any place on campus that had a TV since the news would be on.

The next day, I had an afternoon class. We spent almost the entire hour discussing just how much of an epic disaster a Trump administration will be for our country. I didn’t say anything. I would’ve started screaming incoherently in the face of anyone who minimized my concerns if I did. I could feel it in my chest. At the same time, I was feeling guilty. Why didn’t I just grit my teeth and vote for Hillary? Why?! Would it have made a difference if I did?

My mind has been in the dark since, made even worse during everything that happened in 2020. Sure Joe won - I even voted for the guy - but at what costs? I still didn’t feel relieved. I felt no hope. An oncoming Biden administration felt like the storm would continue, but hey, at least it isn’t flooding anymore.

Now, at almost 32 and bound to witness a historical election once more, I see a light again. We’re not out of the woods yet. Even if Kamala wins, we won’t be. But, just like I did 16 years ago, I feel hope. I’m once again able to believe that things will get better. I’m scared of being optimistic, but I can’t help it. I need this. I need to believe we’re closer to a leader who can and will do right by us, who will listen to us, and represent us in the best way. If it’s not Kamala, she sure as hell will be one giant step in the right direction.

[hotvampireadjacent]

“but he’s not trump so it’s fine i guess” genuinely asking, what in ur opinion is the better alternative? Like are you encouraging voting for a third party candidate, grassroots organizing to address current reps and tell them we won’t for Biden if he supports Israel. I just honestly can’t think of what else to do, other than vote and vote for Biden, bc I don’t think trump is going to make more morally sound decisions than Biden. I don’t think trump is going to stop funding Israel either. Or reverse abortion bans. Or offer recession relief. Is there a candidate we can support who is saying these things?

Why is it my job to repeatedly myself ad naseam? If you want to vote for genocide Joe I won’t stop you but I’m not voting for a man currently supporting genocide and deporting my people at the border.

The democrats are the party of “nothing will fundamentally change.” Like he said, including nothing will change for the better.

Now, if you’re asking in good faith I apologize for coming off aggressive I get so many bad faith asks.

I will be voting third party for president for the socialist Claudia de la kruz https://votesocialist2024.com

Third party has no chance of winning in America but, at least it’ll send a message i guess.

[kcyars99]

The truth about Tim Miller:

A gay man whose world view led him to become a lifelong Republican has the political acumen of a Jewish man who becomes a Nazi.

But it's even worse than that: it's like a Jewish man who helped build the Nazi party. That type of person can never be one of the faces of the Democratic party because he'll never understand it. And honestly, how could he?

To be part of a persecuted minority but find your identity in an alliance with the persecutors? You're unable to grasp any kind of reality that exists outside of whiteness. Whiteness is going to always come first.

And after you spent a decade being Frankenstein, your Republican monster inevitably chased you to the only other game in town: the Democratic party.

Because the GOP never really stood for anything but racism, sexism, and chasing power, and because there's no culture, no values, and no soul, a totally insane lying lunatic was able to swoop in and demagogue his way into ruling the party with an iron fist.

And I get it, you're gay, and now your allies wants to destroy the lives of everyone like you while being happy to use you to further those ends. It's untenable. But instead of putting up a fight and trying to save your party, you go to where the grass is bluer.

One problem: the Democratic party has a soul and it's name is the BLACK VOTER.

Where you wouldn't fight for your party? We will. Where you wouldn't guard your party from demagouges? We do. We don't have the caucasity to assume that we'll be alright. We're not white. It's always existential for us. We can never take our political power for granted.

That's why when you were grooming your party to fall victim to Trump, Bernie Sanders was over here falling flat on his face. Hillary built with us. Biden spent his whole life with us. They have equity. If you want anything over here in Dem land? You need us. Being a former Republican, you have no idea how we work because YOUVE NEVER HAD TO LISTEN TO US.

I'll get to how I know YOU, Tim Miller, have never listened to us in just a second.

That's also why we kill off culture vultures. We're so sensitive to anyone who wants anyone who wants to use us for their gain when we know they'll never get in the trenches with us. And we see it coming a mile away.

That's why we never fall for Trump scams in trying to astroturf black support. Not only does our life depend on us seeing through it, we're disgusted by it.

Now you've abandoned your party. Despite all the money you've made grifting off the party, you have one bad day in your new Democratic life, and now you're trying to rally us to abandon our decades long investment in Joe Biden because he needed a nap, a Joe Biden who beat Trump when you losers couldnt, and you are flumoxed as to why we won't give up like you.

It's because you don't belong here. You have no equity. You haven't built anything with us. You've never been in the trenches. You're not in touch with us. You don't know the community. And more than anything, you don't have the first clue about Black culture.

And in the past 3 days, with endless Black people, specifically Black women, telling you you're wrong, you have no idea what you're talking about, and that you need to LISTEN to Black people, your every response has been the white privileged casually racist response of "I know the Black community better than you."

You don't.

Hell, the idea of representation never even occurred to you until you adopted a Black kid and you're walking through the toy aisle and couldn't find any black dolls. If you couldn't grasp that until it was forced upon you, what makes you think you know us better than we know ourselves? We've been black our whole lives.

And how do I know you'll NEVER have a place in our party?

759.8K

You adopted a little Black girl and still don't even bother to listen to Black women, let one Black people.

In the words of Kendrick Lamar: You're not a colleague. You're a fucking colonizer.

[communistkenobi]

if you don't feel like taking the time to explain this to a random person I totally understand lol I will continue to look elsewhere to form an opinion. but I'm torn on not voting for biden, because I do understand the motive. he's terrible, teaching the democratic party a hard lesson is overdue. they need to be taught once and for all that they need to actually fucking deliver on their lofty virtuous promises or they will lose all support. on the other hand if you're following closely the shit trump's people are spewing right now he just keeps getting worse and worse and overtly fascist and ambitious, it's incredibly frightening atp, it's obvious that he will only make everything that's bad now in the usa and in palestine and everywhere else 10000x worse for a long time to come, I just don't know if the damage from another trump presidency is a worthy price to pay to stick it to joe

I’m going to be blunt, but I genuinely do not mean this in a rude or condescending way, I invite you to think about this deeply: do you legitimately think that if the democrats get re-elected they’re going to stop any of the horrific shit the republicans want to implement, either domestically or overseas? Has their track record given you any hope that that will happen? If you vote for them as they gleefully, openly carry out a genocide, literally what incentive do they have to stop Republicans at all? If their voter base is that secure, that loyal, what incentive do they have to protect their constituents or address their needs when in power? Protecting Roe v Wade was what made voting for Biden an existential necessity in 2020 and that still got trashed! People are still in cages at the US-Mexico border! Cop city is being built in Atlanta! Police brutality against Black people continues unabated! Pipelines are still being built on indigenous land (DAPL happened under Obama)! The threat against minority populations, the truly disadvantaged and oppressed people inside the US, are already living with this violence on a daily basis and have lived with it regardless of who is in office. To assume the threat of fascist violence has not yet arrived, has not yet been developing for decades, is to ignore these things.

I do not think the democrats need to be ‘taught a lesson’ or that you need to ‘stick it to Joe.’ The Democrats are not failing to deliver on their promises - these are their promises. Even on a purely self-interested level, ignoring the genocide currently happening, you are not going to be protected from fascists domestically by voting blue no matter who. Certainly there are local elections and movements were there is genuine progressive potential (Ohio just voted to legalise weed and support abortion, a legit good thing that was absolutely worth going out and voting for), but that is not the reality of the national party. The primary language available to voters as voters is to stop voting for them.

The fascist right in the US (both ‘populist’ groups like qanon and the proud boys, as well as institutional groups like the federalist society, the heritage foundation, etc, the list is endless, not to mention evangelical churches) is organised and developed enough that they will continue to hold power and influence regardless of who is in office. The genocide happening in Palestine right now, carried out by a democrat, is not a neatly contained far-away thing that can be separated from domestic politics (I am not claiming you’re making that argument, only trying to articulate my own point) - it is already having a profound and measurable impact on the US population in the form of increased racist, islamophobic and antisemitic violence, mass police brutality, institutional silencing and firing of anyone who even says the word genocide, etc. I think it’s productive to view those actions as developing fascist actions, actions which are being stoked by a democrat. And if they are not outright fascist, they are certainly a precursor to it. In the last couple years there have been a lot of stupid, incompetent demonstrations by the far right in the US - Unite the Right rally, the storming of the capitol, Qanon-motivated assaults and murders like the attempted plot to kidnap the Michigan governor, that one mob guy who was murdered by a Qanon follower in New York I think, Alex Jones being a national figurehead for the conspiratorial and openly fascist right (although he’s probably not going to continue to be that now that he lost a billion dollars in his court cases lol), the “stop the steal” legal attempt to contest the results of the 2020 election - these are ridiculous and on-the-surface ineffective attempts to express a fascistic will onto USAmerican institutions (“inchoate fascism,” a fascism not yet fully formed, a fascism in an experimental phase). But I think the genocide in Palestine is allowing for the effective version of those things to be done in the US. The hysteria, the rage, the violence that this genocide is producing “at home” is not going to dissipate if a democrat continues to hold office, and the Palestinian genocide is both an organising force for the current fascist right and an inciting force for it to further develop and grow. This larger debate about voting or not voting seems to be operating on the (correct) assumption that foreign policy is not a meaningful realm of difference between democrats and republicans, that the only space to battle over is domestic affairs. But absent from this debate is that these two things can’t be neatly partitioned, they are not separate, not just because you should view all human life as equally worth preserving but because we are seeing the mass domestic response within the US about Palestine - the popular resistance to it on the one hand and the institutional support for it on the other. The early 2000s US culture (“post-9/11”) is widely regarded as incredibly right-wing, and that was because of the war in Iraq! Foreign policy produces and shapes US culture, and the genocide in Palestine a colonial and fascist project.

This is not an argument for despair, or to do nothing. Fascism is not defeated by voting regardless of who you’re voting for, and so we can dispense with that idea. If you want to exercise your civic responsibilities, there are many other avenues - labour unions, community work, protests, boycott organising, and yes even voting in local elections when there is a strategic advantage to do so - things that are meaningful and do legitimately help people. But I do not see any strategic calculus in voting for democrats. Biden already told everyone this - “nothing will fundamentally change.” There should be no surprise, no expectation that they will do anything except what they’re already doing, which is business as usual

[possessesnightshift]

i'm not an eloquent political speech person so im just gonna be direct about this

americans, please please fucking register to vote and vote for joe biden in november

and before you jump to whatever policy thing or weakness of his to counter this plea, just stop. it doesn't actually matter. trump is worse. trump is fucking so much worse

our job from here on out is not only to hold our noses and vote for biden, but also to convince all of our friends family and whoever else to also vote for him in spite of all of his flaws. yes all of them

we need to make the fucking argument that trump is so dangerous, the country would be better off with a drooling old genocide lover whose mental faculties are drying up faster than the sahara desert. we need biden voters to be keenly aware of his shortcomings and refuse to back down. there's no use in pretending biden is still sharp as ever or has this mass grassroots support (he does not). he sucks. he is probably the worst democratic candidate in the party's history.

don't care. trump is worse. he needs to be stopped from taking power by any means necessary. he needs to be STOPPED.

from a non-republican pov, democrats constantly leaning on the "but the other guy is worse" argument is frustrating as all hell. i certainly hate it myself. but what gets lost in the conversation is that the republicans are essentially so beholden to this principle nobody even notices.

i know plenty of small town midwestern republicans who were embarrassed to admit they voted for trump. they voted for him in spite of his nastiness and blatant buffoonery (not in spite of his racism bc they're likely ok with that) because he was on the republican ticket, and to them any republican is better than a woke liberal who wants to take away our gas stoves and force drag queens to read us stories at bedtime

so yeah i kinda don't fucking care at this point

biden is a laughably bad candidate for the election of 2024. any other time he could've run (including 2020) is completely different than now, when he's just too fucking old. so should we just roll over and let him lose? just for trump to finish his term, be biden's current age, and either run for a third term or just stay in power bc the supreme court is on his side and they've been preparing for this for decades? fuck that

actually i think a rotting, pulpy corpse would make a fine president compared to dumbass donald "reality gameshow host" trump. literally if biden dies the day of the election he's still got my vote because it is not for him

the left has to learn to have the tenacity that republicans have. we emulate the right in the worst fucking ways (e.g. closing the southern border for no reason) but we never emulate their pettiness. we never say 'i hate the republicans so much i will willingly vote for someone i kinda hate to spite their smug asses'

remember when trump used to be a joke? remember when he was a giant embarrassment? remember the memes about his illiteracy and his lack of awareness? (see 'covfefe' for more info) trump may have the means to become a brutal dictator, but he relies on people smarter than he is to pull it off

if trump continues to hype up his project 2025 and his fascist ambitions with the swagger and confidence of fdr running against herbert hoover, what does it signal to the rest of the world for that man to LOSE to a corpse with the stamina of a wet flounder? it could stop the fascist momentum in its tracks by associating it with weakness and incompetence (you talk up all this hype and you lose to THAT man?? i guess you must be full of shit huh)

these are fraught times. there's no way to get out of this without letting go of our ideals of a perfect candidate who responds to the political desires of the people. that candidate does not exist and never will

right now we have not just an opportunity to preserve our rotting democracy for a little longer, but something much more special. we can fucking put an end to the trump experiment once and for all. we can make trump wannabes like ron desantis scramble to dissociate their image from the toxicity of the trump administration. we can turn him back into a joke.

at this point im screaming into the wind. no person who isn't already voting for biden is gonna read this far. but i want these words to be here anyway because i think they have value. 2024, 2028, and 2032 are all going to be pivotal election years. we can't wait around. we have to act NOW.

vote rotting fish 2024. i will plug your nose with a clothes pin if you refuse to do so yourself...