#that’s how I’m gonna feel that’s how most people feel about voting for Biden

[sonicthedestiel]

I RAN OUT OF ROOM IN THE TAGS FCKN HELL

[didnt-hear-idsb-live-again]

The election is so close I actually feel physically sick whenever I think about it, and sicker when I think about how much momentum the campaign had when Harris first took over and announced Walz as VP. It’s truly astounding for the party to have seemed actually progressive and hopeful and had personality and cared about engaging young voters for the first time in a decade and, in such a critical election, to slowly walk that back to the old enthusiasm-less center right "nothing will change" moderate-ness we had before, to the point where all the momentum just fell off a cliff and now we might lose all our fucking rights and be destined for fascism in, like, a week.

[thebreakfastgenie]

It’s dangerous because you should be voting for people who have polices that you like. Under Biden this country has gone to shit. Kamala was in charge of the boarder and it was horrendously run. She is an ag who locked up the most black people for minor offenses in ca history. you supported blm now you’re gonna vote for someone that locked up a ton of them for minor offenses. she’s not good at her job and if she wasn’t a democrat black women id guarantee you would not vote for her you’d trash her. Look up who you vote for on neutral websites before casting your vote. And most don’t like that they bypassed a primary and the rich and powerful got to hand pick your candidate for you. So much for defending democracy am I right?

I’m not happy about bypassing a primary either, but what’s done is done. There is no path forward now that gives the primary voters a say. I voted for Kamala Harris for Vice-President in 2020. I voted for President Biden in the 2024 primary and he endorsed Vice-President Harris. Democratic voters are rallying behind her by choice because we don’t want to waste time fighting each other or open ourselves up to Republican attack. We want to beat Trump. You're underestimating how callously partisan I am this year. I want to beat Trump. Everything else comes after.

But let's talk about you. This message isn't just badly type, it seems reads like a response to a post, but none of my popular political posts are that post. I haven't really talked about Kamala Harris being a Black woman, because although it is significant because the base of the Democratic Party is Black women they've already begun incredible organizing for Harris, the most relevant point to me and the point I have chosen to focus on is that Harris is the candidate endorsed by the president, with access to the president's campaign funds, and has quickly secured united support, averting chaos. I was against Biden leaving the reason because I was terrified of chaos. I do support BLM and I'm sure I reblogged posts about it at the peak of that movement's mainstream attention, but most of the content on my blog is not BLM posts. A lot of my posts about racism and antiracism take a more academic stance. This ask feels like a copypasta, something you just sent to any Democrats you saw supporting VP Harris. I wonder why you'd want to undermine support for VP Harris. Could it be that chaos I'm so afraid of? Could it be because you want Trump to win? I mean, you didn't say anything about Trump in this ask. Not even a cursory "of course Trump is bad but." You do go in on "defending democracy," which is a big priority for a lot of Democratic voters. It's almost like you're trying to dissuade people who care about that from supporting/voting for VP Harris. I wonder why?

But this is what really sticks out to me:

Look up who you vote for on neutral websites before you cast your vote.

"Neutral websites?" What exactly are these neutral websites, pray tell? You certainly didn't provide any examples. There's just something about this phrasing that's incredibly strange. This is not, in my experience, the way leftists with left criticisms of Democratic candidates approach this issue.

All this is giving me the gut feeling that this anon is a troll designed to suppress support for VP Harris and the Democratic Party. Maybe a human troll, maybe a bot, but the goal is the same. If I get more asks like this I might just delete them so as not to platform them, but I wanted to post this one so everyone could see what I'm talking about.

[pop-punklouis]

I live in a deep blue place but my family is in Ohio. I went to visit them over the summer and it became…immediately clear to me how this was gonna go down. Again. I drove home and climbed in my bed for three days straight. So yeah, I’m angry and sad tonight, but I feel like I did the bulk of my mourning back in July.

Over the next few months I was chastised by friends and colleagues for being pessimistic when I would dump a cold bucket of reality on their heads whenever they would start going on about how there was “absolutely no way he was going to win again.” Most of them have never been to a place like Ohio. They have no fucking clue what it’s like to not live in a big cozy liberal bubble.

I hope they get it now. But I’ve never wanted to say “I told you so” less than I want to say it right now. I’d give anything to be going into work tomorrow to eat a big ole slice of humble pie.

Anyway. Sending big hugs to you Hope.

i just think the democratic party consistently underestimates how strong trump’s pull is when it comes to republicans and his supporters. and unfortunately, republicans go out and vote. they rally. they don’t focus on single-issue voting. they don’t splice each other up and point fingers like we do. and i’m not saying that to place blame on democrats or liberals or anything like that. i’m just saying that to try and map out how this continues to happen. and how unsurprising it is even though it’s devastating and horrifying.

after 2020, the maga camp fueled themselves with as much hatred and spite they could muster and they let it fester for four years all so they could come back and do this. i just wish the democratic party had a better gameplan for that. i wish biden had dropped out sooner. i wish and hope so many things could’ve been different. i assumed trump was going to be a strong candidate due to living in red areas (unbelievable i know), and i think the harris campaign did some impressive stuff with the three months she had. i think it’s difficult to have done better than they did with the time they had. but it was an uphill battle, and unfortunately it just proves how much america hates women and how stupid people are for believing “oh things were cheaper when trump was president so basically that means if he’s president again it’ll be the same” and i genuinely believe so many casual voters who did end up voting for him landed in that camp which is just. mind boggling to me because that’s not how our governments work. that’s not how any of this works. but that’s how it turned out.

it’s just so disappointing and fills me with so much anger. we failed so many tonight. we really did.

[dir7eater]

imagine this: youre a regular old republican and you don’t like biden so you plan on voting for trump, you like him because hes doing the hard work for this country and is gonna fix biden's inflation which has been hitting you kinda hard. you dont like migrants or trans people because they scare you, and you dont really understand the foreign policy stuff but you trust his word that he will fix ukraine and israel because hes charismatic and can do that because he has a lot of inflence. your facebook feed gives you stuff about qanon and other conspiracy theories, but you kinda brush most of it to the side. they have some good points but you’re not a full blown believer.

you just watched trump get shot grazed by a bullet. as he’s getting dragged into a car by secret service you see him pump his fist and yell “fight fight fight”.

(this part is speculative) you hear that the shooter was a leftist who hated trump. you hear that the shooter is trans or a migrant or a woman or a black person or mentally ill or other identity that you don’t know or understand. you hear that the shooter was hired by biden. you hear all this from anywhere, trumps PR, facebook, it doesn’t matter.

you feel worried, but you don’t know how to express that. you hear a ton of stuff from everyone around you. you make some of your own assumptions, that trump is stronger because he’s survived, and the left is weak because they had to resort to violence. you hear assumptions from others, that trump got too close to power and the left had to put him down before he did, that it’s all a big conspiracy done by the jews. but whatever you hear, it’s solidified in your mind that he is the leader of this silent majority that you’re always hearing about, that he’s the only one who’s good for this country.

this is not the only sort of person who could be radicalized by this.

imagine you’re a self proclaimed centrist. you don’t like choosing sides and aren’t that concerned with politics. you like to say that you see merit to both sides of the aisle! and you want more cooperation! you don’t watch the news that much, but you get some stuff on your tik tok and instagram and twitter. you see a ton of stuff about this shooting and get really worried. you feel sad for trump and you agree with all those statements everyone is putting out. that it’s terrible tragedy and it really shows the true colors of some of the left and extremism. you hear all the speculation about the shooter and about how he’s a leftist and you think to yourself, "wow, you know I was considering biden and the left side canidates but if someone from their side could resort to violence over this, i cant vote for that lack or morals"

and what’s even scarier is the things i’m actually seeing right now.

“oh that looks so staged” “trump’s team planned this” these are conspiracy theory guys. please don’t start saying this without hard truth to back this up. please please please. this is coming from someone who is against trump and his ideals, we can do better than this guys.

what i’m trying to say is this shooting is coming at a terrible time of polarization. that conspiracy stuff like this is going to spread because of the echo chambers and social media and everything right now. there is so much potential that could make everything a lot worse in the US. just be aware.

[cigarettedolly13]

Now that I’m more awake and able to coherently speak about this subject, I do think that Kamala won the debate objectively. She was well spoken, spoke coherently, and actually did talk about her policies. Do I like that she’s sticking to the stupid “Israel has a right to defend itself” and “we need to have the most lethal military” garbage she was saying at the DNC? No. I hate it actually. However, I really liked what she had to say on the subject of abortion and reproductive care, and I liked how she called out Trump’s lies, and attacked his ego, which is probably why he was fucking losing it because he can’t handle his ego being attacked whatsover. When I say he got absolutely cooked on that stage I mean that shit. That orange motherfucker was seasoned, marinated, stuffed in a crockpot and cooked over the goddamn oven for 90 minutes until he was ready to be served to a family of seven. That’s how badly he lost.

That being said, this shit just proves that the DNC needs to fucking listen to their voter base more. They were told for months that Biden needed to drop out, he did, and that was quite literally the best move they could’ve possibly made in this election because look where we are now. The democrats actually have a chance of winning because now they have someone who despite holding a lot of the same policies as Biden, can actually communicate, doesn’t hold the political baggage that people like Trump, Biden, and (Hillary) Clinton had, and isn’t a decrepit old man. So in turn, the debate happens, Trump employs his usual strategy of blatantly lying and acting deranged for media attention, and because Kamala isn’t doing that and is actually answering questions, talking about her policies, and even baiting him, which he fucking falls for every single time (she literally got him to admit he got involved with the taliban), and in turn actually lets Trump say his insane shit and go on his rambles instead of trying to shut him down…which is literally working in her favor because instead of him getting to further push the narrative that the media is silencing him or whatever, she’s just letting him make an ass of himself on national television, making herself look much more normal in comparison. Will that sway everyone? Obviously not, Kamala is not a perfect candidate and frankly I highly doubt she’ll actually do half the shit she says she’s gonna do because that’s usually how politics goes in this country, BUT, if I’m looking at this debate from the perspective of a random guy that knows very little about politics or is just getting involved for the first time, I would feel much more compelled to vote for the person who isn’t acting like a raving lunatic onstage and deflecting every question.

Bottom line is the debate was entertaining as fuck, very memeable shit came out of it, and this just proves that the DNC needed to listen to their voters ages ago and should’ve never pushed Biden as a candidate let alone let him run again.

[fandomshatepeopleofcolor]

I feel stuck in my head and I need to ask someone: what's gonna happen to us when biden's reelected? What can we do to stop the genocide? What can we do to get roe v wade back? How to we make things okay?

Answering the last question first — how do we make things okay? We get informed, and we get involved.

If you want to change how things work, first you have to understand why they work the way they do. I’m not saying you have to become an overnight expert, but you gotta know the basics. You have to know who *really* makes the decisions about the stuff you care about. And I’m not being snarky here, but there’s a very very very good chance that that person is not Biden.

(long-ish more in depth USA-specific thoughts under the cut)

Let’s look at the two specifics that you mention. Yes, the president may be commander in chief of the armed forces but that “just” (air quotes bc obviously that is hugely consequential power, but it’s not the only power at play) means he’s the guy who says yes or no, stay or go. A more effective tool to address the United State’s relationship to Israel? Money. You know who controls the federal money? Congress. You know which political body has elections twice as frequently as the president? Congress. Look into who your Senators and Representatives are, look into their voting records, look into their hiring choices, look into their public statements and appearances, look into the company the keep.

If you like what you find, let them know, and if you have the resources, donate money and/or volunteer your time to make sure they win reelection. If you do not like what you find, and you think they might be responsive to public pressure, let them know you didn’t like what you found. If you found it abhorrent or do not trust that they will adjust to their constituents expectations, figure out if they have a competitor, and if they don’t, make sure that someone steps up to the plate. That someone doesn’t have to be you, but while we live in an ostensible democracy, these people can lose their jobs if and when we vote them out.

Regarding Roe v Wade, this might be upsetting to hear but you need to get used to the idea that it’s not coming back, and if anything, things might get worse. If voting and the legal system is your jam, I can recommend researching the circuit and district judges that preside over your region. If organizing and direct action are more your thing, there’s probably a Nurse’s Union in your area that can point you in the right direction. If your school district has an elected body where you can run for a seat to make sure that kids in your area are getting appropriately scientific sexual health education, do that. If you feel brave enough to start actively having conversations about sexual health and reproductive rights among your daily/weekly social groups, and maybe even start a book club style study group to learn about the legal and medical aspects most relevant where you live, do that. Even on the most individual scale, if you can make it clearly known that you are a safe person for people to talk to about this stuff, that’s a great step in the right direction.

To wrap this up, I think I’ll just say that I think big picture, if Biden wins a second term, things will be fine. If anything, maybe his administration will be able to bolster the environmental wins in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) but at a basic level he will probably maintain the status quo and then after the four years are up, he’ll leave office.

Let’s please not pretend the same can be said about Trump.

But in the spirit of ending on a more hopeful note, if you do not want Kamala Harris to be the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party in 2028 (and/or if you want a third party other than the Democrats and the Republicans to stand a snowball’s chance in hell) the time to start organizing is now. We deserve better than the status quo, we can do this, let’s fuckin go 💪

mod dyr

[nappingpaperclip]

what kind of math are liberals doing with the measuring of voting issues against eachother (always somehow placing genocide at the bottom of the list like it isn’t the most important) cause I really wonder like, where is the line? Democrats have shown over and over again that they are very happy to be pushed right with no hope of returning even minimally left. We ALL watched them twiddle their thumbs and make “compromises” that push them right, they went from “defund the police” to funding them even more, they went from “stop the wall” to “we’ll build the wall,” from “abolish ICE, no kids in cages” to “fund ICE, continue to deport families and put their kids in cages,” from “save the environment!! Ban fracking” to taking money from oil companies and approving more and more pipelines, honestly I could go on but I feel like I’m in a fuckin echo chamber

whenever people tell me how much better the democrats are than trump I want to scream cause it’s like, well I could sit there and point out the many fucking times they did the exact same thing or point out things like how Biden had ex-BlackRock employees in his cabinet and how they’ve broken almost every single campaign promise and haven’t done shit to secure our rights but it wouldn’t matter because these people are so scared for themselves that they don’t listen to reason

like how much is it gonna take? Where’s the line? when democrats have gone fully conservative but still retain ONE policy that is minimally different, will y’all still haw and hem about the lesser evil? And what about after that when they keep going? how many kids have to be killed for y’all to care? How many pipelines, how many protesters shot, how many homeless people arrested, how many rights lost before y’all realize that the thin line between Dems & republicans is shrinking and it is no longer a question of political stances but of class? how long till y’all realize politicians will always choose money over our rights, every single time?

[nunuisancenewt]

I was gonna Vote Blue No Matter Who ( TM) anyway but I’m not sure how I should feel about Kamala vs Biden. I kept thinking back to that “ If there was no Israel , the US would have to have invented an Israel” speech of Joe Biden, I think it’s fare to say Joe Biden was way more personally zionist than most democrats but I’m not sure it means anything materially because there is such broad support for Israel among US politicians and has been for along time, the US’s shielding of Israel from international accountability for war crimes, and imperialist expansion while funding them, and denying Palestine a UN seat, started long before 2020. And probably won’t change regardless of who’s in office. I’ve heard the criticism of Kamala Harris as DA but I don’t have enough background/details to compare it to another DA, I don’t know how much more “ tough on crime” she’ll be than an average president. I was never concerned about Biden’s age/mental abilities cause the important work is mostly done by who is put in place, you are picking someone’s team not them, if nothing else the team can tell him to just Sign Here. So they come across as a wash except for electability. Joe Biden’s bland old white man establishment thing was his success, it’s part of why Barack Obama picked him as VP to soften his image to centrist. Alot of how he was able to rally votes for Democratic candidate in 2020 was because we thought he was someone trump voters might vote for. The Swing States are basically all that matters. We need to play up the DA thing, tough on crime thing, win some conservative but not super racist types. it doesn’t matter how many votes we win California by. Georgia was critical in 2020, hopefully Kamala will have alot of success there, or even in other parts of the south with large black populations but a problem of voter suppression. Some people blame losing in 2016 on the US not being ready for a female candidate and I hope they are wrong. I want to trust that the people are in charge are making the smartest decisions and know better on how to win, but according to AOC there is no plan and they are just listening to donors scared by CNN about Biden’s electability. There was some talk on here about how it would look bad for the Democrats to pick someone else after Joe Biden was picked democratically, but so far I haven’t seen any of that thankfully.

[malwarewolf404]

I’m gonna prescribe this very simple razor test for any post you see that says anything along the lines of “people are spineless for choosing Biden as ‘the lesser of two evils,’ when they’re both just as evil” or anything of the sort. You know the ones.

Read the entire post, and take a moment to reflect on what the author is saying, and then as: “what do they wish for me to do instead?”

If there’s no alternative offered by the author of what you can do instead of just voting blue, then the person behind the post is just bitter about the illusion of democracy being washed away and lashing out. And they should be upset! But it’s really time we took a very hard look at how we speak about this whole “vote blue no matter who” discourse and realize that it doesn’t serve any higher purpose to lose what is essentially the last hold of even vaguely liberal government branches because we’re too liberal to bend the knee to someone who isn’t the perfect progressive working class anti-war anti-capitalist saint.

I don’t really jive with the idea of four more years of Biden. Putting his age and brain acquity aside, his entire presidency has been plagued with the most insidious and corrupt acts of law perpetrated by the Supreme Court on its citizens in recent memory, so much so that it feels as if we have absolutely no say in who or what we are governed by.

I don’t have all the answers. But I can tell you this much, discouraging people from voting for someone who already isn’t ideal is a lot worse than voting for someone and being able to talk about their faults and shortcomings as well. Obviously not that many people on here need to be sold on Biden, as we have almost no say in the matter to begin with. What concerns me is the people on here who seem intent to shame others because they are trying to prop up a presidential candidate who would at least be able to mitigate some damage rather than actively cause it.

We are not bootlickers for wanting someone other than one of the two presidential candidates we have been forced to choose. We can be critical of Biden’s handling of Gaza and rampant military spending while also acknowledging that he is, regretfully, the only candidate who has a shot at winning that could introduce meaningful change. What separates us from conservatives is that we recognize that politicians are, more often than not fair from saints, whereas they treat every candidate regardless how rancid as a flawless god emperor. It is our responsibility to be critical of our leaders, and we can’t do that if the RNC installs a dictator.

[jutsomethoughtsihave]

My rights aren't more important than innocent people being killed in the most demonic ways possible. Kamala will also be bad for "minorities" (please don't use that word again) and women. Her saying she's for women's rights is the same as her saying she's for Palestinian rights. She has already said she will not allow abortion clinics on federal lands. Everyone that is affected by Trump's policies knows Kamala will be the same. Everyone seems to forget Biden has been the president for four years. He promised to undo Trump policies and he kept them. Even going as far as override EPA rules to keep them in place. Biden and Kamala do not care about climate change. Fracking is one of the most destructive things you can do to the environment. We won't even have a planet in 100-200 years if we keep letting there be elections between two evils. One party says the evil out loud and the other does it quietly while pretending they're not evil. I had planned on coming out to my family but they planned on voting Kamala no matter how much I pleaded. They will never know because I don't feel safe around liberals either. They will sell out my rights for a false sense of comfort. We need more votes on the left. According to political scientists and independent journalists, Trump will definitely be winning. The people that claim to be progressive who are voting for Kamala keep saying stuff like "Our country is moving to the Right, and progess isn't popular right now, so I'm not gonna waste my vote on progess." It makes absolutely no sense to vote against policies you'd rather have just because boomers and elder gen x don't want progess. It's that same mentality of "I'm not gonna help that person who crashed their bike because no one else is". We need all the people who call themselves progressives or even "leftists" (which is meaningless anymore) to actually show they care instead of being afraid and continuing to keep this illusion of good vs bad (they're both bad) alive. Please join us. Your vote will not be wasted. And if the bad guy wins, then we'll fucking fight them will full force and we'll be there together. I promise.

Once again I’m Canadian and not old enough so I have no vote to give but I agree with you. I hate this. I wish people would vote 3rd party that’s the whole reason I made the poll. What I am saying is that in this moment during this election we’re too far down to revolt. No matter who wins I can only hope that Americans wake up and fight back. The government does not own the people, they should not have control over their rights. The government does not own the land, they should not have it at their mercy.

I also agree that the “no one else is doing it so I won’t either” mentality is what puts people in those situations in the first place and things need to change really fast at large. Full stop.

The election is less than a month away. We have no time. I wish we did. I wish people with actual gravity in their words would care just a little bit about humanity. I wish regular people were more concerned.

Fuck the “lesser of two evils”. I hate it. I hate it a lot. But right now where we are in this moment the two evils are really our only option. We would need a big ton of people to change to win.

And I empathize with you so much because right now even in Canada my safety is being compromised. The election for my province is currently happening and the Conservative Party is damn close to winning. They’ve stated that if they win they’ll ban gender and sexuality teaching and ban a law that prevents discrimination and bullying for queer people in schools. Me and my friends and every young queer persons safety is at risk and I’m terrified.

I understand you anon. I feel for you. I agree with you for the most part. This is a complicated thing. It sucks.

Humanity has done a lot to get where we are and it’ll probably take a lot to get to a place where we can all live happily free from the establishment but that takes individuals. A fuck ton of them, but individuals none the less. I hope that’s an answer enough.

[toaarcan]

Nothing more concerning than watching this site fall for the exact same “Look how useless the Dems are, they’re just the same as the GOP, why do you even vote, voting is pointless” routine they did in 2016.

Because y’know what? The people who are telling you that you shouldn’t vote... do vote. And they vote Republican.

The Republicans build their entire strategy on manipulating districts to group together more of their supporters, relying on the Electoral College, and disenfranchising the left, because they’re so backwards and archaic that if they didn’t do those things, they’d never hold office again.

I’m not gonna say Biden’s perfect, because he’s not. Dude is the very definition of an establishment Democrat and he’s probably almost certainly too old for the job. He’s made basically no impact in any visible way. That’s all true.

But he’s also got basically the entire Republican party and a handful of his own standing in the way and making it impossible to achieve anything.

I mean for fuck’s sake, in 2017-2018, this site was filled with people screaming “Tyrant!” and “Fascist!” every time the Cheeto Man used an executive order to force his awful ideas into law without due process, and now those same people are becoming angry with Biden for not doing that.

In 2020, this site was filled with people going “Hey, don’t go all doomsayer and apathetic when Biden doesn’t take over and immediately fix everything, because that’s probably not going to happen, and getting the country to swing left is going to take a lot of time and effort and it’ll be a slow, painful process as a result.”

And oh look, now they’re going all doomsayer and apathetic because Biden didn’t take over and immediately transform one of the most racist and corrupt institutions on the planet into a leftist utopia with a snap of his fingers.

And yeah, a lot of this shit shouldn’t take a long time. The people who have suffered under America’s regime for decades shouldn’t have to wait for the old rich farts in charge of the machine to painstakingly fix their bullshit, it shouldn’t be like that. But it is like that. And we can’t fix that quickly any more than the Democrats can fix the damage the Republicans have done.

Yeah, the current crop of Democrats are about as uninspiring as it gets. But you’re not going to get any movement leftwards if you keep letting the extreme right that is the current GOP back into power.

I see the same shit every week these days. A screenshot of a tweet will start circulating, with the usual “Oh look how useless the President is” “He’s not doing anything” “He’s given up after trying nothing” “Remember when you said we had a moral obligation to vote for this man” and it will be massively popular, and all the blogs that talk politics will reblog it and agree with it.

And then two days later, it’ll reappear with an addendum added pointing out that the person that made the Tweet is a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, and has voted Red in every election since they hit voting age, including 2020.

Do you think this shit kicking into high-gear as we go into Midterms Year is a coincidence, or have you all just forgotten that this was the exact same strategy the Republicans used in 2016?

I feel like this site needs one of those “Is-The-Animal-Video-Cute” blogs but for political Twitter screenshots. “Is-The-Tweet-Republican-Propaganda” or some shit like that, because the answer is nearly always yes.

And I see a lot of people trotting out the age-old “It’s not my job to educate you!”

Yeah, no, see, that doesn’t work. Sure, it might feel righteous in the moment, but letting people do their own investigation on politics is basically feeding another brain to the right.

It’s been happening as far back as GamerGate, and probably before that too.

People asked the Left questions, the left went “It’s not my job to educate you”, so they went looking for answers, and they found people like Carl Benjamin, like MundaneMatt, like InternetAristocrat/Mr. Metokur, who ended up telling them that GG is right, actually, and there goes another one into the Alt-Right Pipeline.

The left’s unwillingness to actually talk to people, the fixation on paywalling our news sites and telling people to do their own research has only ever sent more people to Fox, to Breitbart, to 4chan.

So here’s what’s going to happen.

When election day rolls around, you are going to go and vote. You are going to vote blue. And maybe it’ll stick in your craw, maybe you’ll do it with gritted teeth, maybe you’ll spit on the ground afterwards.

But you’ll do it. Because the alternative is this:

[qqueenofhades]

Re: the post you reblogged about Bush. I'm 21 and tbh feel like I can only vote for Bernie, can you explain if/why I shouldn't? Thanks and sorry if this is dumb or anything.

Oh boy. Okay, I’ll do my best here. Note that a) this will get long, and b) I’m old, Tired, and I‘m pretty sure my brain tried to kill me last night. Since by nature I am sure I will say something Controversial ™, if anyone reads this and feels a deep urge to inform me that I am Wrong, just… mark it down as me being Wrong and move on with your life. But also, really, you should read this and hopefully think about it. Because while I’m glad you asked this question, it feels like there’s a lot in your cohort who won’t, and that worries me. A lot.

First, not to sound utterly old-woman-in-a-rocking-chair ancient, people who came of age/are only old enough to have Obama be the first president that they really remember have no idea how good they had it. The world was falling the fuck apart in 2008 (not coincidentally, after 8 years of Bush). We came within a flicker of the permanent collapse of the global economy. The War on Terror was in full roar, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were at their height, we had Dick Cheney as the cartoon supervillain before we had any of Trump’s cohort, and this was before Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden had exposed the extent of NSA/CIA intelligence-gathering/American excesses or there was any kind of public debate around the fact that we were all surveilled all the time. And the fact that a brown guy named Barack Hussein Obama was elected in this climate seems, and still seems tbh, kind of amazing. And Obama was certainly not a Perfect President ™. He had to scale back a lot of planned initiatives, he is notorious for expanding the drone strike/extrajudicial assassination program, he still subscribed to the overall principles of neoliberalism and American exceptionalism, etc etc. There is valid criticism to be made as to how the hopey-changey optimistic rhetoric stacked up against the hard realities of political office. And yet…. at this point, given what we’re seeing from the White House on a daily basis, the depth of the parallel universe/double standards is absurd.

Because here’s the thing. Obama, his entire family, and his entire administration had to be personally/ethically flawless the whole time (and they managed that – not one scandal or arrest in eight years, against the legions of Trumpistas now being convicted) because of the absolute frothing depths of Republican hatred, racial conspiracy theories, and obstruction against him. (Remember Merrick Garland and how Mitch McConnell got away with that, and now we have Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court? Because I remember that). If Obama had pulled one-tenth of the shit, one-twentieth of the shit that the Trump administration does every day, he would be gone. It also meant that people who only remember Obama think he was typical for an American president, and he wasn’t. Since about… Jimmy Carter, and definitely since Ronald Reagan, the American people have gone for the Trump model a lot more than the Obama model. Whatever your opinion on his politics or character, Obama was a constitutional law professor, a community activist, a neighborhood organizer and brilliant Ivy League intellectual who used to randomly lie awake at night thinking about income inequality. Americans don’t value intellectualism in their politicians; they just don’t. They don’t like thinking that “the elites” are smarter than them. They like the folksy populist who seems fun to have a beer with, and Reagan/Bush Senior/Clinton/Bush Junior sold this persona as hard as they possibly could. As noted in said post, Bush Junior (or Shrub as the late, great Molly Ivins memorably dubbed him) was Trump Lite but from a long-established political family who could operate like an outwardly civilized human.

The point is: when you think Obama was relatively normal (which, again, he wasn’t, for any number of reasons) and not the outlier in a much larger pattern of catastrophic damage that has been accelerated since, again, the 1980s (oh Ronnie Raygun, how you lastingly fucked us!), you miss the overall context in which this, and which Trump, happened. Like most left-wingers, I don’t agree with Obama’s recent and baffling decision to insert himself into the 2020 race and warn the Democratic candidates against being too progressive or whatever he was on about. I think he was giving into the same fear that appears to be motivating the remaining chunk of Joe Biden’s support: that middle/working-class white America won’t go for anything too wild or that might sniff of Socialism, and that Uncle Joe, recalled fondly as said folksy populist and the internet’s favorite meme grandfather from his time as VP, could pick up the votes that went to Trump last time. And that by nature, no one else can.

The underlying belief is that these white voters just can’t support anything too “un-American,” and that by pushing too hard left, Democratic candidates risk handing Trump a second term. Again: I don’t agree and I think he was mistaken in saying it. But I also can’t say that Obama of all people doesn’t know exactly the strength of the political machine operating against the Democratic Party and the progressive agenda as a whole, because he ran headfirst into it for eight years. The fact that he managed to pass any of his legislative agenda, usually before the Tea Party became a thing in 2010, is because Democrats controlled the House and Senate for the first two years of his first term. He was not perfect, but it was clear that he really did care (just look up the pictures of him with kids). He installed smart, efficient, and scandal-free people to do jobs they were qualified for. He gave us Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to join RBG on the Supreme Court. All of this seems… like a dream.

That said: here we are in a place where Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren are the front-runners for the Democratic nomination (and apparently Pete Buttigieg is getting some airplay as a dark horse candidate, which… whatever). The appeal of Biden is discussed above, and he sure as hell is not my favored candidate (frankly, I wish he’d just quit). But Sanders and Warren are 85% - 95% similar in their policy platforms. The fact that Michael “50 Billion Dollar Fortune” Bloomberg started rattling his chains about running for president is because either a Sanders or Warren presidency terrifies the outrageously exploitative billionaire capitalist oligarchy that runs this country and has been allowed to proceed essentially however the fuck they like since… you guessed it, the 1980s, the era of voodoo economics, deregulation, and the free market above all. Warren just happens to be ten years younger than Sanders and female, and Sanders’ age is not insignificant. He’s 80 years old and just had a heart attack, and there’s still a year to go to the election. It’s also more than a little eye-rolling to describe him as the only progressive candidate in the race, when he’s an old white man (however much we like and approve of his policy positions). And here’s the thing, which I think is a big part of the reason why this polarized ideological purity internet leftist culture mistrusts Warren:

She may have changed her mind on things in the past.

Scary, right? I sound like I’m being facetious, but I’m not. An argument I had to read with my own two eyes on this godforsaken hellsite was that since Warren became a Democrat around the time Clinton signed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, she sekritly hated gay people and might still be a corporate sellout, so on and etcetera. (And don’t even get me STARTED on the fact that DADT, coming a few years after the height of the AIDS crisis which was considered God’s Judgment of the Icky Gays, was the best Clinton could realistically hope to achieve, but this smacks of White Gay Syndrome anyway and that is a whole other kettle of fish.) Bernie has always demonstrably been a democratic socialist, and: good for him. I’m serious. But because there’s the chance that Warren might not have thought exactly as she does now at any point in her life, the hysterical and paranoid left-wing elements don’t trust that she might not still secretly do so. (Zomgz!) It’s the same element that’s feeding cancel culture and “wokeness.” Nobody can be allowed to have shifted or grown in their opinions or, like a functional, thoughtful, non-insane adult, changed their beliefs when presented with compelling evidence to the contrary. To the ideological hordes, any hint of uncertainty or past failure to completely toe the line is tantamount to heresy. Any evidence of any other belief except The Correct One means that this person is functionally as bad as Trump. And frankly, it’s only the Sanders supporters who, just as in 2016, are threatening to withhold their vote in the general election if their preferred candidate doesn’t win the primary, and indeed seem weirdly proud about it.

OK, boomer Bernie or Buster.

Here’s the thing, the thing, the thing: there is never going to be an American president free of the deeply toxic elements of American ideology. There just won’t be. This country has been built how it has for 250 years, and it’s not gonna change. You are never going to have, at least not in the current system, some dream candidate who gets up there and parrots the left-wing talking points and attacks American imperialism, exceptionalism, ravaging global capitalism, military and oil addiction, etc. They want to be elected as leader of a country that has deeply internalized and taken these things to heart for its entire existence, and most of them believe it to some degree themselves. So this groupthink white liberal mentality where the only acceptable candidate is this Perfect Non-Problematic robot who has only ever had one belief their entire lives and has never ever wavered in their devotion to doctrine has really gotten bad. The Democratic Party would be considered… maybe center/mild left in most other developed countries. It’s not even really left-wing by general standards, and Sanders and Warren are the only two candidates for the nomination who are even willing to go there and explicitly put out policy proposals that challenge the systematic structure of power, oppression, and exploitation of the late-stage capitalist 21st century. Warren has the billionaires fussed, and instead of backing down, she’s doubling down. That’s part of why they’re so scared of her. (And also misogyny, because the world is depressing like that.) She is going head-on after picking a fight with some of the worst people on the planet, who are actively killing the rest of us, and I don’t know about you, but I like that.

Of course: none of this will mean squat if she (or the eventual Democratic winner, who I will vote for regardless of who it is, but as you can probably tell, she’s my ride or die) don’t a) win the White House and then do as they promised on the campaign trail, and b) don’t have a Democratic House and Senate willing to have a backbone and pass the laws. Even Nancy Pelosi, much as she’s otherwise a badass, held off on opening a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump for months out of fear it would benefit him, until the Ukraine thing fell into everyone’s laps. The Democrats are really horrible at sticking together and voting the party line the way Republicans do consistently, because Democrats are big-tent people who like to think of themselves as accepting and tolerant of other views and unwilling to force their members’ hands. The Republicans have no such qualms (and indeed, judging by their enabling of Trump, have no qualms at all). 

The modern American Republican party has become a vehicle for no-holds-barred power for rich white men at the expense of absolutely everything and everyone else, and if your rationale is that you can’t vote for the person opposing Donald Goddamn Trump is that you’re just not vibing with them on the language of that one policy proposal… well, I’m glad that you, White Middle Class Liberal, feel relatively safe that the consequences of that decision won’t affect you personally. Even if we’re due to be out of the Paris Climate Accords one day after the 2020 election, and the issue of climate change now has the most visibility it’s ever had after years of big-business, Republican-led efforts to deny and discredit the science, hey, Secret Corporate Shill, am I right? Can’t trust ‘er. Let’s go have a craft beer.

As has been said before: vote as far left as you want in the primary. Vote your ideology, vote whatever candidate you want, because the only way to make actual, real-world change is to do that. The huge, embedded, all-consuming and horrible system in which we operate is not just going to suddenly be run by fairy dust and happy thoughts overnight. Select candidates that reflect your values exactly, be as picky and ideologically militant as you want. That’s the time to do that! Then when it comes to the general election:

America is a two-party system. It sucks, but that’s the case. Third-party votes, or refraining from voting because “it doesn’t matter” are functionally useless at best and actively harmful at worst.

Either the Democratic candidate or Donald Trump will win the 2020 election.

There is absolutely no length that the Republican/GOP machine, and its malevolent allies elsewhere, will not go to in order to secure a Trump victory. None.

Any talk whatsoever about “progressive values” or any kind of liberal activism, coupled with a course of action that increases the possibility of a Trump victory, is hypocritical at best and actively malicious at worst.

This is why I found the Democratic response to Obama’s “don’t go too wild” comments interesting. Bernie doubled down on the fact that his plans have widespread public support, and he’s right. (Frankly, the fact that Sanders and Warren are polling at the top, and the fact that they’re politicians and would not be crafting these campaign messages if they didn’t know that they were being positively received, says plenty on its own). Warren cleverly highlighted and praised Obama’s accomplishments in office (i.e. the Affordable Care Act) and didn’t say squat about whether she agreed or disagreed with him, then went right back to campaigning about why billionaires suck. And some guy named Julian Castro basically blew Obama off and claimed that “any Democrat” could beat Trump in 2020, just by nature of existing and being non-insane.

This is very dangerous! Do not be Julian Castro!

As I said in my tags on the Bush post: everyone assumed that sensible people would vote for Kerry in 2004. Guess what happened? Yeah, he got Swift Boated. The race between Obama and McCain in 2008, even after those said nightmare years of Bush, was very close until the global crash broke it open in Obama’s favor, and Sarah Palin was an actual disqualifier for a politician being brazenly incompetent and unprepared. (Then again, she was a woman from a remote backwater state, not a billionaire businessman.) In 2012, we thought Corporate MormonBot Mitt Fuggin’ Romney was somehow the worst and most dangerous candidate the Republicans could offer. In 2016, up until Election Day itself, everyone assumed that HRC was a badly flawed candidate but would win anyway. And… we saw how that worked out. Complacency is literally deadly.

I was born when Reagan was still president. I’m just old enough to remember the efforts to impeach Clinton over forcing an intern to give him a BJ in the Oval Office (This led by the same Republicans making Donald Trump into a darling of the evangelical Christian right wing.) I’m definitely old enough to remember 9/11 and how America lost its mind after that, and I remember the Bush years. And, obviously, the contrast with Obama, the swing back toward Trump, and everything that has happened since. We can’t afford to do this again. We’re hanging by a thread as it is, and not just America, but the entire planet.

So yes. By all means, vote for Sanders in the primary. Then when November 3, 2020 rolls around, if you care about literally any of this at all, hold your nose if necessary and vote straight-ticket Democrat, from the president, to the House and Senate, to the state and local offices. I cannot put it more strongly than that.

[cleolinda]

Okay, y’all, bring it in, huddle up. It’s gonna be a long week, not just for U.S. voters but for people in other countries watching this who can only sit back unable to do anything. I’m gonna give you the credit of assuming that if you can vote, you’re already on top of that. Alabama doesn’t allow early voting (of course it doesn’t), so I’m more kicking the dirt waiting for the starting pistol to go off right now. But anyway, let’s get the obvious out of the way—we’re not going back, do not go gently, hype as hell, etc.

I just want to reiterate: take care of yourself. I won’t tell you what that means for you, but I have to admit that for me it means I gotta stop doomscrolling Reddit with a bowl of Halloween candy and GO TO BED. Get your rest, get your water, get away from all this now and then, and get into the things that keep you afloat.

I’m gonna mute most of my mobile news apps (Reuters and the BBC are solid), and I will be judicious about what I post and not spam tumblr on Tuesday with every little unconfirmed “development.” If something significant happens, I’ll try to vet how much people trust that source (some networks have been known to call state results too soon).

Don’t read polls, because they’re all over the place and news outlets have a vested interest in making the race seem close so you’ll keep clicking.

Don’t listen to anybody declaring victory at 7:05 PM Tuesday night.

Don’t panic when it takes a while to count votes. It took four days last time. Yeah, in my childhood it felt like you knew who won before you went to bed, but I first voted in a national election in 2000. That was Bush vs. Gore. Yeah. They didn’t finish fucking that up until MID-DECEMBER.

Don’t be surprised if challenges are made in court. There already have been some, and it won’t stop any time soon. Have your strategic escapism ready if we have to wait.

If I, a random woman in Alabama, know all these things just from reading the news and being a college student 25 years ago, I assure you that the Biden-Harris administration knows and has been preparing for them. I’m not letting my guard down, but I think Kamala Harris has the momentum and she’s feeling good. Besides, I gave her $5 and that ought to buy her at least 30 seconds of Supreme Court lawyer time.

So: take care of yourself. Protect your peace and take time for yourself if you feel overwhelmed by the news or the internet or the people around you, because there have been a few elections where I wish I had. Find something that makes you laugh or daydream or sleep a little better at night. Tell me in the notes what you’re into right now, music or movies or games or TV or channels or, God forbid, getting some fresh air, when you set time aside for yourself.

Have been dealing with my Anxiety Disorder™ lately, because [gestures at everything]. Normally it’s a real low level kind of thing, I’m on medication, I occasionally have therapy, but I think now we’re all just kind of In It for a while and that’s just something we gotta deal with.

I would strenuously encourage everyone reading this to find the things that keep you afloat, whether it’s a video game, a TV show, standup comedy, anime, a book series, your favorite YouTube channel, one song on loop for eight entire days, whatever it is. Just find something to climb into for a few hours and protect your peace, build up your reserves, for as long as you can.

I feel like I haven’t done much in 2024 except hang on by my fingernails, and sometimes you gotta call that good.

[mysherlockstardis]

There will be many many films, documentaries, tv/web series about the Trump administration.

Not many of those depictions will paint him in a good light.

His presidency will forever be seen as the most abnormal presidency of modern times. Trump broke so many norms, and people loved him for it. Others did not. Most did not. If the popular vote means anything.

I can’t imagine history will look kindly on the circumstances of Trump’s mpeachment.

I can’t imagine history will look kindly on the rushed confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett a week before the presidential election, considering what the GOP had done to Obama 4 years earlier.

I can’t imagine history will look kindly on how Trump handled the coronavirus.

Like can you see these films in your head already?

There is gonna be an Oscar award winning film about how Trump handled the coronavirus. At the end it will tell us how many lives were taken by Covid and how many could have been saved if Trump had just told his moronic supporters to wear a mask.

Can’t you just see the all the biopics on him? There is so much damn scandal with this man that it is not gonna be possible to cover every single scandal in every movie.

Each movie is gonna have a topic:

Impeachment

Coronavirus

2016 Election

Wall/Muslim Ban/ Family Seperation.

Racism/Proud Boys/Charlottesville

I mean the list could go on and on. I’m just like already imagining what it’s gonna be like to watch these films.

I wonder if Trump supporters will feel wronged by history?

There is just no way history will be able to see very much good to come from his presidency.

Trump has caused so many Americans pain. Frustration. Fear.

I hope the popular vote will show his supporters just how harmful some of their most ignorant and shallow beliefs are to America’s detriment and division.

I mostly hope that the electoral college will swing in Joe Biden’s favor. Trump barely won by the hair on his chin in those swing states, but the voter turnout this year has been insane. I gotta believe that a lot of those people are voting this time around for Biden, because they wanna get off this ride too. They didn’t think Trump would win, and Clinton wasn’t worth their time either, but then Trump won and they won’t sit back and be chumps again.

Trump is just so fucking abnormal that I don’t feel safe under his leadership. I don’t feel safe. I feel compromised by Russia, and Iran, and Turkey, and North Korea because Trump kisses their ass. And for what? Probably financial reprieve but I digress.

Either way, I can’t believe if Trump wins again the best years of my life will be spent terrified of what Trump is doing to our country. Trump was elected when I was 19. I’m 23 going on 24 and then I’ll be stuck with him till in 27.

please, vote for Biden so I can enjoy the rest of my 20s in peace.

[andrebearakovsky]

To my American followers - I’m gonna use this post here to urge you to vote and because it’s so so important. Please vote. Please please please please vote. And I am going to explicitly tell you to vote for Joe Biden. And to vote blue in your local Congressional races, otherwise people are likely to keep dying and I am so so tired.

Here are some resources to help you out:

Register to vote here

Check your absentee ballot info by state here

Check your polling place here

Go to this website, it will personalize what your ballot will look like for you based on your location, you can familiarize yourself with everything

And, finally, please get in contact with your congresspeople (both your senators and representatives). Tell them, most importantly, to enforce McConnell’s own rule and not to allow a new Supreme Court justice in until 2021, and to not let a nominee through in an election year. But you can also urge them to push for change on other topics, like racial injustice/reform the police/stop killing black people, gun reform, coronavirus relief/related topics, or whatever else you like. There are so many more important things happening, but the Supreme Court feels the most important right now. Calling is probably the most effective way to get in touch with them, but if you don’t feel comfortable calling (like me!), there is a place on each congressperson’s website where you can submit a message/email online.

Find your senators here

Find your representative here

Or call 202-224-3121

I’m only gonna post about this once I think, because this stuff stresses me the fuck out and makes my anxiety go off the wall, but I might reblog a few times. But I cannot stress how important it is. Please, guys.

VOTE