Opinion: clueless voters risk returning Donald Trump to the White House
Opinion: clueless voters risk returning Donald Trump to the White House
US climate voters need an accurate accounting of Joe Biden’s record ahead of the November 2024 US presidential election.
Any chance of limiting global warming to 1.5˚C rests on Joe Biden being elected to a second term. Voters need an accurate accounting of Biden’s climate record ahead of the November 2024 election.
If you're in the US and want to get involved, you can volunteer or give to the Biden Victory Fund
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Any chance
Gotta disagree, we could for example elect someone who is an actual leftist and won’t drop build back better’s agenda because of some senate parliamentarian nonsense, or who won’t hand Joe Manchin a new gas pipeline during record heatwaves.
But yeah sure, Biden is our only hope 🙄
Shout out to Cornell West.
And before anyone picks a fight: I would vote for Biden if my vote made the difference between him and Trump, but we won't get anything from Biden unless we apply demands and pressure. We would not have any of Biden's climate legislation if he wasn't afraid of losing Bernie's voters. We absolutely need West running, or electing Biden will accomplish very little.
"But we have to pick someone more moderate so we can compromise with the Republicans!"
Fuck no we don't. If they field their most extreme and we field our most moderate only one thing happens. I yearn for a future where Bernie was elected instead and even he's too damn old for this shit.
I yearn for a past where Al Gore won the election in 2000.
Or perhaps, one where the republicans didn't steal it (legitimately, not like Trump's claims) is more accurate, I suppose.
Maybe if we drag the Overton Window far enough to the right, it’ll come back around on the left?!
You just end up in a pure fascist state with no way out when you do that. Not a good move.
Haha sorry I was just being “/s” amigo. Although I’m sure some right wing pundits would love for us to believe this is possible!
How do you propose to elect somebody like that? Somebody well to the left of Biden would lose the center, and hence the election.
Elect the progressives in Congress, where they stand a chance and can influence legislation. Put a moderate in the White House because we can.
We need to foster a much larger, and longer scale ambition: democratic reforms.
Ranked choice voting, an end to the electoral college, greater participation in local elections, and campaign finance reform are the primary avenues that come to mind.
I don't disagree that we should elect progressives to congress, but if the problem is structural, the solutions must be too. And they must be things that can overcome the current structural barriers. So obviously electing a third party candidate can't be a solution to the barriers to that prevent third party candidates, for instance.
But direct democracy ballot measures, for instance, can be used to institute ranked choice voting, and state legislatures can be used to compel more democratic measures on local elections, which can then foster the generation of politicians who built a populist base and are more likely to expand the franchise to the state level once they rise in their careers.
Don't forget: overturning Roe was believed impossible, but the people who wanted to do it spent 50 years building the tools to build the tools to build the tools to do the impossible.
Yeah, it will take structural change, and the way to pull that off is to elect people to state legislatures and to congress who will actually work to make it happen. It doesn't happen otherwise.
I don't get why this is downvoted? A grassroots new political party can't go from 0 to Congress/Whitehouse in any reasonable time. A coup is a worse idea that if failed would crush the entire movement. A revolution means the most powerful military by far to ever exist, and the worlds reserve currency has uncertain control and would destabilize the world.
I think I'll take pushing the DNC to get us where we need to be, thank you very much.
The structure of the US electoral system means that we're not going to get some third party to the left of the Democrats winning the Presidency any time soon.
Biden's about as good as we can get right now.
If you still believe in voting you are driving us off the cliff. You are actively destroying our planet. Yes, you specifically are guilty too. Biden is not going to save anybody without civil resistance either. There is a lot better than Biden and if you don't want to argue for that then you are dooming the world to catastrophe. We have to get better than Biden, otherwise we might as well just lie down and give up right now.
The point is: Biden might be all we (or you, I'm German) get, but he is not enough. You MUST see that, right? If the US electoral system is incapable of avoiding climate catastrophe, are you really going to look back, satisfied you tried everything, or do you consider means outside of just voting every couple of years?
And so it goes in perpetuity.
How many degrees warmer does it have to get before we say enough and demand real leadership and accountability to the people above the dollar?
Probably right up until one of those super hurricanes the size of North America wipes the USA right off the map.
The strategy that works is winning primaries within the Democratic party. You can see that happen in NY for example, where the DSA candidates won several primaries in the state legislature, creating a meaningful shift in what kinds of laws passed.
Agreed! Primaries are the more likely strategy for success. DNC holding presidential primaries this time around?..
They are...but there aren't progressives running in them because they don't think they're in a position to win. Instead we get Robert Kennedy Jr. who is backed by Trump supporters to try and normalize fascist viewpoints and running in the Democratic primary against Biden in order to do that.
I'd concentrate on congressional primaries if you want to elect progressives right now.
I worry that the only way to escape this nonsense two party system is for one party to lose enough that people start waking the fuck up that there are other, better options. Maybe if Trump / Desantis is electric then we'll stop boiling frogs and get legitimately good candidates in.
The two-party system exists in the US because of how elections are run. In particular, most states decide who wins an election by who gets the most votes in the general election. So when you have a third party in the mix, it serves as a spoiler, tipping the election to the people that it disagrees with the most. A few examples:
Example 1: D: 10 R: 9 I: 0
The Democrat wins
Example 2: D: 9 R: 9 I: 1
Tied election, with outcome decided by a coin flip or other game of chance
Example 3: D: 8 R: 9 I: 2
The Republican wins
The model which lets you change outcomes when elections are run like this is to take over a party from the inside. That means running candidates in the primaries in safe districts, and then backing them with money and volunteer hours.