Everyone seems to forget that the largest mobilization of the US masses ever happened that year and at least some of it (if not most) was co-opted by the Democrats. Literally millions of people in the streets being told they needed to vote for Joe or they supported police brutality and he only won by a small albeit comfortable margin.
I have no idea what they think is gonna happen this year when the only people that are in the streets are fervently opposed to the current administration.
Obama got Rat Boy and every other centrist candidate to simultaneously drop out/endorse Biden; Warren was left out of the deal so she could continue to siphon off progressive support for Bernie.
I remember when Biden campaigned on the promise of addressing COVID by following the science.
Instead he got rid of mask mandates and there is serious discussions about banning masking in US states, biobot is no longer recording COVID data, and COVID is surging in the US.
Also there was apparently a massive antivax campaign being done by the pentagon that continued for like almost a year under his administration. I know it started under Trump but still....drug his feet stopping it.
They also forgot that the core of his campaign was "I'm not Trump!" and "Anybody but Trump!"
Now that Trump isn't president and those campaign slogans have been memory-holed there's massive confusion as to why inadequate measures to address problems doesn't seem to be exciting anybody about his running again.
There are too many minor players with career aspirations on the line for "losing on purpose" to make any sense. What we're seeing is:
No one is "the people in charge." We keep having these stories about how Biden only wants yes-men around, and there's no party mechanism that can force a sitting president to resign or drop out, even in an egregious situation like this. We have an imperial executive who's too senile to be competent, but who can still shout down minions who attempt to steer him.
The movers and shakers in the Democratic Party want to win -- hence the panic this morning when Biden’s ineptitude is impossible to keep ignoring -- but are too up their own asses to do a decent job of it. Believing their own bullshit is how they ignored this situation this long in the first place, is how they think you can fight fascism in the voting booth, etc.
Dem voters only know what they are told to know by the boob tube and right now they know 'china=bad' trump=no more
History is meaningless to them, everything happening is divorced from previous events.
They know also, because they have been told that by agreeing with the tv they are smart, that disagreeing is only for people who don't have all the info, or are dumb/racist. They don't want to be dumb/racist so they agree and defend the TVs lies as their own, as they have been convinced by this trick that their very intelligence is on the line.
It's pretty sad, cuz i don't know how to move one from this headspace. I think maybe those types need to come to some kind of revelation on their own before they can be radicalized. I wish i could do it, because (i think) if those types ever did realize they had been played for fools their absolute fury at this would help communism grow.
Trump would flip on Ukraine if someone asked him to, just like he did on every other issue every time somebody talked to him. In the debate, he was saying both that the US supporting Ukraine is bad but also that because Biden is weak Putin would take all of Ukraine.
Sadly the voting populace is so centrist and high on Obama’s shit I think Biden would have won his first election anyway. Coattailing off Obamas legacy despite being completely fake and PR driven, is what won him the election. It’s how he beat Bernie too.
Given how quickly they all went back to brunch and declared COVID over? No. Demonstrably no.
Furthermore, had the stars aligned to defeat Trump in 2016 it would have happened to under Hillary's watch and she would have lost in 2020.
What they still don't understand about COVID (well, they ignore a lot more) but what they still fail to understand is that the big problem with COVID wasn't the deaths or the actual real failures. The problem was that it interrupted the Treat Drip required to salve the rather unbearable antisocial reality of living in late capitalism. You could not eat Borgor. You had to wear mask. You had to get vaccine. You could not drink in bar. You could not send your kids to school. You could not go to Thanksgiving to eat Big Bird. You could not watch Marvel Movie.
And that matters to people for 2 big reasons: first as I said before creature comforts are all you have left when your other material realities are eroding and your planet is dying. The bread was stale and circuses were closed. Second, there is no other vector for criticism because dems agree with Republicans on so many other issues that there is no other thing to discuss! Nothing will fundamentally change, Jack. So this is it. The only game in town. Playing for peanuts on the margins.
the big problem with COVID wasn't the deaths or the actual real failures. The problem was that it interrupted the Treat Drip
This isn't quite right -- you could still have all your food treats (just the takeout versions), besides some delays you still had a wealth of media available, you could absolutely have Thanksgiving or Christmas meals (many people did this with family the same as they always have), sports resumed after a few months, you even had more time to enjoy a lot of these things if you could work from home.
It was more the long-term state of genuine crisis and uncertainty. Everything was up in the air in a way that (like last night's debate) was blatant enough that most people couldn't ignore it.