politics @lemmy.world return2ozma @lemmy.world 10 mo. ago

The man supposed to stop Donald Trump is an unpopular 81-year-old with a net approval rating at minus 16 points

www.economist.com The man supposed to stop Donald Trump is an unpopular 81-year-old

In failing to look past Joe Biden, Democrats have shown cowardice and complacency

95 comments

The man that should stop Donald Trump is Donald Trump.

It’s stunning that he can say and do so much.. terribleness.. and still even have a chance at the presidency (again).
- it's a race to the bottom, and liberals are so attached to biden for some reason they seem to actively want him despite the fact that some random state senator would be a safer bet. if we get fascism I'm putting some of the blame on bidenbros
  
  It's the two party system and electoral college that causes the "lessor evil" effect. We'll have to address that better next time.
  
  Edit: autocorrect gave us an electric college!
  
  Has there ever been a current president that the party has not put up for re-election after their first term? The decision isn't really up to me as a pleb Democrat, it's up to the party in Washington D.C. on who they want to represent the party in the election. When given the choice, I'll vote for anyone over Trump.
  
  I just haven't seen the evidence that some random state sentator would be a safer bet.
  
  The unfortunate reality is that there are still too many voters who will vote for a centrist old white man over Trump, but would not vote for a young progressive over Trump.
  
  I didn't like it in 2020 either, but the Democrats did what they needed to do to beat Trump.
I'm pretty old. Biden is hands down the best president in my lifetime.

He's way older than I am, which is a problem, but he's also a national hero for beating Trump in 2020 and making the win stick, which was more difficult than it seemed.

Since then he's been great on jobs, infrastructure, defense, and a host of other issues. Not that I agree with him on everything, but to call him a run of the mill conservative Dem, as some do in these comments, is almost slander. He's an old-school Democrat who survived all the way through the Reagan revolution. The old-school Dems ran the country for almost 50 years from about 1933 to 1980, and did a pretty good job.

In 2020 I was 100% behind Liz Warren and disliked Biden. I thought he'd lose, but this year I'll gladly vote for him. If he beats Trump for good, they'll be making statues of him.
the dems seem as helpless to run this geriatric conservative as the gop are to prevent an actual fascist dictator wannabe from successfully running for office.

how can both these massive parties suck so fucking hard
- Because voting in the primaries seems anathema to the young progressives who want to change.
  
  I'm glad I'm a progressive that votes in the primary. I plan to vote in more progressives myself.
  
  They did vote in the primaries in 2020. The DNC made it clear that they will not allow anyone but their ordained candidate by having everyone but Biden drop out when he couldn't break 3rd place. Then clearer by literally forcing Biden-only ballots in 4 states and counting...
- And you are proposing what?
  
  i dont... i kinda think were all fucked. the only action possible here is to just keep voting lesser evil.
  
  i used to hope, but that runs out after the first few decades
  
  A no holds barred Yu-Gi-Oh match. Winner becomes president, loser cleans the white house bathrooms for the next 4 years.
  
  I believe you're under the mistaken impression that u/originalucifer is actually running one or both of these parties.
- bOtH SIdeS
  
  The Democrats are generally a fairly ineffective ally on good days. The Republicans are an effective enemy every day. It's not an equivocation to say those are both crappy options.
  
  uhhh no.
  
  "both sides" is pretending both suffer from the same issue... i have clearly not made that case
- Because the electorate is doing little to nothing at the local scale to change voting methodology. Until that happens in a broad fashion, the two parties will continue to be a problem.
  
  Edit: you can downvote all you want, it doesn't change reality.
Yes, welcome to politics.
I have never approved of the person I voted for president
- Voting isn't a valentine. It's a chess move. —Rebecca Solnit
  
  Except the chess piece doesn’t honestly care what you think and a couple thousand people in flyover country can put you in checkmate regardless of how you move.
  
  Voting is more like beating your head against a wall. If enough people join you then you might just move the building. But don’t expect it to feel good afterwards.
  
  Forfeiting is a chess move, yes.
  
  but the people who say this keep losing, so it doesn't work in reality
Blah blah blah it's January for crying out loud. Most voters haven't even actually started thinking about the race. Only the terminally online and talking heads are thinking about this.

Of course Biden's unpopular compared with a nebulous "what if" alternative. Shit, the real comparison people answering these polls are probably making is him against Obama. Obama was only fighting the Great Recession, not a global pandemic and a wannabe dictator with all his fans and an expansionist Russia with greedy stockholders driving CEOs to gouge consumers under cover of "inflation" and on and on.

I'm not even saying Biden's approval rating will get better between now and November. But if Trump is the Republican nominee, I think Biden has a pretty strong shot at winning anyway. As long as we all get out and vote.
Trump's dislike is going to run even higher (and a lot deeper).
See you in June when prices come down across the board, wages rise, and more conservatives die of preventable diseases.
- Those are the things we like about Biden! That is like saying " You don't like Trump because the COVID vaccine was developed while he was president."
  
  No, I am pretty sure there are other things that would make people not like him.

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