I normally don’t even want to get involved in posting a drumbeat of “here’s something about Biden staying in the race” stories because, (1) I’m not sure he should, and (2) it doesn’t “cancel out” the waste of time that is the incessant drumbeat of articles about how he should drop out. It’s like taking uppers to counteract downers; it just doesn’t work that way, it makes everything worse. And the amount of press this whole thing is getting and the way it’s being presented is absolutely fuckin absurd.
But that being said, I want to post this one because I like Elizabeth Warren quite a lot and I think what she says gets to the core of the issue.
Also, if you are a Democratic politician or donor and you want to replace Biden with someone else, surely talking to the press about how he should drop out without anyone in particular in mind that you’re talking to them about as a replacement, and a strategy to get that person into place, should be an absolute last, last, last resort for a way to get that done. And probably not even then.
Biden’s thing of “If you want to replace me then mount a challenge at the convention, that’s what it’s for, and whoever wins, let’s fuckin fight the real enemy” makes quite a bit of sense to me, and the longer this goes on, the less sense the people who are talking to the press about him dropping out make.
So here you go, here’s a story about someone who thinks he should stay in and what she has to say.
As a progressive, it’s so fuckin’ funny to me to see liberals complain about media bias. With the amount of vitriol y’all spread every time we point that out, you should probably find a different tactic if you want sympathy from your left.
And also: I don’t need the media to tell me how uninspiring Biden is to people who think like me. Voting for Hillary in the 2016 general made me feel physically ill and still somehow Biden this election is less inspiring than she was. I’m mainly just exhausted from having bland centrist elites handpicked to be the only choice on my ballot.
Hey, funny story. So I was talking to this guy the other day on here, and he was so upset about how the Democratic Party had shifted to the right. And he was talking about during the Bill Clinton years, how he and all his progressive / activist friends were so happy about how Clinton balanced the budget, and how great it was to get a young guy like Clinton in the White House, and it was a shame that his legacy got tarnished when Obama and then Biden came in.
And so I was thinking back on like all the activist people I knew in the 90s and how they felt about Clinton and the fuckin balanced budget alongside the WTO and prison population and bombing in Serbia and welfare to work and all that fun stuff, and then contrasting that with how they felt when Obama got elected. And I was like damn, that guy’s story that just happens to match a particular narrative that would be convenient if you wanted to shit on the Democrats sure matches up exactly with how I remember it. Like to a T.
Anyway. I just thought of that story. What was your favorite way Hillary Clinton was better than Biden? What did you miss about her platform, as bad as it was, that Biden managed to make even worse? I am curious.
I actually have no clue what point you were trying to make in the first two paragraphs.
Frankly, I see no perceptible difference in platform between the two of them. The main difference in terms of election enthusiasm is the burden of history. This is now the third “most important election of our lifetime” facing the same boogeyman (that I do want to keep out of the White House, to be clear). In the meantime I’ve faced 8 years of the Democratic Party blaming me for 2016 even though I voted for their illegitimate candidate, saying my political group isn’t large enough to be listened to (simultaneous with being large enough to lose the election???), and refusing to take responsibility for any of their actions that have landed us here.
They propped up Trump as a pied piper, ignored progressives and polls warning them Hillary would lose, and started a pre-emptive smear campaign to blame progressives for the loss. Now, they are still contending with the man they propped up, are once again ignoring polls, and I already see the groundwork for blaming this on progressives. So I’m less enthusiastic because I’ve heard this song before and I dislike it just as much as the first time.
My vote doesn’t even matter since I’m not in a battleground state. Only my state and local elections will matter. But I’m gonna get blamed for his inevitable loss anyway. I’m just so tired of it.
I believe that you do not, yes. Read it again and think about what I’m saying a little bit deeper.
Yeah, this stuff is totally how I look at the election, too. Just how I emotionally feel about it, and whether I’m “enthusiastic”, and nothing about platforms, and talking about all the bad things about Hillary as the reasons why I don’t like Biden.
I think I’m missing some context for what the left wing opinion was at the time considering I was born a few months into Clinton’s first term. Looking back, I can’t see him as progressive at all. I see Clinton as a catalyst of the party’s most recent shift to the right. My first presidential election was Obama’s reelection, which was fine but not very inspiring to vote for someone you were excited about 4 years ago when you couldn’t vote and starting to wonder when he was going to… uh… do anything.
I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I don’t dislike Biden because of the things I disliked about Hillary. I dislike Biden because he fits the same bill she did. I don’t like a moderate “incremental change” platform because that’s been the MO for a long while now and it clearly only lets the Republicans drag us right. I don’t like the lip service from the Democrats with no follow through time after time after time. I don’t like being told over and over that I have to be happy we have the “most progressive president ever” when half the things that are claimed about him are drops in the bucket when we need a faucet turned on.
I saw an administration holding student loan debt like a knife over people like me burdened with debt to milk extra votes out of us before proceeding to do very little about it and acting like they fixed the problem. I saw an administration do absolutely nothing to progress universal health care. Not even a plan. I recognize they don’t have the congressional votes for it now. But come up with a fucking plan to inspire us to vote for you so we know if we give you a mandate you’ll follow through. Instead, all we have to rely on is history which shows us the Democrats will implement a watered down, heavily means-tested version of whatever they do. Which means someone like me who makes over their threshold because I’m in one of the highest cost of living cities gets no help even though I’m barely treading water financially due to the yoke of student debt and goddamn groceries that cost over twice what they did 5 years ago. Meanwhile I haven’t been to a doctor in 10 years because I can’t afford whatever they’re going to tell me is wrong with me.