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In the past few elections, voting feels more like a hostage situation than exercising my right to making a “choice”. This country is absolutely fucked if Trump is elected again.
Yes. That's the end game of our type of voting system. You get two options and both suck.
We will get no progress until we get something like ranked choice voting.
Obligatory CGP Grey video about the inevitability of a 2-party system
Which we won’t get, because it doesn’t benefit the right people
If we can at least get 2 dems in a row in office we can begin to claw the Overton window back from the fascist side. It'd be a start at least
This is the part too may people fail to understand. The same reason Trump wasn't able to completely dismantle democracy in 4 years is why Dems can't check every progressive box in 4 years. The system is designed to require a decade or more of electoral success to enact real change. Otherwise you'd just have an unsustainable political yoyo.
Even then, Trump winning one time has completely fucked the Supreme Court, and US democracy will unequivocally not survive another Trump pick. A ton of allegedly left leaning people here seem suspiciously enthusiastic about that prospect.
Easier said than done I know but if Trump wins my wife and I would strongly consider emigrating to another country. There's only so much insanity one can take before needlessly going down with the ship. And if the calculus is that that my kids will have better prospects elsewhere, then so be it.
You're assuming that 1st world countries will have us.
Seconding this. Moving to another country without skilled work history and/or higher education in a niche field that would be of use to the destination country is extremely hard to do. You, basically, have to beat out a skilled worker that already lives there. The other option is to be wealthy and buy your way in.
A lot of people have this misconception that moving elsewhere is easy. Turns out, when assholes yell at you about leaving the country when you don't like something, they're not being genuine and more doors are closed to you than open.
And, if you're asking yourself how all the other immigrants are doing it, I can guess that they're possibly being exploited with by pay that won't be a living wage and/or have a desperate situation back home.
Interestingly, I've seen a few people warn that, when poop finally hits the fan because of ww3, you don't necessarily want to be the othered, new family on the block.
Take my words with a grain of salt, but reality might be much different than people think when it comes to jumping ship.
Fascism is on the rise globally. If enough decent people leave the US, we will fall into a fascist regime, and it will be the beginning of World War Three, with the US leading the equivalent of the Axis powers. No place in the world will be safe for you or your children. That's the hard, honest truth.
Agreed. We need to stay, and we need to fight to change the system from the inside. We can still prevent disaster at this stage.
It always has been.
We might be tempted to think that our Democratic heritage automatically protects us from such threats. This is a misguided reflex. In fact, the precedent set by the founders demand that we examine history to understand the deep sources of tyranny and consider the proper responses to it. - On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder (Chapter 1, Page 13)
We need to focus on smaller winnable races. Unfortunately we can't shortcut our way into the presidential candidates we want, we need to replace the establishment and build a foundation of allies to support it. I know a lot of us are in conservative areas where you can't realistically get new candidates elected locally, but you can still volunteer for races in other parts of the country. If we can shift politics in the house and Senate the presidency will follow. It's hard work but it's possible.
Is there a real plan to shore up our "democracy" if the Democrats win this election? What is Biden going to do next term that he didn't do this term?
I feel like people are so fixated on Trump that they can't see past him. Trump is a giant, clown-shaped piece of shit-- absolutely. How does the opposing party fail at politics so hard that someone like Trump ever even had a shot?
I feel like people are so fixated on Trump that they can't see past him.
Well yeah, because if he wins there won't be anything past him for much of the country.
I agree that it's frustrating that Democrats use shitty Republicans as an excuse to be just a tiny bit less shitty. However, it's getting really annoying that you can't criticize Trump without someone chiming in with "whadabout Biden?!" and you can't criticize Biden without getting a "whadabout Trump?!"
They're both fucking awful. It's a waste of time criticizing Trump because everybody knows who he is, and the people that like him don't give a fuck what he does. They aren't listening to your criticism. I'm don't think Dem leadership really wants to actually help working class people, but they definitely don't have much reason to start when people keep voting for the most "conservative" ones out of fear from the monsters which have mysteriously found a way to represent the other half of voters.
Don't forget, Sanders is the only person Trump has ever admitted he's afraid of.
Dems really underestimate what life is like for normal Americans. trump doesn't get it either obviously, but at least he acknowledges shit is bad for them.
If Biden tries to run in the economy it's going to hurt him because all the money is going to the wealthy.
Bernie acknowledges and actually has a plan to fix shit. And unlike trump points the finger at whose fault it is.
trump can't compete with that.
But neoliberals don't want to really address wealth inequality either.
MUST WATCH: Bernie Sanders - Why People Vote For Trump
He's 100% right on this.
Man, it's crazy how similar that sounds to exactly what Biden has been saying all along:
And I’ve said many times before: I believe we’re at an inflection point in this country — one of those moments where the decisions we’re about to make can change — literally change the trajectory of our nation for years and possibly decades to come.
Each inflection point in this nation’s history represents a fundamental choice. I believe that America, at this moment, is facing such a choice. And the choice is this: Are we going to continue with an economy where the overwhelming share of the benefits go to big corporations and the very wealthy? Or are we going to take this moment right now to set this country on a new path — one that invests in this nation; creates real, sustained economic growth; and that benefits everyone, including working people and middle-class folks?
That’s something we haven’t realized in this country for decades.
Here’s the simple truth. For a long time, this economy has worked great for those at the very top, while ordinary, hardworking Americans — the people who built this country — have been basically cut out of the deal.
And I’ve said this from the time I announced I was going to run: I believe this is a moment of potentially great change. This is our moment to deal working people back into the economy. This is our moment to prove to the American people that their government works for them, not just for the big corporations and those at the very top.
Yet an off-the-cuff remark about asking wealthy people to accept slightly higher taxes is somehow all his breathless detractors want to pretend has ever existed.
If trump wins and America can't defeat his senile version of fascism, then it's already on the death bed waiting for the next republican to take power...
trump is the best authoritarian we're going to get, he's easy mode, the republicans will get someone worse, someone who has the ability to think beyond his next shit.
It's not going to get better only worse...
Even for a politician who doesn’t mince his words, his assessment of a Trump victory in November is sobering. “It will be the end of democracy, functional democracy.”
It may not happen on day one, he says. Trump wouldn’t be as obvious as to abolish elections. But he would steadily weaken democracy, making it harder for young people and people of colour to vote, enervating political opposition, whipping up anger against minorities and immigrants.
This interview with Sanders is from January of this year, well before the recent CPAC and Trump's open calls to end democracy. And it's the only point upon which I disagree with him.
I think elections WILL be abolished, and Trump will have no reason to slow down or hide his real objectives, even on Day 1.
Just to remind people, Day 1 of Trump's first term he used to begin opening up and even selling long-protected BLM lands to corporate mining and energy companies.
Trump has a horrific agenda. Dismantling anything that could be an obstacle for him later is at the top of the list, like democracy itself, and he'll get to it as soon as his feet land in the Oval Office.
And it's not just about Trump being weak, craven, and humiliated: Trump is, essentially, a demagogue and a puppet, one that is owned by foreign interests. His owners will ensure that all Trump's days are spent dismantling democracy, ensuring places like Cop City get up and running on schedule, and returning us all to the company store economy as soon as it can be done.
Watch the VP pick closely. It won't be Trump's choice, it will be someone relatively unknown that his owners pick, in the same way that Mike Johnson came out of bumfuck nowhere to be Speaker of the House. Watch that second place very carefully, because that's who will eventually be POTUS once the hamberders, tertiary syphilis, and/or dissatisfied foreign Trump debt owners finish with Trump.
Citizens United needs to be removed.
The massive polarisation in the media needs to be addressed and the outright blatant lies told by the Rightwing goons needs to be legally stopped. ‘Free Speech’ my ass. They need to be labelled ‘opinion’ or ‘entertainment’ or something other than pretending to be ‘fair’ or ‘news’.
I was proud to vote for Bernie in the 2016 and 2020 primaries, but I bit the bullet and phone banked for Biden even though he was far from my first choice. There's way too much at stake here.
We don't have much of a democracy as things stand considering the average person doesn't influence policy lol. If all hope is on Biden clutching it out then we better brace for the end. Dems had 4 years to plan ahead.
By supporting a different Republican, how hard is it? In many states you can even vote in the primary of a party you're not part of, people think it's beneath them to pick a candidate of the party they dislike whose agenda is least-unlikable. There's no law preventing you from switching parties on a whim.
