this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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You ignore the other option in current criticisms of Biden. No, I don't want Trump to win, but it sure would be nice if Biden listened to criticism and stopped his current, weak "I told Netanyahu, 'Stop this, bub, or I'm going to get really cross with you. Now, listen here, I mean it this time!'" enablement of the genocide Israel is carrying out. He's apparently able to listen voters on stuff like not banning menthol cigarettes for fear of alienating black voters due to black smokers predominantly smoking menthols, yet when younger and more left-wing voters ask "Could you please stop fast-tracking Israel's ability to commit genocide so I can vote for you with a clean conscience?" the response is apparently, "Lol, get fucked."
If Biden loses, this will be entirely on him. He can cave to pressure from a fraction of the African American population that smokes over something that will actively help kill them, but is seemingly committed to ignoring young voters across demographic groups to enable something that systematically murders innocent people, makes the US complicit in crimes against humanity and offers literally no tangible benefit to the US, but could get him some more of that sweet AIPAC money.
I just love how "leftists" accuse others of not taking fascism seriously enough and then post shit like this when the opportunity to put up actually presents itself.
When Fascists Vote, Not Voting is Collaboration.
That's not a platitude, that's basic math, and it's true even under a not absolutely fucked FPTP system like what we're stuck with right now, let alone with it.
When fascism is on the ballot, you vote against it or you are a collaborator. End of story. No debate.
If you need more convincing than just being informed that the other candidate is a fascist running on a platform of doing fascism, you are a collaborator.
If ten people are at a table and a Nazi can sit down at that table unchallenged, there are eleven Nazis at that table.
I'm voting against it. To be clear, that means a vote for Biden.
Biden should stop supporting genocide, and you should stop pretending that opposition to genocide is support for Trump.
Look, in past elections we didn't have to wonder if not voting for a candidate would have lasting implications for the future of this country and the freedom of the world. This election does. I think what has happened, and is continuing to happen, to those in Gaza is gut wrenching. As a father of a 4-year-old, I would be mentally eviscerated if I lost him. I would probably go from "father" to "extremist" in that instance, too.
It's hard for me to vote for Biden knowing his support for the state of Israel. I also know I want to be able to vote in the future. I want women to have bodily autonomy. I want marginalized groups to exist and not have their very existence removed from the vernacular. I want the government to remain an agnostic-ish state. I want our allies to stay allies (except for maybe the state of Israel) and our enemies to stay enemies.
I can also admit to not knowing everything about the geopolitical landscape to know just how much sway Biden may have in his support for the state of Israel. We like to think the president is a king and can snap his fingers to make his will THE will (see all the people thinking Biden can control gas prices, for instance), but that just isn't so.
I already said I'm voting for Biden. I don't need to be lectured into doing something I already said I'm gonna do.
Biden circumvented congress to provide weapons that he knew would be used for genocide.
If withdrawing his support won't do anything, we aided a genocide for no reason other than Biden really fucking wanted to. If it will do something, his continued support makes the genocide possible. I do not buy any argument in favor of continuing support for genocide, because there is no good reason for genocide.
Expecting me to buy the "he isn't a king" line when he acted by himself without congress in order to sell Netanyahu weapons when he didn't have to is insulting.
It's funny how little people believe in democracy whilst simultaneously claiming that their vote is too important to cast for an immoral cause.
If Biden loses, it is on all of us. If Trump wins, it is on all of us. If Biden wins, likewise, it is on all of us.
That's the cost of living in a somewhat-democratic fucking society. As much as some would love to have a king or a fuhrer or some friendly neighborhood oligarchs they could knuckle under and point to and say, "God help me, it wasn't me, it was all them!", it's not fucking there yet. And anyone with an ounce of fucking morality in them will fight to prevent it.
So Biden literally has no agency to change one stance that is overwhelmingly unpopular with young voters, many of whom are threatening not to vote for him over this issue? Exactly, this is entirely on Biden. You can make all the excuses you want, for anyone whose eyes aren't painted on, it's obvious what's going on.
Young voters turned out in record numbers in the last election, and they favored Biden by far, helping him win. But sure, Biden can turn his back on these voters, he did win by such a comfortable margin last time that he has no reason to be worried. He has nothing to gain by doubling down on his stance on Israel, and everything to lose.
I've seen so many excuses for why voters should feel they personally failed democracy if they don't vote for Biden over his support for genocide, but not a single one of you have offered a reason why Biden should hold course on his Israeli policy, rather than correcting now, while he still has time. Again, there is zero benefit to the US for him to hold his current position.
I'll just go comment in the forum where Biden hangs out because that's totally a thing /s
When an equal or greater number of voters believe he's doing the right thing, or needs to do more for Israel, and young voters are notoriously unreliable? In terms of political calculus, this is not a clear-cut strategic decision.
He's in a lose-lose situation. Either way he loses votes, unless the anti-Israel sentiment accelerates even more. My opinion is that in a lose-lose situation, you should take the moral loss and not the immoral one - so I'm entirely in favor of cutting Israel off.
But if Biden doesn't change his position on Israel, despite voicing some responsiveness to current protests, he's still better, and yes, including for the Palestinian people, than Donald Trump. And realistically speaking, it's one of those two old fucks that's going to be president.
If young voters don't turn out for him in similar numbers as they did the last election, he's likely lost anyway. He's running a campaign on a knife edge, and alienating a demographic that was essential for his last win, which is a dumb move. Support for Israel tracks heavily with age, which coincidentally, tracks pretty decently with the likelihood to vote Republican, so there's a good portion of this block that were never going to vote for him to begin with.
No, it's just competing on degrees of awfulness. This is like saying you're going to fall victim to one of two murders; the first one will flay you alive and let you die of infections once they set in, while the second will shoot you 3 times in the face and make sure you're dead within ten minutes. You're arguing the first one is better because they prolong the agony, but the outcome is the same either way.
The pro-Israel moderate vote was also essential for his last win.
Ah, so your opinion is that swift genocide is superior to delaying genocide. It's all the same in the end, right? Like how we all die in the end, so what's the difference between harsh circumstances and torture? All lives end in the same place, and circumstances don't determine possible courses of actions. And of course, it's not like circumstances can change, no, giving the Palestinian people more time to live will obviously have no possibilities that the swift extermination of the Palestinian people would extinguish.
Ridiculous.
Not what I said at all. Rather, you're acting as though one is actually a great option, and not just possibly slightly less terrible, if not ultimately the same. As though that thin chance was supposed to be something to actually get excited about someone backing.
The mental gymnastics is insane. The judges score you 10 out of 10.
One candidate will cause a lot more deaths than the other.
I'm really excited about the prospect of NOT being thrown into a concentration camp, personally.
As shitty as life often is in the US, I don't want it to get worse. I'm very enthusiastic about that cause, not least because I live here.
I've said it many times - though he did much more than I was expecting him to when he won the primary in 2020 (Bernie voter here), Biden is still, at his core, a moderate, milquetoast, centrist, party-consensus politician with only a handful of solid positions that he's kept throughout his career, none of which are particularly radical anyway.
But fuck, you offer me a stale slice of bread with spread so thin you can only tell which side is buttered by the glint of the light, and a literal shit sandwich, I will very quickly and without hesitation take the stale slice of bread every goddamn time if those are the only available choices, no matter how much I might want real food. And if I see 49 people voting for EVERYONE to be forcibly fed the shit sandwich, I am going to be very vocal in trying to remind everyone else that it takes 51 votes for stale bread in order for all of us to not eat shit, and that eating shit is NOT a fucking acceptable alternative.
The menu isn't going to change today. We will have to fight for that. But while invaders are pushing a battering ram to our gates is NOT the time to have that fight.
Damn. That metaphor got a bit mixed. tl;dr; I am excited about not living under fascism, not excited for Biden specifically.