John Fetterman says he'll 'never understand' progressives who refuse to support Joe Biden

I don't like Joe Biden, but this isn't a presidential approval poll, it's an election, and he's clearly better than any of the alternatives. And when it comes down to it, he's been better than I expected. We could have just had an exclusively centrist presidency, and while there's been plenty of centrism, he has been persuadable to progressive action.

And frankly even if you can't bring yourself to express support Biden for some reason, it should be pretty easy to want anyone who willingly associates with Republicans to lose and lose badly, because they're way beyond stealth-mode fascism now. Even the most jaded "they're all neolibs" voter from earlier elections can't possibly ignore that the Republicans are just fash now. There's a real danger if they win that cities end up with federally tasked jackboots kidnapping protesters like Portland.

"Support Joe Biden" - Yes.

"Support particular policies of Joe Biden" - No.

Democrats are not a cult of personality. We can disagree with particular things the president does without wanting to see him defeated.

It's not that I don't support him, it's that I do not support anyone over the age of 65 being in any position of any power anywhere.

His only redeeming quality is not being Donald Trump. He’s otherwise too fucking old and out of touch with the vast majority of the country like most of our government is.

Is it already the time of year to bash progressives in case democrats lose so that they can be blamed for it? The extent of support Joe Biden will get is a vote against the republican party. As a candidate himself, he sucks as does the "democratic" party in general.

In the primaries, I supported progressive candidates like Sanders and Warren because I think their policy prescriptions would make for a better America. In the general, I voted for Biden. That was a harm-reduction vote.

What I don't like to hear, in the primary, is the 'you have to vote for the candidate who can win' line of argument, which begs the question it pretends to answer- if everyone who says "I'd vote for x but x can't possibly win" just voted for x, x would actually win. This gives whoever tells you that "x can't possibly win" the power to get you to give up on voting for what you want, which seems to wag the dog.

In the general, between dem and gop control, it's not a close contest for me; it's between a party afraid to do progressive things the voters want and a party that will do whatever the fuck it wants no matter that nobody wants that.

Yes, our electoral system of first-past-the-post demands that we hedge our bets and compromise in order to avoid the calamity of electing a fascist in this election cycle, but it's hard to support with evidence the idea that what makes a progressive candidate "risky" isn't just a self-fulfilling misperception that causes the party to spend (or not-spend) money to prevent progressives from becoming party nominees. After all, research consistently shows that politicians of both parties routinely overestimate the conservatism of the voters.

I'm glad to see the Biden admin embracing the progressive changes it has been able to get to, but I'm also sooo tired of being told 'we can't nominate a progressive, they'll be called a communist' when no matter who we nominate they'll be called a communist and decades of voting a harm-reduction ticket has rolled back much of the New Deal

Fetterman is 100% right.

He's basically calling out progressives for essentially not wanting power. Those progressives rather sit on the sidelines and complain about everything than ever gaining even a morsel of political power to where they could actually do something.

Falling in-line is what has led conservatives to gain enough control of the government to throw out what most considered a done deal. RvW is gone (as well as any hope for reasonable gun restrictions, as well as a host of other no nonsense laws) because Republicans know about playing the long game and know that collectively they can accomplish far more things.

It's funny that progressives love to push the idea of collective bargaining when it comes to labor relations and yet they can't figure out that collectively if they fell behind the leader of the Democrats, their voices would be much better heard.

Ah yes everything is progressives fault and not establishment dinosaurs pandering to their corporate donors .

I don't get it, either. Unless and until we have something like ranked choice voting, purity ponies that lodge "protest votes" only help the fascists. And these purity ponies seem to revel in creating more division within the left (and create more Republicans in the process), wanting to excommunicate each other over ivory tower orthodoxy, with the Oppression Olympics being one of the more egregious versions of that...

The key to getting progression policies passed is voting for Congress. Having a democratic President, whether it's Biden or someone else, doesn't matter if we only have a razor-thin majority. We just get held hostage by people like Manchin. We need solid majorities in both House and Senate to achieve anything.

Look, I get the Dems are our only vehicle for Progressive policies becoming reality because I know we're never going to move away from FPTP voting any time soon. I just don't like having to go along with the same corporate greed. It feels very two steps forward, one step back.

Cause he's a fuckin mummy John. We are tired of electing boomers that don't understand fuckin computers.

Selling us a tube TV in the year of flat screens.

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Primaries are for ideas and ideals. General elections are for harm reduction.

Oh, because i support progressive people, not union busters

Rave Acts of the 90's. Joe is only swimming because his opponents are literal Neanderthals.

Then he's not listening

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Progressives that said "Joe Biden was a pile of shit" before he was elected have been like "he's shit, but maybe not as shit as I thought"

Before the circular firing squad starts up its probably good to recognize that Joe Biden is shit and the electoral college is shit and this bullshit will continue until we get real election reforms.

They are prioritizing principles over practicality. Which is a great way to hand power to the greater evil.

ITT: people who defend Manchin every single time he votes against his party expecting perfect lockstep from those he keeps betraying.

Edit: I summoned one.

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Because the Democrstic Party did just about everything it could to try and have it be Senator Conor Lamb. Or by effect, a Senator Oz.

For me Biden represents much of that faction of the Democratic Party. Hence I have trouble assuring Biden my vote even before the primary.

I'm still soured by how the primary shook out in 2020. Before any votes were cast, all everyone said about all the candidates were that anyone could beat Trump. Bernie won the first 3 races, and the Democratic establishment fought anyway they could to kill the movement, including pressuring flailing campaigns to back out. Biden finally won and the only message is for the left wing of the party to get in line. Kind of a hard pill to swallow when the Democrats claimed to be the party of the youth, but the youth voted 80%+ for Bernie in the primary. Ended up voting Green in 2020. Will I do so again in '24? Who knows, but at this point it isn't looking good. I don't like that the right wing of the Democrats (center-right overall) expects the left to follow along no matter what they do.

I'm not sure I buy this whole "third party votes are wasted votes" or "third party votes are a vote for the opposition". The US system heavily heavily biases towards having a two party system, but third parties exist, and just because Democrats and Republicans are the two major parties right now, doesn't mean they will be in the future. The Whigs were one of the two major parties for 25 years of US history, even winning the Presidency a few times, but now they're not. It took people not willing to accept the party line and jumping ship to change that, which again the system biases against, but it still happened. Democrats aren't the end-all-be-all of lefty politics. The next left wing party won't be the end-all-be-all either. Democrats have no incentive to change the current system. By continuing to vote for them, whether you believe it or not, you're approving and perpetuating the behavior. It isn't a useful method of change to say "I don't agree with anything the Democrats say, but that's the world we're in". That's how you end up in a situation where 70% of the country supports universal healthcare, but only 5-6 members of Congress do. Voting for a further left party than the Democrats will cause the Democrats to wise up to what their traditional base wants.

Politics in Democracy is not a passive system. Passivity leads to what we have now, two parties that write the rules for the states and the governments that represent the interests of almost no one, but have convinced us that they're the only and best options. There are agents of the Democrats currently in jail for breaking election law in their efforts to keep the Greens off the ballot. I'm sure the same is true for Republicans. Don't tell them its okay by giving them your vote. Don't give in to the political version of the Paradox of Thrift.

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This is the best summary I could come up with:

Sen. John Fetterman has a message for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party: get in line behind President Joe Biden.

He continues to recover from an auditory processing disorder caused by a stroke that happened during the 2022 campaign.

Both Sanders and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York have also endorsed the incumbent president, despite their occasional criticisms from the left.

"At the end of the day, like, do you think Donald Trump is going to be talking about issues and, you know, his white papers?"

Fetterman also recalled a conversation with Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema in which he said he would remain "neutral on all of that," despite his previous suggestion that he would support Gallego, along with the fact that his top political strategist is now working for the Arizona congressman.

Last week, during a similar briefing with reporters, Fetterman referred to the potential impeachment of President Biden as a "big circlejerk on the fringe right."

The original article contains 434 words, the summary contains 159 words. Saved 63%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Is it just me or does this thumbnail make Joe look super super old?

I see Reddit's r/Politics hard liberal cast has migrated wholesale and now drowns out lemmy's leftists.

Duhh

I'll vote for whatever candidate aligns with my views, I'm not playing the numbers game, that's not for me to play. I can and will vote for whoever I want and no one is going to convince me that I'm "throwing my vote away" by voting third party.

Me neither...

I live in Delaware I don't have to vote for Joe biden I can vote for anyone else

Vote greens.

They're easy to understand: they are privileged and insulated enough from potential Republican fuckery that if Democrats lose elections, they are mostly going to be ok. They're mostly middle class or higher with secure employment or other economic support (parents, spouse), straight (or closeted), their religious status isn't contentious, mostly they're male.

The other group I'd expect would be extremely low information voters who believe all politicians are the same and it's a Coke or Pepsi kind of thing. That's not going to be super common with anyone identifying as "progressive" due to the very politicized nature of that term, though.

Simple. They are still liberal. They never drank the progressive kool aid that lead to Trump.

Progressives don't like anyone who is older than 26.