I don't know a single person who's "blindly loyal" to Biden. Most people I know think he's overall pretty reasonable and certainly disagree with him on some things. I also know quite a few Trump voters, as I do live in Texas, and those people are beyond rationality at this point. Trying to have a conversation about an issue is utterly useless, because all they know how to do is restate whatever line they've been fed by whatever conservative media they watch.
I think it's more that people are terrified of Biden being criticized harshly while Trump gets a similar treatment. If news and pundits treat the two the same, it equates them. Which is NOT REALITY. But if outlets treat them as the same, there's a real good chance we get Trump. And there's a not insignificant chance if that happens we won't have another fair election again.
Biden has a lot of problems but they are absolutely nothing compared to Trump on all the same counts and vastly more.
There's degrees of loyalty. I agree with you that lots of people are willing to say Biden shouldn't be leading the country and then start talking about how he's better than Trump. Fine.
But the missing part of that conversation is this: If Biden shouldn't be leading the country what do we say about the people who voted for him in the 2020 primaries? Was that a selfish and foolish decision?
Stewart simply spoke the truth. Candidates are supposed to convince people to vote for them. That’s their job. Biden’s communications people hiding behind “He’s not Trump and is competent at the job” is a repeat of Hillary’s 2016 strategy, and the polling numbers actually supported that strategy in 2016. The reality was very different when the votes were counted.
Relying on that strategy in 2024 is playing Russian roulette with American democracy. Biden needs a better communications team. Ideally younger.
The DNC should have also given their own other candidates support as well to give some semblance of a choice (except for the one that isn't even eligible and is basically a Republican). Perhaps it wouldn't have to be A few McCheeseburgers from death narcissist moron trying to stay out of prison vs. Dazed and Confused, replacement hips are now a matter of national security
The DNC has once again failed their voter pool by trying to pre-pick their candidate. Last time, it ended in them disbanding their Super Delegates after causing a "fuck them both, I'm staying home" voter mentality.
I'm agreeing with you and perhaps being a little too overzealous about it but I can't believe that they are doing this again when they lost doing it the last time.
The incumbent president always has more support than another candidate in the same party. They know they can’t risk running someone else when the incumbent president will always have a bias from the voters.
I agree with everything you said and I think something else we need to talk about is the people who voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 primaries. There were much better options. Voting for Biden was incredibly selfish and foolish.
To them it's "everywhere" because for so long the conversation about so many 2020 DNC primary voters making selfish and foolish decisions has been successfully swept under the rug. Now that it's being mentioned at all they're freaking out because they're losing control of the narrative.
The worst part of it for me was listening to Kamala Harris briefly speak about the President. She kind of stays in the shadows for the most part, but every time she emerges to speak, I feel as though she's politically disingenuous and borders on being Lois Griffin saying "NINE ELEVEN" for applause.
Yeah and she does that weird thing where she pauses every few words and nods, like she expects you to REALLY take in what she’s saying or something. It’s annoying!
What the hell am I looking at in this image? Someone inventing reactions to what's literally just a network announcement? Why am I not being show the "meltdown"?
It's unfortunate that the term liberal has so thoroughly deviated from its original meaning due to right wingers who forget they are also liberals. I hate using it as a leftist because people assume I'm an American conservative which is unfortunate because liberal is a very useful term for classifying western capitalist ideolouges.
I personally blame SJWS FAILS AND CRINGE COMPILATION #6 published on August 4th 2016 by SJWCentral on YouTube specifically for this phenomenon. /s
do not actually go watch this they don't deserve views it doesn't pertain to anything I said it's just a joke
Dems are (rightly) scared to death of another Trump presidency.
Therefore Dems feel they should do everything they can to avoid a Trump presidency.
By trying to make everyone think the only realistic alternative (Biden) is not just better, but vastly better.
And when they see criticism of Biden (especially from left-of-what-the-U.S.-considers-center), they start having visions of Trump in the Oval Office again and panicking.
Fear leads to anger, anger to hate, hate to pretending Biden's perfect.
Because if they admit Biden isn't perfect, the vast numbers (/s) of centrists who haven't decided who to vote for in the general election might vote for Trump.
It's the same logic as crypto "investors." Their favorite cryptocurrency only goes up and they only make money off of it if they portray it as perfect. And pretty soon they stop differentiating between what makes line go up and what is actually true entirely. (And they absolutely cannot under any circumstances admit to even the tiniest flaw or valid criticism of the coins they're invested in.)
I'm mostly referring to what this article is saying.
But more centrist Democrats, including those most likely to have appended "Blue Wave" and "Resistance" labels to their social media accounts in the Trump years, were appalled at what they saw as a betrayal by one of their own.
The judgements against Biden from moderates or defenders of moderates are superficial at best and never go into detail about how we avoid this situation in the future. For example, if we do agree that we should be forced into a choice between Biden and Trump then what does that say about the people who voted for Biden in the 2020 primaries? If we don't call out that decision as selfish and foolish then it virtually guarantees the same thing will happen in the future.
See, here's an example of someone who thinks Biden is perfect! CULT CULT CULT /s
If Dems ran a viable alternative to Biden then it's likely they would have the nomination. Unfortunately, the DNC set their strategy and have no choice but to see it through to the end at this point.
Best thing Republicans could do is run Nikki Haley. She has a real chance of pulling centrists to the right against Biden and his age.
If Dems ran a viable alternative to Biden then it’s likely they would have the nomination.
There's a primary and no one is even close. There are no good alternatives mostly because no one is dumb enough to run against an incumbent. If Biden was not seeking nomination then yeah. But the bias towards incumbents is too strong to take a chance like that on. You'll just end up with an otherwise viable candidate losing by 50-60% and looking terrible. Potentially torpedoing their chances next cycle.
I don't think this person is saying Biden is perfect. It's just the same situation as the last five elections: most important election of our lifetimes, can't let the other guy win because he's so bad etc
I don't know what "sliding right" has anything to do with it. People need to stop assigning general human psychological phenomena to political parties.
Being authoritarian or blindly loyal is not an exclusively "right wing" thing. There are people who want it to be against the law to not use a person's preferred pronouns. That's an extremely authoritarian ideology.
And to put a fine point on it, using people's preferred pronouns is a good thing, in my mind. But making that enforceable by law I view as the same as if religious zealots made a law that you had to refer to religious leaders by their title "Father" and or "Pastor", etc.
This tweet is really poor at addressing the real point.
I mean yes, and political groups can have some leanings, but it doesn't serve a useful purpose in discourse like this.
Trying to say the left is "sliding right" traditionally would mean they are leaning more fiscally conservative and in favor of smaller government. But here the insinuation is by "sliding right" they mean "being sycophants for their leaders". That trait is not part of the "left vs right" axis. And using it really confuses the two, and echos Stewart's overall point... Identity politics is not exclusive to one side.
As an example, if "the left" started gathering on a weekend day to discuss personal growth and the potential presence of the afterlife, would we call that "sliding right"? I would say no because it's a behavior of people who, in general, align with a political ideology, but the activity itself is not part of that ideology.
They are definitely not fair and balanced in the coverage.
They want ratings and will create any and all controversies about the president, even if it means reelecting Trump, for those clicks. They had their most profitable years covering the shit President Dementia was saying.
I was talking about the "Holding Biden Accountable" tweet. I can't possibly imagine a "Biden cult". Or supporting any politician is not automatically a cult behaviour?
It is possible to think that 1 group is awful, and the group almost as bad as them but not quite is not as bad and therefore should be supported over the worse group.