Donald Trump appears close to invincible in the early Republican primaries and caucuses, but his strength among general election voters remains unclear.
I have to let this out, and your comment was the trigger. Lucky you.
Three things are pissing me off in this election in particular.
Undecideds. There’s supposed to be this huge center (well, 30%) of unaffiliated “undecided” voters. Who TF are these people, who look at the modern Republican party and at Trump, and go: “hmmm. I just don’t know. Do I vote for the bland old guy, or the fascist, philandering, traitorous tax-avoiding old guy who’s under inditement in several states? I just don’t know!”
Primaries. Lots of liberals - myself included - are furious with Biden about his support of Israel in this ethnic cleansing. The primaries should be the place where we can express our displeasure, and is almost the only forum we have to exert (generally) direct electoral pressure. But we can’t, because doing so harms Biden’s chances in the general election by sowing discord - c.f. the very relevant Bernie Bros, who refused to vote for Hillary even after Bernie threw in with her.
Biden’s cabinet. Whoever is in charge of his PR is doing a shit job. I learn more on Lemmy about Biden’s accomplishments than I do in the general news. Biden’s doing a good job in many areas, but Joe Public doesn’t know because Biden’s PR staff have their heads up their asses.
It’s utterly insane; the electoral college needs to be dumped, there’s no doubt about that, and adoption of approval voting, or ranked choice – almost anything would be better. But even with these issues, the US managed to work for 200 years, until the past few election cycles, and it’s just gotten insane.
The undecideds are people who aren’t paying attention. It’s easy to not be sure who you’ll vote for when your opinion is based on whatever stray bits of politics pop up around you despite your best efforts to remain ignorant. And those people are just as likely to run into lies and propaganda, but won’t have the knowledge required to spot the inaccuracies.
The problem is, I don’t believe they are all sock puppets. It would be foolish to think that people on the left aren’t as susceptible to disinfo as people on the right. Plus the complaints are totally valid. Biden is too old, he is supporting Israel’s genocide, he is just barely a centrist, and he will just enable the status quo instead of affecting real positive change in the country. What’s at stake is much more dire. I’m willing to wait another 4 years to try again for a more progressive candidate rather than gamble now on a less than 1% chance of a slightly better candidate and a 99% chance of trump and the likely end of free and fair elections.
Which is why you suddenly see all these sockpuppet accounts posting about how bad Biden is.
I have to let this out, and your comment was the trigger. Lucky you.
Three things are pissing me off in this election in particular.
It’s utterly insane; the electoral college needs to be dumped, there’s no doubt about that, and adoption of approval voting, or ranked choice – almost anything would be better. But even with these issues, the US managed to work for 200 years, until the past few election cycles, and it’s just gotten insane.
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🤝
I hate that it seems the only way to win is to use the immoral tactics used by conservatives.
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The undecideds are people who aren’t paying attention. It’s easy to not be sure who you’ll vote for when your opinion is based on whatever stray bits of politics pop up around you despite your best efforts to remain ignorant. And those people are just as likely to run into lies and propaganda, but won’t have the knowledge required to spot the inaccuracies.
The problem is, I don’t believe they are all sock puppets. It would be foolish to think that people on the left aren’t as susceptible to disinfo as people on the right. Plus the complaints are totally valid. Biden is too old, he is supporting Israel’s genocide, he is just barely a centrist, and he will just enable the status quo instead of affecting real positive change in the country. What’s at stake is much more dire. I’m willing to wait another 4 years to try again for a more progressive candidate rather than gamble now on a less than 1% chance of a slightly better candidate and a 99% chance of trump and the likely end of free and fair elections.