this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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My friend said to me the other day “why did democrats nominate such a weak candidate?” To which I asked since given the fact that weak and strong are relative terms, can you point out 1 specific aspect where Biden is weaker than his opponent? She had no answer other than “he is just weak”
Don’t let these fuckers gaslight you in thinking the convicted felon with 90+ indictments and a wannabe dictator is somehow stronger than the alternative.
He's a weak candidate because he's a tepid aged rich guy who only loosely reflects what his base wants and is incapable of delivering the level of change the historic moment requires.
He's uninspiring. The US desperately needs large scale institutional change. With how broken those institutions are, that's going to require a groundswell of public support, something that can only be done by an inspiring reform candidate, not an establishment figure.
I'm still voting for him, but I'm (eternally) disappointed in the short sighted cowardice of the democratic party.
I mean, green energy, student loans, proper actual judges, high-speed rail, decriminalized weed, support for Ukraine, prosecuting trump for at least one of his many many crimes, increased school funding, etc etc and that was with half his term under a batshit republiQan House that can barely not hold up revenge porn in public hearings.
Goddamn, whatever.
Such a weird statement to me. Why would anyone expect to be 'inspired' by a politician? They're tools to represent your interests in government. If there's someone running that does that better- vote for them. Really wish people could be more boring and practical about politics. All this emotional sentiment does no one any good.
Do you think the Maga crowd is not inspired by Trump? Getting people excited is basically the entire purpose of candidates. Obama was amazing at it, Trump is pretty good, and Biden isn't.
Biden definitely isn't as good of a cult leader as Trump.
If you're looking to join a democratic cult of personality you're probably out of luck. That's not really their shtick. Try being an active participant in democracy if\whenever you get tired of looking for someone to lead you.
EDIT: You inspired me to meme! https://lemmy.world/post/15807707
Because he’s the leader of the nation. An essential component of good leadership is the ability to inspire others.
The fact remains that there is no other option which is shameful.
A US president is the elected executive and commander-in-chief of a democracy. I get that simple people need to follow 'leaders' but I thank goodness the US was built on the idea that we devote ourselves to institutions and offices, not the people we choose to temporarily occupy them. Inspire yourself to participate in democracy, don't depend on 'leaders' for anything.
Hitler was inspiring. So that makes him a good leader right? Truth is I'd heard that he was largely lucky and highly incompetent overall.
Quite frankly plenty of people Inspire others to commit atrocities. I don't view that as a good leadership skill. Good leadership skills are the ones who get things done for people who need it done. Even if it's not perfect or 100% adequate.
The ability to inspire others isn't necessarily A negative. But I wouldn't hold that it is a vital or necessary quality of leadership either. More a weakness of people needing someone to lie to them and lead them along more often than not.
One of the biggest things that the president, and really anyone in a high or noteworthy level of office can wield, is the bully pulpit. Their ability to speak to people and basically be guaranteed that people will listen to what they're saying, even if they get clip-chimped by fox news or the nyt or cnn or whatever. "Inspiration" is something that can drive people to the polls, too. Having a candidate that the majority of the population trusts and can believe in, i.e. is inspiring, is better than having a candidate that isn't those things, broadly. Well, if you agree with their goals, anyways.
What you're describing is 'charisma' and I agree- hard to get any group of humans to listen to you if you literally have none at all. But 'some' should be plenty for anyone that cares about being an active participant in a democracy.
There's the rub. Sociopaths have as much if not more charisma than decent, sincere people and the people that need to be 'inspired' by charismatic leaders are as easily led to do good or evil, and work for or against their own interests.
The US was founded on 'checks and balances' specifically designed to prevent people that get too 'inspired' by a charismatic leader from recreating the autocracy we fought a revolution to free ourselves from. The whole point of the US constitution is that even unchecked democracy can quickly devolve into mob rule which quickly leads right back to autocracy.
People that need to be led are sheep. They'll follow a shepherd, or a wolf that looks vaguely like a shepherd, and never know the difference until it's too late. The US constitution relies on the voting citizen to explicitly resist being 'led', and themselves lead by selection of representatives.
The fact that so many people's beef with the only bulwark to impending fascism is essentially "The president should be better at leading sheep" to me indicates this democratic experiment is ultimately going to fail. We probably should have put some kind of educational or personal stake requirement into voting but the 'white land owner' requirement and racist poll taxes set a backwards precedent for that that I can't see a way out of it for the US. Hopefully someone will figure out how to create sustainable democratic institutions at some point in the future but I won't live to see it.
EDIT: You inspired me to meme! https://lemmy.world/post/15807707
Isn't that how Trump happened? People seem to get inspired by some pretty fucked up shit.
A creaking disfunctional democracy slides into fascism because the moderate liberals fail to build a coalition with left. This is literally how democracys fall apart. Are you really trying to say that is the fault of people calling for reform?
Well, a lot of trump supporters are anti establishment, and he has had a groundswell of public support by people who see all the old institutions as broken and are looking for real change. So yes, I'm blaming the slide into fascism on those people.
And these people: https://lemmy.world/post/15781650
Somebody figured out that a lot of human judgement comes down to groupthink. If you see a bunch of people who are clearly operating guided by some assumptions, then you'll take those assumptions on and start being guided by them, whether the people you saw were real or fake.
Then, a few years ago, it became cheap and easy to flood both social media and news media with restatements of whatever assumptions you want people to pretend that are guided by.
And so, behold: The economy is crashing, which is all Biden's fault, and he's a weak candidate who loves genocide. Everyone's disappointed in him. Everyone knows all these things and sees them all the time. The simple repetition is actually a very solid system for producing the public opinion you want to produce.
At the present moment, they are trying to do it tactically with the "anyone who is disagreeing with me is trying to silence me, in fact they are literally hitting me in the face (also! Note that I'm allowed to disagree with whoever I want)" narrative -- simply repeating it, over and over, in the hopes (probably pretty well founded) that people will start to absorb it and behave the way they want them to behave.
Social media is both a blessing and a curse. Depending on context you might think a little of both at any given time.
I hope you do keep engaging with it. The easy thing to do would be to ignore the alarms, but it's not the smartest.
Your selfless and forward-thinking actions in support of the Democrats, and left wing goals, are plain to see. That's totally the result. It's instantly obvious.
I hope it's obvious I could say the same thing about you, by not pushing harder for better.
Don't worry - even if they were pushing harder for better, the moment they had a chance of their chosen candidate winning, you'd swap to "NOT GOOD ENOUGH" and return to simping for the fascist. :)
Public perception and narrative is where Biden is weak. Seeming physically feeble. There's a number of ways. I'm going to vote for him, but don't just yourself. You're sleepwalking towards the grave.
Biden is ancient and incomprehensible in half of his public appearances. Not saying Trump isn't, but his people love his crazy rambling.
It is not unreasonable for people to be disappointed. They are being forced to choose between two dementia riddled candidates. The only people who truly think Trump would be the better alternative are dumbass "centrists" and conservatives.
Yes, lesser evil voting is good, but you can't shame people for not smiling while smelling shit.
The fuck
Have you listened to any of his speeches? Yes, he says insane shit, but his audiences (conservatives) love it.
Trumpisms and Trumpspeak
OH! Trump. Yes. Sorry, I thought you were saying Biden’s crazy rambling.
No, yes, totally agree. It’s a cult. He’s speaking in very stupid tongues.
This is ableism. Biden doesn’t mumble because of his age, but because he’s had issues with stuttering since he was young. To a few kids he’s even been an inspiring image for the fact he rehearses his speeches so well he rises above the impromptu stutters.
No.
I already know of this.
It is what he says through the mumbling that is concerning.
I do not condone ablism.
That’s the opposite of what you said. Are you concerned about what you can understand, or what you can’t?
A speech impediment does not excuse the murder of Palestinian civilians.
Where is Palestine in this sentence
The question isn't whether or not he is weaker than the other candidate. The question was, would a better Democratic candidate have stood a better chance? I think you're misrepresenting what your friend had said.
It's actually kind of rude how you're depicting them right now, as some sort of buffoon.
Yeah they seem like a bad friend, probably very off-putting irl
This does need to be the go-to response to anyone saying shit like that: "How is Trump stronger?" Force them to admit they have no frame of reference.
Don't let anyone gaslight you into thinking that your vote is the only thing that matters.
Of course not. You still have to do the dishes.
I'll do the dishes when I'm eating the food. I'm not going to just clean up after the neoliberals while they let me starve at the kids table.
You can sit with the adults anytime you’re able to stop stuffing peas up your nose and making farting noises with your armpit.
I guess that's how you see universal healthcare yeah?
Its not like the progressives are asking for anything crazy.
It's how centrists see anything to the left of enthusiastic support for genocide.
Trump is vastly better at campaigns, Biden is far too insulated from public appearances. Trump is also really good at inspiring his base, half of Biden's party doesn't even want him. Trump gets to point to a generally good economy for his term until states shut down for covid, Biden gets to downplay a cumulative 20% inflation during his term.
Biden is in trouble in the states he needs to win, and these weaknesses are a big part of it.
Hey, remember what I said about groupthink and just repeating the assumptions and then hoping people will absorb them? This is textbook what I meant.
Half-empty campaign rallies and people leaving before the end are a hallmark of Trump's campaign rallies. I would assert that it's because he just stands up saying literally any unhinged, weird, angry garbage for literally hours and it gets tiresome after a while.
I have seen one story of people leaving before the end of Biden's speech, and that was because of a delberate protest for his genocide-enabling foreign policy, and then it turned out not to be true anyway.
Trump's also gutted the RNC because he needed all the money to pay his legal bills. It remains to be seen exactly how bad the impacts will be on his and everyone else's ability to run a campaign, but it seems unlikely that it'll leave in place a powerhouse. Eight years ago, some of Trump's natural skill at understanding TV audiences made his skill as a campaigner a lot more real than today; at this point I would say that most of Trump's broad support from conservatives is because a complicit conservative media lies for him like a North Korean news anchor, and not because of anything he's doing.
Trump has 75% of the popular vote in the primary; Biden has 85% (in the midst of historic reasons not to vote for him in the primary and an organized effort specifically not to vote for him, even from staunch Democrats). Also -- 30% of Republican primary voters in a few different state polls said that they wouldn't commit to voting for Trump if he won the nomination. That's a huge deal, and very unusual, with only one real explanation (unlike the differences in primary numbers, which obviously aren't a really apples to apples comparison).
Can we please summon to this comment some of those people who jump on every story which covers good things about Biden's economy, to start talking about how good economic numbers don't always translate to a better economy for actual humans?
Biden's strengthened unions, bounced back smoothly from Covid better than literally every other first world country, and boosted pay for low-wage earners even in the face of historic inflation. Trump started mini-trade wars with Canada and China, directly went to factories and coal mines and promised he would bring the jobs back and then weeks later the literal exact same places were closed, and gave away half a trillion dollars via direct Covid-aid fraud (that is literally the number -- not like forgiven PPP loans, which were also massive, but simple rampant theft).
Quick question, what was cumulative wage growth during Biden's term? Average or median or 10th percentile; you pick.
JFC. I don’t even want you to explain that. Hopefully you are not American and/or high as shit.
In the past two elections Trump has been amazing in intensity for campaigning. He hits multiple stops in multiple states. The physical presence is really powerful. Biden has been poor at this, covid isn't a cover this time to avoid appearances. I wouldn't be surprised to see Trump making 10x as many appearances in battleground states.
It’s eye-watering. People say, holy shit I can’t even go near the guy. I thought it was a joke but no, it’s really real; if you go in his vicinity after you-know-what happens, you’re just assaulted by the physical presence of it, and you want to get away from him as quickly as you can, trying not to gag.
“Amazing in intensity”.
Gettysburg, wow.
Blocked.
They hated ryathal because he spoke the truth