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Are you really expecting someone who lost relatives in Gaza to vote for the guy who had the power to do something about it and didn't?
This campaign is telling Biden that there's a voting block that holds the balance of power in a swing state, and all he has to do to get their votes is pick up the phone, tell Bibi to wrap it up or he gets no more weapons (and yes, it is that simple. Reagan did it when Israel invaded Lebanon).
But instead of meeting voters where they are, Democrats seem to fall back to their usual MO of blaming voters, instead of winning votes by doing things that are popular with voters.
It makes them feel better to think it's just online leftists doing purity politics rather than a deeply angered population who have been giving him every opportunity to turn away from this and mostly just treated as an inconvenience.
It's either online purity politics or damn near zero understanding of consequences.
"I don't like what Biden didn't do for Palestinias, I'm going to help someone who would be way worse for Palestinians! Yay!"
If I shoot your son and explain credibly why the other guy would have also shot your daughter, that’s a cold comfort.
To be clear, you're choosing the guy who'd shoot both?
I’m explaining why people don’t want to choose either, because both of them will kill their children.
Unfortunately, failing to choose means choosing the worse option.
Though, had all the young pro Palestine leftists bothered to show up during the 2020 or 2016 primaries, there might be a more progressive president and thus a better set of choices. Unfortunately, showing up to the primaries seems anathema to the under 30 crowd, hence, two terrible choices.
You may not like it, but that’s democracy- even progressive people you wish would vote for Biden might not, even if it means trump wins. Some of them are accelerationists who will vote for Trump directly, no matter how ill advised that may be.
And that's their right!
BUT, to complain about the effects of their own choices is absurd.
"I made a conscious decision to not vote progressive and now a centrist politician is enacting centrist policies with entirely predictable outcomes! How could this have happened?!?"
Luckily the people in this article are making their voices heard, looking for a more progressive option. I think people will complain no matter who gets voted in, especially if a person they didn’t vote for won. But I don’t know that people who are voting against Biden because of Palestine will wish he had won if trump wins, I think they might wish Biden had taken this hint and acted differently, but that’s not the same thing.
And if they'd done so in the primaries, that change might have done some good for Palestineans.
Not the same thing to us rich westerners, no. And it's not the same to the Palestineans who would suffer worse with a trump presidency.
This position makes zero sense. If you give a damn about Palestineans and the worse option wins, how could you not wish the better option had won?
The folks considering not voting either don't actually give a damn about Palestinean well being or are mind bogglingly counter productive.
There is no universe in which someone is simultabeously: a) genuinely concerned about Palestineans B) considering not voting Biden because of Palestine and C) has at least the intelligence of a turnip.
This is the primary.
I don’t think you understand how bad things are under Biden- would you actually vote for someone under whose approval your relative thirsted to death? If so, congratulations on your compartmentalization ability. That would be essentially endorsing those actions and many, many people aren’t able to do that.
Against an incumbent. The meaningful primaries were 2020, 2016.
"My relative died, who cares if my choices actively make things worse for those who are still alive?"
Sucks to have that sociopath as a relative I guess.
That lacks basic empathy.
I know! It is, at best, sociopathic to deliberately make things worse for people you claim to care about.
Very clever. I mean that you are demonstrating no empathy for people who have lost a great deal.
You're infantalizing these people.
We both agree on these two facts right:
So, the question really is do you think so little of these folks that you think they can't comprehend those basic facts? Do you believe they are incapable of simple logic? Or do you think they are sociopaths? Or do you actually think they are disingenuous about their feelings for Palestineans?
Out of the two of us, I'm the only one dignifying these people as functional, albeit grieving, adults. If you'd ever had to deal with the mountains of paperwork following an unexpected death you'd know that grief doesn't turn you into a child.
We don’t agree on those two facts.
I don’t know if I truly believe there will be Palestinians by next January, so I don’t know if trump could be worse for them. If he takes office, he might be more enthusiastic, but I don’t think Netanyahu will stop as long as someone in the White House supports him. When Biden does it while holding his nose, it’s not less useful support.
Not voting may help trump or Biden, depending on your jurisdiction.
Oh boy, those are some pretty silly arguments. I can see why you're supporting this nonsense then.
Unless what, you think Bibbi is going to start dropping nukes? Really?
You’re rude to me too! How fun. This is my last reply.
I absolutely see the escalation that has already occurred from each month to the next and understand how things could get much worse, much more quickly, without nuclear bombs (think about Dresden).
A progressive voter in a solid blue area who will not vote for Biden but may have voted in this primary could absolutely help him by not voting for a third party candidate.
Except, Dresden had a population of 600,000 and lost ~ 25000 people and many folks lived there throughout and after the war. Just like Palestinians will. And of course, if you read the news you'd know that Israel aims to have the bulk of their boots on the ground phase before the summer.
This is just silly. You might as well say Biden is actually helping Palestinians by not having the American military bomb Gaza.
I think at this point, you know how nonsensical your position is, you just don't have the maturity to admit it. At least, I hope that's what's up. Because these are truly childish arguments and if this nonsense is what we on the left have to offer then we deserve to lose elections.
People have outright stated to me that they are doing purity politics. While I cannot prove that every single person I suggest is likely doing so, is actually doing so, I am not making such claims in a vacuum.
You took a handful of anecdotes from your online life and decided "I understand the electorate"? Do you think ~15% of Michigan is online leftists?
Any excuse necessary to continue support for genocide. It's interesting to see the very first policy centrists don't immediately abandon when they encounter pressure.
I took a handful of anecdotes from my online life and decided that people I encounter online have a decently high probability of being more examples of the same thing.
So, first:
No, I do not expect someone who lost relatives in Gaza to vote for the person they blame for it. Humans are creatures of emotion first and logic second, and the vast majority of people won't be able to divorce themselves from their emotional state to do the expected value math. That doesn't mean that, by letting Trump win, they will be doing something other than permitting more people to get massacred faster.
Are you aware that the administration has been pushing on them to not do the shit they've been doing? It seems to me like the answer to that is no, and you expect Biden to just declare terms to a country half a world away which has quite a lot of weapons already, up to and including nuclear arms, I think. Israel is capable of producing weapons on their own. Today isn't 40 years ago.
Biden has done many things that are popular, but people are poorly informed. How much student debt has Biden forgiven, off the top of your head and without consulting the internet?
They haven't been pushing hard enough. The US gives Israel billions in 'aid', and that is definitely leverage that they haven't been willing to use. They're just leaking stuff about Biden 'being frustrated with Netanyahu' and whatever, but there's no evidence of the US daring to touch aid, conditioning aid or even following the US' own laws regarding human rights when providing weapons (you might remember the state department employee who quit in protest over that).
They're just sitting by while Israel is blocking food aid and is preparing to commit a massacre in Rafah.
As for student loans: it's a lot less than what they could've done if they just did a blanket forgiveness, because of the asinine fear of forgiving the loans for someone that is somehow undeserving (like fictional billionaire's children who wouldn't have needed to take out loans to begin with).
A lot less than they could've done, if they just did a blanket forgiveness, and the conservative supreme court didn't strike it down like they struck down the 400b. Do you have any idea of the actual number, though? And how does that number compare to prior presidents? To the likely nonbiden outcomes of this election?
I agree that I want them to do more. This still is not a reason to let the guy who will make it so much worse into office. "This meal wasn't good enough, so I'm going to burn the house down," is not a rational perspective.
The department of education has the simple authority to forgive loans, a process they're using right now (with a huge bureaucratic overhead of means testing, using loan servicers, etc).
For whatever reason they initially decided to try and use the heroes act instead, after declaring that the pandemic was 'over'. So of course the Supreme Court struck it down.
They could've just told the education secretary to forgive everyone's loans from the start. Or set the interest rates to 0% for everyone (as it's really the compound interest that's killing everyone).
Are you aware that your fanfic about what Biden is doing behind the scenes isn't evidence of anything?
Someone said Biden feels real bad about the genocide, it must be true. Just because Biden gave Israel 14 billion in fast track funding without congressional approval doesn’t mean he is pro genocide. He called Natanyahu on the phone….. and said yes daddy, yes daddy! Ohhh. The left or the right nut daddy!