For the good of the republic and to demonstrate new leadership before the election

  • Jay@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    So should the guy with 34 felonys, but here we are.

    • toomanypancakes@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      That fucker shouldn’t drop out of the race, he should be disqualified for treason and thrown in jail for his multitude of crimes.

      And while I’m dreaming, I’d like a pony, too

    • XIIIesq@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Standing against a guy that’s a raving lunatic doesn’t make it OK to be senile. Hilary was a shit candidate and look what that got us.

      • GladiusB@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Are we forgetting that he cheated to win? Like it’s proven that the Russians used social media to convince people to vote for Trump. Whether or not Trump directly paid for it is speculation. But they can put Jaret Kushner and Donald Jr. In the same room with the same people several times.

    • EndlessApollo@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Both would be great, but lefties complaining about trump won’t get him to resign, and Biden will lose. He needs to retire to stop trump, he’s just too egotistical and power hungry for that

      • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Yeah, I did as well, but their op-Ed’s in the last 6 months are batshit crazy. They’re toeing the line for Israel’s far right.

  • Coach@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    But the simple fact remains that if one believes Biden cannot campaign or debate successfully, then he cannot run the country presently. The Constitution contemplates a scenario in which someone would need to take the place of a president who is so diminished, and that someone is the vice president. Biden should step aside from both the campaign and the presidency, and allow Harris to take her best shot at saving the country from those who would destroy it.

    A really good take on how Harris could provide an opportunity to draw a stark contrast between the Nazi…I mean, Republican party and a peaceful transition of power in a functional democracy.

    Decent piece.

    • MSids@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Do you really look at him and think he’s the best person to continue running the country? Look at what happened with RBG, who died in office allowing Republicans to load the supreme court with judges who are objectively bad.

      Biden was fine and all, but it’s starting to feel like Weekend at Bernies. Better democrat candidates exist.

      Edit: I get the down votes, but the truth is that it’s a real concern and confidence is waning. Voters need to be excited and feel confident in their candidate or the turnout will suffer like it did with Hillary. Right or wrong it’s the truth. Strategy is important even if it means making hard uncomfortable decisions.

  • OpenStars@discuss.online
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    4 months ago

    I’m so close to blocking this community. Its Rule #5 states:

    Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.

    Instead, it’s basically a leftist version of a right-wing echo chamber where if you don’t support your candidate hard enough then you get downvoted into oblivion. Which is meh personally, but on the wider scale also shuts down interesting conversations that could result, if people felt more free to actually articulate their positions, using coherent logical formulations mind you. And even that is fine I suppose, if that’s what this community wants to be, then it is on me to seek out what I want elsewhere.

    I may not agree with someone, but I will defend to the death their right to speak.

    Anyway, sorry OP that your The Atlantic article - a liberal media source if I ever heard of one - is getting downvoted to oblivion in spite of the rules of this community specifically asking for the opposite behavior. Fwiw I cross posted it to another news community in case that helps.

    • 555_2@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Right after posting this comment you commented that someone couldn’t say “horse shit”

      What was that about defending the right to speak?

      • OpenStars@discuss.online
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        4 months ago

        Hrm, account that joined 36 minutes ago - and btw wow, what a username!!!:-P - what I actually said was:

        Not good enough, and also btw a violation of the rules of [that other] community. Would you like an opportunity to change someone’s mind using logical articulation rather than merely emotionally venting your random surface thoughts? e.g., perhaps while doing that you could demonstrate that you actually read the article rather than merely the title? These are weighty matters, and not to be taken lightly. But perhaps I’m the horseshit for hoping that people could have rational and logical discussions on a social media website.

        They spoke, and I spoke back. We are still not the same. But one thing I will hold to: the Truth. Which is that I am horseshit indeed, for hoping for more from this social media site where when users are blocked they simply make a new username and continue - bc other people’s “no” is just another opportunity to evade the block and turn it into a “yes”.

    • eran_morad@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      It’s just dumbfucks unable to accept reality for what it is. Same as it ever was. FWIW, I don’t think Biden should step down (i.e., resign right now), and I’ll vote for whoever the D is, no matter what. But I also think Biden should fuck off into the sunset and endorse someone else. He has no business continuing on to a second term, even if he could win (and I don’t believe he can).

      • OpenStars@discuss.online
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        4 months ago

        I am not sure that I agree, but you clearly articulated your point so I am upvoting nonetheless:-).

        For myself, it depends on the facts, which I am not in full possession of. Everyone has bad days imho - that’s not “news” at all - but more important is what that performance indicates about his current state. And more importantly, the state he would be in 4 years from now.

        This puts the nail in coffin, so to speak, on the idea that he would even live through his Presidency, much less remain salient throughout. A vote for him is a vote for Harris, as the article suggests, and talks about how acknowledging that reality might help pick up more independent voters that could turn the tide of the election.

        Oh well, it’s not like it is up to any of us.

    • die444die@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I mean, it could just be that people don’t like you and that’s why they’re downvoting you. You do come off a bit rude.

      • OpenStars@discuss.online
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        4 months ago

        Oh yes, I earned these particular downvotes, to be sure.:-) But I was talking about OP.

        It does make it hard to have intelligent discussions on Lemmy when we cannot handle anything other than strict agreement to whatever the crowd-think happens to fall upon that day.

    • HomerianSymphony@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Democrats would rather go after The Atlantic, one of the most pro-Democrat media institutions in the country, rather than contemplate replacing Biden.

      This won’t end well.

      • OpenStars@discuss.online
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        4 months ago

        People kept telling me that Trump will win and I kept fighting it, but it seems that you cannot escape facts: conservatives pull together, when it counts, whereas liberals eat their own.

      • OpenStars@discuss.online
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        4 months ago

        By that token though, are there any true leftists alive or dead that ever existed on planet earth? The issue with such an ideological purity test is that it keeps shifting around, forever trying to distinguish the pure and correct ones from those on the periphery who are somehow worse than those entirely outside bc these at least should have known better. I’m not even saying that you are wrong - obviously there’s a spectrum and obviously some people are more along it than others, but I’m saying that that entire mode of thinking is problematic in the practical sense. Example: isn’t my very own message hypocritically doing exactly this, and I would have done far better to have been more accepting of your words? 😜 So it’s like the trolly problem: not meant to find a practical solution, just something to consider in case it’s fun to do so.:-)

          • OpenStars@discuss.online
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            4 months ago

            Sigh… fair point:-|. I hate that it’s true, but…

            (in my head, I like to think that “real liberals” simply have no representation in politics right now, or ever, but then the opposing argument to that is that the purpose of a system is what it manages to accomplish so… I cannot in good conscience continue to do that)

            • anticolonialist@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              None of the working class has representation in government. Our government represents capital, bankers, and corporations. All of which have convinced voters there are only 2 options for which right wing corporate owned party they want to select.

              • OpenStars@discuss.online
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                4 months ago

                Possibly the difference being which set of “traditional values” are being upheld. Still, this take ignores a lot of details, chiefly that the two are nowhere close to being equally so.

                e.g. right now would it be fair to say that black people are roughly considered to be ~4/5ths of a person?

                If so, conservatives want to return that to being perhaps 3/5ths, while liberals want that to remain 4/5ths, and leftists want that to be expanded to 5/5ths. Both only look right-wing with respect to the POV of being at the left, which we are currently not, since mainstream America is shifted so extremely right-wards.

  • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Edit: grammer and format, improved a bit

    The Republican or Republican-lite candidates would never give up their power to help the working class unless they were forced to.

    Be it Trump or Biden, they will continue to fight for more endless wars, where the working class is sent to die for owner-class profits.


    The American right has spent every day since Biden was nominated in 2020 presenting him as an incompetent, doddering old fool, incapable of discharging the responsibilities of the office. Biden’s task at the first presidential debate, on Thursday, was to dismiss those allegations as mere smears, as he did in 2020. Instead, he confirmed that he has aged dramatically over the past four years. Biden was very old to begin with, and at the debate he appeared far more visibly diminished than he has in the past.

    The left has been telling the Republican-lites since the beginning; that is why there was a push for other Republican-lite candidates in the primary.

    The earlier Biden resigns, the faster the Democratic Party can move to reunite behind the new nominee and concentrate its efforts on keeping Trump from returning to the White House. Harris would become the party’s presumptive nominee, enjoying the prestige and advantages of incumbency. She is also the only candidate who can legally access the financial war chest the Biden campaign has amassed. As Brian Beutler writes, “it’s impossible to identify the most prudent path forward with certainty.” There is no clear way to know if Harris is a politically riskier option than Biden. But if Biden’s mental state is as bad as it appeared at the debate, then there is no other choice.

    Harris seems to be much worse in polling than 2016 Hillary Clinton…

    Some Democrats fear the prospect of a Harris candidacy—perhaps even enough to wish for Biden to hang on until the election, despite the dangers. They worry that she will only exacerbate the appeal of Trump’s implicit promise to restore racial and gender hierarchies. Indeed, Trump’s brain trust designed his 2016 campaign around the belief that the recent Republican nominees John McCain and Mitt Romney had failed to mobilize demoralized white voters because they had not been overtly racist enough, and that the path to victory lay through deliberate racial polarization.

    But the simple fact remains that if one believes Biden cannot campaign or debate successfully, then he cannot run the country presently. The Constitution contemplates a scenario in which someone would need to take the place of a president who is so diminished, and that someone is the vice president. Biden should step aside from both the campaign and the presidency, and allow Harris to take her best shot at saving the country from those who would destroy it.

  • flyingjake@lemmy.oneOP
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    4 months ago

    Given Biden’s condition, the Trump campaign will try to stoke irrational fears about a potential Harris presidency anyway. And the hypothetical, driven as it is by lurid right-wing fantasies, will necessarily be worse than the reality. That is, Harris can begin to defuse apocalyptic right-wing arguments against her—that she is some kind of left-wing radical who will render the country unrecognizable—by governing wisely for the remainder of the term.