Spoiler alert.

There’s a tendency among democratic voters, speaking as one myself, to imagine that fascism will simply burn to ash upon losing a federal election. In this regard, I think it’s time to be honest with ourselves about the situation we find ourselves in. I think that the recent SCOTUS decision was the death knell of the Republic. Between that and the fact that project 2025 isn’t going to just vanish in a puff of smoke if the Republicans lose this year, and the knowledge that the democrats won’t make serious enough changes, well… Maybe this years, maybe in four years, maybe in eight, we’re going to end up with a proper dictator.

I’ve been critical of Biden on several things, currently the fact that I don’t think he’s up to the demand of the campaign season. All that said, I’ve been very clear that I would vote for a wet sandwich before I vote for Trump or don’t vote. I think most third party voters are coming at this from a genuine place; after all, we’ve never had two more unpopular candidates running against each other. But the MFs telling you not to vote are up to some shit. IIRC, only one party’s voters are easily dissuaded.

I’m starting to think we need more wartime generals and less businesspeople in politics.

Interesting. It’s kind of interesting, but in the battle of Blair mountain, there’s definitely some hints that there were already communist and anti-communist sentiments at work. I wonder if the red bandanas were a nod to communism.

Oh, both, cool!

I thought it had something to do with union membership, something about red handkerchiefs.

I mean, all I’m saying here is “can we not test if 2016’s tactics really don’t work, please?” Because “just shut up, hold your nose, and vote Hillary or else we’ll get Hitler” didn’t work.

And FWIW, I voted for Hillary.

I really think it could make sense to pass the torch to Kamala. It’s not perfect, but she can talk in complete sentences. Her debate performances were bad, but I remember she completely ragdolled Biden in the first '20 primary debate. She doesn’t have a lot to her that’s good, but she also doesn’t have a lot of baggage. So, she’s kind of a nothingburger, which could be good depending on your angle. She’s still a really conservative left choice who should be able to appeal to the apparently very large auth center segment of the party and to undecided voters. It also makes sense because she’s Biden’s VP. It would be a very easy sell to say “I’ve reviewed everything with friends, family, and peers, and we’ve decided that it’s the right thing for both me and the country to step back and concede leadership to the Vice President.” Then, they just have to pick a VP, which is much more of a triviality.

Do I wish the democrats had used even like two seconds of foresight and spent the last four years prepping Kamala for this moment? Yes, of course, but we’ve got to work with what we’ve got, and as it was, Biden went up on stage with a shotgun, said “heads up, chucklefuck”, and blew his own leg off in front of the whole country. I firmly believe Kamala can do better than that.

It’s only false equivalence because the American revolution worked out for the US, and was therefore retroactively justified.

No shame in setting limits for yourself.

Under those standards, the American revolution was fascism and shouldn’t have happened.

My God, it’s beautiful

What’s the point of high-roading if the destination is fascism? You going to hold your head high as you’re being dragged off to jail for not submitting your period tracker data to the state, telling yourself that at least you’re suffering nobly?

Kind of a stupid thing to say when democrats are still pissed at people who stayed home or voted third party in '16. Tbh, Joe 2024 is reminding me of HRC 16 in all the wrong ways.

Look, at this point, my concern is that I don’t want Trump, and I don’t think Biden can handle the campaign trail.

Why would the left do this?

I can buy that he was sick, but I wish the democrats had done something to temper expectations besides load Biden full of robotussin and let fate take him.

I like how when it comes to stupid shit, never fear, government is on the case. When it comes to anything that would actually improve folks’ quality of life, though, they’re helpless babies.

I know not all governments, but the American govt is most of what I have to go off of.

Was that the “when you get knocked down” speech? I’ll check it out.

It’s been a week since the debate. If Biden was really as fine as everyone claims, it should have been a simple thing for him to make a public appearance and show everyone that he’s fine. Instead, it’s been a week of private meetings and “bro, we swear, bro, he’s fine, it was just one bad debate, bro, c’mon”. Afaik, the only public speaking he’s done since was a radio show where he went on and said he was proud to have been the first black woman to serve in the white house or something.

So, for my part, my singular concern is this: is Biden up to the task of being on the campaign trail to stop Trump from winning? So far, it’s looking like no. It’s looking like we’re going to get a bunch of surrogate speakers and excuses why Biden couldn’t be here or there. I just don’t want Trump to win, and I don’t think that running a campaign with a guy who’s seemingly too frail to be a Wal-Mart greeter is going to be the secret sauce.

This is the naive take. Been voting since '08, almost exclusively Democrat. The centrist/corporatist democrats who dominate the party really get off on running against fascists, because it’s like being in a political fast food diet. You don’t have to really prepare or deliver complex policy goals, you don’t have to piss off your corporate donors, you just stand next to the fascists and say “we’re not them; you don’t want fascists running the country, do you?!” Problem being that fear only gets you so far before people stop responding to it, the fascists win an election, people get scared again, and the democrats get another big shot of engagement and fundraising basically for free.

The centrist democrats don’t want to move left and frequently work to shut down actual left politicians in and outside the party. They don’t want to stop fascism because then they have to actually work and compete instead of let fear do the work for them