It’s like you’re stuck in the water with a riptide pushing you away from shore. A really strong swimmer would just swim against it, but you’re not, so you swim parallel to shore because then later you can swim back in. At least it’s not pushing you further out.
Nope.
Just decide to quit and drown. This is what the young “I’ll show you by not participating” crowd sounds like to me.
Well, yes. That’s the thing: If you give up, you drown, if you keep going parallel, you never know when the tide might turn. If you’re 24 (that’s how I interpret your previous comment), you’ve only had the option of voting in one presidential election so far. In that election, progressives completed the monumental task of voting out an incumbent proto-facist. And for all of Bidens flaws, there can’t be much doubt that a lot has been heading in the right direction. Of course, there’s still a huge task ahead, but the previous election shows that Trump can be kept out of office, and the past three years show that things can get better.
Step 1: Forgiving student loans, Step 2: Working to reform the system.
Step 1: Pardon certain drug-related crimes, Step 2: Work to reform drug laws.
Step 1: Massive infrastructure investments, Step 2: More investment in public goods
Step 1: EO’s to protect reproductive rights, Step 2: Legislation to do the same.
My point is this: Biden has shown that he is working to make progress, and that he can actually get stuff done. The problem is that there’s a whole lot that needs doing, much more than anyone can do in two terms. We need to keep getting the best option into office, and we need to spend the next four years to ensure that the best option next time is better than Biden is now. If Trump gets four years, I fear that we’ll have a near impossible job.
I’m actually 42. This is my sixth presidential election. I’m old enough to know this post is writing a check our government can’t cash. It’s too broken.
Calm your tits. I’ve been voting D like a good little neoliberal since 2000.
I don’t need to give them more power. They’ve already elected two presidents without the popular vote, hold most of the Senate because it gives land more power than people, and the House because we haven’t fixed representation in a century. Not to mention the fuckery in every single one of the states they can pull off.
The fact that Republicans are able to do that sort of shit is how it’s broken. They’re not the problem, they’re a symptom of people winning game with broken mechanics. Like the end of Monopoly when one asshole has all the money.
They just don’t recognize that they’ll be crushed first when it rolls back. Maturity is learning not to commit all of your attention to the top of the mountain, but to always be mindful of the boulder.
Even without “both sides”, the situation worldwide is fucked. And “neither side” is going to change much. Yes, one is worse, but the better side still offers a bandaid over a gushing wound.
We just need to help them understand the system better. I voted third-party when was young, and many of my friends abstained. That was due to a lack of education about our government. It’s not about swaying them to vote one way or the other, but just to help them understand how our system functions. After that, if they want to vote for Trump with conviction, so be it. At least it’ll be an informed decision.
Anyone who believes there are more than two choices in this election was poorly educated on American democracy. I know I was when I voted Green Party at 20 years old. If I can help educate those that are as ill-informed as I was, I feel it’s my duty. After that, the choice is theirs.
The whole point I’m trying to make is that the system doesn’t work, voting lesser of two evils never helped in any meaningful way.
We need to stop capitalism, or we will all die, or at the very least suffer greatly.
That’s the whole point.
I’m not from the US, so I can’t vote for either side anyway, but we are all fucked. I watch the children and feel sorry for letting them down. They will not grow up into a world of peace and prosperity, only desolation and dystopia.
So while yes, Orange man very bad, the system will kill us anyway. Fascism will take your country, but capitalism took our entire planet.
Yep. Just vote and don’t expect to get to the top. We’re never getting there. We just vote and vote and vote and then eventually we die, pushing the same boulder the entire time.
It’s far from ideal, but the problem is that we let it roll back every 4-8 years. If Democrats consistently won due to progressive policies, the candidates would inevitably become more progressive to capture more of the constituency. Disengagement and disenfranchisement consistently cause the boulder to fall, leading to the lack of overall progress.
Don’t underestimate the efficacy of voter disenfranchisement and disengagement. Republicans don’t need to prop up Trump. People who loath him will vote for him simply due to party loyalty. Discrediting Biden is all it takes for a win.
You’re right. It’s important to keep negative feelings to yourself. Cram them right down in the pit of your stomach and then smile and say “Yeah, this is exactly the sort of government I want and if you have a problem with it then you’re a bad person.”
You don’t need to play martyr. Get some help if you really want to address it. Trying to convince others to feel hopeless along with you won’t make you feel any better, and it can hurt others in the process.
Voting should be emotionless. It’s a civic responsibility to make a logical decision to benefit yourself and those you care about. Vote for whomever will do that more. Don’t expect perfect representation at that level of government.
Which is exactly what I’ve been saying this entire time: Vote, but don’t expect it to help.
The strategy of telling voters that they can vote for change is what’s caused Millennials and Gen Z to check out. Don’t tell people our government is responsive or effective, because it isn’t and then they’ll get the wrong idea about how government actually works. Don’t tell them they can vote for Hope & Change, because those aren’t things our government provides.
It would be nice if they actually rolled it back up at all instead of just putting a chock block in to keep it in place until a Republican comes along.
Because they’re not rolling it up fast enough! Can’t you see? They just have to roll it faster and preferably all the way and then I’ll get excited and help. Yup. Until then I’ll be adding ankle weights to you too. And don’t forget it’s all your fault too.
Nobody is happy with Biden. Do you want to continue pushing the boulder up the mountain at the pace we don’t like, or let go and see what happens to the town downhill?
I don’t think it is taking accountability to flip a coin on whether or not an authoritarian demagogue insurrectionist who wanted to nuke random hurricanes and Iran should be in charge of the largest arsenals on the planet. Nor does adding additional corrupt regressives to SCOTUS teach the Dems a lesson, but it does put the very act of voting in jeopardy. It is myopic to throw the vote away.
It’s not even anything to do with China. Bibi and Biden do not get along, and Bibi is doing everything he can to damage Biden in this issue hoping he gets Trump, so he can show everyone what an actual genocide looks like.
Biden is in an impossible situation - trying to keep some influence over the horror while also staying at an arms length for all the people who apparently think he is giving orders to the IDF
One of them was telling me, today, how he is donating money to JFK Jr because he is siphoning away so many votes from Biden. He acted like he was involved in some secret mission and was being so sneaky.
Chips act, green energy, union empowerment, student debt, marijuana reform, etc etc etc. Anyone that says Biden isn’t doing anything is wilfully ignorant.
That’s fine. Go back to my OP, not organized enough, not supporting progressives enough. We don’t need a majority we need a super majority. You know, an impossible task.
You’re doing exactly what the parent comments described. All you’re doing is crying when the ball is rolled as much as it can be while you’re (likely) kneecapping him because he doesn’t have a majority in the house.
Couldn’t agree more. There’s a huge misunderstanding that the President is the most important facet of government, but the Executive has remarkably little ability to influence the law aside from directing the various agencies on how they should operate and utilizing the power of veto to check the legislative.
Trump won’t be a dictator on day one because that’s not how the office of President works. He will be, though, if Project 2025 is allowed to be implemented and they get rid of all the barriers to him having unilateral unchecked authority. This is also predicated on the possibility that he will not be held accountable by the courts and the Supreme Court rules that he can commit crimes and label them as “official acts”.
The big misunderstanding is that people think Trump alone can fulfill all of his campaign promises and Biden simply won’t, when the reality is that Biden can’t do it alone and neither can Trump (yet).
Marijuana is still illegal federally. Schedule 3 is not legalization.
Forgiving student debt is not reform. A kid going to college today will still need to take on a ridiculous debt load and play the job/forgiveness lottery.
Biden very publicly told Unions where to stick it.
The green event stuff he funded is great but it’s not novel and he used it as a cover to protect the Big 3 Auto manufacturers from foreign EVs.
The CHIPs act is actually okay. 1 out of 5 things but being performative is good though right? That’s the standard?
You’re crying that it’s not legal yet. Let’s forget that he asked dea to look at rescheduling it and that he forgave federal possession convictions.
You’re crying he only did what he could and forgave debt and hasn’t gotten around to a Herculean overhaul of the entire post secondary system.
You didn’t see the follow-up with unions. I’d give the Beau of the fifth column video but they’re impossible to find.
You’re crying not novel enough, WTF. And you’re forgetting the green energy generation in the IRA.
You’re crying chips being only decent?
That was the easy stuff off the top of my head, and it’s just crying that nothing is ever good enough. Crying that it’s not fast enough. Nevermind that you’re (likely) kneecapping him with no majority in the house.
You’re exactly the character described in the top comments.
The federal possession forgiveness was a red herring. It only applies to people in federal prison who aren’t also in for “violent” offenses, which all the aggravated and intent charges count as.
And yes federal because that’s what he has jurisdiction over. And yes violent offences are a big and completely different step up. It was intended to be possession and that what it was, not other things. You’re doing a weird deflection on what was a good call. And plenty of advisors probably pointed out that many times some decently bad incidents get argued down to possession for plea deal.
Almost no one is in federal prison for “just” possession. Almost no one serves time in federal prison for possession when their case is plead down. Part of an attractive plea deal is avoiding federal prison. Lots of weird shit counts as violent crime even though we wouldn’t think it was. Felony murder is a thing.
A red herring, especially in a narrative, is some piece of information meant to be misleading.
Biden pardoning of people with possession charges amounted to very few actual pardons, didn’t account for the Byzantine legal system and didn’t have any effect for precursor crimes. The intent was to get some publicity and seem like he’s doing something while actually not doing anything. Purposely misleading information. A red herring.
Yeah it’s not many people because most convictions are from the states, which he does not have jurisdiction over. Ok? Got it? The president can not do anything about state convictions or sentences. So he did what he could with federal charges, because federal charges is what he has jurisdiction over.
Part of an attractive deal is pleading down more serious stuff down to simple possession.
Red herring:
Something that draws attention away from the matter being discussed or dealt with.
It’s not a red herring. What you are trying to do is closer (still not quite) to a red herring because you are trying to draw attention away from what he could do and trying to minimize it with the repeated “not many”. The number doesn’t matter, he did what he had jurisdiction over, You are the one much closer to a red herring. Ciao.
Oh the pwesident doesn’t have any juwustiction owver the states… nothing he could do!
If I was a politician with more than 50 years under my belt running on tough on crime platforms and spearheading racist laws that ramp up the convictions of millions of black Americans for minor drug offenses with the knock on effect of providing police the chance to go hunting for more evidence, detain and steal the property of those people, would you call it a red herring when I grant clemency to the absolute barest minimum possible?
I obviously would, because I did, but language is mutable and it’s possible that there’s a better phrase when you’re responsible for the current juiced up run wild carceral slavery system holding millions and decide that a handful of people actually shouldn’t be in there but only the ones that you can very quietly grant clemency to without causing a stir and only the ones serving time on the most narrow range of charges which just happens to be nearly tangential to each other!
If you want to keep arguing about language, the word tangent should be your next target, I just described what most people would visualize as two shapes as being tangent to each other but only unbounded shapes like planes or lines can be tangential! Quick, start looking up definitions!
Biden created the laws and supported the growth of a system that put these people in prison for his entire career. He now occupies the highest seat of power in the nation and releases a tiny fraction of the people he’s responsible for the imprisonment of. If you won’t accept that it’s a red herring then I’m forced to call it bullshit.
Oh the pwesident doesn’t have any juwustiction owver the states… nothing he could do!
Lol you turn to mocking the president about ??? the things he can and can’t do??? Yeah that about sums it up, you showed who you are. You have no idea how things work so sorry to say you’re acting like a child (with those spellings). Why am I even bothering, ciao.
He’s just a smol bean sitting on the big chair! He literally can’t do anything more than the token gesture he made! No, don’t look at all the billions in federal funding and aid for state prisons! Don’t look at the huge standing army, don’t look at the billions in aid to foreign wars!
That was the DEA looking at it. It went from schedule 1 to schedule 3. Which is a year in prison and a fine for possession.
I’m not against him doing harm reduction, but call it what it is. Don’t forgive debt and sell it as a reform. Winning the presidential lottery is not a reform.
The follow up? Where railroad workers are still under manned and required to work sick? Oh I’m sorry we got some real reforms for the IT guys in railroading. But the guys on the tracks, who were getting abused before are still getting abused in the exact same ways.
Green energy generation is solved. It’s already cheaper to build, maintain, and use than fossil fuels. Many states already routinely hit 100% renewable energy on their grid. So much so that the business crowd is trying to get home solar financial benefits reduced because the market is saturated.
This isn’t “nothing is good enough” it’s stop doing merely performative shit and blowing smoke up my ass. I gave him credit for CHIPs, but the IRA was just a corporate grift wrapped in green paper.
Yes, that was the DEA being told by Biden to look at it. And you’re forgetting that he forgave federal possessions.
You’re back to crying about “only” forgiving some debt. And you’re back to crying about not doing a Herculean task of completely overhauling post secondary in 2 years. Who’s selling it as reform? Nobody. You’re making shit up just to cry about now.
The rail union got to negotiate. Whatever they got, they negotiate for themselves. You’re crying again that Biden didn’t do _______. It’s not even his place to negotiate or dictate what happens, but you’re crying about it.
Green energy generation still needed (needs?) a boot in the ass, which is exactly what IRA did. But you can’t cry about this one, so no credit to Biden! Oh wait there’s the crying about IRA. Seriously?
All you’re doing is crying about things not happening at warp speed. And then ignoring the things that do happen. You are exactly what the top comment are about.
What this comes down to: If you don’t vote, then you can’t complain or cry. Do you vote? Good. But I’ll say that your crying is largely inaccurate. Do you not vote? Then it’s bizarre and pathetic that you are crying while you are the one that is actively kneecapping progress.
Again. Hoping the president pardons you is not fucking reform.
And yeah we’ve known student debt was a problem for a decade. He knows he has four years in a term. Nobody wanting to reform things starts on January 20th. They start making plans years in advance or subscribe to think tank plans. Saying he’s only had his entire term is a bullshit excuse. That’s when shit gets done. He hasn’t got the job done. And that wouldn’t even be a big problem if he weren’t trying to tell people he did get the job done.
The rail union didn’t get to negotiate.b that was the entire reason they were going on strike. Biden forced them to take the company’s offer. That’s what breaking the strike does. At this point you’re straight up lying.
Oh so corporate grift wrapped in a green paper sounds like it’s not a complaint to you? He set EVs back 10 years.
I’m not complaining that things aren’t happening day enough. I’m complaining that you’re lying about what he’s done. I’m complaining that he lies about his accomplishments and then wonders why people don’t just fawn over him.
And you’re still crying that it’s not fast enough. Someone said it has to be reclassified first before either decriminalization or legalization (no idea if accurate). But you just want to cry that the boulder isn’t being pushed up the hill fast enough. And crying over what he could and did do. Not to mention that he can’t do it - Congress passes legislation, not the President. He did what he could which is tell DEA to look at it.
Still crying over not doing Herculean overhaul in TWO years. Because you need Congress. Congress is the one that could do massive reform, not the president. You don’t even know how your own government works and yet you want to cry. This is some serious “I’m 14 and don’t know how things work, but I’m going to cry about Biden bad” from you. That’s twice that you don’t even know how your government works.
Dude you can negotiate without a strike. This is more “14 and don’t know how things work”. Here I looked it up for you youtu.be/EM6jMtG_MB8 Also pay attention to how a rail strike would have ground the US economy to a halt. But don’t get the wrong idea, it was about Biden’s success pushing on the negotiations. You should watch him regularly. I’m very certain there’s another one with even more rail union wins but he often has shitty titles so I can’t find it. Don’t forget to cry though.
And more crying about green power generation. You want to set up a domestic industry, green power is not one and done. You can do way more when your country’s money feeds back into itself. For both generation and EVs. This is more 14 and have no idea how industry or long term industry works. But you just want to cry about not fast enough.
You dropped the chips stuff too.
I thought this before, but your reply here showed it full tilt. You have some serious “I’m 14 and don’t know how anything works” vibes. You are the epitome of what was said at the start:
Good news! Apparently a lot of excitingly new young progressives are mad we haven’t rolled it back up high enough and are refusing to help!
Wait. Okay, not good news. Sorry.
And
Because they’re not rolling it up fast enough! Can’t you see? They just have to roll it faster and preferably all the way and then I’ll get excited and help. Yup. Until then I’ll be adding ankle weights to you too. And don’t forget it’s all your fault too.
I notice you didn’t respond about voting either.
No matter what I say you’ll cry about something when you don’t even know how things work, so Ciao.
Right. We’re done here. I’m not the person you think you’re arguing with. It is a very simple idea. Stop lying about progress made. Have fun with your straw man. I think anyone reading this can see the lies about what’s been accomplished.
So you didn’t read anything huh? Or did you get too embarrassed at your own mistakes and how they bordered on lies? Why am I bothering with someone that denies reality. Ciao. (But if I find more rail wins from Biden I’ll let you know.)
OMG you caught me! I’ve been lying the entire time! Presidential pardons are totally reform. Schedule 3 substances don’t give you a record and a year in prison. The rail road workers aren’t still working under the points system, without key personnel, don’t have to schedule their sick days a month in advance, and definitely don’t have to worry about having those sick days cancelled on the day and being punished under the points system for that. The IRA was totally not actually a political grift to donors wrapped in green-wash.
You guys must be stamped in the same propaganda factory, “Quick, do a projection! Then people won’t know who’s telling the truth!”
More like he put the chock block in place to stop the roll and let the rich continue to fuck us before stepping side for the next Republican. I’m convinced he’s actively trying to lose this election between TikTok, EV restrictions, Gaza, and gaslighting people on the economy.
A sarcastic straw-man to avoid actually looking at Biden’s record. He believes it doesn’t matter as long as we can avoid electing Trump. Which would be okay if there was ever an alternative. But like any organization that’s effectively the only option, enshittification is happening with the Democrats.
This is nonsense. If you believe that you should skip to violent revolution because you are not getting anywhere peacefully.
I’m (edit:not) saying I think that’s a good idea. But if you are going to refuse to vote for the better guy because he’s not good ENOUGH then you were never going to vote at all, and the rest of us will go back to persuading the last 3 swing voters.
Yeh, but the late fees are good for people. Free market and free market. Drain the swamp etc. Just pay your debt on time. Or something, both side the same, yada yada.
A great example of the current presidency trying to do something good for a lot of people.
It’s funny that the literal industry posterboy for not paying debts on time his entire career is now leading that crowd of “just pay your debts” 😂 He still isn’t doing it himself, even with other people putting up the money to pay his debts for him
The m9st fucked up thing of all is that he first tried to not make a ruling at all, stating that it should be ruled at Washington DC because there weren’t a ton of banks out of Texas. But they kicked it back to him and forced him to make a ruling on it.
Yeah except that he ruled based on a previous ruling that the CFPB was improperly funded by Congress because it wasn't constitutional. This time it was properly funded so that no longer applies (basically ruling the way that the CFPB is funded -- via the Federal Reserve (they used to do some of the stuff that the CFPB now does) per the Dodd-Frank Act that Congress instead of being part of the normal annual budget is unconstitutional).
Seems like an easy target for SCOTUS to kick the lawsuit back down to the circuit court and tell the court that it was erroneous in its ruling. But the SCOTUS isn't really predictable anymore, so who knows.
I listen to a lawyer podcast and they said you can tell when SCOTUS is going to to do something horrible. Because suddenly they play nice and there’s a lot of unanimous rulings that come out. You know like this year…
I don’t know if this is political or just downright croneyism. He made the ruling because somewhere someone is getting paid by debt companies who don’t want to lose money. This is beyond politics since its infected both sides of the aisle, this is just corruption. We need campaign finance reform and a ban on lobbying.
In case anybody doesn’t already know this, the Chamber of Commerce is a non-governmental organization of private (and also publicly traded) business owners that just sounds like it’s part of the government.
This ruling is a major win for responsible consumers who pay their credit card bills on time and businesses that want to provide affordable credit,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce Litigation Center Counsel Maria Monaghan said in a statement.
It’s the same rationale they used when they tried to stop student loan forgiveness. But they accuse the left of having the mentality of crabs in a bucket.
Well, forgiving a bunch of debt without fixing the problem isn’t going to stop the leak. You can fully expect that bailing out debtors will result in lenders offering riskier loans they expect to be forgiven. With schools turning into a debt-selling industry, buying that debt from private lenders using public money would be robbing not only the tax payer, but also the next generation of the opportunity for an education. You can’t buy your way out of problem that isn’t caused by cost (hint: greed).
All that to say, there should be debt caps on education before any kind of broad forgiveness. Or just federally subsidize up to a certain amount and then no one will go to pricier schools except those who can afford to without hardship.
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