Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, a sign of the president’s strength in uniting his party to have the backing of one of its most liberal members
Age notwithstanding, any incumbent president in the last 50 years would be absolutely overjoyed to run for re-election with Biden's record; tons of new blue-collar jobs, strong economy, relative lack of major fuck-ups or controversies or other drama except manufactured RW ragebait. Basically everything swing voters want and nothing they don't want.
Nor is there any real reason to fret about base turnout, given that liberals will view the Republican candidate winning as apocalyptic and show up simply to vote against that person, however disappointed they may be in Biden and whatever performative statements they make about their votes not being guaranteed.
The only major fuckup was the failure of student loan debt cancellation, and the pullout from Afghanistan. But arguably the latter wasn't his fault, as it had been put in place before he was in office.
Military-wise, the pullout of Afghanistan was a huge success. The Russians lost 535, the British lost 16,000. On top of it the United States evacuated 250,000+ civilians in 3 weeks who were never part of the pull-out. Many think of it as a failure but it was the largest humanitarian airlift effort in human history. If there was a fuckup it occurred in 2020 when Trump told the Taliban they can have Afghanistan. That is where everything fell to pieces.
During my government-paid vacation to Afghanistan, those we fought against were mostly Iranian or Pakastani, not actual Afghani people. If we did run into an Afghani it was usually a teenager. Given I was there in 2008 and 2012 and not in 2020, the feeling that any pull-out would be messy was already present. The locals didn’t believe we would ever leave, we told them in 2012 we didn’t think we were the right culture to help them out of the darkness and that we wouldn’t stay forever. The United States never invested in Afghanistan, Congress blocked all grain shipments despite military intelligence showing it would result in farmers growing opium. I know for many Americans the only view of the nation was war images, but those of us on the ground saw more than that. The Afghani culture is really cool, they are the best horsemen I have ever seen, deeply caring and understanding. They also are a broken people who don’t view themselves as a nation but as tribes of people. In the end those I met and spoke to were very interested in western culture and we fostered a great relationship. The largest problem they faced was foreigners from the West and South bringing war to their villages and forcing their strict religious rules on them.
I do believe that Afghanistan will never recover, India or China are going to exploit the nation for it’s resources and leave nothing for the people there. Maybe either of those nations will run the Taliban out, but it won’t be anytime soon.
The campaign needs to see to make Kamala Harris digestible. More than with most campaigns, the way she is viewed is immensely important due to Biden seemingly able to keel over at any moment.
In fact there's a pretty good argument that they ought to pick their strongest 2028 candidate - which is almost certainly not Harris - and Biden should secretly promise that person that he'll resign after the midterms in order to get them to agree to join the ticket; the odds are pretty strong he doesn't make it through 4 years anyway, and this way there'd be a solid plan in place when he finally runs into whatever medical setback forces him out.
They’ll avoid the problem in favor of short term benefit. Any belief I had that the Democratic insiders had a long-term masterplan went out the window with how little they’ve done to pump up Harris. I don’t even want her to be an eventual nominee, but I thought they’d be purposefully building her as the trusted heir apparent. Instead they just dumped no-win issues on her while making her mostly invisible in the administration’s wins.
From abroad at least Biden seems like a very poor candidate. As he's chosen to stand again the dems have little choice but get behind him or risk a devisive primary season splitting the party.
But the republicans look set to select a very poor candidate too. It says a lot about how broken US politics is that were probably going to see a rerun of the last election with two elderly candidates battling it out in a deeply divisive and particularly polarised election.
The election will basically come down to how many people don't like Donald Trump. That's not great.
If we weren’t stuck in the two party system, we’d absolutely have a much better candidate.
We can stop pretending he’s accomplished. Our nation is still extremely divided, and it’s getting worse. Our economy is okay for the top 60%, but we still have insane opioid crisis, homeless crisis, housing crisis and the bottom 40% are not better off. They are fighting against inflation, while being told that they just need to suck up $5/gallon gas prices. Inflation seems to be getting under control more, and the Ukraine response was decent. He did okay.
Biden is pretty unambiguously awful, and only looks good against any Republican. AOC is doing the right thing here, but long-term we have got to get rid of these cobwebheaded oldsters and move on to the next generation, or the generation after.
When we do, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would be a good choice.
Jimmy Carter did-- Ted Kennedy challenged him for the 1980 presidential nomination. The result was them doing so much damage to each other that the ultimate winner of the primary (Carter) came out battered and bruised, giving Reagan the edge he needed to win the general. And we all know how well that worked out for the planet. (Spoiler alert: horrifically.)
That was “moderate” party leaders trying to sabotage a progressive at any cost.
That fucked America up reeeeeeeally badly. But the people who decided to do it got what they wanted: an excuse to tell voters that progressives can’t win.
I mean, things like primary challenger and stuff like that aren’t really terms non-Americans are familiar with. I also wasn’t quite sure which of the two people I didn’t know was the progressive one.
The kicker to this is that Kennedy was also super progressive. The whole statement doesn’t really make sense to politically engaged Americans either, it was just a “The Party allowed a progressive to challenge a progressive”. Ted Kennedy was a powerful enough politician that the party didn’t need to allow him to run. He was basically royalty (brother of John F. Kennedy) and an untouchable institution in the state he represented. Carter had really terrible approval ratings (28%) and Kennedy had presidential ambitions.
This. Look how angry people still are about the DNC's percieved favoritism towards Hillary in 2016. Imagine the backlash if Bernie had been flat-out barred from running in the primaries against her. Now imagine Bernie's last name is "Kennedy", and it's less than a decade after JFK and RFK were murdered.
Yeah, the DNC basically had no choice but to let him challenge Carter.
Also, OP's ignoring that Kennedy was also a progressive hero, too. The primary was progressive vs. progressive-- which is part of the reason it's remembered today as the poster child of pointless infighting that did nothing but benefit the opposition. I've literally never heard anyone here in the States have OP's take on the primary until this thread.
I explicitly said the problem was the party leaders allowing a primary.
That was “moderate” party leaders trying to sabotage a progressive at any cost.
That fucked America up reeeeeeeally badly. But the people who decided to do it got what they wanted: an excuse to tell voters that progressives can’t win.
Sink two progressives in one blow, and hope you get a moderate in 4 years.
If Carter did 8, Kennedy would have likely been president next, maybe for another 8 years. Moderates were losing the party. Having a republican beat a weakened Carter let them tell voters that the party had to move right and that progressives couldn’t win.
In Canada the leader of the party is basically the PM (Prime Minister) candidate. One and the same.
So reading those words would mean that the PM, who is the party leader, would have had to allow a challenger. (which isn’t how it works here, but anyway.)
That was “moderate” party leaders trying to sabotage a progressive at any cost.
Wait, what? I thought Jimmy Carter was considered really progressive for his time. And Ted Kennedy wasn't some perfect progressive hero, he had some pretty major blemishes on his record like Chappaquiddik. So I always saw it as more pointless infighting than any kind of centrist-vs-progressive showdown like 2016.
Then again, my parents were in high school when all this was going down, so my knowledge is obviously pretty limited, lol.
From Ted Kennedy, who was also extremely progressive for his time. 1980 was progressive vs progressive (which is part of how Reagan was able to win so decisively in the general, by portraying himself as being a centrist-- even though nothing could be further from the truth).
Yeah, I’m not a Biden fan by any stretch, but he went way more left than team I thought he would, and has been very effective on a number of issues.
I’d rather have almost any other prominent Democrat, to say nothing of an actual liberal, but I can live with 4 more years of Biden. He’s the only realistic candidate in the party. No one was going to win a primary challenge against him.
maybe, but there’s no way there isn’t a huge overlap between them
like i’m supposed to believe that the majority of people who liked AOC in 2020 supported Bernie in the primary, and now the majority of people who like AOC are saying Biden is too old, but these are totally separate groups of people with barely any overlap
I thought Biden and Bernie were both too old in 2020, but people could entirely consistently consider 78 (Bernie 2020) “not too old” and 81 (Biden 2024) “too old”. Both of them have gotten older since Bernie was being considered for the role of president.
People don’t understand the importance of this endorsement. AOC is considered as the next generation. Most 16-24 yr olds agree heavily with her and would identify closer to the left.
If Democrats play it smart, they could hold a majority for 10-20yrs. We are seeing swing states lean more blue than red ( Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Arizona, and Virginia). This is a huge problem for Republicans bc they always relied on these states to combat large democratic states.
The issue is that this might not matter much in the short run anyway. Democrats have been playing well at the national level, sure, but they don’t seem to notice that Republicans have figured out that state sovereignty means they can just have fascist fiefdoms rather than coast-to-coast national-level fascism. I don’t see Biden or Harris putting their foot down on a state if shit gets real bad - hell, Florida literally passed a law allowing CPS to take kids from out-of-state parents and nobody at the national level so much as said boo about it.
Believe me, I understand Republicans have gerrymandered a lot of states but those states are fighting back. Look at Minnesota, they have a democratic majority for the first time in years. They have been pushing progress programs left and right that benefit everyone.
My point is that Democrats should stand united behind Biden. This will show everyone that they have two goals, combating corruption and pushing for legislation to better others’ lives. If they attack a red state then Republicans will use that for years. It will feed into the “they’re coming for your guns” crowd.
Democrats need to continue pushing progressive reforms and nominate a good candidate in 2028. Win more senators’ seats and flip the house back. Then go after corrupt judges.
The US Constitution specifies that each state must elect a senator and house of representative, must send electors to the Electoral College for President. It does not specify how.
As such, some states have ranked choice voting. Others do not.
Ah I see. It’s so weird how it works. Why not federate it so those laws are the same all over? I guess it’s a reason for it but in my eyes it sounds very ineffective.
Also the whole electoral college sounds like s bad idea i guess. But it’s also a “safe guard” i guess?
Because that would require a constitutional amendment. The GOP would lose the most so not a single red state or GOP senator or congress member would vote for it. Amendments take a 2/3 majority or a constitutional convention, which requires 2/3 of the state governments to agree to it, which is even harder to pull off.
When the country was founded they needed to convince the state governments of a bunch of different states to agree to unify as a single nation.
At that time state governments had more power and influence on the federal government than they do today. Senators were picked by the state government, not popularly elected as they are today, and it was left to the state governments to decide how they would conduct elections and select delegates to represent them in the Electoral College which is the actual body that picks the president.
I wish. Ranked voting would be phenomenal. It’s obviously more democratic. Makes no sense not to have it. But politicians are dirty corrupt pieces of shit.
I think we’d need a parliamentary system to end up with anything more than 2 parties being relevant. The 2 party system is sort of hard-wired into the way the house and Senate work. Ranked choice could have some cool effects on party primaries, though.
I would rather vote for a bird. Yes. Birds should govern the US! Imagine. To all seriousness AOC would have lost by so insanely amounts. Let’s hope she and more of the liberal parts of the democratic party gets tractions. Getting young people in those positions would be great.
Keep in mind that the more power we give up to conservatives now, the less likely it is that you’ll ever have a chance to do that further down the line. Aoc is backing the future of the world right now, but also her political future. The last conservative presidency did a LOT of damage to this country, if only by installing the justices who would go on to overturn Roe V Wade. She doesn’t want to see more of that damage, and neither do you.
I was there for the sparrow landing moment at the Moda center, back when. Literally 100ft from the podium (on the clock), and after that sight? I gotta say: I wouldn’t be surprised.
Been telling people she’s about as fugazi as cubic zirconium in a Tiffany storefront; I don’t know why people keep expecting anything resembling revolutionary intent or even as much as spine out of tHe SqUaD.
I’m about as liberal as you’ll ever find, and a huge fan of AOC. Definitely NOT a fan of Biden.
However, I’m really happy to see her supporting Biden’s reelection, since there is no path forward for any liberal challenger this cycle.
So it really does boil down to mediocre, tired, do-little, centrist Biden… Or… THE END OF OUR DEMOCRACY.
Trump is a fascist wannabe dictator who will use the presidency to escape his criminal charges and/or convictions. He has already stated that he will do a loyalty purge of the entire federal government. He already tried to overthrow our democracy. At this point anyone who joins his administration will be totally on board with that. He’s also stated he will be doing a massive power grab to turn the presidency into a something like a kingship.
So, yeah … I’m glad AOC has enough sense to understand that right now the most important thing is to stop Trump, and that the only way to do that is to hold our nose and get Biden a second term.
…And? Y’all are going to keep this cycle going forever if you can. “Boy who cried ‘Wolf’” type beats. There’s always gotta be a worse boogeyman who’s gonna do worse to ‘democracy’ that my people don’t even get to partake of proper without getting redlined, incarcerated, or murdered by the state you want me to prop up for even trying. So from where I sit, the enemy of my enemy is most certainly not my friend or ally. Get fucked.
“we’re under a fascist insurgency and we must ensure that the GOP doesn’t gain the White House, this is why we must vote for a politician who refuses to do anything to prevent this insurgency from gaining strength like expanding the court or making abortion available on federal land and who refused to use their constitutional authority to prevent giving the House GOP any concessions on the budget/debt ceiling”
The fact that the majority here is okay to settle with a mildly dissapointing 80 year old, just so the other “evil” side doesn’t win is a bit disheartening for the state of US politics and democracy.
And this is comming from a politically shithole country I am born and living in.
She wouldn’t win, at least not yet, we’ve got to drift more to the left as a country to have an election she’d become President in. And if not Biden who? Who should run for President that has a chance of actually winning the election? It’s easy to piss on them selecting Biden, but no one else is a viable option. You want more younger options to vote for, run for office yourself, get your friends to run for office, can’t vote for young left leaning politicians if they don’t freaking run and win elections.
People not understanding there is no such thing as a “protest” vote protest voting during her run are why we are in this mess in the first place. Not sure risking it a second time for those that didn’t learn the lesson is a good idea. It would be interesting and fun to watch the oppositions heads explode though if it did happen.
You know that the “evil” have no idea what he’s doing half the time right? He has zero clue as to what he is actually doing. He is saying a lot of shit but in reality he has no idea what the fuck is going on.
Trump is one of the few presidents that actually has no idea of how to govern at all. If that don’t scare you then I have no freaking idea what will.
At least Biden understands the political prosses and how things work. And also he don’t take cases of files with him so he can brag about how the US had plans to attack Iran…
Biden wasn’t my first choice in 2020 and I really wish he was younger, but he has done extremely well as President so far. If he wins again and stays healthy, I have almost no concerns he will continue to get things done.
I disagree with what he did in the railroad union, but to say he’s destroyed unions is a bit of a misnomer. Other replies have already explained how stupid the second part of your comment is, I don’t need to add to that.
Unfortunately you’re displaying your ignorance. Biden has zero influence on the currently-ghastly Supreme Court. In fact given how little actual power a President has here, Biden has accomplished a lot, despite the razor thin Democrat majority (and Manchin! and Sinema!) in the Senate.
I mean, he doesn’t really have direct power to control the court, but the court is vulnerable and responsive to public opinion and he could do more on that front. We have justices themselves saying the court is acting unconstitutionally and Biden’s putting out statements worried about how expansion would “politicize” the court. The more worried they are with their legitimacy the less bold they are in their rulings.
She understands that we are under attack by a global RW fascist insurgency. Keeping the GOP out of the WH will save democracy in the US and around the world. Any GOP winner would stand back and allow the russian terrorists to take Ukraine and beyond.
So you’re saying that without any source backing up your comment? If I’m wrong, then I’m wrong and can admit that but give me a source. “No” doesn’t work for me. We are leasing shit out, just like we did with England during ww2 and they JUST paid that off.
What you stated is false. No matter what your personal RW/Kremlin disinformation manipulated beliefs may be, the Biden admin DO NOT support russians murdering and kidnapping Ukrainian children.
Yes, this is why we must unequivocally support the guy who couldn’t get any laws passed to protect against said RW fascist insurgency. The guy who can’t get his own party to pass voting rights expansion. The guy with no plan to counter the hijacked Supreme Court, and who has steadfastly refused to develop one. Yup, this is the guy that’ll stop American Fascism.
No one’s blaming biden for the facists existence but are you expecting the facists to stop themselves? If not someones gotta do it, like maybe the commander in chief of the country under attack.
It’s so easy to keep the status quo going when you’re able to convince both sides that it’ll be the literal end of the world if the other side wins. Keep voting for one of the two parties which are chosen for you, it’ll turn out alright.
If it were reversed, Trump would be bullying the GOP senators in his way (and he might even pull a couple of Democrat votes because they lack party unity)
Trump isn’t bullying his way past 60 senators and the house for anything major. They passed one major piece of legislation (tax cuts) when he was in office. That’s it. No Obamacare repeal, no abortion legislation, nothing of significance. And now they don’t have any platform anyway so….
Add comment