Joe Biden's age has not negatively affected his job performance, and the alternative is FASCISM. So, just quit the nonsense and get it together. DO NOT HELP FASCISTS.
@TonyStark@StillIRise1963
Our youth-oriented culture underestimates the benefits that experience, perspective and age bring to the table.
Joe Biden has all three and has gotten this country back on track. He has accomplished more than even those of us paying attention realize. This article needs to be required reading.
@Sharonbw@TonyStark@StillIRise1963
He certainly has. He is a talent the GQP can only dream of and only seek to disrespect with personal insults and misrepresentation, oh and a load of sheer hypocrisy. Sometimes despite some of his own party.
Trump talks gibberish for 4 years, has no comprehension of policy, plunged us into turmoil, and they're worried about Biden? Besides the fact that trump is only 3 years younger.
@StillIRise1963 They could straight up Weekend at Bernie’s Biden for all I care. No way I’d ever vote for pussy grabber alternative-facts orange Joffrey coathanger salesman dictator guy.
@StillIRise1963 honestly. these are your actual 2 options currently, full on right wing fascism and loss of more rights and more loss of body autonomy, or not.
@StillIRise1963 I feel like people are acting out against the system (the thing that keeps bringing us the "lesser of 2 evils" choices) and because the system sucks they just want another way... ANY WAY
With our current climate this is short sided! We are doing triage of the country here my friends of the internet. Do I wish he wasn't shot? Sure... but like we need to stop the bleeding then figure the rest out...
Because if we don't it's not going to matter about anything else. 🤔
@TruthSandwich@StillIRise1963 My friend of the internet... I know that and you know that but others don't (or they don't care/think they will survive no matter what etc)
Fine, but the whole “lesser evil” framing is based on a misunderstanding of how democracy works. They were never going to get what they imagine to be a “good” candidate, and someone like Biden is not any sort of evil.
@TruthSandwich@StillIRise1963 The main problem I personally see with him is he is going after the wrong things (or it is uneven) for example without voting rights there are no other rights...
But!
Considering everything he is most certainly not bad and absolutely gives a shit. Only problem is a populous who is already getting very stabby is not going to care about any of that if nothing is "accomplished" (at least in their mind).
Populism doesn’t believe in compromise, but sane politics requires it. Biden does not have the power to do all he wants, and he has to compromise with total assholes in order to get anything done at all.
As such, he will never be “good” enough for these people, and there’s no point trying. They don’t even want to be satisfied. If he passed one of their litmus tests, they’d just raise the bar until he failed.
@StillIRise1963 ‘24’s elections, from the local elections to the Presidential Election are really simple! It’s choice of Democracy versus Nazi Fascism!!!
@StarkRG@StillIRise1963 Meanwhile, Dick Van Dyke is 97 and still tack sharp and tap dancing. Age is a number. Biden is fine. The back up is Harris. Third parties don't have their ducks in a row and are nationally irrelevant at this time. The alternative is hell.
President Biden has been remarkable! Of course I will vote for him again. I don’t worry about his age. Also VP Harris is smart, trained, and right there . Vote against Fascism! Yes! Always!
@StillIRise1963
While the Republicans (the "real" ones) will get in lockstep to support their criminals, the Democrats will equivocate all the way to the ballot box.
@StillIRise1963 I'm so sick of people meddling with his age. If he thinks he can do it proves this with doing a good job, and if people want to vote for him, let him do it!
Someone I know said 'Yeah but he's old, it's not healthy for him, something might happen...' et cetera blah. That's none of their business.
If someone is pro-Trump then I think different rules apply when talking to them, because they're just utterly beyond the event horizon and you'll just exhaust yourself if you try to reason with them. Have you read Altermeyer?
Altermeyer says that among authoritarians, there is a clear distinction between leaders and followers. Authoritarian followers don't want to follow just anyone, they have a very specific direction they want that leader to lead in, but they themselves want to be free of the moral burden of command. Authoritarian leaders want to bask in the adoration of the crowd and make up their policies as they go along. When they find one another it can be very dangerous, but fortunately for us the chemistry isn't always there. Ted Cruz is an example of an authoritarian leader who has failed pretty dismally to get the mass following he thinks he deserves.
The psychology of the two is very different and Altermeyer says they must be studied separately.
One defining trait of the authoritarian follower is that they don't see hypocrisy in their chosen leaders as a bad thing. On the contrary, to them a true leader is someone who doesn't have to play by the same rules as you or I. If you suggest to a follower that their leader should obey their own rules, they'll get puzzled or angry. To them you're making about as much sense as if you said that the sky is red. Among themselves they won't use words like "hypocrisy" or "lies", because those are words that only apply to other people: to an authoritarian follower, what their leaders are doing is simply leadership, good tactics, and evidence of their innate right to rule.
One sign that an authoritarian leader has lost the faith of their followers, in fact, is that those followers start expecting them to obey the rules. At this point the spell is breaking, and if the leader doesn't do something drastic, the followers will go off and find a new and even more extreme leader to follow. Milo Yiannopoulos may be the clearest modern example of this.
So when a pro-Trump person says "Biden is too old", they know full well that Trump is also old. They're not ignorant of that. But the implicit "old people can't be rulers" rule doesn't apply to Trump, in their minds, because Trump is their leader and rules don't apply to leaders.
This is intuitively obvious to them, to the point where you disagreeing with it is probably pretty puzzling to them.
Altermeyer says that authoritarianism isn't so much an idea as a way that your intuition and emotions work, and he theorises that we either develop it in childhood or not all. He's done a lot of writing on the topic and I would recommend his book "The Authoritarians" as a beginning text.
@davidnjoku@StillIRise1963
I don't see a problem with pointint out that Biden is old. Anyone who is going to vote for Trump instead of Biden because Biden is old was always going to vote for Trump anyway.
We don't have to pretend our candidates are perfect. That's what they do.
Biden is old. That is worth talking about, but Trump is far more age-addled than Biden on his worst day. No one is going to look at these choices and say "I was going to vote for Biden, but he is old."
@tofugolem@davidnjoku@StillIRise1963 I think many people intend to literally stay home or do the equivalent of voting third party, because they believe Biden is too old and won't vote for him, even at the cost of fascism
But a lot of people stay home because they recognize that the economic policies of both parties are not very different, and at the end of the day, things keep getting worse for most families regardless of which party is in power.
The age question isn't even going to cause a blip.
You seem to be under the impression that Reagan's 11th commandment would be a good idea for Dems. I disagree.
The economic policies of the two Parties are not remotely similar.
The overlap of the pieces of the proposed Build Back Better bill included fixing highways & bridges, the smallest piece of the proposed legislation.
Not in the overlap, the entirety of the Inflation Reduction Act for which zero Republicans voted.
Not in the overlap, family leave, increased & indexed for inflation minimum wage, ...
The wealth gap grows more slowly under Democrats. Maybe sometimes it stays the same.
But ever since Clinton started his Third Way nonsense, there hasn't been much difference at a macroscopic view.
Having slightly more infrastructure spending or slightly higher taxes on the wealthy is a drop in the bucket compared to what has been happening since 1980. That gap doesn't shrink substantively.
Since 1980, we've had a massive redistribution of wealth. If we don't reverse that and bring wealth distribution back to where it was before 1980, the whole system is coming down like the Soviet bloc did, and for many of the same reasons.
Then look at what progress has been made since the civil rights era when it comes to racial issues. King and X accurately predicted all of this. Slowing progress is what they do. Republicans makes things actively worse.
The answer is 2021-22 with passage of the American Rescue Plan & Inflation Reduction Act, just barely overcoming the recalcitrance of that small minority of corporate-funded center-right Democrats.
We have a hill to climb to hold the Senate next year with one fewer such Democrats (2 fewer, but only 1 replaced by a better Dem), but doable.
Retaking the House & holding the White House is very realistic.
Until then, voting for Democrats will only result in empty gestures.
I vote for Democrats to avoid making things worse, not because I'm under the delusion that voting for them will make anything better. MLK and Malcolm X was right about them.
FWIW, the reason for my (too) many replies is how important it is to stay optimistic.
Optimistic activists will be much more effective motivating rank & file people/voters to exercise their power to drive change.
If we allow pessimism/fatalism to creep in, it's way too easy for people dealing with life's every day struggles to not take the time/effort to learn about the candidates/issues and vote, and then we're screwed.
This is something I would really like to see more analysis and data on.
It's possible that the nature part of the left makes them more ok with changes/chaos, whereas the right needs things settled and to feel in control.
My own gut, and therefore probably incorrect, feeling is that the left might benefit more from the threat of bad things, whereas the right needs to believe they are going to win.
Rs are brought into the fold mostly using fear that something is going to change their world. One key factor - immigrants coming to take your job and erode your way of life. Basic fear of change.
I should've clarified the last paragraph was about motivation to actually be active and vote. Both sides pretty much always say they're going to win, though, and they're doing the focus groups.
I still don't see how you got there. I see a system resistant in a multitude of ways. I see even a small amount of Republicans sometimes willing to join Democrats and disrupt the status quo. Recent example shown by our evolution on same sex marriage. No Ds against and 12 Rs for the Respect for Marriage act in the Senate.
Ds pretty much maxed out what they could pass during this last majority. It all of course comes down to the most conservative members as it always will. How could they have passed more?
@EyalL@cappiello@joeinwynnewood@davidnjoku@StillIRise1963
Republicans find ways to change the filibuster when they please, even when they have narrow majorities. Even when they have moderates on their own side complaining that a piece of legislation might make their next elections more difficult.
Maybe for the 2 who refused to budge.
It's easy to boil it all down to "Democrats" don't want to get anything significant done, but it's a fundamentally false picture. Reality is more complex.
Lastly, Dems have employed the (threat of) filibuster, but as noted above & totally true, Republicans have very little they want to legislate on and they get most of that with Reconciliation.
What happens is not a result of the details of how legislation is passed, but a result of the fact that politicians in both parties are recording donations from a very similar pool of donors. Wealthy donors donate to both parties do that they get what they want now matter who is in power.
@EyalL@joeinwynnewood@cappiello@davidnjoku@StillIRise1963
We aren't getting these results because of some aspect of Byzantine procedural rules, we are getting these results because they have largely the same lost of major donors.
And, waiting to be convinced seems self defeating. Acknowledging what has been accomplished and leveraging it to push for more is far more likely to produce the desired results.
@joeinwynnewood@EyalL@cappiello@davidnjoku@StillIRise1963
The oligarchs are very happy to hear that you are satisfied with empty gestures instead of substantive change. You are certainly on the right path to beg for more empty gestures.
I can't help but be reminded of the things Malcolm X and MLKjr said about white liberals and incrementalism.
None of us are saying anything remotely like that.
There is one and only one bone of contention here, your refusal to acknowledge that progress has been made, that we are very close to being able to make very significant additional progress and we should spend our time and energy putting the final pieces in place to make it happen.
I haven't defended anyone. I've noted the fact of progress across multiple aspects of efforts by Democrats and aligned groups and acknowledged that it is insufficient.
You choose to characterize the progress as a ruse, as if there is clear intent to forestall "real" change.
What I've not heard from you are any actions to increase the pace of change. You did say we need to get $ out of politics, but not a hint of how.
Now you are reaching. Surely you understand on your own why that logic is bad? What I have or have not done has zero bearing on whether or not my analysis of the actions of establishment Democratic politicians is correct.
I did not say personal actions, I said actions, period.
What specifically should we, collectively, be doing that we are not already doing to achieve "real" change at whatever speed makes the change real vs. a distraction of incrementalism?
I also note that you have newly added "establishment" as a qualifier.
So it isn't the entire Democratic Party, only the establishment Democrats?
Until we get all private money out of elections and go to the kind of publicly-funded elections they have in functional democracies, nothing is really going to change. Otherwise, the voices of donors will always carry more weight than voters.
Politicians simply aren't going to give us much more than empty platitudes and weak half-measures otherwise.
How?
Saying it has to happen is fine, but not having accomplished it can't be an excuse for throwing up our hands and doing no more than the minimum.
I will contend that the significant expansion of small dollar contributions across all levels of campaigns has put a significant crimp in the influence of wealthy donors.
We have a very long way to go, but should we not be leveraging this real change as a step towards significant $ reform?
Then Obama broke records for having a large number of small donations, and other than a few weak hair-measures early in his administration, we got very little out of him.
Small donations are never going to compete. We need to get all private money out of elections and switch to the kind of public-funded elections many successful democracies have.
As I think I've said before, the President isn't all powerful. While Obama broke records, he was very much in the minority across government in grassroots $ success, so he was still facing a large block of high $ donor backed Senators and Congresspeople.
That has now completely flipped in the House and is substantially better in the Senate.
It's also has flipped/is flipping in many state legislatures.
/1
What leads you to believe that a Senate Democratic caucus that was unable to include a public option - deep sixed by Joe Liberman who was arguably more odious then than Manchin is today - would have somehow passed a true universal healthcare bill just because Obama "pushed" for it?
Never mind that Obama was never as far to the left as many thought. His years at U of Chicago left him more not less conservative.
@joeinwynnewood@EyalL@cappiello@davidnjoku@StillIRise1963
No, I recognize that Obama was not a liberal, but he could have at least pretended to care about what Democratic voters want. You seem content to make excuses for the incrementalism.
Stating history is stating history. Nothing more, nothing less.
Obama was a realist and accomplished what no Democrat in the history of the country had been able to accomplish, but by all means, be as disappointed and discouraged as you like.
The system didn't limit the amount of change he could affect, the real power in America didn't want real change, and so we did not get real change.
But he sure sold us on the idea of real change, didn't he? He did a really good job of maintaining the illusion of representative government while serving the oligarchs.
No one is arguing that money isn't a part of it. Ds win battles against it and would win more of it weren't for the system. Look at House vs Senate when Ds are in power.
Voters can change everything. It's why so much money and time is spent persuading voters and suppressing the vote of the opposition.
@cappiello@joeinwynnewood@EyalL@davidnjoku@StillIRise1963
If you want voters to have a voice, we need to get all private money out of elections and have publicly-funded elections like a lot of democracies have. Until then, our voice will always count less than the voice of big donors, and politicians will look for ways to be performative, but not actually make life better for voters.
Everyone knows that legislators spend most of their days on the phone begging people for money.
They don't spend most of their time talking to constituents. They don't spend most of their time crafting or debating legislation. The majority of their time is spent calling up potential voters and asking them for money.
It is not a secret whose interests they serve or why.
@tofugolem@cappiello@joeinwynnewood@davidnjoku@StillIRise1963 claiming that beyond Manchin and Sinema they're lying together about supporting removing the filibuster, and would not support it if there were more elected democrats, that's a conspiracy
@EyalL@cappiello@joeinwynnewood@davidnjoku@StillIRise1963
We know from past efforts that if anyone talks about real change, and they cannot ostracize that person by accusing them of being an "extremist," they magically find someone like Manchin and Sinema to blame for not getting anything done.
They all know who the real powers are, but they have to maintain the fiction of America being a democracy.
@StillIRise1963@mistergibson@researchbuzz
Putin has been pushing stories about Biden's age since 2019 and of course we should all be aware that he's the major supporter of third-party candidates for POTUS too.
I think that they are pushing the #BidenIsOld canard in case Trump is not made the GOP nominee in 2024 to help get their alternative elected.
@StillIRise1963 hasn't affected you say. You mean like McConnell Feinstien Pelosi? Whether its his age or just his being a failure to lead during crisis we can't trust him. Party loyalty refuses to allow any other options so yet again voters get to choose between a fascist conman and a corporate slimeball. By robbing the people of choice the establishment parties have insured fascism.
@StillIRise1963 OK where did the racist come from or or is it you just don't like being called on your gas lighting bs? The plain facts are Dem are failing to do the job view terms expect of them while Repubs actively and openly make things worse. "Vote Blue No Matter Who" and "MAGA" are both cults.
@StillIRise1963 WITHOUT BIDEN YEARS IN GOVERMENT, and relationships around the world. YOU THINK anyone else could have pulled off getting the whole world linedup against putin . nato and u.s. please putin has about 20 km before his forces are cut in half and can't be resupplied giving them about one week to survie not fight surive or surrender. BIDEN DID THIS he led the way. ANY 50 YEAR OLD DO what biden did no experience matters. we havent been nuke by putin that's a win.
@StillIRise1963@fcktheworld587 There’s no way anyone could know what he’s doing “off camera.” If one agrees he’s gotten good things done, his age isn’t a factor in that. Ageism isn’t something I’m supporting, either.
Biggest part of any president’s job is picking people. That is “off camera.” I like his picks.
Biden is old. He got jet lagged. Remember Bush vomiting in Japan? Biden tripped on an object on a stair. Remember Ford falling down the airplane stairs?
@Woodswalked@fcktheworld587@StillIRise1963 I’m not in the mood for pedantic. I’m sure anyone reading this knows what was meant by odd camera. I can’t tell if you’re agreeing he’s old or comparing it to food poisoning but I don’t have time for it.
I think both. I think you have a point about off camera. I also think I like the old guy’s work. You seem to mostly like him, but not like I do. It’s both.
And ain’t it a shame that the alternative isn’t saving the planet, getting rid of racist infrastructure, demilitarizing, and half a dozen other things that Biden is not going to do?
@Tattered Your analysis is flawed. How in the world would I be accepting of a totally RACIST status quo that's enslaved, raped and oppressed me and mine for 400 years? Perhaps it's something other - COMMON SENSE.
@StillIRise1963 I am sorry that you are so mistaken in your understanding of my motives.
My final word is to ask whether James Baldwin, Louis Farrakhan, Malcolm X, Kwame Ture, Huey P Newton, … would agree that a vote for Biden is the solution?
And I still wish you all the best in your struggle.
@StillIRise1963 Option One: A bag full of crappy stuff from the thrift store. Some of it is actually useful, & some of that is stuff you actually want.
Option Two: A scorched plain upon which jackbooted hobgoblins torture you amidst the wreckage of everything you used to love.
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