this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
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This is a reminder that this guy has very large chances to go back in the office and be president of the United States once again. We are so fucked and I am saying this as someone who is not American.
Same here. I am a US citizen.
I even have people in my family that voted for this guy and may again.
The options we have are limited. Biden who is really too old. Trump who is too old not qualified and self serving. Nikki Haley who probably cannot get nominated.
Edit: Most people want Biden and Trump to not be running but we will probably be stuck choosing between these two. In the primaries I will not vote for either. In the general election I will never vote for Trump.
So who do you vote for in the primaries? If you don't vote for Biden, does that not help Trump?
Asking as a confused British person.
Primaries are only to decide which candidate will be nominated by which party. Typically there is no real contest for a sitting president to be renominated, so not voting for Biden in the primary will not affect anything.
Basically Trump and Biden are not competing in the primary because they are competing for different things—the nominations of their respective parties.
Once the general election rolls around you can make the argument that failing to vote for the best candidate to beat Trump would be helping him indirectly. But in the primary you could actually make the argument that voting for Nikki Haley would be more effective in stopping Trump than voting for Biden, since she is completing directly for the Republican nomination. However her candidacy is all but dead at this point.
Got it. Thanks.
As an actual point. I will probably vote for Nikki Haley and I can because I am in am open primary state. Each state has different rules. Some you have to belong to her party, some you just have to not belong to any other party, others party affiliation does not matter. Some states do not have primaries but use the caucus process. It is all over the map.
Edit: If Haley makes it to the general election and Biden is the other candidate, I may well vote for Haley. It would be a hard choice but I am fine with both but for different reasons. My view ... the best thing a voter can do at the moment is vote on the republican ticket for Haley even if you have to change party to do it. Most people will not though... either to lazy, to uninformed, to unengaged, or too sickened by the prospect.
Ya, I live in a state with a closed primary and where the general regrettably tends to be a forgone conclusion, so like every Dem and Socialist I know here I’m a registered Republican when primary season rolls around, because that’s the only way you’re vote for the moderate counts.
Depends. In some states it doesn't matter at all.
The most important thing to know is our voting system is broken far beyond its original design and won't get fixed any time soon.
These are just the primaries, not the general election. Primaries are for each party, to choose which candidate from that party will run in the general election in November.
If Biden got re-elected, and then became incapacitated to fulfill his duties, wouldn't that make the vice-president take his place?
I mean, Kamala Harris doesn't seem that bad of a choice for president, and neither does Nikki Haley if Biden decided to run with her for the presidentials.
Harris would be fine.
Nikki Haley would be fine but she is in the other party and will never be Biden's running mate. Interesting idea though. She probably will not be Trump's running mate either.
I would rather see a contest between Harris and Haley. Fine with either. Both reasonable people.
..Haley supports a nationwide abortion ban and can't remember what the civil war was about. Reasonable‽
Over stating. She supports a national consensus on abortion whatever that turns out to be. Civil War... that is just pandering. Do I agree with her on all things, no.
Keep in mind that national security and rule of law are now the only issues that matter. Everything else is just arranging the deck chairs on the titanic. Politics is the art of the possible.
Edit: Younger candidates that are not age impaired is important too.
Whoops, you're right, wrong party.
Who's Biden running against in the primaries, is there a single strong opponent?
No strong candidate. There are three. The most serious is Dean Phillips. He is reasonable but getting almost no votes. Way weaker then Haley is on the other side and Haley is likely to go no where too. Though at the moment Halley to me seems the obvious one to support in the primaries regardless of your usual party.
And sadly, the DNC is going to cause it, because they're trapped in the 90s. Bill Clinton, who was elected president in 1993, is younger today than the person they're throwing into the ring 31 years later.
I live in California, which is going to go Democrat no matter what, so there's not much I can do but sit back and watch Biden lose swing states.
Hillary's refusal to bow out when it was clear how deeply unpopular she was put Trump in office in 2016, and I'm going to be shocked if Biden's same arrogance doesn't cause it this year.
Biden's gonna "hold onto the torch a little longer" out of pride, and we're all gonna suffer for it.
It is not the fault of the DNC that the Republicans are full fascist. I wish there were a more compelling candidate that Biden but put the blame where it belongs. Squarely on the shoulders of the GOP and their voters.
See, it's funny because when I say, "just vote for whoever you believe best represents you, politically", I get told that I need to address the practical realities of politics, and that sticking to ideals is wrong for me to do (and that it is thus incumbent upon me to vote for Biden).
Often the phrase, "a vote for anyone but Biden is a vote for Trump" or similar gets deployed.
But when I say, "okay, the practical reality is that Biden is looking more and more likely to actually lose to Trump, so the DNC forcing bad candidates like him through is wrong, and making Trump more likely to win", I get told it's actually the fault of the GOP.
Yes, it is of course on Republicans for voting for bad people. But if it's wrong for me to ignore that they will, and vote for whoever best represents me (and trust in democracy and the citizenry to deliver the person most-liked by most people), then it's also wrong for the DNC to choose their preferred but likely-to-lose candidates like Hillary (and now Biden) over candidates who would have been likely to beat Trump.
Can't have it both ways.
Biden was trailing Trump nationally before the genocide in Gaza. Before the special counsel report talking about him presenting himself as old and forgetful. Before the press conference meant to repudiate that report, in which Biden then went on to basically prove it correct.
Our best hope is Republicans doing something so incredibly stupid that they shoot their entire metaphorical torso off, because at this point shooting themselves in the foot alone may not be enough.
Wow, what a fucking bad faith argument. Nobody is telling you who to vote for in the primaries.
First off, who said anything about just primaries? I've been deadass told that if I leave the line for president blank, it's the same as voting for Trump, which is literally this argument (that the moral imperative in voting is to minimize the damage of another candidate, not to say who best represents your political beliefs).
But secondly, all the people in the party who pushed for Democrats not to run against Biden were saying exactly that, but taking it even a step further, by saying that we shouldn't even have the choice to vote for other candidates in the primaries. So no, not a bad faith interpretation at all.
And now it's too late, god help us.
The thing I'm noticing now is a deep stratification between Democrats who are begrudgingly forcing themselves to vote for Biden because a second Trump presidency basically means the end of the United States if it wasn't already inevitable, and Progressives who are refusing to vote for Biden because of his tacit support of the ongoing genocide in Palestine, who feel it doesn't really matter who they vote for because the AMIC ensures that bombs will fall and innocent people will die regardless of who's in the White House.
And the thing is, Biden has achieved a lot that goes quietly unnoticed. $130 billion in student loans debt relief, the $35 cap on insulin, gains in employment and reduction on inflation, to name a few accomplishments. But America's been circling the drain for a long, long time, and the refusal to admit it, and hold accountable the people responsible for it (because as much a sin it is to engage in bothsidesism, those people bankroll campaigns for team red and blue) is what will end up being the death knell for democracy in America, and even if it's not, the earth is falling apart faster than we can fix or escape it.
Me, personally? I'm voting for Biden, but I'm not holding my breath for hope in this lifetime. Suicide rates are the highest they've ever been and it's not hard to see why.
I think the real stratification is between Democrats who acknowledge that Biden is culpable in no small part for Israel's current impunity in executing this genocide, and those who want to pretend otherwise, either claiming that Biden is actually slowing Netanyahu's hand (despite all evidence to the contrary, including Netanyahu's public repudiation of calls from the US to avoid civilian casualties), or who just rationalize the issue by saying that because Trump could be doing worse, that makes Biden's actions okay.
Back during 2020 my dad and I were discussing Biden, and I told him that my opposition to him was based on his outdated views, not because I think he is a bad person. Sadly, Gaza is making me back off on that; I think that when taken together with his other policies (like still being tough-on-crime and pro-cop), I think he is ultimately the exact kind of person that MLK Jr. was referring to when he denounced the White Moderate.
He is just so incredibly paternalistic and arrogant, and it's literally getting thousands of people killed. And his refusal to drop from the race (which has caused other Dems to not run at all, out of fear of splitting the vote), despite polls and just the atmosphere out here, means that the additional deaths that Trump enables will also partially be on Biden, because right now he's clearing the metaphorical landing strip for Trump's second term.
Trump is absolutely compromised by Putin. The Kremlin leak in 2021 confirmed that, but that story also flew under the radar for most people.
It would have been nice to have 2 terms of Sanders, and be ready to move on to a younger candidate now, but now he's too old as well. Oh well.
Yes, an opinion by experts. It is an opinion, but not one that can be dismissed without competing opinion from others of equal credential.
Absolutely agree, although I think it's 'more true' stated the opposite direction: even without Russian interference, Hillary was never going to win, because she was a bad candidate, and her disastrous campaign was the nail in the coffin.
I feel like when he was in office before, I recall him wanting to pull out of NATO then.
I hope we have legislatively done everything we can to ensure whoever the president is, is not able to unilaterally pull out of alliances, and membership in the UN, and WHO, without first getting congressional approval as well, and any such action would be null, and void without such approval.
We were a joke on the world stage when Trump was in office, and lost the trust of much of our allies. We are finally taken seriously on the world stage again, and not laughed at for our president, but we have not fully regained that trust; it is there now, but the world now see's weather they can trust us at any given moment is depending on elections every 4 years at minimum, and our current congress is even swayed by the whims of a former president that isn't even in office.
The trust, standing, and soft power the USA lost from Trump's time in office, may never return to what it once was.
Congressional approval is necessary for entering treaties, not for leaving them. Congress tries to change that. Hopefully in time
Congress already passed a bill preventing presidents from unilaterally withdrawing from NATO, but legal experts think it won't hold up in court if challenged by Trump.
I would also have concerns of if congress only requires 50% of the vote or not, but as things stand, we at least have enough who support NATO and view Russia as an adversary, that it is unlikely.
But house republicans have proven over and over they are weak. They cave to pressure on Trump when he isn't even president.
To use one of Trumps phrases, Republicans got a 'sweetheart deal' on immigration and the border, and they gave it up over pressure from Trump to not fix the border issue if he isn't in office. Every day the border crisis continues is on Trump, and republicans hands (I want to say house, but even the Senate caved to him).
The law now requires 2/3s of the Senate to approve a presidential order to withdraw from NATO, or for congress to pass a separate bill choosing to withdraw.
Awesome. Thanks for the info.