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53% disapprove, 43% approve
Doesn't seem like cause to celebrate...
I don't care if people like Biden. They just need to vote for him over the alternative.
Besides, a lot of the country has already decided they're going to hate him regardless.
I don't like Biden. I disapprove of his job performance. And I will desperately support his candidacy for president. He must win.
I dont like biden. I approve of some of his policies. I dig forgiving student loans. I like the updated infrastructure plan, esp that it specifically targets the state that just had issues with their roads floading and is in desperate need of more jobs (VT). And i like the Texan high speed rail idea. Texas being annoying as shit aside, a high speed rail between two massive metropolises is exactly what we need. Not to mention the big 3 cities in TX already historically vote blue in the general so trying to energize that crowd ahead of the election seems a little optimistic, but not as misplaced as some would have u believe.
Biden is still Status Quo Joe to me. He still represents the continuation of neoliberal policies that keep us from addressing the climate crisis, but he does not represent a disruption to the democratic process but rather its continuation. With the youth being more aware of the climate situation, the draconian foreign policies we hold, and on the whole supporting a wider array of left leaning policies than any generation prior, biden is the only sane choice.
Joe has done a TON for climate change. He wanted to do more (earlier versions of the infrastructure bill basically called for moving the entire grid to renewables), but he didn't have the majorities. If we can deliver a majority in the house and Senate that doesn't rely on Manchin and Sinema, you'll see big climate change legislation with teeth, I can almost guarantee it.
Agree and disagree. If not Manshit and sEnema, wed find two other corporate dems to do the same. We need to primary the shit dems for progressives anytime we get the chance from the bottom up to really get climate action.
Joe tried more than he accomplished, but given that he accomplished more than Obama towards this end, id say thats a byproduct of the dems realizing they must cater to the new generation and i give the credit to the general culture shift. I dont think joe is the answer we're looking for, but he is swayed by his consituents, regardless of what the lemmy FUD crowd will tell u.
So i do agree that for climate action we need the house to turn blue, but i also need it be said that the action they will accomplish will be less than needed, and they should be uncomfortably pressed on that fact. Over more than one election cycle, that is how we get what we want/need.
Eta: spelling
I don't buy the self destructive theory of "the Dems just pull some people out of a hat to block legislation and only act like they want to solve the problem."
That argument is basically built on a history of failure caused by razor thin margins. Margins that rely on Democrats in conservative areas that just barely won or have some fringe beliefs/interests.
Sinema was brand new and basically untested, Manchin has an interest in coal. It's not exactly a mystery or a conspiracy why both of them stonewalled.
It's more than that, we need a blue house and blue senate with a margin for some people to defect. We have a blue senate but we don't have that margin.
I never agreed with folks that wanted to get rid of Manchin, I grew up next to West Virginia, we were lucky to have him for the votes he helped us on instead of another Ted Cruz. We would be far better off if we had even more "Sherrod Browns" (a "corporate dem" like Biden that's willing to piss rich people off and demonstrated the "traditional democratic party" is not a bunch of sellouts). Flipping red seats is far more important than making the blue seats bluer.
Ooh! Productive disagreements based in good faith arguments! I love it!
The reason i buy into the "theory" in question is bc corporate democrats are notorious for playing the political game by ear and ammending their values to 1. Keep their voters backing, 2. Keep their owners happy.
Agreed on flipping the house, agreed on creating a tangible majority in the senate, agreed on flipping red seats. To this last point, based off of many many convos ive had with blue collar conservatives (who i think are either thr core of GOP support, or damn near), i feel like progressive candidates who arent afraid to get down and dirty on the grassroots level in red districts have a better chance of flipping those seats than so-called "moderate" dems. Per my experience, these right wing voters hate insurance conpanies, hate "the elite", hate being unfairly taxed or otherwise "controlled" by their govt, and are willing to enact the policies we preach (single payer healthcare, wealth tax, lower taxes for their tax bracket and higher for the "elite" they hate, or even max wages) as long as they are stripped of the buzzwords they fear. Thru continuous conversation, even those buzzwords start to be less scary when the policies u preach are being espoused by someone they see as one of their own.
Disagree on making blue seats bluer. Largely bc of what i just said. To your credit, you bring up excellent points on manchin, i must admit i was ignorant about the situation u describe in WV. Great food for thought. Nevertheless, flipping red seats is not an either or situation with replacing the old guard with progressives. You have to remember the new guard coming into voting power prefers progressives.
I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, in fact I think it might be a necessary thing for any long serving politician. A politician should be there to represent the people that elected them more than themselves. The people in any given area change over time, as do their concerns and priorities.
If you go back and look at e.g. Bernie's vs Biden's record ... it's true Bernie has been a rock but it's also true that Biden got a lot more legislation through. Biden (as with many other long time Democrats) is willing to compromise on some things if folks end up better than where they started. Bernie does this to some extent as well but not as much.
It's a fine line to balance before you end up like many of those that Republicans have elected which just refuse to compromise on anything. It's their way or the highway even when dealing with others in their party.
I guess what I'm saying is, I think you need to be able to sway a bit with the wind in politics to be able to keep the thing moving. Things are so messed up right now in part because congress is increasingly composed of hard liners that "have their views" and they won't settle.
I think that the United States isn't as divided as it seems. I've similarly noticed in my various conversations people often say the same thing with a slightly different tilt that's a long shot from the major divergence we see in elected officials.
I'm not sure how to undo that while Russia and China target the country with a continuous psyhop.
I don't think progressive candidates are the only ones that can really break through to these folks. In some ways I think traditional Democrats have a better chance of breaking through because they're not the ones that have been painted as the demons ... they're only demon adjacent.
A young Obama or Biden I think could reach a lot of people in my home state of Ohio. A young AOC ... I think she would struggle in the same way that Clinton struggled, the propaganda and hate hose has been on for so long ... I think it's really hard for folks to bridge that gap.
Basically it's just sad, lots of people are voting against their own interest because they've been convinced voting in their own interest is voting for some radical agenda.
This is true and I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing. I would encourage those progressives to remain somewhat flexible though. We almost didn't get the infrastructure bill and the inflation reduction act which are some of the best bills to come out under the Biden Administration because of progressive stonewalling in the opposite direction that Manchin was stonewalling.
I don't want in fighting to make the Democratic party ineffective at governance similarly to how MAGA made the Republican party ineffective at governance.
Energizing the cities in Texas also forces the GOP to spend time and money defending their strongholds. Biden doesn't need to win Texas, but if voters show up and elect more down-ballot representatives at state and local levels, that will be good for Texas and by extension the rest of the nation.
Huh...
Excellent points, truly didnt consider. Now if only we could get Joe to also go after WI, MI, and PA harder... i think those are key.
H. Clinton made the mistake in 2016 of not campaigning everywhere. DNC made the same mistake in many, many elections over the years.
The DNC needs to campaign in every possible place, obviously they need to have a bigger spend, and a bigger push in swing states, but the more they campaign everywhere, the more down ballot Dems get attention. They need more than a president to get shit done.
Start adding more progressives to the house and (maybe someday) the senate, and we'll start turning this ship around.
Agreed. My local area put a progressive (u know, an actual one) in office a couple election cycles ago and shes been very popular with her constituents.
Progressives are so much easier to elect locally. It's a much simpler sell to point out local issues with progressive solutions than it is to make larger, sweeping changes at a state or national level.
Bottom up, amigo! When the low level supports more progressives at higher levels, those endorsements from popular local officials will go a long way.
If you look at the primary figures in Texas right now, Dem participation has completely tanked out. Collin Alfred got less than half the votes Ted Cruz racked in during the primary. The Dem polling locations were dead while Republicans stormed to polls to support their guys.
Its going to be a bloodbath in Texas come 2024. Again. Because Dems insist on running the most milk toast, uninspiring, "safe" hack candidates imaginable, for fear of some labor group or environmental movement accidentally forming around someone with a spine.
That's just because the Democratic Party sucks ass. Look at how they treated Beto.
He was just a big money sponge they could suck dry.
Oh I hated him since the 1990s when he wrote the crime bill. Hated him in 2020, and hated Hillary in 2016. I still voted for both of them. Voted for Gore in 2000, despite not liking him. I actually liked Obama in 2008, not so much in 2012
I would absolutely shoot Trump, and his entire family tree in the head, if I thought for a second that I could get away with it. That scam artist wouldn't have gotten my vote in 2004 when he thought about running as a Democrat, he sure as fuck isn't getting my vote now that he's gone mask off Republican.
I haven't actually liked anyone I've voted for except for the time I voted for my dad for town council. Isn't that the point?
That's simply not how elections work. If people hate you, and they hate the other guy, they just stay home.
That's how Gore lost in 2000 (plus a touch of GOP vote rigging and Brooks Brothers Rioting). He just parroted all the conservative lines about balanced budgets and business growth. Half the country simply slept through November rather than vote for him or Bush. Even a big chunk of disaffected Republicans joining the Green/Libertarian vote couldn't save Gore from his own mealy mouthed centrism.
Biden is Clinton/Gore Centrism on fucking steroids. He's going to tank his own base of support while Trump wipes MAGA shitheads up into an even bigger lather than the last time he was on the ballot.
I completely disagree with this. People stayed home and didn't vote for Hillary in 2016 because they wanted to send a message. They didn't think Trump would be elected.
What we got was 4 years of a narcissist running the country who cares more about himself and his friends than what was good for the people.
I didn't like Hillary, but I voted for her. I don't like Biden but I'll vote for him because the alternative is another 4 years of people losing rights that I believe they should have.
I don't know about "send a message" nearly so much as "felt disillusioned and betrayed". She gave them nothing to show up for. Hell, Hillary's primary demographic was supposed to be upwardly mobile white women, and the majority of them ended up voting for Trump.
After Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and then Obama, this was par for the course.
If you lived through the 2002 GOP landslide, Trump wasn't anything new. The xenophobia and the white nationalism, the naked demagoguery and far-right religious fervor, the shameless pandering to a handful of insider business leaders, the bailouts and bankruptcies... It was just a repeat of the Bush Administration.
To see Democrats in leadership sucking up to the prior dipshit fascist really drove home to us old-heads what GenZ had to learn the hard way - liberals weren't going to lift a finger to this guy if they could help it.
This has been the story of American politics since at least Kennedy. The long line of "I didn't like him but I voted for him" candidates have only produced more of the same shitty guys. And the country has rotted out from the inside, as liberals continued to contend "the only thing we can do is VOTE!" while conservatives took to the streets and reshaped the country with their own bare hands.
If you believe the previous presidents you listed were as narcissistic as Trump, I do t know what to say.
Also, Republicans have reshaped this country in a worst way. Democrats are weaker, but that is only because they don't stoop to the same level as Republicans do when it comes to politics. Dems actually try to work together, Republicans say do what I want or else. Do you remember at all the previous government shutdowns? All due to Republicans not willing to compromise. Then they do a big show saying it's all Democrats fault.
Show me so much as a candidate in the last forty years who isn't dripping with narcissism.
Whether it was the Bankruptcy Bill of 2005 or the Graham-Leach-Biley of 1998 or SESTA/FOSTA in 2018 or the repeated extensions and reauthorizations of the 2001 Patriot Act, the Reagan and Bush tax cuts, or the endless wars in the Middle East, you can consistently find a large cadre of Democrats (often with Joe Biden himself at their head) paving the way for these ultra-conservative legislative changes.
In 2016, Mitch McConnell dragged out the nomination of Judge Antonin Scalia's replacement for a full ten months.
In 2020, Democrats couldn't stall the nomination of ACB as the replacement for RBG for three months.
I only wish the problem was Republicans being unwilling to compromise. Far too often, they simply play the face to policies Democrats appear more than willing to support.
I wouldn't say we didn't still end up with that after 2020. Have you been out in public recently?
I should note that Obama had a sub-50 approval rating in 2012 when he beat Mitt Romney. But Romney also wasn't pulling in record-breaking primary vote totals or seeing huge groundswells of MAGA-tier support.
Biden coasted to victory in 2020 thanks to a pandemic everybody hated and four years of Trump fresh in their minds. I don't think he has those advantages anymore.
What?
Are you talking about popular vote? That sadly doesn't matter.
Biden won a handful of states by razor thin margins, which got him the presidency. And it took his campaign spending a literal billion dollars to accomplish that
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/09/politics/2020-election-trump-biden-closest-states/index.html
And he's less popular now... Not just nationwide, but in state polling for those states.
We don't live in a direct democracy, so you have to look kinda close to see what's happening.
To be fair, the only state he broke primary vote total records in this year was New Hampshire (pop. 1.4m).
He's breaking his own records from 2016, but the conditions of the 2016 primary and the 2024 primary are pretty different, given that there was never any real competition against him this year, mostly just a clown show.