I don’t know what was wrong with Joe Biden. It’s hard to imagine that they ever would have asked for a debate if this was the way he is normally. We’ve seen him recently holding press conferences and giving speeches and he seemed to be fine. They said he had a cold so maybe he really was on drugs — Nyquil or Mucinex or something that made him seem so shaky and frail. Whatever it was, it was a terrible debate for him and if he does stay in the race (which is almost certain in my opinion) the campaign is going to have a lot of work to do to dig out of the hole that was dug last night. The media smells blood and they are circling like a bunch of starved piranhas.
. . . For some odd reason, moderator Jake Tapper told Trump in the beginning that he didn’t need to answer the questions and that he could use the time however he wanted. Trump ran with that, essentially giving a rally speech whenever he had the floor and was unresponsive to the vast majority of the questions. He made faces and insulted Biden to his face, at one point calling him a criminal and a Manchurian candidate. If anyone had said 10 years ago that this would happen at a presidential debate they would have been laughed out of the room.
After the debate when most of the country had turned off cable news or gone to bed, CNN aired its fact check. And it’s a doozy:
It sure would have been good if even some of that epic litany of lies could have been checked while people were still watching. The decision to have the moderators sit like a couple of potted plants woodenly asking questions about child care while Trump responded with irrelevant lies was inexplicable. Why did they even bother to ask questions at all? They could have just run the timer and let the candidates talk for two minutes each about anything they wanted. It probably would have been more enlightening.
Thanks for the sources, I was genuinely not aware of how many people supported Perot.
But even then, it’s usually not enough support for it to actually change the outcome. In the case of Perot it was, apparently, but even then it still didn’t push either of the candidates to change their views on nafta. If support that big is still not enough for them to worry, it’s hard to believe it can ever make a difference.
No, it’s because the US got so divided on stuff that’s supposed to be a given, that contributing to an ongoing genocide isn’t the most important thing for voters right now. When the main candidates are polar opposites on key issues in people’s lives like Abortion or LGBT rights, anything happening outside of the country becomes an afterthought.
It is, but not by voting third party. I can understand it if the candidate is actually leading in polls like Perot was, but right now hoping for a third party (or worse, Kennedy is apparently the most supported after the main two so FOURTH party) exploit is way too unrealistic to take the risk.
As I’ve said in another post, to me the only feasible way to get stuff to actually change is to keep voting for the “least bad” of the main candidates. If Republicans keep losing every election, eventually they’ll resign to the fact that they can’t keep running on christofascism and give their platform to a candidate that at least has the same opinion as the Dem one about basic human rights. And only at that point, when Dems won’t be able to run on “my opponent is literally Satan”, they’ll have to shift to more progressive positions to keep getting elected. If at that point they still don’t, you can safely vote for third parties because “wasting your vote” isn’t that much of a risk.
you just said the only feasible way to change things is to keep voting for the lesser of two evils. doesn’t that seem a little absurd, given that its what got us where we are through a consistent movement right, not left?
how can you suggest that the democrats just need more of our votes when they got enough of them on a popular left movement to win both houses and the executive in our lifetimes only to pursue a right wing policy program?
you said republicans would change if they keep losing, but that’s predicated on republicans losing consistently. even if by some act of a power higher than both of us biden manages to win this go round, how much longer do you think it will take before republicans resign themselves to it? two more regimes? four? before or after florida is lost to the rising atlantic? before or after every person who ends up at the southern border is detained indefinitley or put to death? can the people of gaza last until even this november?
how long do i need to patently wait? twelve, twenty four years?
What youre suggesting rests on fundamentally misunderstanding both the history we have to refer to the record to see and the history that we both lived through!
I will not wait for some unspecific pie in the sky future to be heard and neither should you!
You answered yourself, it’s because Republicans need to lose consistently, and it’s been over 70 years since the last time they even lost three consecutive terms.
Meanwhile, did you see what happened after three consecutive Republican terms? Clinton. Reagan + H. W. in a row definitely shifted the overton window to the right, and forced Dems to react accordingly. That’s what needs to happen, in reverse. Allowing Trump in office again would send the message that racism is the winning strategy, and Dems might get even worse.
Waiting for the window to shift might look like a pie in the sky to you (and you’re not even that wrong, considering how the DNC keeps pushing their worst), but a third party winning is a pie in straight outer space.
we need to keep voting for conservative, xenophobic, genocidal democrats in the hope that something which hasn’t happened in seventy years is going to happen again before we can actually make our voices heard in a way that can’t be ignored?
and that will somehow not send democrats the message that racism is the winning strategy?
thats a counterproductive and extremely bad idea that hasn’t been thought out.
don’t do that.
And splitting the votes of the sane Americans among multiple parties, allowing Trump to get a second term and enact Project 2025 is a productive and thought-out strategy?
We’ve already been through this.
Third parties aren’t vote splitting spoilers.
People who don’t vote for democrats aren’t insane.
If you’re really afraid of project 2025, buy a gun and develop deeper relationships with your neighbors. Voting against the person who already did January 6 won’t protect you from them.