Political Memes

I just hope Trump is dead by 2026.

There could always be some other MAGA asshole to fill the void, but the dissolution of Trump's cult of personality would be a crippling blow.

Biden never was going to be a great president, lacking a a majority in both houses means you burn up too much political capital to get anything done that doesn't already have broad bipartisan support. And with how divided politics is today compared to any point in history where we had a great president, there is no such thing as bipartisan today.

I’m fine with how Afghanistan went. The military would have dragged it out for another 10 years. I’d much rather have a suboptimal quick withdrawal.

Yep. She's not my ideal candidate, but she is better in every single way when compared to Trump.

Since it's easier to break things than to maintain, fix, or create, the choice is obvious.

You and I have very different ideas of what a good sandwich looks like. I'd still vote for it though.

She used to be a prosecutor. That means she can see things from both sides and look at things objectively and not make rash decisions. It's a good quality for a president.

Start with what makes a good president? Obviously there's the issues and all that which people focus on, but that's subject to debate. Objectively, some qualities are definitely good, like being good at both urgent and non-urgent decision making, good at managing/organizing/handling chaos, capable of outsmarting adversaries, being a unifying force rather than a divisive one. Just to name a few. So let's look at those:

• Decision-making: She's relatively young compared to recent presidents, definitely a bit more in touch with modern reality and less tied to the old ways of doing politics. She's faced a tough choice with her running mate, and while Walz has been criticized by some, given the short timeframe it's clear she at least didn't fuck it up. Her debate prep clearly succeeded, and she's avoided any scandals despite clearly Republicans trying very hard to find them. All of these show a record of decent to good decisions.
• Managing, etc Obviously her campaign started in the midst of chaos, and there were a lot of fears regarding that transition. And it went probably better than anyone expected, with everyone quickly gaining confidence in her.
• Outsmarting adversaries She did a better job at this in the debate than any candidate in my memory.
• Unifying force Again I'll refer to her getting everyone behind her after Biden dropped, while also keeping Biden's support. Don't underestimate how unlikely that seemed before it happened.

I'll avoid comparing Trump who is obviously severely deficient in all of these respects. But I could go further and say she obviously compares favorably to Biden too, and compared to Obama, I'd give her an edge on outsmarting adversaries and managing, and Obama probably gets the edge on the other 2. But we'll see.

Well, Al Gore was voted president, and he didn't make any objectionable decisions while George Bush was living in his house and working in his office.

Grant's administration was deeply imperfect - corruption ran deep - but he eradicated the first KKK. I feel like that's an objective good, and anyone who disagrees isn't worth listening to.

George S. Washington

If it's not been posted already...

https://theintercept.com/2024/09/10/polls-arms-embargo-israel-weapons-gaza/

Banning sales of arms to Israel would not only attract a huge proportion of otherwise reluctant leftists, but might even steal votes from Trump as a small but not insignificant number of voters have been fooled by his 'started no wars' con. The idea that doing so would lose some key demographic is clearly not supported by the data.

But the Democratic strategists are not idiots. They must know this. So one of two things is the case; the polling is wrong, or the Democrats have absolutely no desire to move leftward on this and are willing to risk a Trump win to hold out on their position.

We can rule out the first because if the Democrats had better poll data they'd share it. Nothing to lose by doing so.

So we're left with the second.

Odd then that the online vitriol is delivered not to the Democrats for cynically risking a Trump victory, but to leftists for being opposed to genocide.

The rich can also be eaten.

Voting matters. Don't be so defeatist that you stop trying.

It is a sham democracy, but the votes do still matter. Worst case, we have a choice between half assed climate policy that at least acknowledges it needs attention, or climate accelerationism. We have the choice between half assed women's rights, or women being pushed further towards being second class citizens. We have the choice between half assed protections for the queer community, or the continued dehumanization and harm towards the queer community.

The list goes on. The two candidates aren't equal.