Democratic Primary: Crisis of infinite candidates

On the other hand, I'm scared because this has revealed how many gullible, selfish, & short-sighted people are out there that I'm going to have to deal with once this election is over, and they can't just go back to hiding it now--they're out and proud of it and no matter how things turn out, that's gonna follow them for the next 10-20 years.
This is my second fear. It would be naive to think just because Biden is elected that the madness will end. Trumpism has made the worst of people come out to the surface, and you can't put that madness back into the box. Not when there are people out there willing to stroke and coddle those feelings for their own gain.

I worry about violence should Trump actually be indicted for crimes next year. Part of me wants him to be arrested and exposed, but I worry that will make him into a martyr for the right. I also worry about him just being left alone, because then he can just go make his own nationwide OANN and I will want to scream.
 
Even if Biden was a conservative, he'd still be a hundred times better than an actual fascist who wants to destroy democracy.

I absolutely hated George W as a president, he had many very serious issues, I still disagree with him on, probably, 90% of political subjects, but he was still ten times the president Trump is.

In France, they use a two - tier system. The last few times, the second round has been extreme-right vs conservative or vs socialist. And every time the voters of the other major party have voted for the non-nationalist. One with literal clothes pins on their bosses to indicate their disapproval, but they still fucking went and did it.
The willingness of self - proclaimed conservatives to vote for a non - conservative, and the willingness of moderate and left voters not to support someone they don't like, will both contribute to Trump's second term. You only have yourself to blame
Oh, make no mistake, I'm voting for Biden. But that's only because we live in a hellscape and democracy's a lie.
 
There's that other fear, too.

You know how there's that projecting thing where all the things they accuse everyone else of doing (or wanting to do) turn out to be something they've been doing (or gearing up to do) all along? Well...

turnabout.png


--Patrick
 
Likewise. And the fact that there are so many people who are not terrified, and who in fact desire that very thing terrifies me even more.
I mean, on the one hand, I'm scared of how many people are so gullible, selfish, & short-sighted that they want to vote for Trump.
On the other hand, I'm scared because this has revealed how many gullible, selfish, & short-sighted people are out there that I'm going to have to deal with once this election is over, and they can't just go back to hiding it now--they're out and proud of it and no matter how things turn out, that's gonna follow them for the next 10-20 years.

A vote for Trump is--LITERALLY--a choice made either out of ignorance or malice/greed. Or both. There is no other possibility. And anyone who says they are voting for Trump for some other reason is lying to your face and actually doing so for one of the reasons I just mentioned.

--Patrick
2016 tRump voters - Stupidity (can't help with that), Ignorance (cureable but not good), Willful Ignorance (this is bad) & Malice/Evil

2020 tRump voters - Stupidity (can't help with that), Willful Ignorance (at this point this is bluring into) Malice/Evil.
 

Dave

Staff member
I am one of those guys. I've always voted libertarian because I refused to compromise my principles.
And then Trump happened.
If you'd have told me 6 years ago I'd be voting for Biden for president, I'd have dismissed it out of hand as nonsense. But here I come, doing just that.
This gives me hope, you have no idea.
 
I feel like any actual libertarians (the ones that don't just want to murder minorities for any given reason) with any modicum of intelligence can see what a fucking disaster Trumpism is.

I believe Gas fits some of those criteria.

/winky face to denote that that is tongue is cheek ribbing and not actual meanness.
 
It's still a shitty choice, and it sucks that our system is set up so flawed that people have to compromise ideals because the person who could be elected again is a bat-shit insane person bent on destroying and demonizing half the country. I'll never gloat or make jokes about it, it truly sucks. I hope I have the same moral character to make the same choice should we be faced with an insane power hungry democrat who is fine with letting people die because they aren't in their voting bloc.
 
I used to rebel against the idea of “voting for the lesser of two evils.” I used to argue that it made our democracy stagnant, and that people shouldn’t be afraid to vote 3rd party if they didn’t like the main 2 options.

Now I think that is a very privileged argument to make. I think that argument takes on a whole new meaning when there is literal evil as one of the options.
 
I think this is 85% the influence of dating a Canadian.
Tsk. Exchange rates these days.
And @Krisken I assume the whole reason Biden was nominated at all is because they felt like whoever they nominated would be a shoe-in, so they picked the person who represented the ideals of what they wanted, knowing that their voters really would have no choice.

--Patrick
 
Tsk. Exchange rates these days.
And @Krisken I assume the whole reason Biden was nominated at all is because they felt like whoever they nominated would be a shoe-in, so they picked the person who represented the ideals of what they wanted, knowing that their voters really would have no choice.

--Patrick
Well, yeah. Just like last election with Hillary Clinton. The Democrats now are basically what the republicans used to be before the republicans went full pants on head crazy. They offer a few progressive ideas as lip service to appease the left but they are very much corporate capitalists.
 
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Well, yeah. Just like last election with Hillary Clinton. The Democrats now are basically what the republicans used to be before the republicans went full pants on head crazy. They offer a few progressive ideas as lip service to appeal the left but they are very much corporate capitalists.
The political spectrum has gotten wider but the political system still only supports two parties.
 
Well, yeah. Just like last election with Hillary Clinton. The Democrats now are basically what the republicans used to be before the republicans went full pants on head crazy. They offer a few progressive ideas as lip service to appease the left but they are very much corporate capitalists.
I said it before, I've said it a million times. In ANY other country, Democrats would be considered Conservative. Hell, even here in Canada, I would argue the Liberal party isn't as progressive as it claims to be. The NDP or Green parties are closer to being actually progressive.

I'd love to see America have at least one party similar to the NDP that have at least a small, fighting chance. But America is so locked into this woefully outdated two-party system, it's literally split the country in half. And even the Democrats are split because the Democrats aren't, as a whole, as progressive as they claim. There are some, like AOC, who represent actual progress. And even a lot of Democrats hate her. She'd make a heck of an NDP or Green Party leader, though, if it existed in the US.
 
I'm scared because this has revealed how many gullible, selfish, & short-sighted people are out there that I'm going to have to deal with once this election is over, and they can't just go back to hiding it now--they're out and proud of it and no matter how things turn out, that's gonna follow them for the next 10-20 years.
whales4jesus.jpg

"Yeah, nuke those gays before they bring that foreign gayness over here and infect us all with gay. I'm not gay, though. Never have been. Well maybe a little...but I can quit whenever I want!"

--Patrick
 
I just wanna call my shot right now and say that if Trump wins reelection, the democrats are going to nominate Mitt Romney in 2024
 

figmentPez

Staff member
I just wanna call my shot right now and say that if Trump wins reelection, the democrats are going to nominate Mitt Romney in 2024
Still a better choice than the Donald Trump he'd theoretically be "running against". (Assuming Ivanka doesn't have dear ol' dad bumped off so that she can take over the dictatorship.)
 
I’m not convinced of that. They spent a lot of effort putting Biden there already, would be a big waste of effort to switch now. Horses in midstream, and all that.

—Patrick
 
If that happens, there won't *be* a 2024.
While I'm inclined to agree with this, Romney has no chance as a dem. While there was definitely politicking behind the scenes with Biden, he was only the chosen candidate because he easily won South Carolina and was by far the main choice of older black people. There is no major segment of the Democratic Party that would like Romney, let alone arguably the dem's biggest demographic.
 
While I'm inclined to agree with this, Romney has no chance as a dem. While there was definitely politicking behind the scenes with Biden, he was only the chosen candidate because he easily won South Carolina and was by far the main choice of older black people. There is no major segment of the Democratic Party that would like Romney, let alone arguably the dem's biggest demographic.
I meant if the *other* thing happens. :Leyla:
 
if Trump wins, I can very well see the democratic party fracturing into a progressive party with AOC and Sanders, and a moderate-conservative party with Biden, Clinton, Kasich etc. Technically, a situation where the Trump Party gets 35%, the Democratic Republican Party gets 35%, and the Progressive party gets 30% wouldn't be so terrible...Except that your Electoral College and Senate are so badly designed and proportioned that that would mean the Trump Party would have supermajorities and control the White House.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
If Trump wins, it will only be a couple of years before Democrats like AOC and Sanders are arrested on bogus charges. Trump remaining in power is a countdown until the US has it's own Kristallnacht.
 
I see Europe and Canada rallying the rest of the world to intervene to take him out if he manages to "win".
Who? Brazil, China, Russia, India are all too happy to have Trump in the WH.
African dictators won't mind either.
Europe itself is facing more and more extremism ; mostly right wing, some left. The only difference is most of our systems are built to cope with multiple parties. It's the two-party systems where one is successfully hijacked by the extreme that things go wrong - the US and the UK primarily, though Italy and France aren't far behind, each in their own way. Poland, Hungary, Ukrain, Belarus, are all already led by crypto-fascists or despots.

We're currently living the end of a system and a world order. Trump is a symptom, not the disease. The Tea Party, conspiracy theories made mainstream, a public filled with propaganda, a global system built on exploiting the poor, first at home and later abroad.
The middle class of the twentieth century is disappearing again, and we're all feeling it. Either you can keep up, or your fall behind. The well-educated, rich, successful are a small group, the regular blue collar workers are being abused by the rich and, especially in the US, don't manage to work together or don't believe in socialist solutions anymore.
This probably started in the late nineties. These are death throes. It'll get worse - far worse, I think - before it gets better.
When we emerge on the other side, it'll be in a different world. We can hope, pray and work to make it a better world, but I honestly expect a distopia where large parts of the population will suffer, live in nearly uninhabitable areas, under a heavy boot which they be forced to lick for subsistence.
 
I honestly expect a distopia where large parts of the population will suffer, live in nearly uninhabitable areas, under a heavy boot which they be forced to lick for subsistence.
We've already been living this since the 80's, it's just become harder and harder to ignore over the last couple of decades.

--Patrick
 
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