I just wish Biden and the DNC would pull their heads out of their asses and treat the threat of a fascist party controlling the government as seriously as Macron and his party in France are treating that same threat in the French elections that are happening right now. Now is the time for pragmatic, tactical political triage. It is absolutely not the time for ego, hubris, and sunk-cost fallacy.

And nothing of value was lost

Yeah - and for that reason I downvoted the post

Well, they run the risk of catching some high velocity lead poisoning if they keep this shit up too much longer.

Serious question: can we do a kickstarter with the express purpose of outright bribing the Supreme Court justices who are clearly bribable to be, like, not massive antidemocratic fascist assholes? It might work for Thomas, but it also could potentially work for Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Roberts.

At this point, I’m starting to get get really worried that Biden might go down as the most catastrophic example of the sunk cost fallacy in modern history. His Friday interview only intensified my concerns about him - that, I should add, are not centered around his age, but the fact that he appears to be largely out of touch with the core domestic issues that he must fight against in this election.

This is a concern that I’ve had since 2016, and is one of the main reasons I didn’t like him in the primary back then. Like, he was saying a lot of the right things, but I frankly didn’t believe him… and that’s kinda panned out for pretty much his whole term as far as I’m concerned.

Like, yeah, he’s had some policy wins, but none of them are actually addressing the root cause of the issues we’re facing recently: fascism is rising, and we need to build a firewall against it. That’s it. That’s the overriding concern. And it feels like he’s just done nothing meaningful to address anything close to the root cause. He’s so far up his own ass about his vaunted “ability to compromise” that he has failed to understand that a large swath of the right wing of American politics have effectively devolved into what I would describe as legislative and cultural terrorism. He doesn’t - and, perhaps, can’t - understand that we’re not playing poker anymore. He keeps bringing a deck of cards to the gunfight that American domestic politics have devolved into.

If he had his head in the game with regard to how serious this needs to be taken, I could forgive a lot of other failings. But he clearly doesn’t have his head in the game. He thinks it’ll be fine if he “gives it his all”, ignoring that his “all” really doesn’t appear to be enough in this scenario - yes, somewhat due to age, endurance, and mental acuity, but much more importantly due to his frame of mind, ego, and hubris.

TL;DR I am very fucking concerned that he just doesn’t understand how serious the consequences of failure are here, and his Friday interview kinda solidified my concerns on that front.

I hope you’re right, but I don’t think you are.

I don’t expect to have meaningful or fair elections for the foreseeable future if the fascists win in November, to the point that I have contingency plans for various scenarios in that domain.

Eh. Not if Biden just says “no. Fuck you. That was an official act.” And then just categorically ignore the court. Which is precisely what Trump would do if presented with a mirrored version of the situation.

Man, that sucks that your shop union didn’t stand with the rest.

At any rate: solidarity forever ✊

I should also add that his ABC interview on Friday only intensified my concerns. To me, all it really communicated is that he actually IS so wrapped up in his own ego and hubris that he doesn’t actually get that this is an existential election, and that the consequences for failure are well and truly catastrophic. Like, there’s a good chance we won’t have functional democratic processes anymore if he looses. But he thinks that’s fine because “he will have given it his all”, ignoring the fact that “his all” is shuffling around, trying to compromise with fascists, and bringing a deck of cards to the gunfight that American politics have devolved into these days.

Really, it’s an evolution of the concerns I had in the 2020 elections, which have kind of proven out to be completely true: that despite some clear domestic policy successes, he’s more or less out of touch with the fact that he’s playing with an absurdly outdated rule book, and does not seem to understand that the rules have fundamentally changed. He doesn’t get that a lot of his old bipartisan negotiating tactics are straight up self-defeating these days.

I am genuinely and deeply worried at this point that his refusal to see past his own personal situation in all of this is going to lead to the conclusion of the American experiment in its current incarnation, and replace it with something far, far darker.

Edit: if you’re downvoting this, I am actually genuinely curious as to which parts of this you disagree with, or think are wrongheaded.

It’s pretty goddamn baffling and more than a little bit infuriating, to be honest

That’s ok the repeated Cat5+s will teach the children anecdotally

Good bot

Our political tribalism seems way worse than the UK though, and the UK has it pretty bad in that regard.

Great. That’ll mean absolutely fuck-all if the fascists gain power in November.

Also time for napsies in the after noon

Also no meetings before 11 in the morning

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why he should not be the candidate. Not because he’s old or whatever. Because he does not understand that if he loses, we fucking lose democracy. Not a joke; not hyperbole. We get to have Russian-style “elections” for the foreseeable future.

He is so fucking wrapped up in his own ego and hubris that he is going to drive us straight into the fucking wall. He’s so far up his own ass about his ability to compromise that he can’t comprehend that fascist elements of the Republican Party (but I repeat myself) have no intention whatsoever of compromising or negotiating once they really get their hands on the reins of power again.

He is betraying his oath of office. He’s not meaningfully protecting and defending the constitution from threats foreign and domestic, and he hasn’t done so effectively for basically his entire term. As a historical parallel, it’s like a mashup of the US in 1859 and Germany in 1932. It’s baffling, infuriating, and horrifying, in equal measure. His head is demonstrably not in the game - and it seems he doesn’t even understand the game he’s playing (that’s not a “he’s old” quip - I’m talking about the fact that he continues to bring a deck of cards to the shitshow gunfight that is modern American politics and expects to get good results).

I’ll vote for whoever is opposing Trump on the ticket. Seriously, I’ll vote for a fucking sock puppet.

The problem I have with Biden at this point is NOT that he’s old, or possibly not all there.

The problem I have with Biden at this point is that he’s clearly staunchly opposed to using the (very dangerous) gift that the Supreme Court gave him with the “official act” immunity ruling in literally any way, shape, or form. He clearly does not have the willpower or balls to do fucking anything meaningful in a truly existential crisis of American democracy. That - and that alone - makes him entirely unfit for the presidency in my eyes. He is, and has been for most of his term, abrogating his oath of office to protect and defend the constitution from enemies foreign and domestic. He’s going to stand around, do fuck all, shake some hands, and suddenly we’ll find ourselves in an authoritarian dictatorship because he didn’t want to do anything that was tOo diVisIVe. The fascists are going to march in, and he’s going to shake their hand and try to negotiate. Fascists who hold power, notably, tend not to negotiate.