• CoggyMcFee@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    When people talk about that Biden is going to lose and blame it on him, I really wonder if they understand what our system is and what the stakes are. We only lose if people decide not to vote for Biden. There are things that a good candidate can do to excite their voters and motivate people, but at the end of the day, anyone can see the options that lay before them and choose regardless of what the campaign does.

    You can wish that the campaign/candidate were better so that it made the job of motivating people easier. But if you are worried about the consequences of Trump winning this election, then you should be trying to motivate people to vote Biden. The article is to remind people that while Biden fared poorly at the debate, Trump was actually worse and is always worse. It seems to me that this is an honest point that underscores the need to vote Biden in this election, despite any of his shortcomings.

    We are driving down a road and a semi is coming straight at us at 100 mph. We can either veer off the road and damage or even total our car on whatever is there, or we can say “I shouldn’t have to veer off the road, there should be a shoulder”, or even “I didn’t even want to take this route in the first place but my wife insisted” as the truck hits us head on. There’s no good option, but there’s a clear survival option.

    • zbyte64@awful.systems
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      5 months ago

      To me it makes more sense to blame the weather than any person when it comes to voting patterns. But it would also make more sense to blame the Democratic party as a system than a single politician for a presidential loss.

      • CoggyMcFee@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Doesn’t it make the most sense to blame our election system that makes people feel like they don’t have enough choice or the ability to express their actual preference in an election?

        The Democratic Party is a product of this flawed system. You can make things a bit better, but at the end of the day, you have to have a party that is a coalition of disparate groups that choose a single person who has to win it all. So, a candidate that super excites and energizes one faction of the coalition is likely to be very unappealing to other factions. And most of the time you’re going to end up with someone who nobody is actually excited for. It would be great if Democrats had a preferential/ranked voting system for determining that one candidate, which allowed for many candidates, and for those candidates to stay in the race without the risk of cannibalizing others (e.g. having both Warren and Bernie wouldn’t detract from either one). However, even this isn’t determined centrally by the party, as each state gets to do voting the way they want to. So, it’s not an easy problem to solve.