A new set of Times/Siena polls, including one with The Philadelphia Inquirer, reveal an erosion of support for the president among young and nonwhite voters upset about the economy and Gaza.
This is extremely concerning, not just because of the reality, but the reaction to this news. We should all be terrified, not because young people are too stupid to vote against Republicans, but because Democrats are blaming voters for their fuckups. This is the same fucking bullshit Hillary pulled in 2016, and it’s why she shat the bed so hard and left us with the Cheeto Mussolini.
IT’S THE CANDIDATE’S JOB TO WIN VOTES!!
Joe Biden isn’t a reluctant general lifted out of obscurity by the adoring masses. He wanted this job, fought really hard to get it, and now it is his responsibility to win reelection. And it’s really important that he does, because Trump was a terrible president and will be worse the second time around.
If you’re mad about this news story, you should direct your anger at the party and the candidate. Being mad at Gen Z for choosing not to fall in line is like being mad at drivers in traffic. Sure, if we all slow down and leave more space to avoid excessive braking, we can avoid a lot of traffic and have more time to sing kumbaya together. That’s not a productive avenue for fixing the problem.
Donald Trump is literally on trial for fraud. This shouldn’t even be close. If Biden can’t win in a landslide, it’s because Joe Biden sucks, not because the youth are entitled, bourgeois, ignorant, lazy, or any of the other insults being thrown around in this comment thread.
Counterpoint: If Biden can pass the biggest infrastructure bill since the New Deal, the biggest climate bill ever, erase tens of billions of dollars of student debt, pull us out of the pandemic economy without a major crash, put together a global coalition to help Ukraine fight against Russian imperialism, reschedule cannabis, etc., then I’m going to blame the stupid voters for not (a) recognizing his achievements and (b) not recognizing the threat that Trump and the Republicans pose to our democracy and the global climate.
Biden has a razor-thin majority in the Senate and has no control of the House. Trump has already personally appointed 33% of the SCOTUS, and has another 66% eating out of the palm of his hand. And people are going to hand our country to the Republicans again (even though they are openly speaking out against democracy every fucking day) because… why…? Because there isn’t peace in the middle east and somehow that’s Biden’s fault?
I’ll accept your premise at face value, let’s say he has accomplished a lot. Personally, I’d like to see him doing more, but let’s set that aside and say that his accomplishments would be enough to win the support of the progressive youths, and yet it hasn’t. The problem is still not with the “stupid” voters failing to recognize Biden’s achievements or the existential threat Trump represents. It’s still Biden’s job to sell it to the voters. It’s up to Biden and his campaign to put those issues front and center, to talk about what he’s trying to do and what his vision is for America. If he isn’t getting the message out, then he is failing at one of the critical aspects of his job.
But really, I don’t think the problem is messaging. I think the problem is that Biden isn’t the guy people want him to be. He’s a moderate neoliberal who backs progressive issues when he believes it will help him in the polls. I think he doesn’t put those issues front and center or push very hard or make persuasive arguments because he doesn’t want to piss off the center (or his donors).
Biden has a problem with the House. Why hasn’t he done more to push progressive candidates in downticket races? Biden has a problem with the court. Why isn’t he packing the court and working to eliminate corruption? We still have a massive infrastructure debt, catastrophic climate change, crippling economic inequality.
Yes, his half measures are better than the swift kick in the balls that comprises the Republican agenda. But he needs to recognize that he isn’t fighting hard enough to win the support of people who are looking down the barrel of extinction. That’s not hyperbole. My generation doesn’t expect to retire, and the next generation doesn’t expect humanity to survive. They’re not having kids because the future is that bleak.
Are they stupid? Sure, of course. Kids are often stupid. We were stupid. Our parents were stupid. If Biden is shocked that he has to convince stupid people to vote, then who’s really stupid? Sometimes you gotta make the airplane noise to get kids to eat their vegetables. Biden isn’t even trying, though. He’s blaming them, calling them anti-Semitic, and acting entitled to our votes.
He needs to win. You think it’s frustrating to see stupid people vote for a third party in protest? Imagine how frustrating it is to watch the Biden campaign drive young voters towards third parties.
If Biden is shocked that he has to convince stupid people to vote, then who’s really stupid? Sometimes you gotta make the airplane noise to get kids to eat their vegetables.
I like this bit in particular.
Biden isn’t even trying, though. He’s blaming them, calling them anti-Semitic, and acting entitled to our votes.
I don’t really blame Biden. He’s part of a giant political machine that has been shit at messaging since 1980. Democrats seem to be lead by the sort of try-hard, type-A, rule-follower nerds who were in Student Government in high school. They can’t relate to normal folks, and then resort to insults and guilt to get them to do something.
I believe, if I were an oligarch, I would want to craft an opposition party that looked and acted exactly the way Democrats have since Carter. I would push out progressives and independents, and I would back centrists and pragmatists who claim we can’t really have anything good unless we first settle for better.
The problem is that, for the first time possibly ever, that is precisely the situation we have. If Trump wins, we’re all of us fucked. Biden is the only man who ca possibly beat him.
And yes I can blame Biden for his failings. He’s been a politician for longer than I’ve been alive. He should be better at this.
I guess we can blame Biden. But it could be literally any Democrat in there doing the exact same thing because the political consultants they hire are so ridiculously out of touch.
Nope, but that was a nice try to trivialize the actual problems.
The problem is Biden sending American weapons, paid for with American tax money, to another country to use to indiscriminately kill civilians.
I’m not even going to claim that they want to kill all the gazans.
They were too loose with how they were using them. Too many civilians were being killed, 35,000 minus 15,000, using Israel’s terrorist death count, leaves 20,000 innocents killed in about 6-7 months
It’s the news media’s job to report the reality of what’s going on, not just filter people’s explicit-propaganda-created misunderstandings of what’s going on through the most slanted methodology they can possibly find and then report it back to us like a money fueled human-centipede loop, but what can you do. We all have bad days doing our jobs sometimes.
The news media is a for-profit industry with a fiduciary duty to shareholders to sell the news as a commodity. If you expect anything noble, moral, or objective, you’re being naive.
The news media is a for-profit industry with a fiduciary duty to shareholders to sell the news as a commodity.
Absolutely true, and it’s one of the major problems with it in this country, because that’s the wrong model for it, and it more or less can’t exist in any other form.
It’s one among many reasons I regard the OP article with some sadness and suspicion; because I do not expect anything moral or objective (let alone noble) to come out of the US news industry the majority of the time.
If Biden can’t win in a landslide, it’s because Joe Biden sucks, not because the youth are entitled, bourgeois, ignorant, lazy, or any of the other insults being thrown around in this comment thread.
I don’t think “kids these days” are entitled, lazy or ignorant but to a degree both these types of things can be true. Biden is unappealing, yes, but everywhere I turn are people arguing that both parties are the same and that Democrats have done nothing for them. In these cases, when pressed it turns out they just don’t actually know one way or the other. It’s a generalized sentiment of “politicians bad” and many are surprised to learn of even a handful of things Dems and Biden have done that they support.
So I guess you could argue that Democrats suck at marketing. But I’d also argue that many of us suck at understanding politics.
This is extremely concerning, not just because of the reality, but the reaction to this news. We should all be terrified, not because young people are too stupid to vote against Republicans, but because Democrats are blaming voters for their fuckups. This is the same fucking bullshit Hillary pulled in 2016, and it’s why she shat the bed so hard and left us with the Cheeto Mussolini.
IT’S THE CANDIDATE’S JOB TO WIN VOTES!!
Joe Biden isn’t a reluctant general lifted out of obscurity by the adoring masses. He wanted this job, fought really hard to get it, and now it is his responsibility to win reelection. And it’s really important that he does, because Trump was a terrible president and will be worse the second time around.
If you’re mad about this news story, you should direct your anger at the party and the candidate. Being mad at Gen Z for choosing not to fall in line is like being mad at drivers in traffic. Sure, if we all slow down and leave more space to avoid excessive braking, we can avoid a lot of traffic and have more time to sing kumbaya together. That’s not a productive avenue for fixing the problem.
Donald Trump is literally on trial for fraud. This shouldn’t even be close. If Biden can’t win in a landslide, it’s because Joe Biden sucks, not because the youth are entitled, bourgeois, ignorant, lazy, or any of the other insults being thrown around in this comment thread.
Counterpoint: If Biden can pass the biggest infrastructure bill since the New Deal, the biggest climate bill ever, erase tens of billions of dollars of student debt, pull us out of the pandemic economy without a major crash, put together a global coalition to help Ukraine fight against Russian imperialism, reschedule cannabis, etc., then I’m going to blame the stupid voters for not (a) recognizing his achievements and (b) not recognizing the threat that Trump and the Republicans pose to our democracy and the global climate.
Biden has a razor-thin majority in the Senate and has no control of the House. Trump has already personally appointed 33% of the SCOTUS, and has another 66% eating out of the palm of his hand. And people are going to hand our country to the Republicans again (even though they are openly speaking out against democracy every fucking day) because… why…? Because there isn’t peace in the middle east and somehow that’s Biden’s fault?
I’ll accept your premise at face value, let’s say he has accomplished a lot. Personally, I’d like to see him doing more, but let’s set that aside and say that his accomplishments would be enough to win the support of the progressive youths, and yet it hasn’t. The problem is still not with the “stupid” voters failing to recognize Biden’s achievements or the existential threat Trump represents. It’s still Biden’s job to sell it to the voters. It’s up to Biden and his campaign to put those issues front and center, to talk about what he’s trying to do and what his vision is for America. If he isn’t getting the message out, then he is failing at one of the critical aspects of his job.
But really, I don’t think the problem is messaging. I think the problem is that Biden isn’t the guy people want him to be. He’s a moderate neoliberal who backs progressive issues when he believes it will help him in the polls. I think he doesn’t put those issues front and center or push very hard or make persuasive arguments because he doesn’t want to piss off the center (or his donors).
Biden has a problem with the House. Why hasn’t he done more to push progressive candidates in downticket races? Biden has a problem with the court. Why isn’t he packing the court and working to eliminate corruption? We still have a massive infrastructure debt, catastrophic climate change, crippling economic inequality.
Yes, his half measures are better than the swift kick in the balls that comprises the Republican agenda. But he needs to recognize that he isn’t fighting hard enough to win the support of people who are looking down the barrel of extinction. That’s not hyperbole. My generation doesn’t expect to retire, and the next generation doesn’t expect humanity to survive. They’re not having kids because the future is that bleak.
Are they stupid? Sure, of course. Kids are often stupid. We were stupid. Our parents were stupid. If Biden is shocked that he has to convince stupid people to vote, then who’s really stupid? Sometimes you gotta make the airplane noise to get kids to eat their vegetables. Biden isn’t even trying, though. He’s blaming them, calling them anti-Semitic, and acting entitled to our votes.
He needs to win. You think it’s frustrating to see stupid people vote for a third party in protest? Imagine how frustrating it is to watch the Biden campaign drive young voters towards third parties.
I like this bit in particular.
I don’t really blame Biden. He’s part of a giant political machine that has been shit at messaging since 1980. Democrats seem to be lead by the sort of try-hard, type-A, rule-follower nerds who were in Student Government in high school. They can’t relate to normal folks, and then resort to insults and guilt to get them to do something.
I believe, if I were an oligarch, I would want to craft an opposition party that looked and acted exactly the way Democrats have since Carter. I would push out progressives and independents, and I would back centrists and pragmatists who claim we can’t really have anything good unless we first settle for better.
The problem is that, for the first time possibly ever, that is precisely the situation we have. If Trump wins, we’re all of us fucked. Biden is the only man who ca possibly beat him.
And yes I can blame Biden for his failings. He’s been a politician for longer than I’ve been alive. He should be better at this.
I guess we can blame Biden. But it could be literally any Democrat in there doing the exact same thing because the political consultants they hire are so ridiculously out of touch.
Nope, but that was a nice try to trivialize the actual problems.
The problem is Biden sending American weapons, paid for with American tax money, to another country to use to indiscriminately kill civilians.
I’m not even going to claim that they want to kill all the gazans.
They were too loose with how they were using them. Too many civilians were being killed, 35,000 minus 15,000, using Israel’s terrorist death count, leaves 20,000 innocents killed in about 6-7 months
It’s just a little genocide though! /s
It’s the news media’s job to report the reality of what’s going on, not just filter people’s explicit-propaganda-created misunderstandings of what’s going on through the most slanted methodology they can possibly find and then report it back to us like a money fueled human-centipede loop, but what can you do. We all have bad days doing our jobs sometimes.
The news media is a for-profit industry with a fiduciary duty to shareholders to sell the news as a commodity. If you expect anything noble, moral, or objective, you’re being naive.
Absolutely true, and it’s one of the major problems with it in this country, because that’s the wrong model for it, and it more or less can’t exist in any other form.
It’s one among many reasons I regard the OP article with some sadness and suspicion; because I do not expect anything moral or objective (let alone noble) to come out of the US news industry the majority of the time.
Well said!
I don’t think “kids these days” are entitled, lazy or ignorant but to a degree both these types of things can be true. Biden is unappealing, yes, but everywhere I turn are people arguing that both parties are the same and that Democrats have done nothing for them. In these cases, when pressed it turns out they just don’t actually know one way or the other. It’s a generalized sentiment of “politicians bad” and many are surprised to learn of even a handful of things Dems and Biden have done that they support.
So I guess you could argue that Democrats suck at marketing. But I’d also argue that many of us suck at understanding politics.
A wise philosopher once said, “Peoples is peoples.”
Politicians need to win votes. Whinging about a lack of support in a key demographic just comes off as entitlement.