Big Picture American Politics

[jimmy jazz]

I'm honestly curious how much of you not liking Biden has anything to do with Gaza. I feel like Genocide Joe is an effective Trump style nickname but nothing more than that really. But it seems like a virtue signal to me.

Not a lot really. I don't see how anyone can defend Israel. Plenty of footage of them targeting civilians and blowing them to bits as if it's GTA.

[Guybrush]

I fully admit my ignorance on this but is it not a stretch to assume this conflict would've looked any better if it had been Trump instead of Biden as pres?

[SGR]

I fully admit my ignorance on this but is it not a stretch to assume this conflict would've looked any better if it had been Trump instead of Biden as pres?

I'm assuming you're talking about Israel-Hamas, and yes, it is a stretch to assume it would've looked any better if it had been Trump instead of Biden leading the helm. It very well could've been worse. It's all speculative. It's similar to the right's criticism of how Biden botched the Afghanistan pull-out, with the conveyed assumption that it would've gone better under Trump. All speculative. With US Presidents though, it's always 'the buck stops here', and the opposition party to whoever holds the executive branch will let no crisis go to waste in playing the finger-pointing blame game. Biden's current political albatross though is that its his own party that's vastly criticizing how Israel-Hamas is being handled. For example, to my knowledge, Trump hasn't yet called Biden 'Genocide Joe'.

[Jwb]

Yeah, and Genocide Joe is honestly a more damning and useful nickname for attacking Biden than anything Trump has come up with for him. He probably would love to use it against him but that would be implicitly accusing Israel of genocide lol. So there's some collateral damage involved in using that nickname.


The reality is, I do think Biden is weak on foreign policy but no more so than in the typical sense. It just seems worse because the world it's on fire and he happens to be president.

I think a lot of Republicans actually have the mentality that if Trump were in office, Putin wouldn't have invaded Ukraine. Iran would be dealt with and peace in the Middle East would have been secured through the Abraham accords. The attacks on Oct 7 would have never occurred, and he would have still pulled out of Afghanistan as he planned to do but somehow without the country quickly being taken over by the Taliban.

I think the reality of the situation is our position in the world has been declining since 9/11, and that didn't stop during Trump. No significant new wars being launched is a matter of historical circumstance. But the situation continued to deteriorate in all of the key strategic  regions, including Ukraine and the Middle East. Bush laid the ground work for Obama who then laid it for Trump who laid it for Biden. Each leader has, through their actions and policies, continued us along roughly the same trajectory we've been on for over 20 years. But yes. At the same time any crisis can always be expected to be weaponized against you, and if you don't do the same back in response to your opponents then you might be playing a losing strategy.

The people on the left who are calling him Genocide Joe, on the other hand, are less interested in Bidens electoral success than they are in applying pressure to the United States to shift their policy towards Israel. In this case it's not a cynical move. The prospect of trying to appeal to them to look the other way on Gaza for the sake of getting Biden 4 more years just fundamentally misses what their political priorities are.

[Lexi Darling]

Biden's current actions/inaction is what is harming his slight chances of winning. The protest vote isn't. Well that's not true, the protest vote in Michigan is going to tank Biden. Huge Muslim community there and actually helped him to win against Trump last time isn't voting for him so there is that.

This is where I think we might just have to agree to disagree, then. Maybe I'm wrong, but based on 2020 I think it could be very possible for Biden to win 2024 if all the protest non-voters in crucial states would vote for Biden instead of throwing their votes away. And nobody's going to convince me that Biden winning is a worse outcome than Trump. Right now those are our two possible outcomes. It sucks but one of them is going to happen.

I don't want to come off like I'm finger pointing. But as someone who will be very directly harmed the anti-LGBT policies Trump and Project 2025 have spoken on and outlined, it just bums me out that people I thought were in my corner (including some irl friends) are just going to let this country get torpedoed into christofascist hell.

[SGR]

Yeah, and Genocide Joe is honestly a more damning and useful nickname for attacking Biden than anything Trump has come up with for him. He probably would love to use it against him but that would be implicitly accusing Israel of genocide lol. So there's some collateral damage involved in using that nickname.


The reality is, I do think Biden is weak on foreign policy but no more so than in the typical sense. It just seems worse because the world it's on fire and he happens to be president.

I think a lot of Republicans actually have the mentality that if Trump were in office, Putin wouldn't have invaded Ukraine. Iran would be dealt with and peace in the Middle East would have been secured through the Abraham accords. The attacks on Oct 7 would have never occurred, and he would have still pulled out of Afghanistan as he planned to do but somehow without the country quickly being taken over by the Taliban.

I think the reality of the situation is our position in the world has been declining since 9/11, and that didn't stop during Trump. No significant new wars being launched is a matter of historical circumstance. But the situation continued to deteriorate in all of the key strategic  regions, including Ukraine and the Middle East. Bush laid the ground work for Obama who then laid it for Trump who laid it for Biden. Each leader has, through their actions and policies, continued us along roughly the same trajectory we've been on for over 20 years. But yes. At the same time any crisis can always be expected to be weaponized against you, and if you don't do the same back in response to your opponents then you might be playing a losing strategy.

The people on the left who are calling him Genocide Joe, on the other hand, are less interested in Bidens electoral success than they are in applying pressure to the United States to shift their policy towards Israel. In this case it's not a cynical move. The prospect of trying to appeal to them to look the other way on Gaza for the sake of getting Biden 4 more years just fundamentally misses what their political priorities are.

I agree with all of this. I think some credit has to be given to progressives for sticking with their convictions in their criticism of Trump and Biden. In 2016, Bernie kinda got shafted by the DNC, and some progressives decided to punish the Democrats by either sitting the election out, or voting third party, or in some cases, even voting for Trump. I think that's a significant reason why Trump was able to win (though of course, not the only reason). In 2020 though, the Dems were successfully able to rally the progressives to vote for Joe, even though he wasn't perfect, to get rid of Trump, and at least move the country closer towards where some of their political priorities are. Now it seems like the pendulum is starting to shift again - and I think the Dems are going to have a more difficult time rallying progressives to get a turnout like they did in 2020 - I'm sure recency bias plays a role in that too. But really, the only way to convince the Dems to change their political priorities is to remind them that they need progressives if they want to win elections. I don't think "At least we're not as bad as the other guys!" is a viable long-term strategy to get turnout from progressives (however, it's been largely viable in the last 8 years). How the Dems can successfully court both progressives and independents effectively will remain an uncertain tightrope that they'll have to walk. I think the progressives who are casting protest votes (or not planning to vote) in crucial swing states are playing with a dangerous gambit - the idea that if things get worse in the short-term (for Democrats/Progressives), they'll get better in the long-term.

[Jwb]

This is where I think we might just have to agree to disagree, then. Maybe I'm wrong, but based on 2020 I think it could be very possible for Biden to win 2024 if all the protest non-voters in crucial states would vote for Biden instead of throwing their votes away. And nobody's going to convince me that Biden winning is a worse outcome than Trump. Right now those are our two possible outcomes. It sucks but one of them is going to happen.

I don't want to come off like I'm finger pointing. But as someone who will be very directly harmed the anti-LGBT policies Trump and Project 2025 have spoken on and outlined, it just bums me out that people I thought were in my corner (including some irl friends) are just going to let this country get torpedoed into christofascist hell.

The fact of the matter is you can't simultaneously concede that Biden is supporting a genocide and then castigate people for trying to apply pressure to try to get him to stop. And in order for that effort to have any real teeth, there has to be leverage that you can employ to potentially hurt Biden. That's the only type of pressure that actually means anything, and when you are talking about a  supposed genocide taking place, it really doesn't make sense to forgo applying that pressure.


The only argument we ever hear is that Trump is worse. If you don't get why that's such an unsatisfying answer at this point, I don't know what to tell you. You can't have genocide on the one side of the equation and then still expect to get endless purchase from referring to "kids in cages" or "trans genocide" etc. Once you accept that a genocide is happening, you can't heighten the stakes any more than that by appealing back to how evil Trump is. 

This is a serious rhetorical issue for the democrats and their supporters to deal with at the moment. I actually basically agree with you and Marie that ultimately Trump would end up doing nothing to help that situation while making other situations here worse. But you kind of have to already believe that for that to seem convincing. It's just a weak counter argument rhetorically. The only effective counter is to portray him as not supporting genocide. Once you concede on that point, the appeals to evil orange man seem rather impotent.

[Marie Monday]

I agree with all of this. I think some credit has to be given to progressives for sticking with their convictions in their criticism of Trump and Biden. In 2016, Bernie kinda got shafted by the DNC, and some progressives decided to punish the Democrats by either sitting the election out, or voting third party, or in some cases, even voting for Trump. I think that's a significant reason why Trump was able to win (though of course, not the only reason). In 2020 though, the Dems were successfully able to rally the progressives to vote for Joe, even though he wasn't perfect, to get rid of Trump, and at least move the country closer towards where some of their political priorities are. Now it seems like the pendulum is starting to shift again - and I think the Dems are going to have a more difficult time rallying progressives to get a turnout like they did in 2020 - I'm sure recency bias plays a role in that too. But really, the only way to convince the Dems to change their political priorities is to remind them that they need progressives if they want to win elections. I don't think "At least we're not as bad as the other guys!" is a viable long-term strategy to get turnout from progressives (however, it's been largely viable in the last 8 years). How the Dems can successfully court both progressives and independents effectively will remain an uncertain tightrope that they'll have to walk. I think the progressives who are casting protest votes (or not planning to vote) in crucial swing states are playing with a dangerous gambit - the idea that if things get worse in the short-term (for Democrats/Progressives), they'll get better in the long-term.

I've mostly been voicing my revulsion to trump so far but I agree with all this too

[Jwb]

I agree with all of this. I think some credit has to be given to progressives for sticking with their convictions in their criticism of Trump and Biden. In 2016, Bernie kinda got shafted by the DNC, and some progressives decided to punish the Democrats by either sitting the election out, or voting third party, or in some cases, even voting for Trump. I think that's a significant reason why Trump was able to win (though of course, not the only reason). In 2020 though, the Dems were successfully able to rally the progressives to vote for Joe, even though he wasn't perfect, to get rid of Trump, and at least move the country closer towards where some of their political priorities are. Now it seems like the pendulum is starting to shift again - and I think the Dems are going to have a more difficult time rallying progressives to get a turnout like they did in 2020 - I'm sure recency bias plays a role in that too. But really, the only way to convince the Dems to change their political priorities is to remind them that they need progressives if they want to win elections. I don't think "At least we're not as bad as the other guys!" is a viable long-term strategy to get turnout from progressives (however, it's been largely viable in the last 8 years). How the Dems can successfully court both progressives and independents effectively will remain an uncertain tightrope that they'll have to walk. I think the progressives who are casting protest votes (or not planning to vote) in crucial swing states are playing with a dangerous gambit - the idea that if things get worse in the short-term (for Democrats/Progressives), they'll get better in the long-term.

i don't know that Bernie bros actually did turn to Trump in any significant number. I've heard that claimed vaguely but I'd like to see numbers on that.

In any case, struggling to get people to turn out, especially young people and more progressive types, is indeed a constant theme with the Democrats struggling to mobilize a certain portion of their base.

I'm not so convinced there was a winning move for Biden here vis a vis Israel, but the impression he has given is of someone who is just stuck in some unquestioning status quo logic of always supporting Israel. That logic was tolerable to more people before this recent war. As the body count rises that position is just becoming more and more untenable. But the Democrats are fucked both ways on this issue because the right has always weaponized the perception that the democrats were less loyal to Israel against them, to the largely sympathetic-to-Israel American public. But as the war potentially changes the level of sympathy people have, that changes that calculus. And Biden has just been slow to adjust.

[SGR]

i don't know that Bernie bros actually did turn to Trump in any significant number. I've heard that claimed vaguely but I'd like to see numbers on that.

I remembered reading about it years ago, but your question here is a valid one - so I had to look it up to see if my memory was true - according to NPR, who links to a survey over around 50,000 people, a little over 1 in 10 Sanders supporters ended up voting for Trump in the general. Might not seem like a whole lot, but when the electoral margins were as slim as they were in 2016, I think it's significant.

In any case, struggling to get people to turn out, especially young people and more progressive types, is indeed a constant theme with the Democrats struggling to mobilize a certain portion of their base.

I'm not so convinced there was a winning move for Biden here vis a vis Israel, but the impression he has given is of someone who is just stuck in some unquestioning status quo logic of always supporting Israel. That logic was tolerable to more people before this recent war. As the body count rises that position is just becoming more and more untenable. But the Democrats are fucked both ways on this issue because the right has always weaponized the perception that the democrats were less loyal to Israel against them, to the largely sympathetic-to-Israel American public. But as the war potentially changes the level of sympathy people have, that changes that calculus. And Biden has just been slow to adjust.

I agree on all points. The Democrat leadership, in my opinion, is missing a lot of youth and vitality. Regardless of anyone's opinions of her, AOC represents the kind of energy the Dems are going to need going forward. I can't blame young people for not getting excited to go vote for Democrats when so many of their primary establishment messengers are completely out-of-touch septuagenarians and octogenarians like Biden, Pelosi, and Hillary. It appears Obama is getting more involved recently, and he's still favorably viewed (last I checked) by the Democrat base, so they're gonna need to lean on him a lot.

I feel like Israel has, for a long time, had overwhelming support and sympathy from the western public because of the Holocaust. After October 7th, it feels like they've been given a lot of leeway and wiggle room as a result of that long-held sympathy (and of course, a long military alliance with the US). But in some ways, it feels like with what they're doing in Gaza, they're ready to completely cash that Holocaust ticket. Because after this, when people appeal back to the Holocaust in defense or sympathy-garnering for Jews/Israelis, people will respond with: "Well what about your genocide in Gaza?". Depending on how things go for Israel, the ticket might be worth cashing for them in the long run. But at some point, when they conduct themselves like they have been, that ticket isn't going to cash in the minds of the public anymore. But I agree that Biden is in a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' kind of position.

[Lexi Darling]

The fact of the matter is you can't simultaneously concede that Biden is supporting a genocide and then castigate people for trying to apply pressure to try to get him to stop. And in order for that effort to have any real teeth, there has to be leverage that you can employ to potentially hurt Biden. That's the only type of pressure that actually means anything, and when you are talking about a  supposed genocide taking place, it really doesn't make sense to forgo applying that pressure.


The only argument we ever hear is that Trump is worse. If you don't get why that's such an unsatisfying answer at this point, I don't know what to tell you. You can't have genocide on the one side of the equation and then still expect to get endless purchase from referring to "kids in cages" or "trans genocide" etc. Once you accept that a genocide is happening, you can't heighten the stakes any more than that by appealing back to how evil Trump is. 

This is a serious rhetorical issue for the democrats and their supporters to deal with at the moment. I actually basically agree with you and Marie that ultimately Trump would end up doing nothing to help that situation while making other situations here worse. But you kind of have to already believe that for that to seem convincing. It's just a weak counter argument rhetorically. The only effective counter is to portray him as not supporting genocide. Once you concede on that point, the appeals to evil orange man seem rather impotent.

In theory I agree with the point on voter pressure. If I was getting any indication that threatening to withhold votes was actually going to accomplish the goal of getting Biden to stop supporting the genocide, I would support it. And if I had any sense of reassurance that should such a threat fail, the left/progressive people making the threat will still vote for Biden in November. But I don't get that impression at all.

I guess I'm just trying to say my problem with not voting out of protest is not that I disagree with it morally. I hope you all are right and leveraging Biden will actually work. But I just can't trust that it will.

[Jwb]

I remembered reading about it years ago, but your question here is a valid one - so I had to look it up to see if my memory was true - according to NPR, who links to a survey over around 50,000 people, a little over 1 in 10 Sanders supporters ended up voting for Trump in the general. Might not seem like a whole lot, but when the electoral margins were as slim as they were in 2016, I think it's significant.

I agree on all points. The Democrat leadership, in my opinion, is missing a lot of youth and vitality. Regardless of anyone's opinions of her, AOC represents the kind of energy the Dems are going to need going forward. I can't blame young people for not getting excited to go vote for Democrats when so many of their primary establishment messengers are completely out-of-touch septuagenarians and octogenarians like Biden, Pelosi, and Hillary. It appears Obama is getting more involved recently, and he's still favorably viewed (last I checked) by the Democrat base, so they're gonna need to lean on him a lot.

I feel like Israel has, for a long time, had overwhelming support and sympathy from the western public because of the Holocaust. After October 7th, it feels like they've been given a lot of leeway and wiggle room as a result of that long-held sympathy (and of course, a long military alliance with the US). But in some ways, it feels like with what they're doing in Gaza, they're ready to completely cash that Holocaust ticket. Because after this, when people appeal back to the Holocaust in defense or sympathy-garnering for Jews/Israelis, people will respond with: "Well what about your genocide in Gaza?". Depending on how things go for Israel, the ticket might be worth cashing for them in the long run. But at some point, when they conduct themselves like they have been, that ticket isn't going to cash in the minds of the public anymore. But I agree that Biden is in a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' kind of position.

It's not just the left that's divided on the issue. Have you been following any of the daily wire beef with Candace?

[SGR]

It's not just the left that's divided on the issue. Have you been following any of the daily wire beef with Candace?

Yes I have, a little bit. I don't particularly like either Candace or Ben Shapiro, so I've only lightly been following it. But Shapiro is a shill for Israel, so I don't take his opinions on the matter very seriously.

[Jwb]

I don't think  he's a shill lol. I think he's just a Zionist to the core.

Candace has been going on about gangs of Jews running Hollywood and beefing with Rabbi Shmuley. I have never particularly liked her either but I have definitely found all of that pretty entertaining.

[SGR]

I don't think  he's a shill lol. I think he's just a Zionist to the core.

Yeah, tomato, tomah-to. Plus Ben Shapiro is an insufferable nerd.

Candace has been going on about gangs of Jews running Hollywood and beefing with Rabbi Shmuley. I have never particularly liked her either but I have definitely found all of that pretty entertaining.

Didn't Dave Chapelle say that wasn't a gang, but rather, a 'coincedence'? 

I'll admit, I love some good internet drama. You ever watch this guy's channel? I feel like you'd enjoy it. Covers drama primarily about comedians, but also streamers, and political junkies.