#Biden is doing Trump policy better than Trump

[the-psudo]

[source]

We've never had a time when we've exported more crude oil than we've imported, but there are times that we've exported more petroleum products than we've imported. Petroleum products includes crude oil, gasoline, diesel fuels, jet fuel, plastics, and much more. Anything that can be made from what comes out of oil wells.

That negative net imports era began in 2020 under Trump, and he touted it as 'energy independence.' Exporting more plastics than we import doesn't really relate to energy independence, though. Real energy independence starts with exporting more crude oil than we import.

But the net exports of petroleum products that Trump celebrated as an accomplishment are greater now than they ever were then.

[bedforddanes75]

im not american but some of you guys are just fucking stupid ong what do you MEAN youre not gna vote because you disagree with like one part of what youre voting for. like okay me when im fucking thick

[nirvanaida]

“if you don’t vote blue our democracy will be destroyed” literally what democracy. the united states can barely be called democratic atp.

[seeinglittlestars]

Bruhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[bugpill]

If I see any more misinformation about Kamala Harris to dissuade people from voting I will explode.

1. She did a lot of work as a prosecutor to dismantle the system. When she was DA in San Francisco she was labeled as being “soft on crime” which she in turn claimed was “smart on crime”. Harris made a program called Back on Track so that low-level nonviolent drug offenders could enroll in school rather than doing jail time. She has believe and continues to believe that supporting people prevents crime far better than criminalizing people.

Yes, she put people behind bars. I know she called herself the “Top Cop” and I fucking hate that. However, the number of people who served time in jail was significantly reduced due to her program. She’s not a saint, but she tried to reduce harm as much as she could in her position. Since then, she’s called for even more action in terms of legalizing marijuana and I believe recently fully endorsed it publicly.

2. She is not transphobic. Harris backed the state of California when it tried to deny gender-affirmation surgery to a trans prisoner, but as attorney general, she could not deny the state’s Department of Corrections as a client of hers. Essentially, she had no say in the denial of surgery herself, as she had to represent the department’s interests over her own. Once she realized what they were doing, Harris actually worked behind the scenes to get that very policy changed so that any inmate who needs that care could get it. Additionally, she has lead efforts to put an end to gay and transgender “panic” defenses in criminal trials.

3. Kamala Harris is Black. For some reason, people like to say that she isn’t, and that she’s Indian and pretending to be black… for what reason? Depends on who’s telling the lie to begin with. Kamala Harris is Black and South Asian. Her father, Donald Harris, is a Black man who was born in Jamaica. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was born in India. Speculating about her race with so much evidence towards the contrary is so wrong. If anyone tells you shit about this, just send them her whitehouse.gov biography.

4. Harris (reportedly) has different opinions than Biden on Palestine. Whether or not she makes a clear stance against Israel, I don’t know. That hasn’t happened yet, but I’ll remain hopeful until further notice. She reportedly tried to push Biden towards “a policy on Gaza that was both more humane and in alignment with international law” but wasn’t listened to. The only reason why this is one of my points is that I’ve seen a lot of people stating that she is totally behind every decision and stance Biden made as president, which isn’t necessarily true. I don’t want to give her credit for being pro-Palestine if she isn’t, just to be clear. That is not what I’m trying to do here.

I desperately want her to stand for a free Palestine. I cannot make the promise that this will happen. All I can hope for is that her policy will be less harmful than Trump’s- who wants Israel to “finish the job” and promises to “throw (pro-Palestinian protestors) out of the country”.

Conclusion: the fact of the matter is that people make shit up all of the time. Sometimes it’s propaganda they accidentally absorb, sometimes it’s deliberate misinformation. People often take rumors as facts, and we need to be more vigilant about it. What I know is that some people will do anything for you to not vote tor Kamala Harris, when in reality she’s our only hope here.

Is Harris my favorite person ever? Absolutely not. Does she share my exact views and opinions? Nope. Would I rather vote for someone who more aligns with my personal views? Yes.

Is voting for Harris the only way to stop Donald Trump and Project 2025? Yes.

Disclaimer for the blog: To be 100% transparent, this is only my (Fanya’s) opinions. Although this is a shared blog, I cannot claim that my stance and my voice speaks for everybody involved in this blog. Some members are not American. Some may have different takes. All I know is that all of us are anti-Trump. Don’t go after my friends if you have beef with what I’m saying. I’m trying my best here.

[anexperimentallife]

Project 2025 would ban anything the far right considers pornography. The far right considers anything queer-positive to be pornography, and they WILL encode that into law if given just a TINY bit more power.

Have queer fanfic (or trad published literature) or pics of your transition, or of two men kissing, saved to your hard drive? If the GOP get their way, you'd be guilty of possession of pornography. Did you share any of it? You'd be guilty of distribution of pornography. Have a sweet coming of age story with a queer protagonist? That'd be child pornography.

Even now, states are trying to make it a crime to be openly queer in public (by, among other things, classifying dressing as the "wrong gender" anyplace kids might see as a sex crime against children). Oh, and Florida tried (and thankfully failed) to impose the death penalty for the above.

This is just one example of the horrors awaiting us if the project comes to fruition.

And the far right is already screaming that any adult who mentions around kids that queer people exist is "grooming" children. Wear your Pride shirt past a playground? You're now a child groomer. Think they won't put that into law if allowed? You're naive.

The GOP currently controls the Supreme Court (which is how they overturned Roe v. Wade) and has a majority in one branch of congress. Imagine what will happen nationwide with the GOP controlling every branch of government, including supermajoroties in both houses of Congress.

Oh, and top GOP officials have also announced their desire to NUKE Gaza, so don't come at me with, "but I can't vote blue because Biden..." Or tell me how you think Gaza would somehow be better off with Trump and the GOP.

In France, the left and center joined together--even though they disagree vehemently on many issues (get two leftists together and they'll have three positions on any issue)--to stop the far right from totally taking over, because the one thing they ALL agree on is that fascists dictatorships are BAD.

Much the same with the UK finally kicking out their own neo-fascist party, the Torries, to install 400 Labour MPs. Not everyone loves Labour's policies, but virtually everyone with a brain cell recognizes that the Torries are fascists, and that FASCISM BAD.

"Every election, they tell us this is the most important election if our lives!" Yeah, because each election over the past several decades has been more important than the one before, until we are now at a tipping point between remaining a fucked up oligarchy with SOME resemblance to freedom, and an outright neo-fascist military dictatorship.

Trump has literally stated publicly his intent to criminalize dissent, use US armed forces against protesters (Kent State, but multiply it by thousands), purge all agencies and stuff them with those personally loyal to him, and use the DOJ to go after anyone he perceives as a threat to his political power, among other things.

And remember the things he did in office, like pulling the teeth of federal workplace protections for queer folks (which Biden reatored).

I don't care if you don't like Biden or Harris. Neither do I. But the alternative is Trump, and anyone telling you not to vote in 2024, or to vote third party, is rooting for Trump, and for Project 2025. Anyone telling you not to vote does not give one single solitary flying fuck about vulnerable populations in the US or anywhere else in the world.

"You're just being an alarmist!" Right. Like I was being alarmist when I predicted the failed Jan 6 coup attempt. Like I was being alarmist when I said the GOP would try to use control over SCOTUS to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Fucking vote.

[decolonize-the-everything]

I saw your post about the leopards eating faces and democrats and if you think the us is bad under biden have a good look through project 2025 and please fucking realize that queer people, those that can get pregnant, and people of color are going to be absolutely fucked if trump wins in November.

Sigh

If you ACTUALLY read it then you'd know Biden is ALREADY carrying out the goals outlined in project2025. You'd also know that his administration is even using the SAME exact language that's found in the Mandate for Leadership. Such as "protecting the freedom of navigation in the Suez Canal"

I literally have a post floating around somewhere where I said he was gonna escalate the genocide and smoke out all the rebel groups because guess what? Project2025 outlined that too. Literally listed them as targets that the administration should focus on.

Another part of it says they should continue to protect and support Israel's "right to defend itself" at any cost.

So yeah that thing you're afraid of? It's here. And it's here because you thought the fascist with a blue tie was less scary than a fascist than a red tie so you stopped paying attention when Blue Tie Man was around. And that blue Fascism that's allowing book bans and abortion bans and making trans people illegal is going to stay here and grow because you don't fucking care to address it unless the tie is red.

Maybe fucking read the thing you're trying to fearmonger me about because I guarantee I've read more of it than you.

And it's not that I find the realities in it less scary, it's that I'm not such a privileged shithead that I would prioritize my own comfort over lives being lost in a literal fucking genocide.

Yeah shit sucks for queer people and trans people and trust me, I know that, but we aren't being killed in broad fucking daylight and having people go into denial about it so maybe instead of barking up MY blog about how fucked up everything is you go and send the DNC and your representatives some emails and tell them to give Democrats a candidate that doesnt commit genocide?

How about instead of yelling at me to lower my standards cuz things MIGHT get scarier for you if Blue Tie Man doesn't beat trump (and he won't) you ACCEPT that reality and DO SOMETHING USEFUL about it. How about you and your party just BE BETTER????

There's seven months before the elections and Biden is tanking every poll and Democrats are voting uncommited in swing states and what's Biden doing? Doubling down on every single policy that he's losing voters over (like supporting Israel). If he loses that's not my fault or anyone else's.

Maybe stop asking people to vote for a warmongering white supremacist.

"think of the queers and pregnant people and PoC"

I Am.

They live in Palestine and Sudan and the DRC.

Or did you mean I should prioritize different queers and pregnant people and PoC?

Don't be shy. Did you mean I should prioritize you?

Cuz yeah. Fuck that.

(white) USamerican citizens prioritizing ourselves over everyone else is exactly how the world got so fucked up.

I'm NOT voting for Biden under any fucking circumstances, don't waste my time with another bullshit uninformed scare mongering ask like this again just cuz YOU lack the solidarity to care about any community but your own.

The fuck?

Do you think the queer community only counts Americans? What an ignorant thing to say. "Think of minority communites but only from this specific part of the world"

You wouldn't know community if it hit you in the fucking face.

[qqueenofhades]

oh god is biden dropping out? i don't know what happens then

Jesus effing Christ.

Few thoughts:

The billionaire Democratic donors got their way, apparently. All I saw was that the big-dollar donors were secretly putting pressure on the rank-and-file Democratic elected officials (i.e. House and Senate) to denounce Biden or not get any more money, and other shameful backroom maneuvering to knife Biden. I will refrain (lol, no I won't) from speculating that billionaires of any political stripe feel threatened by Biden's increasingly progressive tax/wealth redistribution policies, and saw their chance after the bad debate performance to knife him. Because until further notice, I'm going to think that was the biggest factor.

I don't know if there's an actual health condition that made Biden agree it was the best time (in fucking July) to step down, but if this was an issue, there needed to be planning last year, at the earliest, to prepare for a new successor. I don't know what's going on. This is a clusterfuck on many, many levels.

However: it is true that this does change things and not necessarily only for the worse, as long as Harris is immediately confirmed as the new nominee and this stupid Democrats In Disarray nonsense, which is giving the media exactly what they want, is put to a fucking end. If Harris is also swept aside and the billionaire donors try to install their preferred "Centrist!!!" candidate (lol Manchin or some shit) with an equally antidemocratic closed-door Star Chamber convention, then yes, we're fucked. Because the Congressional Black Caucus and African American voters saw exactly what the rich white man billionaires were trying to do by torching Biden and then Harris, and they are not going to play ball with some Magical White Man replacement.

If Harris is immediately confirmed as the new nominee (and to the best of my knowledge Biden has endorsed her), then she has a chance of reinvigorating the race. There were a lot of Americans who did not want either Biden or Trump. I suspect they were fucking braindead, but so be it. Harris has apparently polled pretty and increasingly well in recent days (in some cases actually better than Biden) and again, there is no remotely small-d democratic alternative to her. The billionaire donors already trashed the duly elected (by the primary process) Democratic nominee. If they do the same to Harris, then yes. We will have Trump and there won't be any more democracy in this country on either side, because the Republican big-bucks donors will gleefully pick up where the Democratic big-bucks donors left off.

Jesus fucking Christ.

The message needs to be "Harris is Joe's successor, she is younger and already has four years of experience and is the only candidate." Anything else is a fucking gift from god to the Republicans, once more getting trashed after Trump's terrible RNC speech. Maybe she can then pick Whitmer or Shapiro (both popular and effective Democratic governors of swing states, MI and PA respectively) as a running mate, but the nominee has to be Kamala. There is no other fucking choice. This is already enough of a mess.

If that can happen, and the fucking donors can refrain from fucking it up, then... okay. It's not great, but it does change things. It makes the ticket younger. It makes it historic (first Black female president beating Trump would be amazing). It could reach people disenchanted with the current two-old-white-guys setup.

This is an incredible sacrifice on Biden's part and I only wish that I could believe he did it voluntarily, rather than being forced out by a small class of rich people worrying about his policies getting too progressive.

I wish him only the best and I recognize this decision was taken under extreme pressure. If we then lose to Trump, I hope everyone who forced Biden out burns in hell.

I was a diehard Biden supporter not because I loved the guy personally, but because he was the only choice for preserving democracy in America. The essential stakes of the election have not changed, even if the billionaires just knifed us in the fucking back, possibly to nobody's surprise, because R or D, they are not our friends.

Kamala is the only choice. I will now have to defend her as hard as I did for Biden. She needs to beat Trump. There is nothing else to it. If you think she can't, then you need to work at helping her do that. There is already enough calamity and doom. We do not have a choice. We cannot lose sight of what is at stake here.

Kamala Harris/Whitmer and/or Shapiro and/or Buttigieg 2024.

The end.

[nientedal]

What progress at home has biden enacted? What policies of his show that he is making progress that prove he is actually different than trump?

I like to pretend I have faith in humanity, so I'll answer as if you're asking this in good faith.

Biden's DEA has lifted restrictions on telehealth prescriptions to make appointments and assistance more accessible.

He put a funding package into place to help unhoused people get access to mental and physical healthcare, as well as short-term and long-term housing.

He has attempted and is still attempting to get student debt relief through - this was blocked by Republican judges appointed by Trump, but he's still working on it.

Infrastructure repair - his administration has budgeted funds to actually fix some severely-damaged and frequently-traveled bridges.

Trying to expand access to healthcare to include undocumented immigrants who came to the USA as children (Dreamers) under the Affordable Care Act. Support for Navigator programs and outreach has also been increased.

He has vetoed Republican-led bills that were attempting to overturn environmental protections - one that would have forbidden investment fund managers to consider climate change in their portfolios (I have two degrees in accounting and this is actually huge), and another that would have overturned restrictions on agricultural runoff into our waterways.

He and his administration worked for ages to get rail workers paid sick days.

This is just some of what he's been doing. Meanwhile, Trump and other Republicans want to criminalize the lives of LGBT people like you and me. They want to eliminate no-fault divorce and force births that will kill parents or devastate them financially. They have stated flat out that they want to install a military dictatorship in the USA. They attempted to put that in motion on January 6th, 2021. They failed once. They will do better next time.

One party wants to house the homeless and expand social safety nets, while the other one wants to criminalize homelessness. One of them wants a future in which I might be able to vote to change how much of a war machine my country is, while the other one wants to eliminate my ability to vote entirely. Those are not the same. Those literally are opposites.

At the end of the day, all you and I can do is choose to do the least amount of harm possible. You and I cannot choose to do no harm. This is the USA, we sell war, you and I cannot choose to do no harm. I wish we could, my god do I wish we could, but that is not an option. So we grieve for the harm we couldn't eliminate and work to minimize the harm that is done. Despite all the crap they support, Democrats are the minimum amount of harm right now. Acting like they aren't is exactly what brought us to an election where our options are a future where we are either wading in blood or drowning in it.

Not voting for Biden will not help Palestine. Not voting for Biden will guarantee a Republican president who will make the situation in Palestine WORSE. AND it'll hurt a lot of other places as well, both at home and abroad, because Republicans are about business and the USA is in the business of war! And I would very much like that to change someday! I would very much like to someday be able to choose to do no harm! And I know what I have to do to try for that future, so what are YOU going to do? There is no standing off to the side in this. If you aren't helping pull, you're the dead weight we're pulling. Are you going to dig your feet into the mud and blood and drown us there? Or are you going to get the fuck off your ass, grit your teeth, and help us pull free?

[potofsoup]

i love your fourth of july comics every year but this years feels extremely optimistic about biden’s abilities in the face of him letting roe get overturned and funding a gen*cide at worst or letting it happen at best by taking the bare minimum of regulatory action… i mean can he really be trusted at all anymore to do the right thing or act in line with the people’s demands? and how do we know the people behind project 2025 won’t just rig the election again to get in under false pretenses?

Hihi! Thank you for reading and enjoying my July 4th comics every year! I am in a non-US airport en route to a month-long trip in a place with sketchy internet, so sorry in advance for sloppiness in my response (and potentially going radio silent).

But:

I don't think he "let" Roe get overturned, since that was the Supreme Court's overwhelming conservative majority, which really started with Mitch McConnell refusing to approve Obama's appointee and forcing it into a 2016 election issue. The fact that Trump got to appoint 3 Supreme Court Justices is what got us here.

Re: Biden and the Israel/Hamas war ... on the one hand, there's definitely more that he could have done, but on the other hand, they are a whole other country over there. It's Hamas that initiated the Oct 7 attacks and took the hostages. It's Netanyahu and his right-wing government who decided to retaliate to such extreme extent. Biden can talk about how he would really like Netanyahu to stop fighting and step down, but at the end of the day that's not his call, any more than he can stop the Sudan fighting that is near-genocidal either.

So, to come to your question #1: "Can he really be trusted at all anymore to do the right thing or act in line with the people’s demands"?

For me, it's a resounding YES. Guyz, he has passed so much good domestic policies. My spouse works in green energy and the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act halved his anxiety and gave him legitimate hope. The tumblr post I linked to in my comic has links to many of the other great things that Biden has done. Tbh I voted for him in 2020 because "a moldy onion is still better than Trump", and I've been pleasantly surprised. Like how he tried to cancel student loans, the Supreme Court overturned it, and then he came back 6 months later with a different way to do it that didn't lead to a court challenge.

Is he perfect? Hell no. There's tons of stuff that I wish he did more about, or he went further on, but also he's just one guy heading one branch of government who is heading into an election year. (Just like FDR promising not joining WWII, while behind the scenes doing all the Lend-Lease Act stuff). And "the people" have lots of demands, many of them conflicting.

I'd also like to push at the unspoken part of your question... "Can he really be trusted to do the right thing..." compared to whom? Because right now the answer is "compared to Trump." And compared to Trump... I don't even trust Trump to respect the results of a legitimate election. Heck, he might just take his favorite state secrets, sell them to the highest bidder (or just show them off to someone for funzies), and then claim Presidential immunity. A decent Democrat who got stuff done vs someone who probably wants to pardon himself and all his friends and do Project 2025 stuff is not even on the same level. (Do I wish that there was a viable Democratic alternative to Biden? Sure! But who?) Heck, at this point -- imagine if it's Kamala Harris vs. Trump. Who would you vote for?

As for your question #2: "How do we know the people behind project 2025 won’t just rig the election again to get in under false pretenses?"

We don't. But also what can we do besides showing up to vote?

Actually, I need bullet points for this:

The 2022 midterm elections brought in fewer-than-expected election-deniers into crucial electoral offices at the state level, which means that hopefully most state electoral boards will continue to have integrity

Yes, voting is harder but at least we can still vote. So it's about getting out there and getting your vote counted. For some states, it involves waiting in 8 hour lines. For some states, it involves bringing 2 forms of ID. Document. Track. Make sure it's dropped off in a real ballot box and not a fake one. Don't believe messaging that the voting is happening on a different day or location, etc.

A 50.1% majority is easily challenged. A 55% majority, less so. Which means getting people out to vote.

The more people know about and think about the reality of a second Trump term (versus being disappointed by a Biden term), the more they will be motivated to vote against Trump.

Finally, let's be real here: I'm braced for a 2nd Trump term. That said:

I'm still going to go and vote for Biden, because the only way to prevent a 2nd Trump term is to vote.

A Trump term where either the House or Senate is controlled by the Democrats will be *very* different from a clean Republican sweep.

Even with a clean Republican sweep on the federal level, States have so much more power now, and voting the state level stuff will help shore up Democratic goals for the future. States get to draw voting districts however they want. States get to decide on abortion policies. If you live in a deep Red state, there still might be things to vote for that make it easier to live in now, and turn it purple a few elections down the line.

So at the end of the day, it's "Vote AND". Vote and keep living your best life. Vote and tell others about Project 2025. Vote and have hope. Even if Trump wins, at least you'll have voted against him. Vote and stay to build up a progressive wave for the next election.

[violet-phoenix-nebula]

Debate thoughts:

Harris definitely could have answered questions about policies better, however after thinking about it a little more I think I have an idea of why she didn't.

She had two options:

Talk about her policies and beliefs, and allow Trump to basically do the same thing he did during the last debate, which was to calmly spew out his rehearsed lies and bullshit without sending up any red flags.

Forego direct answers to poke the dragon in the eye, rile him up and show the American people who they're voting for instead of trying to just tell them. She opted to get under his skin and expose him, showing the people who praised him during the last debate how he fares against a (no offense Biden) capable opponent.

I mean, she poked him into a ridiculous, unhinged rant about people eating pets in Springfield Smithfield? What? I was watching the whole time, I was (regrettably) sober and I still could not even begin to make heads or tails of that tangent. Frankly, I'll call that a win.

Nobody watching this to support Trump is wanting or expecting policy from him. And I think she made a calculated guess that undecided voters will be more likely to be swayed by him coming unglued than her talking policy.

[lividbrunette]

I am so sick and tired of seeing all these “I know biden is bad, I know biden has done some bad things but vote for biden because trump will destroy our democracy” posts bc a) clearly our democracy is a sham and b) STOP DEFENDING BIDEN, STOP DOWNPLAYING WHAT HE HAS DONE! you do not need to, nor should you, defend biden to any degree. you can say that we cannot let trump win without that other bullshit. biden is pure evil, he is scum. and part of what makes him so horrendous and disturbing is the charade he puts on like he’s the good guy and trump is the evil, the bad to his good. quite literally the only thing that he has going for him is that his opponent is somehow even worse than him. that his opponent has no pretense of even trying to act like he doesn’t want to fully be a dictator. stop fucking defending biden. stop fucking downplaying all the horrendous, despicable, evil things he has done and is continuing to do. he is fully funding and supporting and enabling a genocide. it helps no one.

and if/when biden loses, he only has himself to blame.

ideally we would all rally behind a third party candidate and the electoral college wouldn’t exist. ideally these wouldn’t be our “choices”. idfk what to do because trump cannot win but how can any of us in good conscience vote for biden’s evil, fascistic, decrepit ass ??

what makes biden so different from or better than trump? nothing!!

- he is unconditionally supporting netanyahu and his genocide of Palestinians

- democrats have done nothing to protect nor help us as roe v. wade was overturned, we still have student loan debt, the cost of living is unaffordable and the minimum wage remains unchanged, biden has increased police presence and funding for police (more so than in 2020, despite the eruption of BLM protests and the murder of George Floyd and his promise to George Floyd’s family that he wouldn’t let his murder become just another number, another hashtag), and so. much. more.

- biden is building off of trump’s policies - specifically and most recently, biden has just announced an executive order to deny asylum requests. the increase in police funding and the further militarization of police was also built off of trump’s policies

the u.s. is an evil sham of a country.

as ethel cain said …

[darcylindbergh]

I've talked a lot about why you should vote AGAINST Trump. No fucking shit, right? But I want to vote FOR something, too.

Kamala Harris hasn't had time yet to put together her platform documents, though no doubt we'll see those in the coming days. But this is a good analysis of where she and Joe Biden stand - and Kamala is more progressive on every front.

Abortion rights: Joe would've restored Roe, but Kamala would expand it to prevent states from limiting access. The pre-clearance measure discussed here is a non-starter but I'd expect Kamala to be looking at how to frame the issue for another try.

Israel and Gaza: it's true that Kamala hasn't broken with Joe publicly about Gaza. However, the article goes on:

Harris hasn’t exactly broken with Biden over the issue. But she has expressed more public sympathy than Biden has over the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died during Israel’s counterattack. In March, she was one of the earliest high-profile leaders in the administration to call for an immediate temporary cease-fire in March. She also delivered the sharpest rebuke against Israel’s handling of aid flows into Gaza and described the conflict as a “humanitarian catastrophe” for innocent civilians. And privately, she has told Biden and other top officials that the administration needed to take a stronger stance against Netanyahu and focus on a long-term peace to the decades-long conflict, people familiar with her remarks have previously told POLITICO.

Kamala has also declined to preside over the upcoming session of Congress that Netanyahu is speaking at, on invitation by Republicans. She wasn't scheduled to before this, but I think declining now is a clear indicator that her foreign policy will not include the broad support we saw from Joe.

Climte Change: Honestly, the Build Back Better bill was so fucking substantial and incredible I think Kamala would be hard-pressed to do much more. I think Kamala needs to have a solid response ready to the recent Supreme Court decision overturning Chevron, which is the biggest threat to the EPA and other agencies in our lifetimes. (Trump, by the way, would abolish the EPA and the vast majority of environmental protections.)

Student debt relief: She was more progressive earlier, and I expect we'll see many of Joe's relief packages continue expanding.

Similarly:

Free college: Kamala's in full support. I understand Joe's position that students from wealthy families should pay their own way, but I also know from experience that students from wealthy family not immune to financial abuse by controlling parents.

Trade: this is actually a great one to know, because Kamala's hesitance on these trade agreements are related to a) environmental concerns, and b) outsourcing American jobs. Republicans love to lose their shit over outsourcing American jobs. Here's more significance in the trade sphere:

This is going to be a HUGE talking point for your conservative-leaning relatives. Business leaders do not want Trump in office, because the agenda laid out in Project 2025 will make it harder for them to do business - it will make it harder for them to attract global talent, costlier to import and export, and stunt economic growth. Do you know that "undecided" voter who votes red for "fiscal responsibility?" This your talking point. Kamala's platform spends, but in such a way that it will stimulate economic growth and solidify the US as a business leader worldwide.

Artificial Intelligence: I'll let Kamala speak for herself.

“History has shown, in the absence of regulation and strong government oversight, some technology companies choose to prioritize profit over the wellbeing of their customers, the safety of our communities, and the stability of our democracies,” Harris said during her visit to the U.K. for November’s AI Safety Summit.  Last July, during the early days of the White House’s mobilization on AI policy, Harris led a meeting among civil rights, labor and consumer protection groups where she rejected the “false choice” between promoting innovation and protecting the public.

The article also talks about data privacy, where Kamala and Joe are very similar, and animal welfare. Historically, Kamala defended animal welfare protections in CA, but remember that as Attorney General, Kamala's job was to defend the law no matter what her personal feelings were. Biden made some strides here, but many will agree not enough - I think this is a place where Kamala has to tread very carefully because progressives are in favor of more stringent animal welfare protections, but agricultural and rural voters are already a demographic inclined to view progressive agendas negatively, feeling forgotten, misunderstood, and passed over in favor of large cities. It's definitely a weakness for the Dems so I wouldn't expect to hear much about animal welfare as a voting issue.

IN SUM

I'm very happy to vote FOR Kamala, not just against Trump. I think she stands to take stronger action on abortion, stronger action on Israel and Gaza, stronger action on college and student debt relief. I think she'll continue work inherited on environmental protections and infrastructure. I think she will do more to protect LGBTQ+ individuals and unions, as well as standing strong on disability reform and criminal justice reform (yes, I know she was a prosecutor, and I also know that she worked on several important CJ reforms during her time as AG - here's an article about her progressive record as DA).

Remember, there's no such thing as a protest vote. The only people who benefit by third-party voting or choosing not to vote are the far-right.

[txttletale]

How are British politics currently worse than American politics? /gen

labour (our opposition party) has spent the last five years enacting a thorough and total purge of any vaguely left-wing or grassroots elements and is now totally dominated by hard-righters. their response to the tories' horrific persecution of trans people and migrants is to say that the tories are being inefficient and that labour can do the same thing better. their diversities and equalities minister is meeting with hate groups. they are openly committed to austerity.

obviously i hate genocide joe and given the chance would not vote for him. but the 'vote biden people' can point to real, actual policy wins of the biden administration that are better than trump policies. now, ofc again, i am a communist and i think these are woefully inadequate and do not, in fact, stack up against perpetrating a genocide. but the fact is that labour party supporters can't even do that because kier starmer's policies are literally exactly the same as the tories--this is a core part of his pitch! imagine if joe biden said that project 2025 was bad because it was impractical and he had much better and more efficient ideas about how to accomplish those goals--that's essentially what the uk is dealing with lol.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Pizzaburger Presidency

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

The corporate wing of the Democrats has objectively terrible political instincts, because the corporate wing of the Dems wants things that are very unpopular with the electorate (this is a trait they share with the Republican establishment).

Remember Hillary Clinton's unimaginably terrible campaign slogan, "America is already great?" In other words, "Vote for me if you believe that nothing needs to change":

https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/758501814945869824

Biden picked up the "This is fine" messaging where Clinton left off, promising that "nothing would fundamentally change" if he became president:

https://www.salon.com/2019/06/19/joe-biden-to-rich-donors-nothing-would-fundamentally-change-if-hes-elected/

Biden didn't so much win that election as Trump lost it, by doing extremely unpopular things, including badly bungling the American covid response and killing about a million people.

Biden's 2020 election victory was a squeaker, and it was absolutely dependent on compromising with the party's left wing, embodied by the Warren and Sanders campaigns. The Unity Task Force promised – and delivered – key appointments and policies that represented serious and powerful change for the better:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/10/thanks-obama/#triangulation

Despite these excellent appointments and policies, the Biden administration has remained unpopular and is heading into the 2024 election with worryingly poor numbers. There is a lot of debate about why this might be. It's undeniable that every leader who has presided over a period of inflation, irrespective of political tendency, is facing extreme defenstration, from Rishi Sunak, the far-right prime minister of the UK, to the relentlessly centrist Justin Trudeau in Canada:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-05-29-three-barriers-biden-reelection/

It's also true that Biden has presided over a genocide, which he has been proudly and significantly complicit in. That Trump would have done the same or worse is beside the point. A political leader who does things that the voters deplore can't expect to become more popular, though perhaps they can pull off less unpopular:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-left-is-not-joe-bidens-problem

Biden may be attracting unfair blame for inflation, and totally fair blame for genocide, but in addition to those problems, there's this: Biden hasn't gotten credit for the actual good things he's done:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoflHnGrCpM

Writing in his newsletter, Matt Stoller offers an explanation for this lack of credit: the Biden White House almost never talks about any of these triumphs, even the bold, generational ones that will significantly alter the political landscape no matter who wins the next election:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/why-does-the-biden-white-house-hate

Biden's antitrust enforcers have gone after price-fixing in oil, food and rent – the three largest sources of voter cost-of-living concern. They've done more on these three kinds of crime than all of their predecessors over the past forty years, combined. And yet, Stoller finds example after example of White House press secretaries being lobbed softballs by the press and refusing to even try to swing at them. When asked about any of this stuff, the White House demurs, refusing to comment.

The reasons they give for this is that they don't want to mess up an active case while it's before the courts. But that's not how this works. Yes, misstatements about active cases can do serious damage, but not talking about cases extinguishes the political will needed to carry them out. That's why a competent press secretary excellent briefings and training, because they must talk about these cases.

Think for a moment about the fact that the US government is – at this very moment – trying to break up Google, the largest tech company in the history of the world, and there has been virtually no press about it. This is a gigantic story. It's literally the biggest business story ever. It's practically a secret.

Why doesn't the Biden admin want to talk about this very small number of very good things it's doing? To understand that, you have to understand the hollowness of "centrist" politics as practiced in the Democratic Party.

The Democrats, like all political parties, are a coalition. Now, there are lots of ways to keep a coalition together. Parties who detest one another can stay in coalition provided that each partner is getting something they want out of it – even if one partner is bitterly unhappy about everything else happening in the coalition. That's the present-day Democratic approach: arrest students, bomb Gaza, but promise to do something about abortion and a few other issues while gesturing with real and justified alarm at Trump's open fascism, and hope that the party's left turns out at the polls this fall.

Leaders who play this game can't announce that they are deliberately making a vital coalition partner miserable and furious. Instead, they insist that they are "compromising" and point to the fact that "everyone is equally unhappy" with the way things are going.

This school of politics – "Everyone is angry at me, therefore I am doing something right" – has a name, courtesy of Anat Shenker-Osorio: "Pizzaburger politics." Say half your family wants burgers for dinner and the other half wants pizza: make a pizzaburger and disappoint all of them, and declare yourself to be a politics genius:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/17/pizzaburgers/

But Biden's Pizzaburger Presidency doesn't disappoint everyone equally. Sure, Biden appointed some brilliant antitrust enforcers to begin the long project of smashing the corporate juggernauts built through forty years of Reaganomics (including the Reganomics of Bill Clinton and Obama). But his lifetime federal judicial appointments are drawn heavily from the corporate wing of the party's darlings, and those judges will spend the rest of their lives ruling against the kinds of enforcers Biden put in charge of the FTC and DoJ antitrust division:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/judge-rules-for-microsoft-mergers

So that's one reason that Biden's comms team won't talk about his most successful and popular policies. But there's another reason: schismogenesis.

"Schismogenesis" is a anthropological concept describing how groups define themselves in opposition to their opponents (if they're for it, we're against it). Think of the liberals who became cheerleaders for the "intelligence community" (you know the CIA spies who organized murderous coups against a dozen Latin American democracies, and the FBI agents who tried to get MLK to kill himself) as soon as Trump and his allies began to rail against them:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

Part of Trump's takeover of conservativism is a revival of "the paranoid style" of the American right – the conspiratorial, unhinged apocalyptic rhetoric that the movement's leaders are no longer capable of keeping a lid on:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

This stuff – the lizard-people/Bilderberg/blood libel/antisemitic/Great Replacement/race realist/gender critical whackadoodlery – was always in conservative rhetoric, but it was reserved for internal communications, a way to talk to low-information voters in private forums. It wasn't supposed to make it into your campaign ads:

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/05/27/texas-republicans-adopts-conservative-wish-list-for-the-2024-platform/73858798007/

Today's conservative vibe is all about saying the quiet part aloud. Historian Rick Perlstein calls this the "authoritarian ratchet": conservativism promises a return to a "prelapsarian" state, before the country lost its way:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-05-29-my-political-depression-problem/

This is presented as imperative: unless we restore that mythical order, the country is doomed. We might just be the last generation of free Americans!

But that state never existed, and can never be recovered, but it doesn't matter. When conservatives lose a fight they declare to be existential (say, trans bathroom bans), they just pretend they never cared about it and move on to the next panic.

It's actually worse for them when they win. When the GOP repeals Roe, or takes the Presidency, the Senate and Congress, and still fails to restore that lost glory, then they have to find someone or something to blame. They turn on themselves, purging their ranks, promise ever-more-unhinged policies that will finally restore the state that never existed.

This is where schismogenesis comes in. If the GOP is making big, bold promises, then a shismogenesis-poisoned liberal will insist that the Dems must be "the party of normal." If the GOP's radical wing is taking the upper hand, then the Dems must be the party whose radical wing is marginalized (see also: UK Labour).

This is the trap of schismogenesis. It's possible for the things your opponents do to be wrong, but tactically sound (like promising the big changes that voters want). The difference you should seek to establish between yourself and your enemies isn't in promising to maintaining the status quo – it's in promising to make better, big muscular changes, and keeping those promises.

It's possible to acknowledge that an odious institution to do something good – like the CIA and FBI trying to wrongfoot Trump's most unhinged policies – without becoming a stan for that institution, and without abandoning your stance that the institution should either be root-and-branch reformed or abolished altogether.

The mere fact that your enemy uses a sound tactic to do something bad doesn't make that tactic invalid. As Naomi Klein writes in her magnificent Doppelganger, the right's genius is in co-opting progressive rhetoric and making it mean the opposite: think of their ownership of "fake news" or the equivalence of transphobia with feminism, of opposition to genocide with antisemitism:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

Promising bold policies and then talking about them in plain language at every opportunity is something demagogues do, but having bold policies and talking about them doesn't make you a demagogue.

The reason demagogues talk that way is that it works. It captures the interest of potential followers, and keeps existing followers excited about the project.

Choosing not to do these things is political suicide. Good politics aren't boring. They're exciting. The fact that Republicans use eschatological rhetoric to motivate crazed insurrectionists who think they're the last hope for a good future doesn't change the fact that we are at a critical juncture for a survivable future.

If the GOP wins this coming election – or when Pierre Poilievre's petro-tories win the next Canadian election – they will do everything they can to set the planet on fire and render it permanently uninhabitable by humans and other animals. We are running out of time.

We can't afford to cede this ground to the right. Remember the clickbait wars? Low-quality websites and Facebook accounts got really good at ginning up misleading, compelling headlines that attracted a lot of monetizable clicks.

For a certain kind of online scolding centrist, the lesson from this era was that headlines should a) be boring and b) not leave out any salient fact. This is very bad headline-writing advice. While it claims to be in service to thoughtfulness and nuance, it misses out on the most important nuance of all: there's a difference between a misleading headline and a headline that calls out the most salient element of the story and then fleshes that out with more detail in the body of the article. If a headline completely summarizes the article, it's not a headline, it's an abstract.

Biden's comms team isn't bragging about the administration's accomplishments, because the senior partners in this coalition oppose those accomplishments. They don't want to win an election based on the promise to prosecute and anti-corporate revolution, because they are counter-revolutionaries.

The Democratic coalition has some irredeemably terrible elements. It also has elements that I would march into the sun for. The party itself is a very weak institution that's bad at resolving the tension between both groups:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/30/weak-institutions/

Pizzaburgers don't make anyone happy and they're not supposed to. They're a convenient cover for the winners of intraparty struggles to keep the losers from staying home on election day. I don't know how Biden can win this coming election, but I know how he can lose it: keep on reminding us that all the good things about his administration were undertaken reluctantly and could be jettisoned in a second Biden administration.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/29/sub-bushel-comms-strategy/#nothing-would-fundamentally-change

[psychotrenny]

Like when are all of Biden's idiot fans gonna realise that he is not the "lesser evil". They love threatening people with how any opposition to Biden is gonna let Trump win and how Trumps gonna do all these awful things to the US as though said awful things aren't already happening under Biden. Increased border militarisation and deportation of migrants, loss of reproductive rights, legal assaults on the existence of gay and transgender people, corporate malpractice, police brutality etc etc. Like they're not just continuing to happen they've actually gotten worse under Biden than they were under the Orange Satan himself. The only substantial difference between them is foreign policy and in that area Biden is actually even bloodthirsty; in particular he's been an especially bad zionist for his entire political career and there's nothing to indicate that Trump would have somehow handled it worse beyond the mindless truism of "Orange Man Bad". Looking at their actual policies, voting for Joe Biden isn't gonna protect anyone within the US and is arguably more dangerous for the rest of the world (i.e. where the majority of the world's population lives). There is no "harm reduction" here.

If you're actually looking to help create a better world and protect vulnerable people, as opposed to feeling good that you helped the blue team win, then you're going to have to do it through avenues beyond voting for Joe. Vote third party, withhold your vote to pressure the democrats into nominating a better candidate, engage in action beyond electoralism; there are plenty of options out there. And they're all more effective than lecturing people on the computer (most of whom don't even live in your country they're just part of your empire and so forced to follow the politics) about how being mean to Biden makes you functionally a fascist or whatever