Political Memes

Election date is getting closer, methinks. People are slowly transitioning from voicing their complaints to reminding everyone of their two options, or even to appreciating all that Biden has accomplished.

I haven't seen things saying he's good. I have seen it said, and said, that he's better than expected. It's just that the bar is too low. He might possibly be one of the better president, though not inspiring, just because there aren't many good ones. FDR is good from what I know of him, though I'm sure there's still plenty to complain about. Other than that, we haven't really had any leftist president's in the US. The fact that Biden has mostly been friendly towards unions is a nice change from standard US practice.

Basically, he's not great. He's what we've got. He's also better than it would seem like he would be if you paid attention to his political past.

Typically how this goes is that a centrist liberal Democrat will get the nomination, and then push the left and progressives to support them because this centrist liberal can be transacted with. Once in office, they'll stomp all over the left and progressives, do literally less than the bare minimum needed to support the idea that they are in fact trying to get support from progressives and leftists, and then demand more votes four years later so progressives and the left can all get taken for another ride by some rich asshole who has more in common with Elon Musk than they do with most Americans.

Clinton more or less promised this type of governance to the left, and only tried, all too tardily, to come around after it became clear that people might actually not show up for someone who openly hates them and literally does not share their politics, and that raw identity politics alone was not going to be enough to get her into government.

Biden, surprisingly, has out of nowhere done a variety of progressive things. He allowed himself to be pushed on student loans. Like actually though. He banned non-competes, which won't fix capitalism, but if you're a capitalist liberal who believes in transacting with the left and in properly managing markets through policy, then that was a 100% necessary move. And he did it, without even that much fanfare.

While he'll never be pro-labor in the way I would want to see in order to be a supporter, the fact that he is actually willing to engage in transactional politics with progressives/the left really does count for something to me. He's still a strikebreaker and I won't give him credit for being a pro-labor candidate, but being willing to cut deals on things here and there does mean he has something to offer.

People coming to terms with being held hostage by First Past The Post voting.

Stockholm syndrome with your captors.

The record just needed to be corrected.

I’ve always been on the side of “better than he gets credit for” and “as good as anyone can do in an impossible situation of dysfunctional politics”. I do believe he wants to be at least a bit closer to that yellow line

That’s not the same as thinking he’s one of the better in my lifetime, and most of my reaction is give credit where it’s sure, but also face reality. For all we criticize republicans about hiding from reality (such as global warming), why are we hiding from realities like dysfunctional politics and the limits of what one person can do?

money!

I kid, they haven't paid me yet. badum-tiss

I'm a member of a political party (not in the US, thank the Gods) and was also in one in a different country I lived in and to me it looks a lot like the Democrat Party has started activelly campaigning, so party members are out and about in, amongst other places, social media, spreading the word about their tribe, maybe with some professional help.

This also explains the increase in articles posted in forums here like World and News consistently pushing a "vote Biden or get apocalypse" message, as well as the swarming nature of downvotes for even the most well thought comment that pick holes in that political propaganda strategy (such comments are swamped by downvotes, but the ones at the top or near of threads will over time slowly get more upvotes until they're more than the downvotes).

It looks a lot like the kind of shit I saw in social media and newspaper forums in Britain during the Leave Referendum and that stuff later was discovered to have had massive manipulation from US-based interests via Cambridge Analytica and from Russia.

Nobody does opinion farming better than Israel. Not even the Russian and Chinese governments can operate at their level.

The bots stoking the hexbear genocide Joe thing were retasked I guess.

You'll notice they come from the big 4 most propagandized instances. Almost certainly a mix of willing idiots and active manipulation