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Exclusive: Bernie Sanders worries young people are underestimating the threat from Trump
(www.usatoday.com)
this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
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He absolutely is more so. Also, young people have more power to influence Biden because they are part of his coalition. Of course, using this power is tricky because you need to pressure and criticize Biden without actually making him lose. So far I support the pressure campaign but I hope as the election gets closer people will start to realize what an epic disaster Trump term two would be.
He said he would level Palestine.
Not sure what these youngins are reading but he isn't coy about it.
Biden said this? When?
I think they were referencing Trump as that's who was being discussed in the last sentence.
Oh that makes sense.
Are young people really a part of Bidens coalition? Bidens policies and rhetoric have consistantly pushed young people away. The ridiculous speech he gave just a few minutes ago maligning student protestors is emblematic of this.
And it seems like young people have got the message. The last poll I saw had 18-24yr olds voting for Trump at +8%
Historically they have been. I think Biden seems out of touch but I’m not sure I agree with this sentiment overall. That poll sounds dubious but I mean coalitions can change certainly. Trump seems even further from the views I see most young people espousing so I’m not sure why they would move to him but maybe it’s protest vote kind of situation.
Young people are part of the coalition but they've never proven to be a reliable part. When the 18-25s vote like the older generations then campaigns will start to take their needs more seriously.
Exactly. When I was 18-25 bernie learned this. We didn’t like Hillary so we got trump.
It's a two way street. Young progressives don't see any reason to vote for Democrats who won't fight for any of the policies they care about, so they wont defend or fight for those officials.
If i am thirsty and someone is offering me toilet water after they just shit in the toilet, I don't need to show gratitude to the next person who comes by offering water from their toilet after they pissed in it.
Your analogy is completely absurd though, it's more like voting for cake and getting bread - and then being so pissed off about the bread that you let bread guy get voted out in favor of toilet guy.
Hold it!
Let me make sure I've got that right. In this analogy, a candidate supporting genocide is a perfectly fine option, and people who have a problem with him are comparable to picky eaters?
Trump would probably be just fine with nuking Palestine so consider that when you think about what's the shit and what's the bread.
Irrelevant. Answer the question please: is supporting the genocide of Palestinians comparable to "bread" in this analogy? Do you consider the genocide of Palestinians to be a perfectly acceptable outcome? Do you think people who aren't satisfied with a candidate who supports genocide are comparable to picky eaters?
I support the phoenix wright roleplay, but I think you'd find more success in just saying something like "this is kind of a glib analogy when the outcome is still genocide, don't you think?", or something along those lines, rather than asking like, a series of questions asking whether or not they find genocide to be an acceptable outcome. One of those will come off as bad faith, and put the defendant on the back foot, the other will get them to open up and possibly admit fault, or potentially come off much poorer to a jury, were they still to choose to object.
I wanted to apply maximum pressure, because they already said everything I needed to prove my point
fuck i need to play this series already
I just got into bc it was on sale and it inspired this account, they're really fun
I mean, a silly game about ridiculous over the top anime court room nonsense, becoming so culturally relevant that its memes become genuinely useful metaphors to shut down annoying, repetitive rhetorical strategies by grifters trying to sidetrack an otherwise serious conversation..... that is some next level shit
Who needs Virtual Reality when you can make reality virtually part of your game?
This is what I've been saying: Don't vote and expect cake. Vote and expect bread at best. Lower your expectations and treat it like paying your taxes and you'll feel better about it.
I guess sime people viewed "Never again" as more than just a feel good saying, and don't want to condone genocide.
If they don't want to condone genocide I suggest they just never vote. And also leave the country. Because this is a country built on genocide, and that will ignore genocide if its in their economic or geopolitical interest.
America sucks. Stop thinking it doesn't and that you have any control and you'll be less frustrated.
Young voters delivered GA in 2020, and what did Dems do with that majority?
Biden immediately dropped all pretense of doing immigration reform because an unelected senate parliamentarian said no, offered no meaningful student debt relief, didn’t legalize cannabis, and is drilling for oil at record rates - more so than Trump did. Dems had yet another chance to codify Roe, and blew it. Biden even left in Louis DeJoy as postmaster general. Now he’s mischaracterizing peaceful student protesters as violent radicals, while actual thugs in riot gear and stars of david are free to descend upon them and beat them into submission.
Don’t blame young people for having eyes and ears and paying attention - Biden had his chance, and blew it in favor of his donors’ interests. It’s a tale as old as time, and if you have any interest in actually galvanizing youthful voters, you’ve got to offer something better than the outmoded views of geriatric, genocidin’ Biden.
Downvote me if you want but it's still a fact that older voters vote more reliably and therefore get better representation. I don't know that GA was that large of a deviation but even if it was, in general the younger vote still can't be counted on.
Either way, your comment is case in point (if not also a bit misinformed) - if the youth vote is going to abandon the Dems after one election you can kind of see why they might consider spending more time and money going after a more reliable bloc.
I love your framing here, “youth vote is going to abandon the Dems.” lol!
The youth vote delivered a majority for the Dems, which was squandered yet again, because democrats don’t actually want to lead. Dems clearly are a fundraising organization, not a political organization.
Shouldn’t the DNC have to do something to earn people’s votes? Instead they spit in our faces as they continue to serve the corporate donors.
So fine, let them continue to court boomers. Because that will obviously work forever.
Correction - you were the one that implied the young people were going to abandon the dems: "Biden had his chance, and blew it"
You're missing their point. Biden didn't abandon younger voters because he never supported them in the first place. He talked a good game so he had their support which is why he won in 2020. Now that it's clear they never had his support yes, they will abandon him.
as somebody with a cumulative $130k in student loan debt, whose loans just went into repayment last year, don't fucking speak for me on whether i think Biden is trying to do something about it. needless to say i'm following that topic, and i see the efforts Biden/the current admin is making, and i see it repeatedly thwarted by right-wing politicians at fed and state levels.
every time i read a statement like yours, i get the feeling it's coming from someone who isn't in repayment yet.
edit - or a right-wing troll
I hear you on student debt forgiveness, Biden has done $144B, which is a little under a tenth of the total. I give that to him as part of the 10% of his campaign promises he has actually delivered on, but it’s not nearly enough. And holy hell did he screw up delivering on that - telling all those borrowers they were getting relief, only to snatch it away from them some months later in a most confusing and disorganized way. Truly inept.
Why not forgive all the student debt? The cost of higher learning in this country is absurd. Especially when you consider that many of these universities are land grant institutions. The commodification of education was a huge mistake (thanks W Bush for eliminating the tuition cap and opening the floodgates). Biden himself authored the legislation which prevents students from declaring bankruptcy when they inevitably get crushed from the massive amount of debt brought on by pursuing degrees. This is how they tag team us, to cement corporate hegemony. Here is a perfect example where Biden has a chance to make things right, but of course he wants nothing of it.
Instead, Biden sends billions overseas to massacre brown children. All the while preventing the UN from doing anything about it to keep civilians safe.
Instead, Biden locks in over half of Trump’s $2T tax cuts for the rich and corporations. Recapturing those alone could have paid for all the student debt. Literally all of it.
So yes, you’re correct that repugnantcons play their part to ensure corporate domination of our lives. But realize the Dems are also fiscal conservatives, and also extremely pro corporate, and they are complicit in this great robbery as well.
yes, even though i didn't get my $20k forgiveness, i'm sure current admin would be SUPER SUCCESSFUL in pushing through forgiveness of all student loan debt. no pushback from the right at all. /s
yes, even though the right is attempting to dismantle education at all levels, i'm sure the left could absolutely succeed in making quality higher ed free for everyone in a single term, no problem. /s
seriously though, i don't think it's worthwhile to pin our hopes on any administration achieving hugely improved outcomes on any complex issue in one or two terms. on a societal level, i think things decay and fall apart more easily than utopia is realized. i'm hoping for slow progress. i'm not holding my breath or shooting myself in the foot voting third party right now and expecting a miracle.
final thought as i write this - has utopia ever been realized on any significant scale? only for some, and only for a time.
Congress passed Trump’s $2T tax cuts for the rich and corporations without too much concern over how we’d pay for it, why does the cost of education need to be held to a different standard?
Can’t argue about the right’s war on education though. With their voter base dwindling and dying off, they’re getting increasingly more desperate to manufacture a voting populace incapable of questioning their failing governance.
Regardless, while I agree it won’t happen overnight, I also think we can achieve this “utopia” far more quickly than you imply. Never before has humanity had the means at its disposal to delegate fulfillment of our basic needs to our tools, but now we can thanks to advanced technology and AI. The challenge is going to be convincing the elites to relinquish their vice grip on society, which is what they exploit to increase their capital hoard and leverage it to keep all of us on the grind, fighting to survive or otherwise fighting pointless culture wars with each other. Part of that equation is of course modern day indentured servitude in the form of student loans.
Challenge yourself! Dare to dream of how we could, instead of why we won’t.
i don't approve of the tax cuts. look, i'm middle aged and my future doesn't look good. i'm hoping for... well, a better old age and death than the one that honestly seems likely. i talk to a lot of people without a place to stay, food, safety, or medical care.
my point to you was, i'm not going to not vote for Biden because he didn't manifest total financial freedom for me in the last four years. i don't think third party has a chance right now, and i'm terrified for myself, my family, and the people i work with if we get Trump.
i genuinely believe splitting the left will only enable Trump to win, and i'm not convinced there's any coming back from that. as bad as things are for most of us, i believe it can get a lot worse - and some of the the people i work with tell me what that looks like in places where government isn't functional at all any more.
i don't believe there is anyone in any party who is going to eliminate my student loan debt in the next four years. but i am grateful that i paid $0 this month instead of the $800 it would have been.
"because you need to pressure and criticize Biden without actually making him lose"
"We need to be toothless about our criticism of Biden" FTFY
The threat of making your candidate lose is the only power you have to shift them.
Next time you're negotiating for a car, see how much the seller budges after you preceed negotiations with "Now, I am fully committed and happy paying sticker price, but how much can you lower the price?"
Edit: at least have the intellectual honesty to say out loud that Biden could do anything, and you'd still vote for him
I mean this is also not really a threat, though. I think realistically biden and trump are both closer to each other than either of them are to this like, eclectic amalgamation of positions that is the "youth vote". Him not winning isn't like, still a victory, in that circumstance, but it's not like, a loss to them in the same way that it would be if they actually had to do all the stuff the "youth vote" wanted. Basically I'm just saying that they, the DNC broadly I suppose, would rather give as little as they absolutely can, while still maintaining a delicate balance of power where they're the only ones that can maintain the status quo rather than a backslide into total fascism. Going with all the "youth vote" positions, to them, would be as big if not a bigger loss than a slide into total fascism.
Which is to say, I think they're willing to lose as long as it means they don't have to really do anything major.
100% agree. This is something liberal and moderate voters are completely blind to.
I’m fully committed to lesser evil voting since it’s the only viable electoral strategy. So as long as Biden is better than Trump I would vote for him. I have a hard time understanding why people don’t see that this is the most rational way to vote. If you don’t like it, and I don’t either, then you need to pursue strategies to change it, particularly outside the electoral system. Since these strategies do not conflict with voting I think it’s rational to pursue both actions.
And no I don’t think we need to be toothless. But a lot of people don’t seem to be smart enough to walk the line of threatening to withhold support without actually doing so. I’m not going to go right up to Biden and tell him that’s what I’m doing. He doesn’t know what my strategy is, so it can still be effective.
I mean so lesser evil voting is generally a good strategy for damage control, but it's not necessarily a great strategy in terms of like, blanket things you can just effect to the whole. If you take a voter in a non-swing state, say, california, a state that votes very consistently, them defecting their vote to a third party which represents them more accurately, is going to be of much lesser weight in totality than if someone in a swing state had done so. They are probably much safer in their estimation of walking up towards the line without crossing it. This is probably also true of states who get their votes tallied up later on, and also of states where projections are already in favor of certain candidates, since those projections affect elections.
This also kind of discounts "not voting" as an electoral strategy because that doesn't send a super clear signal, but it's probably not the worst thing in the world, since we could kind of file them away under like, either the average non-voter's position in their state, or just the average non-voter's position at large, which is probably going to be more radical of an average position than most would think.
But yeah, all of this still tracks with what you're saying so far. I think the biggest determining factor for me, though, is that electoralism as a strategy at all hinges on the assumption that democrats would rather move left than lose to republicans. And I dunno, that's kind of a tenuous assumption, and I think is the major disagreement on people who are willing to engage in electoralism vs those who aren't, is that most people who aren't, assume that the democrats would rather lose to republicans and ensure a status quo/backslide into fascism rather than move to the left.