So, Biden bros...can be annoying. A lot of them LOVE to pontificate the virtues of lesser evil voting to third party voters. And it's obnoxious, annoying, and ineffective. Because as someone who voted third party in 2016 and 2020, if you dont support the democrats, someone telling you about lesser evil voting and their theory of "harm reduction" is not likely going to do much. If anything, it just creates confrontation, which just leads to backlash. It's ineffective. Yes yes, I, a third party voter in previous elections, are very familiar with your theories of harm reduction. I didn't care. You can't make me change my mind, only I can, by reading the room and updating my theories on the world accordingly.
You know, I've been reading over my blog going back to 2016 lately for another project, and I'm remarkably stable in my views. A lot of my takes from 2016 still hold up today. Some havent aged well, like ones downplaying trump as a threat, or those cringey takes discussing the russian propaganda going around at the time, I'm still fundamentally the same guy now as I was then. I could go back and read my original ideological posts on my blog and they're near 100% accurate of my views today. And any shifts in politics have been more about me adapting to the modern environment than a genuine shift in views.
Why am I voting for Biden this time but i voted for Stein and Hawkins in previous elections? Context, mostly. I admit I have gotten a bit more mature as I've added onto my 2016 era views, and I have a bit more nuance today, but yeah, my views are mostly, by all accounts, the same. And what makes me support Biden this time, but not back in 2016 comes down to a few things. First, Trump is, genuinely, more of a threat. Second, he has gotten more fascistic and authoritarian. Third, Biden has done decently. And fourth, in 2016 we were still dealing with lingering effects of the great recession and that led to a national environment where I think people were in the mood for an economic shift to the left. In 2024, we're dealing with lingering effects of the inflation that's ravaged the country since 2021 when we reopened from COVID. Back then, we could argue a left populist was exactly what the country needed to fix it. in 2024, the left needs to hold on for dear life and defend their current position, not pressure Biden to the left in ways he cant deliver on and even if he did, he would be hated on by the rest of the country on it. We CANNOT move left as long as inflation remains the #1 issue in Americans' minds. That's the economic reality, and we need to ride this out and just avoid losing to the republicans.
A lot of people dont wanna hear that. For them, nothing Biden does is ever good enough. Don't get me wrong, i get it, given my agenda, I also want to move hard left. BUT, I also understand that 1) Biden isnt that guy, 2) he's done a lot more than I thought he would, 3) the big obstacle right now is congress, not the president, and 4) the country already hates him for "doing too much" because again, fricking inflation. Did I mention it's the kryptonite of progressive policy? Seriously, we can't even doing anything in our current state. Our policies arent what the country wants or needs right now, as much as I want them in the long term. These times are abnormal. Seriously, we are in very strange, not normal circumstances that only occur once in a blue moon, and we gotta understand that even if our policies are what we need 90% of the time, this is in that other 10% where things don't apply. As such, even I have to shift to support Biden.
But...some people haven't gotten the memo. And much like the hippies of 1968, they're spitting in the face of one of the most progressive presidents we've had, and are going bugnuts over gaza, claiming it's "their one red line" and blah blah blah. And more centristy, blue no matter who libs, think they can reach these people by voter shaming them. And I gotta tell you, no, you can't. Because as a former third party voter, these guys won't listen. Leftists who are anti democratic party will reflexively just ignore everything you say. I would know, I was one of these guys. Even worse, unlike me, who is just a relatively keynesian progressive liberal economically, most of those guys are marxists. I've been kinda realizing it more than more as time goes on, but most of the bernie or bust crowd is batcrap insane. They're literal red flag waving marxists. They fundamentally dont believe in electoralism and if they participate at all, it's to go third party. The number of these guys who ever could be reached by liberals and be convinced to vote for biden are already going to do so, like me. Because I'm actually a liberal who did that stuff to pressure the dems to do better and reach their full potential. But a lot of leftists just hate the democratic party reflexively and will continue to double down and vote green out of spite.
I really don't know how many of these guys are reachable. A lot of dems who voter shame have this idea that these guys are potential democratic voters and if only they didnt vote for greens, they'd vote democrat. But, again, having done this in previous elections, I myself am not sure my vote was really up for grabs by the dems. I mean it was, contingent on them meeting certain policy goals of mine, but barring that, I wasn't moving. And with these guys this time, their goalposts moving has gotten so ridiculous i honestly think dems reaching out to them is like lucy with the football. You just cant reach these guys. They just live in a different ideological world than the rest of us, and I doubt that they ever seriously considered a biden vote. Many of them seemed to be looking for an excuse to defect from the dems and it just so happened that gaza was the issue that motivated them.
Also, did we mention how these voters are actually a really tiny part of the electorate who barely shows up in polls? Like really, im starting to think that these guys are just this really tiny vocal minority who lives in their own little world. So why do liberals care so much what they do? let them not vote for biden and scream into the void. Sure it would be nice if they did, but honestly, dems arent owed votes and these guys are too far gone for the dems to even listen to.
Right now, we gotta play defensively. Most people probably are gonna back Biden. I admit his polling deficiencies are from his own base being demotivated, but what are they mostly demotivated about? Inflation and of course, voting for an 82 year old who looks like he's gonna fall asleep at any moment. Of course, we already covered that replacing biden makes dems poll worse.
Dems are just in a really bad position this election. This is what happens when inflation happens. Inflation is our kryptonite. Think of this in terms of keynesian economics. The solution when unemployment is high and inflation is low, more stimulus, more spending. Progressive policies help here. The solution when we got full employment and inflation is high, well historically the solution is normally more austerity, raising fed interest rates and cracking down on worker bargaining power. Although this isnt even a normal inflationary spell. it's not wages driving it. it's basically corporate greed. Of course, many people dont know that so are just blaming biden's spending on everything.
And yeah, what more can we do? We got a gridlocked congress, Biden basically being a lame duck similar to obama (although he's admittedly learned from Biden's mistake and is doing what he can). He's being attacked from all sides. The national environment favors conservatives. And yeah, any level of conventional knowledge of politics is gonna tell you that we gotta lay low here. Biden's screwed, we can't do anything. All we can do is defend him the best we can, and while yes, the gaza people are annoying, they're mostly a tiny minority who may very well be electorally irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Polling wise, these guys are background noise at best. Could they throw it to Trump? In theory, yes, but that implies that they were ever on the table for biden in the first place, and im not sure they were. And likewise, im not sure that, if biden loses, we can point to these guys and be like "yeah if only we won them over, things would be different." Again, like bill clinton said that one time, "it's the economy, stupid." It always was. It was in 2016, which is why i still stand my my analysis of then, but economic conditions are different now, and it's very clear inflation is what's screwing us.
If you're on the left, I'm gonna ask you to vote Biden. We need to beat trump. We need to keep power. This isnt a year to be pushing a progressive wish list on presidential candidates, especially an unrealistic one. We can pick up this debate in a future election cycle, but for now, we gotta stand by our guy. That's how I see it. As for how to get more people to vote for Biden, I don't know. Feel free to share my articles but I doubt they'll win anyone over. That's the thing. Most debates dont win people over. People on the internet have their minds made up 99% of the time.
Anyway if I were gonna debate, id rather focus on trying to win people over who blame biden for inflation by educating them, than by winning over the gaza people. Seems more productive, there's a lot more of them, and i actually feel like my arguments are sound, the problem is most people dont understand policy enough to realize that. And I know that sounds elitist AF and is itself not convincing, but ya know, whatever. I'm a political science grad, and I'm a blunt motherfricker who is gonna point out ignorance. So yeah, whatever.
But yeah that's where I'd focus my effort if you wanna get the word out. Ignore the free palestine whackos, focus on normies who are upset over inflation. There's a lot more of them and hopefully some of them can be convinced more easily.
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