In a letter published Wednesday on Medium, an anonymous group of Biden’s campaign staffers demanded the president call for a ceasefire in Gaza, citing concerns that not shifting his policy on the issue could hurt his 2024 chances.
“Biden for President staff have seen volunteers quit in droves, and people who have voted blue for decades feel uncertain about doing so for the first time ever, because of this conflict,” the Medium letter read.
“It is not enough to merely be the alternative to Donald Trump,” the campaigners continued. “The campaign has to shift the feeling in the pits of voters’ stomachs, the same feeling that weighs on us every day as we fight for your reelection. The only way to do that is to call for a ceasefire.”
Sure, still going to vote for Biden over Trump. All Biden has to do is not be Trump and he is the better option.
So am I. Because probably like you, voting for me is easy.
Takes less than 15 minutes even on presidential years.
Not everyone is so lucky. Some people are hours of waiting, presidential years we still hear about some places being five, eight, maybe even more hours wait
And because that is almost always caused by Republicans doing it to dem areas of their state…
We really, really need those votes. If we didn’t, Republicans wouldn’t try so hard to suppress them.
So while voting Biden is undoubtedly worth 15 minutes of my time, you have to ask yourself: is it enough for a single parent working two jobs they don’t get PTO from to stand there for half a day.
It might have been enough when Trump was actively in office. But lots of people liked the idea of Biden four years ago a lot more than they do after his first 3 years in office.
And college students may need to drive many hours to their “home” where they are registered to vote. Which they might do “often” anyway, and like combine it with laundry, a meal, and an overnight stay, but still that all comes at the expense of homework time and exam prep, plus depending on the weather that drive may get more difficult. People like to blame college kids for not voting more, especially earlier in the primaries, as if somehow it is the youth that put DT into office back then!?
Your comment providing a deeper perspective is like a breath of fresh air. Thank you for sharing it.:-)
And people told me I was an idiot for getting a sociology minor!
/s
Real talk tho, a big reason governments are so fucked up is at some point we all got convinced business majors and lawyers were a better pick for leaders over sociologists.
At the bare minimum we need sociologists running campaigns.
Give me somebody that went through grad school to earn barely above the poverty line for decades before becoming fed up with the system and running for office. That is someone American voters can identify with, and someone that understands how the American public thinks.
At this point I’m convinced business majors shouldn’t even be leading businesses, let alone countries. Society suffers from how they’ve determined to extract the maximum profits from things.
It’s specifically the McKinsey kids.
Ivy Leaguers straight out of school that get paid millions for “hot takes” like companies should pay CEOs more and that as a huge coincidence every company needs to downsize.
That’s just American countries.
They also do work overseas like Saudi Arabia.
It’s what blew up Pete Butteigeigs camoaign, people started talking about how he wasn’t just a former McKinsey kid, he did the real shady shit overseas. It made it really hard for him to pretend to be a progressive.
I must disagree with the last paragraph, if you meant it more broadly beyond sociologists. For one, Obama was a Harvard constitutional scholar - though I don’t think he was “barely above the poverty line for decades” - so we already tried someone who at least paid attention in school as opposed to merely paying to cover their transgressions (I am speaking about GWB, who basically flunked Yale but then went to great trouble to hide that fact - you probably already know that a “C” in grad school is flunking). Much of the criticism that he received was undeserved and horrifically out of line - e.g. how his wife & children all looked like various forms of monkeys, do you hear that dog whistle? - but some of it was also probably deserved (unfortunately I do not know precisely how to distinguish which is which, and we likely will not know for another decade or so until historians are able to piece it together; and then the likes of me may never find out b/c I’d have to sift it through all the misinformation also being spewed out, and the idiocy besides).
More recently, Fauci provided a great example when he was asked what policy he would recommend implementing during the pandemic and his response was basically “I do not know. I will help with the factual questions though.” - thereby displaying humility, and precision in stating where exactly his sphere of knowledge lay, and having the wisdom to know that that target was beyond it. i.e., scientists tend to know very little beyond the fields that they choose to study.
So for the same reason that you may not want a brain surgeon coming over to fix your toilet problems - nor vice versa I might add!!! - just b/c someone went through grad school means very little, in terms of their ability to LEAD.
That said, ofc leaders should LISTEN to experts, not shit on them as DT did, especially within their area of expertise. Much of the economic struggles we are having today derive from the power of “corporations”, which were a thing that did not used to exist, but Bill Clinton (as he says many times) ignored them (he did set us up with many overseas treatises I am told, but domestic affairs on the other hand tended to be neglected under his administration - I thought the consensus was? oh right, you probably know way more than that than I!:-D), and ignored Robert Reich his cabinet secretary who tried to help with domestic policies.
So this is a lot of words to say that people can do well what they have been trained to do, but that does not mean that they can do everything, especially things that have very little to do with their training. Angela Merkel could, so ofc it’s not mutually exclusive, just not a sure thing either.
Also, at this point you probably would have to be insane to WANT to enter the political sphere, unless you were doing it for the $$$$$.
You out arguing that not ever sociologist would be a good president…
Cool man, no idea who told you they should, but I think everyone agrees
Entrenched leadership wants to ignore everyone who isn’t a conservative boomer. Blaming everyone else means they can dismiss them as unreliable.
If Covid hadn’t pushed vote by mail so hard in 2020, Biden would not have won. It was only because vote by mail increased voter engagement that Biden got it.
Engagement is going to be down in '24, vote by mail won’t be the same option it was in lots of places, and that’s going to make it a lot harder for Biden to win.
Not just vote by mail.
Lots of states finally moved away from requiring a specific polling location to anywhere in your city/county.
Which essentially broke the biggest waits. Who would stand in line for hours instead of driving to a different one if they had the option?
Pre-covid my 15 minute round trip for voting was about an hour at best, including 30 minutes driving. Because the polling location I had to go to wasn’t the closest, served a large area, and was pretty tiny with very few machines. They never even had stickers.
Now I get to go to the “rich” polling location that’s in walking distance, has a bunch of machines and volunteers, and gives out legit breakfast bags to every voter.
That also drastically helped Biden, I believe it’ll stick around tho.
I highly doubt this.
Ikr?? Voting is so easy in my state. I get the ballot in the mail, like everyone in my state. I get a voting guide. I vote then drop it off 15 mins from my house. Everyone can vote even if they’re working.
That’s all he has to do to get votes, but he needs a campaign staff. Can you imagine dedicating energy to work to get someone elected who you aren’t exactly passionate about?
Maybe he doesn’t need a campaign staff. He could keep his head down and just see what happens on election day. I’d almost welcome it.
I can because there are always more staffers, just like there are always new fools that decide to work for Trump. There isn’t a union of staffers after all, so I’m not at all worried about a handful of them.
Good news. That’s the extent of Democrats’ ambition.
Lol, ok then…
As will I, but I will also take every opportunity I have to try and make him be less of a trash person. As difficult of a task as it is.
“I’m going to vote for the guy but do my best to convince others he’s trash. Hopefully they still vote for him too!”
So, one should never criticize the party they’re supporting? Like the blind Trump followers?
No, not never. But goddamn, pick your moments. Ten months out from an election with trump leading the polls is impressively poor timing.
The best moment for criticism was 2020 in the primaries but the progressive/youth wing of the Democratic coalition feels voting in primaries abhorrent (and loves screeching about hating the party during the general election.)
I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember how close 2016 and 2020 were but goddamn, elections these days are won on the margins. And if my snarky comments about Biden make one progressive kid sit this election out, that’s one too many.
its infuriating because all he has do is setup some shitty arbitrary line Israel already crossed such as barring support/arms sales to countries with high child casualty rates and he doesn’t even have to mention Israel to sidestep the whole problem like a coward.
Some people get mad when the US plays world police, some when it doesn’t. There is always something to be outraged about.
Personally I don’t think a ceasefire is a good idea. Hamas will, again, turn around and commit more atrocities, as will Israel. It’s delusional to think they will ever stop. No one in Hamas or the IDF will magically come to their senses.
So, for now I’m just waiting for the end result. Hamas is clearly losing and all we can do is hope something good comes of it.
If you killed my family and destroyed my town to take out Hamas, the first thing I’d do is start Hamas 2. You can’t indiscriminately bomb your way out of terrorism.
The only possible outcome I can imagine where these atrocities make Israelis and Palestinians safer is if the UN Security Council enforces the 1967 borders and the ICC tries the senior leadership of Hamas and Israel for crimes against humanity. The world has to say “Never Again” to these atrocities.
Hamas part 2 or 29, it doesn’t matter, because there is no solution. Maybe if cults weren’t involved it would be a different story. The UN has no power in changing the outcome.
The best result would be Hamas and the IDF disappearing from the world, but I doubt either of those things will happen.
The latter for obvious reasons, the former because the many orphaned children now have good (and, honestly, legitimate) reason to hate Israel.
I would like Islamic groups participating in terrorism to disappear as well. The whole middle east situation is FUBAR. It needs a clean slate to work with.
Maybe if the US actually pulled out of the middle East everyone would be happy. But they’re not; they’re actively supporting Israel’s genocide.
This is the way