Joe Biden, Senator from Citibank (oops, DELAWARE), to Run for President

Voters were pretty consistent from Obama to Trump, the electoral college wasn’t.

You’re so mad you can’t recognize offhand sarcasm, bro. Smoke a blunt and chill.

Please ban yourself, you insufferable twit.

Casual sarcasm, when translated to a text interface on the internet, is flattened to the point where it generally fails to convey sarcasm. Try it sometime and see.

I think trying to explain things to milo just makes him cackle harder

Tomboto seriously I think you're looking for things to get enraged by in that last post. you're being way more aggressive and insulting than milo at this point.

nah it started this way

I’m exorcising many, many months of unpleasantness tonight, yes. I really don’t care what you think.

milo sucks at posting, he drives off other posters, he thinks it’s all hilarious, and I fucking hate him.

Man there’s better choices of posters to lose your shit at

Some ppl itt really need to get out more tbh

Thats not good advice right now

depends on yer perspective

I don’t know of that many other posters who gleefully drive fellow posters off the board and then keep on truckin’ with the same formula and single-minded certainty as our man milo zed

I tried to drive someone off the board but got tempbanned for it smh

The unfettered dgafness of his approach to these threads, on and on and on, despite several people pointing out the repetition, the repetition, and how we got the point, we got the point; it’s enough. I’ve had enough.

It remains the case that if Joe Biden loses it won’t be because of our posts about how he’s bad

this "Joe Biden sucks" thread is 15 years old next month, we might accidentally fill it up and start making posts about how he's bad on ILX's one "Joe Biden rules" thread, that sways the votes of a nation

Can I distract u by asking u to explain what NATO is for, I probably know less about it than Donald Trump

Once upon a time there was a country called the Soviet Union

Other countries were scared of it, even us (but we rarely said so)

Needless to say I have no idea what you’re talking about but you told someone to “fuck off and die” like half an hour ago.

The countries on its western border - “the west” - joined us in an agreement of collective defense. An attack on one would be treated as an attack on all.

Everyone liked this agreement and it kept the borders with the scary Soviet Union stable until 1989, when things got weird.

Since then, the Soviet Union fell apart, and a lot more countries joined NATO. Why, you ask?

Because they were still afraid of Russia- the country that used to be most of the Soviet Union, and was still scary, especially for countries on its western border.

NATO is no longer just about keeping Russia at bay, though. It is an important part of how we train and build our allied military forces to take on challenges anywhere in the world when a NATO country is threatened.

biden wasn't my candidate -- i voted for sanders in the primary. (i might have voted for warren if she hadn't already dropped out by the time my state got to vote.) i have no argument with anyone who thinks that biden is a weak candidate, that he has a patchy record, or that we could have done a lot better.

i'm voting for him because a vote for biden is a vote for the democratic party to control presidential nominations, executive orders, and court appointments. and despite my various disappointments with them, the democratic party of 2020 is very different than the party of the 1990s, or even the early 2000s. the fact that someone like sanders could come so close to winning the nomination tells you everything you need to know about the difference between now and then. (was there an equivalent figure to AOC -- a popular left-wing democrat who got constant media attention -- during that era? i can't remember one.)

there are plenty of things about biden that concern me, but most of them qualify as reasons to have voted against him in the primary, not reasons to sit out the election in november. i find biden's vote for the iraq war abhorrent, but he does not seem to have been especially hawkish when he served as VP -- he didn't favor the intervention in libya, for example. i doubt i'll like his foreign policy much, and i doubt he'll end the drone war. on the other hand, considering that donald trump dramatically escalated drone bombing and has basically gotten away with it, i think the unfortunate truth is that the public doesn't care that much about this issue. that's a problem, but it's not a problem that's going to be solved by re-electing trump.

and yeah, obviously, this is just a message board where we all post under silly names and nothing we say matters. but it is genuinely odd to me that so many ppl here keep insisting that there's no real difference between biden and trump. but, yknow, so it goes.

on an unrelated note, i always find it odd that biden was considered important enough to be the subject of his own thread way back in 2005. i don't think we even had a thread for ted kennedy until he died.

And that’s the NATO story.

but it is genuinely odd to me that so many ppl here keep insisting that there's no real difference between biden and trump.

One person has done that, sort of, and said that yes a difference exists but not enough of one for him and also that person can’t vote anyway.

these threads, on and on and on, despite several people pointing out the repetition, the repetition, and how we got the point, we got the point; it’s enough

new board description

i always find it odd that biden was considered important enough to be the subject of his own thread way back in 2005. i don't think we even had a thread for ted kennedy until he died.

Great point JD!

I was around reading ILX all the time in 2005, and was interested in US politics, but I still don't think I even knew who Biden was until c.2008!

A British leftist comments on Biden:

If I was an American I wouldn’t vote for this guy. The Democratic establishment scotched the left candidate for their guy (who has multiple *major* issues).

That’s fine, but the left then owes them absolutely nothing. https://t.co/5gfRq6tooV

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) May 20, 2020

He ran for President in '84 and '88, he was a big-name Senator in 2005, esp. among the kind of people who watched Sunday morning political talk shows.

but it is genuinely odd to me that so many ppl here keep insisting that there's no real difference between biden and trump

It's genuinely odd to me that so many ppl here keep insisting that anyone who goes out of their way to point out or openly discuss the myriad list of abhorrent things Biden has done/said/voted for/credibly alleged to have done/supports must be equating him with Trump. Like a candidate for the highest office of authority on the face of this Earth shouldn't be subjected to the highest possible scrutiny and shouldn't be held accountable for their past actions and words.

If discussion of Biden's politics and past/present transgressions upsets you so badly that you're hallucinating or gaslighting fictional South Park libertarian talking points to argue at (that don't seem to exist in reality; Can you actually show us some examples of all these "so many ppl" you're referring to?)... maybe you shouldn't be so eager to roll over and vote for such a person at the drop of a hat?

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/20/andrew-cuomo-new-york-coronavirus-catastrophe?

Pretty much how a Biden admin is going to play out. At least he is not Trump 1000 times a day.

Great post, JD.

I haven't seen anyone directly equate Biden with Trump, but one of milo's favorite talking points is that Biden sucks so much that it's not worth voting for him unless you happen to live in a swing state.

This kind of attitude bums me out because I like thinking that everyone's vote matters, that we are all participating in democracy when we enter the voting booth, even when we live in a reliably red or blue state, and even if the vote we cast is for the lesser of two evils. Especially when Republicans are actively making it harder for people to vote, we should be embracing this civic responsibility. There's absolutely no scenario in which I don't vote just because I live in Illinois.

It also makes me really anxious, I have to say. Milo likes to mention that he lives in a red state, but Texas is gradually turning purple thanks to demographic trends, and recent polls show the race fairly close there. States aren't intrinsically red or blue; they become that way because of individual voters. You may decide that your individual vote doesn't matter because there are millions of other people in your state, but who's to say that a lot of those other people aren't making the same decision?

While it's obviously true that Biden won't lose because of ILX posts, I do generally worry that he'll lose because of lack of enthusiasm. (It's one of the reasons I didn't support him in the primary.) That doesn't mean that I want this thread (or anywhere else) to be free of criticism. But nihilistic cynicism about the election creates the conditions for Trump to win.

Pushing the demographic trends has become my second most important reason for voing.

*voting

I do generally worry that he'll lose because of lack of enthusiasm.

Isn't the argument here that Trump is uniquely unpopular and that unpopularity is what will supply the enthusiasm to get Biden over the line?

I hope so! That's what makes me feel optimistic. But I still worry.

must be equating him with Trump

i think it's more that not anti-biden people see how abhorrent trump is and watch in amazement as his "base" not only doesn't give a shit but kayfabes along with his stupid transparent lies -- while not anti-biden people worry that criticizing biden is so much the opposite of what 'works' for trump that it's symptomatic of why biden will lose. i don't think anyone's saying to pump biden up the way the deplorables do trump, but just keep it in context sometimes. sure biden sucks in some ways, but you know what would suck worse? more deadly inept response to pandemics. continuing not only to ignore climate science but speeding it spitefully along. another "conservative" supreme court justice. dozens more 40-something federalist society judges on the bench. sure it blows that it's a binary choice between the lesser of two evils, but the lesser evil is so manifestly less evil, step off on occasion

I do generally worry that he'll lose because of lack of enthusiasm.

Isn't the argument here that Trump is uniquely unpopular and that unpopularity is what will supply the enthusiasm to get Biden over the line?

That's part of it, that people will show up just to vote "not Trump," but polling is starting to indicate that Biden is actually poaching Trump's voters. That old people are gonna vote for him.

Elections are always binaries choices b/w two evils. When haven't they been? At least for POC.

Is that how Obama was perceived?

For me, yeah. In 2008 he said he opposed gay marriage when his record in Illinois said otherwise and supported the FISA expansions

It also makes me really anxious, I have to say. Milo likes to mention that he lives in a red state, but Texas is gradually turning purple thanks to demographic trends, and recent polls show the race fairly close there. States aren't intrinsically red or blue; they become that way because of individual voters. You may decide that your individual vote doesn't matter because there are millions of other people in your state, but who's to say that a lot of those other people aren't making the same decision?

otm

also, obv i don't see this thread as influencing the election. we can all go to town here for Biden, or not, it won't matter. but the thread does serve as a bellwether of sorts. it certainly doesn't represent what all democratic voters think of biden, but i think it does represent what the left side of that voting bloc thinks.

idk any young person in real life who is pumped to vote for biden. but almost all of them are going to vote for him, all the same. it's more like a civic duty, to defeat trump. and since young people forget to vote every goddamn election, and the revolution didn't take place this year, what ultimately matters is how many racist old farts decide to either not vote (like my parents this year - i did it!) or to switch their votes to biden. it's a helpless feeling, which i think is what promotes some of the bad vibes itt

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/20/andrew-cuomo-new-york-coronavirus-catastrophe?

Pretty much how a Biden admin is going to play out. At least he is not Trump 1000 times a day.

― xyzzzz__, Thursday, May 21, 2020 5:26 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

cuomo and biden are different kinds of shitheads imo

i wonder what editing nathan robinson is like, seems horrible

i mistakenly thought cuomo was a republican for years. as much as boe jiden sucks, i don't think i'd ever confuse him for a republican

someone please jump in here and inform me of the top 15 reasons joe biden is indistinguishable from a republican

He thinks repubs are humans so that's one knock against him for sure

Pretty much how a Biden admin is going to play out.

― xyzzzz__, Thursday, May 21, 2020

How?

1. doesn't think quickly, relies on old talking points and slogans, doesn't seem to understand what's actually going on