PHOENIX (AP) – The 2024 presidential election is drawing an unusually robust field of independent, third party and long shot candidates hoping to capitalize on Americans’ ambivalence and frustration over a likely rematch between Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump.
Ok. So you’ve pointed out the reality of the situation. How do we proceed? How do we get them back? “Trump is worse than Biden, moron!!!” hasn’t done the trick. If we need their votes, how do we get their votes?
If we don’t need their votes, we don’t get to retroactively need their votes if we need someone to blame for a loss, either.
If Trump wins, you stop investing your money, pull it completely out of the bank, do not buy anything at all beyond basic needs. You want the economy to implode and your investments are safe at home. Beyond that you can’t do much else.
Never claimed to have any of the answers to that.
I have a few ideas. There’s been a pattern in the Biden administration. I call it “lose big, win small, celebrate huge.”
Example: BBB. We lost big there. Over the course of months, BBB was systematically gutted and then killed. Americans got to watch as things Biden ran on, things that could have improved their lives in tangible ways, the reasons many of them voted for Biden in the first place, get removed, one by one, until the bill was eventually killed, at the behest of a member of Biden’s own party.
This was followed up with a comparatively modest win: The Inflation Reduction Act, which has indirect limited benefits to individuals, like Medicare being able to negotiate prices on a laughably tiny selection of prescription drugs. It’s something, yes, but we voted for childcare and family leave.
Then Biden’s supporters completely ignore the big loss, and instead celebrate the Inflation Reduction Act as though it was a bigger win than passing BBB, with all sorts of puffery about how it’s the least pathetic attempt to address the climate emergency so far.
I can provide other examples, but this is the most glaring one.
Now, compare this to how Biden has handled student loans. Biden started with half measures and his supporters acted like forgiving fraudulent loans for select borrowers was huge, even though it was mandated by existing law. Then Biden actually listened to progressives and tried to forgive student loans. Actual, tangible benefit to voters. That was killed by the courts. Crucially, it was not killed by Biden’s own party. Unlike childcare and family leave, Biden didn’t immediately give up forever. He instead did what he could to forgive what he could. He had a contingency plan and kept going. His supporters could point to the failure, admit it failed, blame those responsible, and show in real terms how Biden wasn’t gonna let that be the last word on the subject.
There’s other examples of this as well, but as before, this is the most glaring.
We need to keep trying to do what voters voted for, not acting like they won the showcase showdown when they’re going home with the consolation prize.
And for the love of god, we can’t keep acting like “not trump” is a sufficient argument to get all the voters we need to win. It might be, but the consequences of failure are so dire that that mustn’t be our only message. That and we need the administration to step up between now and the election. The administration needs a win between now and then.
And before anyone is like “well, you’re not getting one so vote for Biden anyway,” I’m already voting for Biden. I’m saying what I think is needed to convince enough people to vote for Biden so that we can be confident about beating Trump.
In my opinion, the Democrats need to work on broadly popular legislation, like marijuana legalization. Try to push it through, and if it fails, which it probably would in the house, they need to make a stink over it, and then use that for campaign ads, with the promise that if they win all 3 branches next election, they will make it happen. Then they actually need to do that, rather than waffling like they have in the past.