In a rare public address, former president said US is experiencing ‘dark days’ and urged Americans to vote
Joe Biden has warned that his presidential successor, Donald Trump, will attempt to “steal” the midterm elections, in a rare public address.
Speaking in South Carolina, where he was being honored for his lifetime achievement in politics, Biden also asserted that the US is experiencing “dark days”, in a speech made hours before the Trump administration launched attacks on Iran.
Reprising a line from the 2020 campaign that saw him defeat Trump and end Trump’s first presidency, Biden told the crowd at the Columbia Museum of Art on Friday that the “battle for the soul of this nation is one that’s never really over”. He simultaneously criticized Trump’s plan to introduce potentially prohibitive voting requirements ahead of the midterms.
Yeah, no shit. If only one of us had been in a position of power to try to prevent this…
We told you he would do this, Joe. While you were in office.
You did nothing.
Kindly shut the fuck up and get out of the public eye. Just go slink off and be old.
Have no idea why you’re getting down voted. He and his administration dicked around and held no one accountable for anything. They had a chance. They could have saved our democracy*. Instead, they made sure their corporate sponsors weren’t too uncomfortable. And while this has been building for two generations, I will never forget who dropped the ball in what was the last chance at keeping the US from slipping into a fascist shithole.
Sit down and shut up, Joe. Enjoy the America you wouldn’t fight for.
- Maybe it was and is doomed inevitably from the start, but goddamn to just let it go without doing the simplest thing like PROSECUTING CRIMINALS is pathetic.
So you wanted Biden to act just like Trump? Erm…
No, just for Biden to appoint someone who wasn’t too cowardly to prosecute Trump for his many, many crimes.
Mate I’m not even a sepo and I think you’re a wanker
Then why didn’t you put him in prison you useless cancer-hiding fuckhead?
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t the reason we don’t put people like ex presidents in prison cuz there’s a higher chance they’ll get petty and leak info to another country or is that just an excuse I heard by people trying to justify it?
Trump’s bathroom leaks information, regardless of whether Trump is prosecuted.
Excuse, for sure. There’s any number of slimy “protect the rich and powerful” excuses all over the place. Fuck all the excuses, no one is above the law and no one gets to hold the country hostage.
I get that I just wasn’t sure if it’s like that’s why they don’t stay in prison but still get charged with felonies. I do wish we could choose to punish political opponents tho like public hanging if convicted
try toFuck you for not stopping it Joe.
I remember reading for four years that Merrick Garland was just making sure his T’s were crossed and his I’s dotted before putting Trump away. Whoopsie.
The worst part about this was, at the time many believed that to be true.
But it was never even in the works
Well he did defeat medicare.
NO SHIT SHERLOCK
grandpa has escaped containment
He should shut the fuck up. That fucking hump is responsible for this.
When he took over, he immediately launched a Covid Vaccine program and an Economic Stimulus program that were both far more successful than predicted. For that, he could have landed in the top 10-15 of presidents.
But he had to do a decent job for the rest of his presidency, which mainly included dealing with MAGA as the National Security Threat they are. He had just seen Trump launch an Insurrection. That would have been enough for him to step off the podium after being sworn in, and say “Round them ALL up, and ship them to Guantanamo for interrogation. We’ll sort them out there.”
If he’d done that, we would have found out about the False Electors Plot, AND his Stolen Classified Documents Operation. That’s THREE separate cases of sedition and treason, and more than enough for him to get the noose.
Rounding them up would have suppressed the Conservative Propaganda Machine, and allowed the Dems to better control the messaging going into the 2024 election.
Instead, Biden basically checked out of the job after announcing his Covid and Stimulus programs, and stupidly appointed the most feckless Republican to be his AG, perhaps the STUPIDEST Democratic Presidential decision in modern history, who dithered and slow-walked Trump’s treason cases as long as he could, giving him a two year head start to run out the clock, which he did, successfully.
In addition, he ignored the many warnings, many coming from the mouths of the criminals themselves, that they intended to rig the election and steal the presidency, and Biden allowed them to do it in front of the entire world, without any interference at all. And when they did, he went along with the ridiculous concept that Trump won the election “fair & square.”
The American voters fired MAGA decisively, and expected the new Democratic administration to clean up the mess. Instead of getting justice for America, they tried to make friends with feral animals, and got eaten alive. For his weakness and cowardice, allowing MAGA to rise again, Biden’s legacy is in the toilet, and will he will be buried in the bottom 10 of all presidents.
Biden betrayed us, and he’s lucky that he won’t be joining the MAGAs against the wall with the rest of them. He deserves the firing squad as much as any of them.
100% THIS
The Dems are complicit and criminally inept by design and top-down decision-making, they fucking allowed this. We are here as much by the dirty players, Project 2025 puppet-masters as the DNC itself.
Fuck the entire two-party charade.
And this is the fatal flaw with “blue no matter who.”
That isn’t the lesson from this.
You’re taking the wrong lesson from this. Sometimes a feckless Democrat in office is worse than no Democrat at all. In retrospect, we would have been much better off today if Biden had lost in 2020.
No, we wouldn’t. Any second Trump administration was going to be bad.
And the only way it could have been prevented is if everyone made it clear any centrist is unelectable. Instead we had Vote Blue No Matter Who shouting from the rooftops they’d vote for 99% Hitler and so would everyone else.
The DNC might have listened if they couldn’t delude themselves into thinking the base was going to vote anyway, so only appealing to republicans matters.
The lesson is that a Republican can never be allowed to win any election. Shut the fuck up with this strategic losing using magic future vision powers nonsense talk.
You have to beat the Republican every time or countless people will suffer.
I don’t want to hear any plan that doesn’t involve the Republican losing the election.
Golly, if only someone could have prevented this…
Well, maybe the voters could. Well, I guess not.
Well it seems there’s evidence musk stole the last one and nobody is doing shit about it
Maybe you should have done your job and had him executed for treason
Had him tried for treason. Calling directly for execution implies that he is guilty. Which everyone is entitled to a fair trial. He didn’t even give him a trial. It was a complete abortion of justice in all aspects to let it go un acknowledged.
This is the right answer. If you are in a position if power, the consequences for your actions should be ten times more than a civilian.
Instead, all they really ever need to do is step-down and get a high-paid consulting job and for some reason that’s enough.
Absolute insanity.
Do you really think allowing a president to execute their opposition will lead to anything good though?
An insurrectionist who they literally had evidence raped and killed children YES!
The guy led an insurrection against our own government. The evidence was overwhelming. We’ve executed people in this country for much, much less.
Over half the country didn’t think it was a big deal.
I’m not sure why people still think the guy who, a day before he was sworn in, said “He knows those computers better than anybody. All those computers, those vote-counting computers, and we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide. So, it was pretty good, it was pretty good. So, thank you to Elon” legitimately won in a free and fair election.
Prove it in court and I’ll believe he stole the election.
When has proving in a courtroom that Trump did something unlawful ever actually mattered?
Because if it happened there is proof and I’d like to see it.
People are capable of understanding context. Not that you’re totally wrong, but Biden trying and executing Trump for treasonous crimes isn’t the same as Putin torturing and poisoning Navalny in a Siberian prison camp.
How much stuff have the republicans already blamed democrats for?
Do you think that the MAGA base wouldn’t execute Biden for his ‘crimes’ in Ukraine?
How much stuff have the republicans already blamed democrats for?
A lot. But they can literally never back up any of their claims.
Do you think that the MAGA base wouldn’t execute Biden for his ‘crimes’ in Ukraine?
Desire to? Yeah, I’d assume so. They tried to overthrow the government and murder Democratic leadership once already. Be capable of? No.
My prediction is that in much the same way Italy and Germany unified after the deaths of their respective far right leaders, America would eventually move on and become more unified as well. Maga is a cult of personality with Trump as the sole proprietor. When he goes, there’d likely be a power vacuum too big to fill and the cult fractures into multiple small factions that eventually lose popularity. Mayyybe one or two starts to gain traction, but they’re much easier to deal with than the inertia Maga has right now.
Seems like a pretty big bet to base on feelings.
You’re not wrong, but we don’t have the luxury of only making decisions based on rationality. Sometimes you need to trust your intuition and fix the repercussions of those decisions with more rationally sound decisions when/if they backfire.
Personally, I’d rather have dealt with the blowback of Donald Trump’s corpse rotting in a shallow grave than having to deal with where we’re at currently.
considering trump has threatened to jail his oponenets, do you still think doing nothing was a good idea?
Sometimes it just feels like I’m bashing my head against a brick wall here.
Keep going and maybe you’ll rub two braincells together and stop enabling Trump.
“We tried nothing and were all out of ideas” is how it comes across.
Fuck this lousy Smarch weather.
And your statement comes across like you’re okay with the ruling party executing their opposition.
I’m not the one who called to execute. But I did call for biden to arrest him and throw the key away.
But the rest of the world saw y’all do nothing, and now how many people lost their lives in war. How many trans people have killed them selves since election day because of his party’s anti trans bullshit.
There is a real cost to the nothing that was done. And were all paying it. The rest of the world is sick of it.
Yeah but Kamala Harris was forced upon the Democrats as the party leader. She wasn’t elected democratically to lead the party. That’s even worse. /s
If he was arrested and put in jail and Americans voted him back in as they did he’d be free anyways.
I’m bashing my head against a brick wall here.
No. But how about executing someone who weaponized a pandemic? Yes.
Absolutely! These are unprecedented times, and they require unprecedented solutions. We need to do a LOT more than simply punish MAGA treason, corruption, and pedophilia. They need to be punished so harshly, it will be felt for generations, and future dipshits will be reminded of what happens when they get squirrelly.
Yeah, execute the tyrant and his henchmen, and put their heads on the White House fence. Let their followers know that we’re enthusiastically willing to go medieval on their asses. That will keep them under their slimy rocks for the next few decades.
You don’t think the republicans will put liberal/progressive politicians up there the next chance they get?
I feel like there’s a group of people on here who are trying to push us into a civil war that we can’t win and I for one am not going to take that bait.
Just to understand your perspective: is there anything a politician, either sitting or running, can do that would cause you to support jailing or executing them, or is the complication of them being a politician such that, in your eye, no penalty can be met for any crime they commit?
I’m arguing against Biden throwing Trump in jail or executing him not arguing against people or politicians facing legal consequences from the justice system.
I’m arguing against Biden throwing Trump in jail
Presumably because Trump is a politician? Or is it that you believe he committed no crimes?
Do you believe Biden should be judge, jury and executioner?
First of all, there are no Republicans any more, that was the larval stage, before they morphed into their final form, MAGA. The Republican Party is as dead as the Whigs, and should only be referred to in scholarly or historical context.
And once were done with this, there won’t be any MAGAs. MAGA is a National Security Threat, and it’s leaders and followers are Domestic Terrorists, among many other crimes. They will not be allowed to exist any more. Germany did it with the Nazis, and we can do it with MAGA.
The Democratic Party will be our Right Wing Party, and The Progressive Party will be the Left Wing Party.
Finally, we will NOT be punishing MAGA for their politics, we will punish them for their many CRIMES. In the future, any politician calling for the legal punishment of their enemies for their political beliefs should be immediately removed from office and prosecuted for treason.
I feel like there’s a group of people on here who are trying to push us into a civil war that we can’t win and I for one am not going to take that bait.
MAGA is an Organized Criminal Enterprise, including organized child sex trafficking, and they cannot be allowed to influence our government and society any longer.
That shouldn’t take a Civil War, just a solid legal system, unless it takes a Civil War to install that legal system.
Would you rather live as a 13th Amendment Government-owned Slave under an Organized Crime government, or support a Civil War that makes America free again?
Would you rather live as a 13th Amendment Government-owned Slave under an Organized Crime government, or support a Civil War that makes America free again?
Neither and no matter how many charged words or phrases you put in your comments you’re not going to get me to start agreeing with you.
You’re talking about eighty million people in our country.
oh good, satansmaggottycumfart is here to derail the entire thread with his bullshit. I thought for a second that lemmy might actually have a political thread, but now its shut down.
SMCF is one of the top defenders of American exceptionalism when his team does the war crimes.
Idk if voting harder is the best strategy when the opponent wants to steal an election.
Edit: Since most discussion still focuses on voting, here are some ideas you could do instead / additionally:
- (general) strike / walk outs
- riots
- do what the yellow vests in France did and shut down the economy by blockading important logistical routes
- get inspired by indigenious resistance and shut down the US like they did with Canada by shutting down key freight train routes
- squat public spaces like was down in occupy wall street
- do property destruction of republican infrastructure
- take university campus like it was done during free palestine protests
- show solidarity with those imprisoned now and those that will be in the future
Vote hard enough that they legitimately lose, so that the correct course of action is more justified
It already is, of course, but a large majority needs to agree
How can we be sure this isn’t setting up for another 2000 Bush v Gore? Except, you know… on purpose?
At least it can be contested then. It will get more support from people. If they’re going to rig it (hack machines, miscount votes), nothing can be done. But if they’re just trying to weasel they’re way into disenfranchising people, they can be beaten with turnout - and all the republican redistricting (gerrymandering) efforts have razor thin margins, lots of opportunities to flip seats and districts in elections leading up to the big one.
Its the only strategy really.
The bigger the tilt against republicans the harder it is to steal.
This is barely even a strategy. It’s the “take no action” approach. It’s easy, but definitely won’t accomplish very much.
A far better approach would be to organize a leftist January 6 or similar. Get as many people organized and armed as possible.
Jan 6 didn’t work for Trump and they had most of the police on their side.
Organizing a leftist one is suicide.
Jan 6 came dangerously close to succeeding and was the most disorganized mess of incompetent morons imaginable. Get half a dozen transgender hackers in charge of communications and a few hundred antifa supersoldiers to the capitol, they will do the needful.
It’s not the only strategy.
Its the only viable strategy.
What part of “vote in rigged election” is a “viable” strategy?
1964, Presidential Election (LBJ vs Goldwater):
Johnson won 61% of the popular vote. Even if there had been a concerted effort to rig the election against Johnson, it would have had to be so widespread and obvious that it would have been either stopped immediately, or it would have resulted in a new civil war. Getting that many people voting the right way should be the goal; make the margin of victory so wide as to be impossible to overcome via subtle chicanery.
If they still try to steal the election in those circumstances, then there will be violence, which is the only other option for changing government, so we might as well try having the election before the violence.
TLDR:
There have already been extremely obvious attempts to steal US elections. The guy in charge right now tried to lead one. Some were even successful. People weren’t rioting in the street or overthrowing the government when Bush got handed the election by the supreme court, and that’s a much more recent precedent that refers to a successful steal, rather than a failed one.
Did anyone who tried to rig this one election 80 years ago face consequences? Were any measures taken by those in power to prevent another attempt?
2000 Presidential Election:
Popular vote: 50,456,002 (Bush) / 50,999,897 (Gore)
Bush won because the margin was so narrow. He lost the popular vote but eked out an electoral college win because of Florida.
Per Wikipedia:
Bush carried Florida by only 537 votes out of 5.96 million cast in the state (a margin of 0.009%).
Nader took 97,488 votes. If less than one percent of Nader voters had gone for Gore, Gore would have won the state, and who knows what timeline we’d be living in now.
Elections can be stolen when the margin is that narrow. When the margin is wide, it’s impossible to steal.
John Hancock has entered the chat.
It’s a good starting point. The more people vote, the more people will be angry if the result is stolen.
Apathy is the worst threat against democracy. Especially when one part is cheating.
Sir, with respect, we in the rest of the world known that for the past year. Please try to keep up.
In a world where targeted strikes against political leaders has been normalized by the president… Heads of multinational corps become valid targets to organizations with sufficient motivation.
The US is creating a more petty, and dangerous world.
The sky is blue, more at 11.
What they need is to remove the cancer that is Trump by carving him out. That will save democracy with free elections. Voting won’t help if the voting is cancelled and or rigged
Trump is a symptom. Removing him won’t save anything.
We need to gut the entire ruling class.
And a good portion of the non-ruling class rubes who keep approving of this shit.
Once you get the media gutted it’s a good step towards that. The idea that everything that’s taken place in the last 20 years is all Epstein psyop can get tested, good thing we have the names now eh.
No. Wrong. Trump is a mascot, and mascots serve an important purpose.
What they need is to remove the cancer that is
Trumpbillionaires by carvinghimthem out.Don’t let “good” billionaires convince you the problem is just Trump.
If you want to get rid of cancer in American politics, you need to carve out the whole republican party, the whole democrats party and create a system with more than two parties and actually have a leftist party, as democrats are centrist at best.
Also, no single candidate should be allowed to accept and spend more than 1 million on campaign, otherwise it’s just gonna be billionaires running things again.
Federally funded elections. No donations. No fundraising. If you get more than 2.5% of the vote at the local level, you get federal funding of a specific set amount for future campaigns at the level you are at, and one level higher.
Also no lobbying, no superpacs, no tips, and no stock trading for any politician.
If politicians want to give themselves a raise, it is contingent upon them raising the minimum wage at the same time.
Money Out of Politics
You need to abolish capitalism if you want to get money out of politics. There is no way that you can have a system where people can hoard wealth and also have fair elections. Lobbying is legal now, but making it illegal would just drive it underground. The reward for cheating is basically infinite (control of the state) so it basically can’t be regulated away.
You’re not wrong, but I am reminded of the refrain, “it is easier for most people to imagine the end of the world, than the end of capitalism.” The only way I can see is getting to the point that we can abolish capitalists is to regulate them back into “reasonable” (<$50,000,000 total wealth) levels of financial power.
Human history is filled with changes which would have seemed impossible to people living in the world prior to those changes.
We had regulated capitalism in the past, and now we’re here. There’s no reason to think regulation would work next time around. We need to be bold, outspoken, and uncompromising. The future is ours for the taking. We just need to organize.
When you don’t have about 10 parties, your democracy isn’t working.
Considering USA has 50 states, there should be about a hundred parties when local lists are included.Which two of our many territories, districts, and protectorates are you calling states?
Sorry, somehow I once got into my head it was 52. I know it’s 50, but continue to sometimes revert. ☺️
yes, just do away with America and replace it with China or North Korea!
EDIT: Lol, tankies coming out
This but unironically
That would unironically make the world a better place
