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.
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.
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?
You should probably be focusing on changing your local voting methods in order to allow different candidates rather than working towards disillusioning those who would otherwise not make voting decisions that end up supporting Republicans.
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.
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