Gretchen Whitmer responds to calls by some Democrats to vote ‘uncommitted’ in Michigan’s primary on Tuesday
Gretchen Whitmer, the Michigan governor, pushed back on calls to not vote for Joe Biden over his handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict, saying on Sunday that could help Trump get re-elected.
“It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that any vote that’s not cast for Joe Biden supports a second Trump term,” she said on Sunday during an interview on CNN’s State of the Union. “A second Trump term would be devastating. Not just on fundamental rights, not just on our democracy here at home, but also when it comes to foreign policy. This was a man who promoted a Muslim ban.”
Whitmer, who is a co-chair of Biden’s 2024 campaign, also said she wasn’t sure what to expect when it came to the protest vote.
Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat who is the only Palestinian-American serving in Congress, urged Democrats last week to vote “uncommitted” in Michigan’s 27 February primary.
Fuck genocide Joe, I hope he burns in hell the senile old bastard
It does not matter at all who is the figurehead of the Great Satan. The Great Satan must fall completely for the world to be free.
Vote Trump.
She couldn’t be more wrong. Not voting for Biden will show him what he could lose in the General. Primaries are the more important than the general in this way.
So… a statement of fact?
Vote blue: destroying Palestine.
Vote red: destroying Ukraine.
Vote red: destroying Ukraine.
And Palestine.
Then stop bombing children, it’s that fucking simple you fucking ghouls.
Now, if the Democrats had picked someone who actually supported popular Democratic positions, there wouldn’t now be a massive chasm between him and their base on various burning issues they now have to bridge during what may, ironically, in fact be one of the more important elections of our lifetimes.
Support for Palestinians is not even close to being a majority opinion among Demcratic voters. Most Dems that are gen X and boomers tend to (broadly) support Israel, while support for Palestinians is strongest amongst zoomers and younger millennials.
Do you understand that, in regards to a general election, this is a problem?
There’s not any position that he could take that doesn’t have huge potential drawbacks for his core voters, while Trump’s supporters overwhelmingly support Israel’s war against Palestinians.
He could simply not unilaterally and proactively send them more weapons. He could not veto UN resolutions. While I think we should be taking a moral stance on genocide, I’ll take simply not being actively complicit.
…Which costs him independents and Republican-leaning voters, and hence the election.
Whether I like the system we have right now or not, politics is strategic. Right now, it’s not good strategy. If he was just starting his 2nd term, then he could–and should–absolutely to just that. But right now he doesn’t have sufficient political capital to cut off funding to Israel and win an election.
Independents also oppose Israel’s actions. You didn’t even need to open the links, I highlighted that for you. Holy fuck skittish liberals, stop fucking abandoning everything for imagined Republican crossovers.
Democrats don’t pick their candidates, the wealthy donors and senior members do. Which is why we always end up with a centrist and empty promises. Money in politics is a cancer.
Those are who the Democratic Party represents. They are the Party. If you want to pay membership dues and show up to meeting locals, that’s fun and cute and all, but the donors and senior members make all the important decisions above the local level, and local power brokers generally have Party locals all sewn up, too.
Just ignoring that small donors exist and add up…
The DNC doesn’t like them tho. Large entities giving huge amounts of money involves, dinners, fancy fundraisers, trips, and all types of situations the money spreads around where it shouldn’t.
Small donors just want common sense politicians who are actually going to try and help Americans. Large donors want corporations to pay less taxes if were lucky. AIPAC wants billions a year and unquestioed support.
So large so ors and small donors want opposite things, and since large donors are more likely to personally enrich the people running the party, the people running the party decided that’s who they go with.
Even if it means Dems are less likely to win elections.
It costs more money to get ten million $1 donations than it does to get one $10,000,000 donation. You have to advertise, put up a website, collect donations, and possibly pay service fees for the charges. One giant novelty check from a billionaire means more of that money goes into their coffers.
It’s the same reason websites have advertising rather than memberships: Ad dollars are cheaper to get.
Lol
You think thos 20k a plate fundraisers cost zero?
The difference is the in person schmoozing with all those donors. The people running the party want to be paid to attend shit like that and having wealthy people suck up to them
I think getting $19,000 out of $20,000 is better than getting $0.90 out of a $1 donation, yes. It’s called cost-of-revenue.
But you’re right about the schmoozing. The donors love that shit. But there’s also massive armies of political operatives whose livelihood depends on getting paid a ton of money to repeat facts back at the candidates.
Advertisers, analysts, pundits, news orgs, and a ton of other people rely on elections being both as expensive and as frustrating as possible. That way they get a ton of money, and sell a ton of eyeballs.
Sure, if you’re making up random numbers anything can be justified…
But talking to someone who does that isnt something a lot of people are going to want to do bud.
It costs more money to get the $10M donation, but it’s paid for by taxpayers rather than the candidate.
Right, exactly. Sure, the Dems have a bunch of formal structure, and yes, you can participate in it, and if you persuade the decision makers inside the party (who are industry tools more often than not), then yes, you can have an influence. But if you want to challenge them on something genuinely democratic, like calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, which 76% of the Democratic base is in support of, then all of a sudden the elitist liberalism comes out and we all have to get in line behind our august statespeople, who know infinitely better than us measly citizens…
It’s what Bernie has been saying for decades.
The first step is replacing neoliberals with progressives. We can’t fix anything while they’re in power, because they’re the problem
Which is why the DNC fights harder against progressives than republicans. Losing to republicans just isn’t a big deal to them, they know in 4-8 years they’ll be in power again, and they’ll be a shit ton of donations to Dems because of it.
If they lose to progressives…
That could be the end of the gravy train forever.
The more people understand that, the sooner it happens.
That’s why the neoliberals demand absolutely loyalty to Biden.
The DNC has the state infrastructure and most federal and state-level campaigns tied so deeply into their infrastructure there’s no real hope of replacing them.
Local politics are a tiny bit more open-ended, but again, the stakes are lower and local governments are explicity subordinate to states. Cities and counties can’t do much if the state doesn’t like it.
I have no idea how you fix this situation up, but as I see it, whatever the solution is has to look like making the DNC and its infrastructure obsolete. I don’t see this happening inside the Democratic Party.
The DNC has the state infrastructure
…
The DNC is not the state parties…
The state parties exist independent of the DNC, but due to how funding is supposed to trickle down, the state parties do kind of have to listen to them.
And while the state parties are in charge of their primary votes, the DNC can choose to ignore them.
Which is what happened when NH Dems refused to break NH state law so that Biden wouldn’t have to lose the first primary after NH picked progressive over party favorite in 2016 and 2020.
It’s confusing, but please try to learn more about our poltical system.
I’m noticing lots of Bidens supporters are incredibly opinionated, they just don’t know what they’re talking about about. When they do, they finally start understanding how fucked up we are and that if we dont act soon it’s too late.
It’s hard enough when one party is antidemocratic, if both are…
And their democracy is at stake. Just shut up and vote D like a good peon and leave them to make their billions.
No, we always end up with a centrist because a vast majority of voters are nowhere near as left-wing as the people who flock to Reddit and Lemmy. The American public is electing who they support and believe in, and it sounds to Lemmy leftists like the rest of America is robbing something from them because they never meaningfully interact with people on other parts of the ideological spectrum. Whether you realize it or not, a sizeable majority of American voters do not think or vote like you do.
Which is why I’ve given up on actually being happy with my government: I’m a weirdo and most Americans actually like this shit.
A majority of Americans have been unhappy with their government almost every single year since Nixon was President. So no, most Americans don’t actually like this shit. It’s just that given the problems we’re currently facing and the fact that most Americans don’t like this shit, a huge majority of them either blithely disagree with people who think like you, or actively and violently oppose people who think like you. A majority of America simply has different priorities, even if they ostensibly like progressive ideas, and that’s the reality we’re stuck with until public opinion shifts in a different direction or on-the-ground conditions change.
And I’m not gonna live long enough to see that.
A lot of black people died before the Civil Rights Movement. A lot of LGBTQ+ people died before gay marriage was legalized. A lot of women died before their full integration into the workforce. A lot of political outsiders died before the first nationally-binding primary system was implemented in 1972. All of those people died either hopeful that change would come or resigned to the fact that it never would, yet here we are.
Public opinion can and does change. It takes time, and progress is intermixed with periods of backsliding, but change is certainly possible. I think the American experiment will eventually collapse by popular vote, but I hope I can see a few cultural, economic, environmental, and philosophical victories notched between now and then, just as I’ve witnessed a few big ones since I was born.
Cool take, see you after the flopped election when you’re back here screaming that leftists single handedly tanked the election for Biden. 🤷
Not my take, I brought sources. Feel free to read them if you want to get outside of your bubble for a bit.
People really will argue there are no left leaning voters and also leftists are why Democrats can’t win elections because the non existent voters don’t vote.
Shocking that aiming at the apathetic middle fence sitters doesn’t seem to work when clearly that the argument is that it does. In which case it doesn’t matter that Biden isn’t liked by leftists cause he will win in a landslide for getting all those centrists and centrist conservatives right?
I’m with you dude. I don’t get how there can be this argument that Democrats don’t need leftists and shouldn’t try to even bother getting their votes but also are being ruined by greedy lefties not voting. It’s a fucking paradox which means they need to actually give a shit and aim for the left.
I will eat this thread printed out on a sheet of paper after elections in November if Biden loses
Trump, the one who moved the US embassy would, if anything, support Israel even more aggressively than Biden.
It’s so infuriating how difficult it is for people to understand this
Democrats should not be supporting genocide. Regardless of how much worse the alternative is.
Most would agree, but putting a worse person in power through apathy or inaction isn’t the solution.
I’m not advocating for voting for Trump or not voting.
Democrats should not be supporting genocide.
And what does that look like to you this election cycle?
Stop the bullshit double speak, half truth skirting around the conversation and say, flat out and in plain English, how do you propose we handle this situation as a voter? Give us an actual solution.
We should continue the protests until Biden stops supporting genocide.
We should vote for Biden and not Trump. Democrats should not support genocide. The two aren’t contradictory.
Stop the bullshit double speak
“Democrats should not support genocide” is a simple, direct statement.
Your point is received. It’s a shitty point, but please, you keep trying to elaborate but you just keep repeating the same useless point.
There isn’t one, unless we can somehow replace key centre-right policymakers inside the Democrat party and drag the party to a more firmly progressive platform
WOW THANKS FOR THE TIP
Shame Dems won’t take it
I’ll stop saying it if they ever stop doing it.
You think Trump, the guy who makes transparent threats of violence every other sentence, would stop Israel from levelling Gaza?
I think Democrats should stop supporting genocide. They should vote for Biden and not Trump.
Biden should stop supporting genocide, and pro-genocide centrists should stop assuming that opposition to genocide is support for Trump. Or at least scroll down and see if others haven’t spammed identical genocide apologia.
The alternative appears to be that same genocide plus an authoritarian state run by a corrupt egoistist BTW. Voting for a party is and never has been a vote to support literally every policy they stand on.
I wasn’t advocating for not voting for Biden; I was advocating for Biden to cease his support for Netanyahu’s genocide.
When you make statements like
Democrats should not be supporting genocide. Regardless of how much worse the alternative is
You need to understand that the alternative is Trump. Stop creating bullshit noise and get on the same page as everyone else.
The alternative is Biden not supporting genocide, and if it takes threats to not vote for him to do it, that’s well worth it. You act like everything is baked into stone and none of these current actions could have a material impact on the people that are right now dying.
You need to understand that the alternative is Trump.
“But they’re worse” does not justify supporting genocide. Nothing justifies supporting genocide. Biden should stop.
Yep, so vote Bernie in the primaries, then when he loses the primary and the election is Biden vs Trump vote Biden.
It sucks that our election system has been warped into a two party shitshow, but here we are.
Our ecosystem will not survive a Trump term. That means our food supply will not survive a Trump term. We do not want a neverending dust bowl.
Additionally of you really think Trump will do anything for peace you haven’t been listening to his words or looked at his actions.
I said Democrats should not support genocide. I did not say people should not vote for Biden. I did not say people should vote for Trump.
I said that Democrats should not be supporting genocide. Biden should stop and you should too.
Why I started with, “Yep”. Another word for yes.
Then don’t accuse me of being a trumpist because I don’t think that Democrats should be supporting genocide.
There are also a large amount of people who understand this and are intentionally acting as if they don’t. This is just this round’s version of the ‘walk away’ people from previous elections.
Walk away is such a shitty psyop. I feel bad for anyone stupid enough to fall for the obvious bullshit.
Some people love genocide so much they cannot imagine anyone opposing it without ulterior motives.
Some people love to argue in bad faith.
Is there a good faith argument that can be made in favor of supporting genocide?
Just like @dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com said, no one is arguing for genocide so you’re not arguing in good faith. Imagine being so blind and you think Trump and Biden are the same. Unreal how reductive some people are.
If it were possible, you would be ashamed of your comment but here you are.
Imagine being so blind and you think Trump and Biden are the same.
I didn’t say that either. Biden should stop supporting genocide.
No one is supporting genocide. Hence why Oderus implied you were arguing in bad faith. Quit now before you make an ass of yourself.
“Opposition to genocide isn’t real”, is pretty close to supporting it.
A young man just lit himself on fire to protest our complicity in the genocide, this isn’t a made up issue. The people up in arms in my social feeds aren’t faceless Russians, they the people who would work past campaigns and donate to Democrats.
Biden circumvented congress to sell weapons to Netanyahu for genocide. That’s support for genocide.
You can’t justify support for genocide, and I doubt you want Biden to stop doing so. So let’s see which Standard Centrist Dismissal you select instead.
He’s good friends with and likely has donations from Netanyahu. And all Trump and the GOP have to do (as usual) is sit back and watch the left fight and destroy itself while the gop sit back and win.
Democrats are so damn stupid. Not a single one of your candidates and potential presidents is against Israel, none, so why make it an issue for this election?
Because I’m guessing the hope is that Biden will see the threats to not vote and change his tact in order to keep his job.
Talk about blowing off your own foot cause your toe hurts.
Russian propaganda.
Idiot
? The reason it’s being pushed is Russian propaganda.
I mean she’s right. If you register a protest vote against Biden you need to accept the moral liability of helping Trump. There really isn’t any additional conversation here. You can write a million words about how you are making the perfect the enemy of the good, and none of it will change the very simple cause and effect of a protest vote.
If you vote for any politician instead of the guillotine you are complicit in the genocide of the middle class.
Primaries are the place for protest votes. You want to send a message, send it now in the primary.
Come general election, it’s time to shut up and protect the country.
It is a goddamn primary election and there isn’t oppostion to Biden. Anyone voting uncommitted in the primary is having no actual effect on the general election as Biden will be the nominee no matter what the voters express.
Telling the voters they doth protest too much is electorally a shit strategy.
And shit electoral strategies on behalf of the Democratic Party is how we got Trump once and now likely twice.
She’s not wrong, but I’m not sure this strategy is going to work. Biden is at risk of losing Michigan because of his support of Israel, and I think people are going to be swayed by a, “better than the other guy,” argument on that issue. You can argue that economically, even if Biden is not as progressive as you’d like, he will govern in a manner closer to your beliefs than Trump. Trump is even more hostile to the Palestinians than Biden, but if Biden is supplying Israel with unconditional military aid while defunding UNRWA, it will be hard to claim that he’s different in any practical way. If the democrats are worried about Michigan, they should be trying to push Biden to do something meaningful, like restoring humanitarian aid to Gaza, not scolding their voters.
Gonna cut her some slack since the last time trump was president his sycophants almost kidnapped and executed her.
Voting uncommitted is a fine thing to do during the primary. It shows the party that people are displeased with how the government is handling the Gaza situation.
Sitting out an election in Michigan is a bad idea. If you’re in a safe state, go wild. Just not Michigan.
