I wish you weren’t being downvoted just because people disagree with you, but I do think there are a couple of things wrong with your statement. For one, there has been some sort of genocide level event happening somewhere in the world pretty much continuously for decades. How much, exactly, do you want the USA to be the World Police? Most of us would say we want to be less involved in foreign affairs, not more. Now, many people will say, “sure, Biden’s policy with regard to Israel isn’t great, but can you imagine how much worse Trump’s would be?” I’ve never liked that argument, because just because one candidate’s policies are worse doesn’t mean that we should capitulate to the other guy’s bad ideas. Surely we can find a way to do better, right? But, I think a lot of people will read your comment like you’re making the election a single-issue choice, and that doesn’t tend to read well.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why Biden is taking this stance. He surely knows it’s unpopular with a big chunk of his voters. So why then? I’m sure he isn’t acting alone, he is listening to foreign policy, national security, military advisors. Maybe he’s listening too much to the military industrial complex, and we have every right to be pissed about that. OTOH, we can acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization. We can also recognize that Netanyahu was democratically elected. What would you have Biden do, send teams in to forcibly remove him and install our own leader? Maybe we’d just like to stop sending Israel munitions. Seems like a pretty low bar, why don’t we do it? I have no idea. I hate it. I can’t sit here and pretend to be a foreign policy expert however. Maybe by sending the weapons, we keep a seat at the table over how they are used. Maybe without our bargaining chip, Netanyahu tells us to eat shit and carpet bombs the entire Palestinian state into glass. Maybe it really is just the American M/I complex making sure we keep that gravy train flowing. That’s the most depressing, most frustrating possibility, but I’d really like to think it is more nuanced than that.

I hope he fucking shapes up on this issue by November. I don’t want him to take all these votes for him as an endorsement of his pro genocide policies.

I agree with you on that, 100%. At the very least, we deserve an honest explanation.

It’s more than just damage control. Everything you said should be enough to get people to vote, but the sad reality is reducing it to that may not be enough. If you’re reading this and considering whether or not to vote, OP is 100% correct. You need to do it. Make no excuse, get it done. But try to feel good about it too. You’re not just voting for one person, you’re voting for an entire administration, and Biden has proven himself in that regard. Under a Biden administration you’re going to have competent people working at all levels of the federal government, which is a big deal. Biden’s administration has done a lot of good as well that is easy to gloss over in favor of focusing on his negative attributes:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/02/joe-biden-30-policy-things-you-might-have-missed-00139046

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-opinion-biden-accomplishment-data/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/therecord/

You also need to be at the polls to vote for your down-ballot candidates. Do not underestimate the importance or closeness of those races.

No candidate is ever going to be perfect for you. Personally I wish we were finishing the 8th year of a Bernie Sanders presidency. But that doesn’t mean that because I didn’t get it perfectly the way I want it I’m going to take my ball and just go home. I hate the democrat strategy right now, but please don’t let yourself be told that Biden has been a bad president. He’s done some things you can be happy about and some things you can wish were different. If you want to see those differences, the best way you can do that is to be politically active and work for that change. Not participating means you forfeit that right.

It seems pretty obvious to me at this point that the DNC would rather lose than have an actual progressive win. None of the shitty things that Trump wants to do will hurt them, (stupid take if they cared at all about their descendants but they’re either too arrogant or too ignorant to worry about that) but actual progressive policies that helped average people WOULD hurt their way of life. Marginally. Like, the tiniest little amount. Like, your yacht can only have one master bedroom instead of four. But why give that up when you don’t have to?

“It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it”

I’m voting for Biden though, and I’ll keep voting as progressively as possible in the down ballot elections. If a progressive movement from the bottom up can start by doing things like getting rid of FPTP, we still have a chance. And to anyone thinking about not voting, please do. The president is one person. They are the single most powerful person individually, (taking aside impact on the judicial system) but the collective impact on your day to day life is far more influenced by down ballot positions. Research your down ballot candidates and vote. Many of those races are decided by only a handful of votes. Yours matters.

All that conservatives will see is a violent black man. Gun control will continue to not be part of the solution. He was going to do it gun or no gun, if those women had their own guns they could have defended themselves, clearly it was a mental health issue….

FWIW I didn’t downvote you for this. I read the Ars article and saw the bit about them making it unlimited during the early pandemic days, but it seemed to imply that is was above board during other times. So if the whole case hinges on their actions during lockdown when people lost access to their own local libraries it becomes a letter vs spirit of the law thing to me personally. They broke the letter of the law, did they break the spirit of it? Was what they did immoral? The justice system isn’t perfect and as a society we continually refine and redefine our laws and have been forever. The state of Louisiana just signed a law into effect that requires poster sized copies of the Ten Commandments be posted in every classroom, kindergarten through college. If someone breaks that law, what side of history will they be on?

If unlimited lending was something that IA was doing all the time, I can see it both ways. If it was for a few months during lockdown, then I think the court got this wrong.

(citation needed)