If you live in Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, or Florida (really any of the fifty states, but these are the most critical), AND you don’t want to see Donald Trump elected for a second term, you must vote for Joe Biden in November. Yes Biden is a doddering old man who is experiencing rapid cognitive decline, and yes it is totally unacceptable that these are our choices, but disengaging does not solve the problem, it only makes it worse.

Believe me, I completely understand the inclination to just say to hell with it and check out, but we can’t do that. I have been as guilty of it as anyone but I now fully recognize it was a mistake. But it’s not too late to make it right. Voting is not only a right, it is a responsibility. If we, the people, want to rule, we must be vigilant and responsible.

Right now, our priority is damage control and harm reduction. I know, it has been that way for far too long, and that is extremely frustrating, but it is nonetheless the reality of the situation. We must vote for Biden this year, and then we MUST stay engaged so that we can work toward nominating the best possible candidate in 2028. We must stay informed and vote, diligently, in every state, local, and primary election.

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:

politico.com/…/joe-biden-30-policy-things-you-mig…

bloomberg.com/…/2024-opinion-biden-accomplishment…

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.

Any President who encourages a genocide is by definition a bad President I’m sorry to say. The ethnic cleansing campaign is already almost complete, all on his watch with his defending Israel and giving them weapons and cover in the UN and in public. Hell, he even lied about the reason on the debate (the one thing he lied about and Trump told the truth about lol). People should still feel free to vote for him, especially if you live in a swing state, but we shouldn’t minimize that millions of Gazans are currently refugees. I hope he fucking shapes up on this issue by November.

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.