And every day he holds off on giving up the nomination is a day his actually viable replacement is deprived of. The latest DNC internal polling shows him even farther behind in swing states and on the verge of losing some reliably blue states.

DNC Leadership: We won’t have a real primary, that’ll weaken the incumbent, who’ll probably win anyway. And remember, if you don’t get behind our anointed candidate, you’re anti-democratic.

The numbers are already coming in, the debate hurt Biden, and badly. Why does “Democracy is on the line” only mean voters are required to show up to vote for whoever DNC Leadership chose for us? Why do they have no obligation to put their best foot forward?

They’re gonna bet democracy on “We don’t really have a plan to turn this around, we’re just gonna keep doing what we’ve been doing and hope things get better.” The man is ancient, his brain is not gonna suddenly start improving. People know how aging works, and know that even if he never flops that badly on camera again, it’s just because he was never on camera at the wrong time.

It didn’t all happen in 2016. Fascists have been quietly diminishing the power of the electorate for decades now. We’ll keep on having “the most important election of our lifetimes” until we manage to undo the damage. IF we manage to undo the damage.

To be fair, I’d be less inclined to wish death on them if they’d just retire after reasonable tenures.

The notion that a civilian militia could plausibly overcome the US military was outdated over 100 years ago. The only viable path toward a violent revolution in the United States is getting all or most of the military on board.

So in other words, Biden is still losing.

Not just the next election, either. We can’t afford to have a Republican president again until this has been overturned, or the party has undergone a radical reform

“This is the most important election of our lifetime” is gonna be true for every election until the GOP stops using any power they can get to inoculate themselves from voters.

Basic human decency is a debilitating handicap in US politics.

So, the United States is no longer a democracy. If a president wants to remain in power despite losing an election, they can, as long as they get the right people behind them, which is how every dictatorship works. What makes democracies different is that they have laws to stop that, and the supreme court just ruled those don’t apply to the president. There is no mechanism to stop them. You can say impeachment, but the results of an impeachment against the president are as much of a foregone conclusion as a North Korean election. The trappings of democracy does not unmake a dictatorship.

We’re no longer a democracy, and the only way we can ever return to being one is if we elect a string of dictators who feel disinclined to push their power as far as it can go. If we can do that long enough to get this decision overturned, we can have our democracy back.

Republicans have hammered on the “liberal bias” point for decades so that they can claim victimhood anytime they’re subject to the slightest scrutiny. The whole of the media has to treat them with kid gloves or take a hit in the ratings, which is basically illegal due to fiduciary laws.

The whole political ecosystem of the US, not just government itself but the press and lobbying, just isn’t built to handle the epidemic of bad-faith actors (mostly corporatist and on the right) we have today. Lobbying used to mean interest groups educating elected officials so they could make informed decisions, now it’s just legalized bribery.

Hearing “Trump is a threat to democracy” from Democrat leadership has started to make me seethe. They think it’s a one-way responsibility: we the voters are obligated to show up to vote for whoever they put in front of us, but they feel no responsibility to switch to a better candidate.

He didn’t have to edit in defined abs, but he went above and beyond the call.

When I accidentally spilled some (unheated) chicken broth on my dog the other day, I hoped it might teach her a lesson about being in the kitchen when I’m preparing food. It did not.

This’ll probably be an “agree to disagree,” but I think most websites do make good faith efforts to lower bot usage. Not because I trust them or anything, but because the perception that bot spam is out of control is bad for their bottom line. It drives away real users and high bot activity makes advertisers disinclined to trust that the high traffic is of any value.

You’ll trip balls so hard survival isn’t guaranteed.

The tragic thing, though, is that if lemmy ever “takes off”, there’s nothing about it that will make it any more resistant to bots and trolls.

It’s kinda like back when Macs had no viruses, because nobody bothered.

Then your choices are to come home and be slaughtered for the sustenance of the empire, or defect and be slaughtered for the sustenance of their empire.

Can’t forget the nice red uniforms.

Oh, please. The MAGA cult conquered doublethink years ago. They have no difficulty concluding Hunter Biden is the only person who deserves to have his gun rights revoked.