I won’t vote for Joe Biden, and I’m not Alone
I won’t vote for Biden.
Fight me.
I’m not talking about the Primary. Of course I’d never vote for him in the Primary. I mean, that if Biden does manage to scrape his way through the rest of the debates, lasts until the Primary, and then manages to win, and get the Democratic nomination, then goes into the presidential election against Trump, I will not vote for him.
Fight me.
With every debate, and virtually every public statement, Biden further proves himself a horrible candidate. Even among the gaggle of mediocrity that is the overcrowded field of Democratic candidates, he’s one of the worst options. As if his abysmal public record weren’t reason enough for him to be dismissed before his campaign kicked off, he persists in showing that he hasn’t the qualifications or intentions to lead this country where it needs to go for the sake of its and humanity’s continued existence. He’s a corrupt neoliberal stooge, pandering to blue collar crowds while getting most of his support from corporate interests, from large banking firms and rich schmucks who could give a fuck whether the average person has a home and a living wage. His record on race, crime, drugs, women’s rights, immigration: all garbage. He’s garbage. In addition, he’s shown himself of late to have not even the mental acuity to answer questions coherently or string together sentences. Any of these traits sound familiar? Comparable to a certain ketchup-smeared glob of sentient mayonnaise? How many people actually want to sit through the rambling sparring of two demented elderly crackers to see which one is given the keys to drive us off a cliff? Wipe away the superficial veneer of both, and Biden isn’t that much better than Trump.
Fight me.
The best Biden can offer is a possible return to the aw-shucks bullshit congeniality of this nation’s long lineage of old white male assholes who fuck over ninety-nine percent of the country and the world with shit-eating grins on their dentures. Apart from not being Trump, and not having fond things to say about nazis, what are Biden’s positive attributes?
And don’t talk to me about “electability.” I fucking despise the electability argument. All people mean when they say Biden is the most electable candidate is that he looks and acts like the majority of assholes that came before him. He lacks melanin and a vagina, so he’s electable. He has nothing new to offer and gives no hope for progressive reform, how very electable that makes him. To the extent that the electability argument can be blamed on actual voters, their belief is, I believe, based disproportionately on their misperception of what others believe. They don’t think Biden is a good candidate themselves, but believe that a majority of other people believe he is. People are, however, historically bad at predicting the beliefs of others and how closely they correspond to their own.
A majority of Americans surveyed said they believe that marijuana should be legalized at the federal level, however they also said they believed that only a majority of their fellow Americans shared this view. (I cannot recall the exact statistics, rifle through this book if you demand numbers.)
And there is the oft-cited statistic showing that the majority of people believe they are better than average drivers. People think that they are better, in general, than others. This
trend, coined the Dunning-Kruger effect, which could be called a psychological disorder, leads most people to think they’re special, fundamentally different and better.
The point of all that is that it is, of course, impossible for most people to be better than average at anything than most other people because that negates the meaning of average, and indicates that we are terribly cynical in our valuations of other people. If you believe you are smart enough to recognize that Biden is garbage, why not give others the benefit of the doubt that they’re smart enough to know he’s garbage, too?
Fight me.
We’ve been here before. The so-called experts were just as confident in the run up to the 2016 election that Hillary Clinton was the most electable Democrat. The nomination was handed to her, despite much apathy and opposition among voters, like a birthright. Then throughout the election, those same self-appointed experts were sure that she’d be president, that Trump was unelectable and didn’t stand a chance. The arrogance, corruption, and idiocy of the Democratic party’s leadership blinded them to how badly they were screwing themselves.
Of course, these days, the “experts” always come back to the claim that all voters really want is someone who can beat Trump, and they express confidence that Democrats and the assorted left will vote in droves for whatever nominee the party props up. They are fucking morons with piss-poor memories. The last time around, they all wrote Trump off as a joke, easily beaten by Clinton, soon to be an embarrassing footnote. And here we are. Now they act as though he’s this powerhouse, a great challenge that only the toughest, most universally liked champion can overcome. But to do that, they choose Biden? The man’s a failure. He’s embarrassed himself, and failed, every time he’s taken a shot at the presidency. If not for riding Obama’s coattails, he’d be just another cracker-faced senator in a repugnant sea of obscurity. The idea that he can succeed where Clinton failed is asinine. He has all her faults and none of her strengths. The Democrats and pundits apparently learned the lesson that Trump, pathetic joke that he is, won’t be that easily beaten, but they wilfully refuse to learn the lesson of how he beat Clinton in the first place. (Apart from the GOP’s virulent campaign of disenfranchising the poor and people of color across the country. And, I guess, misinformation on social media. Can you hear my eyes rolling as I write that last comment?) She lost because she was an establishment tool, peddling the virtues of the iniquitous status quo, and people generally don’t care for her. Biden is the same, but worse.
As for the idea that everyone who at all ascribes to the tenets of leftist politics will back whoever goes against Trump… For fuck’s sake. That didn’t happen then, why would it happen now? Because people are more afraid now? Because they’ve seen how bad Trump is and are motivated to do what they didn’t before? No. I did that, last time. I put aside my dislike of Clinton because I knew Trump would be horrible, and I knew that, despite the cockiness of self-satisfied pundits, pollsters and politicos, that Trump had a decent shot. I played the pragmatist, and it didn’t do jack shit. I’m not going to do it again.
Fight me.
It’s important to note that it doesn’t really matter whether I vote or not. Thanks to the nonsensical anachronism that is the Electoral College, and that I live in California, my one meaningless vote would be lost in a sea of blue anyway. That travesty of false democracy means I have the luxury to not be pragmatic and not throw my vote out of fear at whatever sack of shit has a D next to their name. I’m not about to tell you how to vote. If you live in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, or another “swing state,” the only states that mean a damn thing in this garbage system, then perhaps you need to be a pragmatist and give your vote to the lesser of two evils. Good luck and more power to you. I have the luxury of not compromising this time, so I won’t.
Fight me.