this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024

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8 More Democrats in Congress Urge Biden to Step Aside. (www.commondreams.org)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I don't know about you all, but I'm beyond tired of being carpet bombed with these so-called articles repeating over and over again that (someone) thinks Biden should withdraw. They're not only deafeningly repetitive without offering any valuable information, but often come from questionable sources that we've never heard of before. One of yesterday's examples (now removed) was a tabloid stating an outright lie in the headline.

It's annoying and useless at best, with the common theme of appealing to mob mentality to shape public opinion. It feels exactly like a propaganda campaign aimed at controlling political discourse on social media.

Please stop.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Yep. I've not seen one that mentions the fact the largest advantage possible going onto races historically has been incumbency. Not one.

As we are all seeing, propaganda campaigns being run by Russians, bot orgs run by god-knows-who all over being outed; whether it's them or anyone else looking to disturb democrat chances by sewing discord, there should be a lot more stick poking at sources, posters, etc. on Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (3 children)

If you are talking about the reliability of common dreams, they are very reliable.

If you are tired of hearing about any specific topic, I heard that you can blacklist words, so posts with this words does not show in your feed.

All my posts are from very reliable sources.

I don't care about influencing people beliefs, in fact I turned off showing upvotes and downvotes in my client(Jerboa for Android). If you are bothered with people seeing this type of posts, you can share any news article you want as long as the source is reliable.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Sigh...

No single drop believes it is responsible for the flood.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago

And yet — this submission is upvoted more than it is downvoted...

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Regardless of what your motives might be, you are contributing to the problem.

And now that I look at your post history, I see you're doing it multiple times per day.

Kindly knock it off.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

What are you talking about? What problem is he contributing to?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The disinformation problem

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

Specifically which disinformation? This all seems factual.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

To some, inconvenient truths and disinformation are synonyms.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This person isn't accusing you of the right thing.

What people are irritated with is when one user focuses really heavily on anti-Biden content as everyone else is far more worried about what a Trump presidency is going to do to this country.

Fascism looms on the horizon, and people are paying close attention to who is for or against it. They're seeing you post repeatedly against the guy running against the fascist. They're making a prescient conclusion.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I can see that concern but a couple things I think are worth highlighting (and for starters I'm not the submitter).

I and everyone else who's calling for Biden to step down are equally concerned for a Trump presidency.
We simply believe all the data points to an inevitable Biden loss, in addition to down-ballot races. Clearly Democratic representatives running tough races agree.
We can't put the cart before the horse and deal with Trump until we actually have a viable candidate first. I and many like Biden and his administration but know he cannot run a successful campaign, and again, data shows it.
Once this is settled, normal scheduled programming will resume and all focus will be on how bad Trump and the GOP is.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

I made a reply here.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

If it’s too hot for you, get out of the fucking kitchen.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

, I heard that you can blacklist words

How about instead of that, we let you know every single time that it’s fucking tiresome and please give it a rest

Or would that mean you would be hearing that statement oppressively many times?

The moderation of this community has entirely lost the plot

Same article 10 times a day and a literally limitless stream of the same 5-6 bad faith arguments in the comments to back it up? Sure sounds good

Blog post? GET IT THE FUCK OUT OF HERE

We need room for more stories about the Ithaca dogcatcher who is now saying that Biden should step down

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You're welcome to post whatever you'd like on here. But if you go to any given news outlet, half the front page stories right now are about the RNC and dems calling on Biden to resign. The fact that our posts reflect that right now doesn't feel like a huge issue

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

The #1 upvoted comment in this thread is one of your users saying they're tired of being carpet-bombed with these articles. Saying "Please stop." I feel pretty much the exact same way. Isn't that relevant? The existence of the articles on this newsworthy topic isn't the issue, of course, just their incredible volume and frequency and the laziness of the "new" features of the situation that are then graced with a whole new cycle of stories.

I looked over the articles in [email protected] specifically, and it actually doesn't look like there's any particular excessive coverage of it here -- so maybe criticizing moderation in this sub specifically because of it is unfair, yeah. I think it's more a statement about the flood of various article restating the exact same thing with some minor reframing, in Lemmy as a whole. And yes, I feel exactly the same way about the ridiculously front-and-center coverage it's been getting in a lot of mainstream media outlets, frequently framed in ways that are explicitly opposed to the factual reality (he's dropping in the polls!) and almost always framed towards one particular conclusion.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Idk if it’s really that ridiculous. There have never been so many incumbents calling on a president to drop out before. It’s pretty crazy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

There are two issues that make me offended to see this stuff in such a volume:

It's dishonest. It consistently constructs, out of individual data points that are accurate, an overall reality that doesn't exist. It went seamlessly from "Biden's support TANKS after the debate", then when polls showed him dropping 2-3 percentage points and most and sometimes not by that much, to simply claiming his polls were tanking when they weren't, to then suddenly pivoting to claiming that something else was the issue when he pulled back to where he had been or ahead of it. Now it's reporting an avalanching drumbeat of increasing numbers of people calling for him to drop out, always with headlines that create the perception that it's a growing inevitable crowd and that him dropping out is already a given, and he's just holding out before he will inevitably crumble.

Read the headlines. They are constructing through artful phrasing a consistent picture of a snowballing lack of support for Biden, with the facts to underlie it purely invented, by subtle dodges like asking Democrats and Republicans alike whether he should drop out and then reporting the (fairly high) resulting number, instead of just reporting the delta in his support numbers. Or, by taking one local chapter of a national union who wants him to drop out as a "major union" that wants him to drop out, not mentioning that the vast majority of unions want him to stay in.

Here's a selection of headlines from [email protected], one contiguous chunk I grabbed to illustrate the problem:

Majority of Democrats think Kamala Harris would make a good president, AP-NORC poll shows (asking a misleading question so you can report the answer you want to highlight in the headline)
Joe Biden faces increasing pressure to quit the race, but has spent a lifetime overcoming the odds (fact-free editorial amplifying the framing)
Biden feels angry and betrayed by top Dems as family discusses ‘possible’ plan to drop out (I skimmed the sources and couldn't find any particular backing for the statement that he feels angry or betrayed, although for all I know he may well do)
Larry Hogan blasts Project 2025 as a ‘dangerous path’ for GOP (news)
Biden's family starts discussing his possible exit plan from the 2024 race (story seems perfectly reasonable but being framed to create the perception that his resolve is buckling and he may exit soon, it's a done deal -- I see no backing at all for the idea that these conversations "started" recently. I have to assume he's talked about backing out of the race before, and they're just purely inventing the idea that the conversations "started" recently just to create the framing).

Like I say, that's not necessarily this sub or your problem. And maybe it all sounds thin skinned on my part. But also, I can't see how you can't see that as a problem, if your sub meant to inform people about what's going on is being subjected to propaganda on a big scale.

Which brings us to:

It never stops. It's seeking to overwhelm any alternate narrative by sheer volume of repetition. It would be absurd for me to counter each and every "here's a new person who wants Biden to drop out!" story by finding a "here's the 99% of unions that don't want him to drop out!" story to counterbalance it.

It is, to me, engineering a certain public perception, not reporting on the world as it exists. There's a perfectly legitimate conversation to be had about what the Democrats should do and whether Biden should stay in. But phrasing the conversation with one side of it amplified by constant repetition in every single forum, with the facts twisted up pretty much as far as they can go to support that conclusion, seems dishonest. No?

How that impacts moderation, or what rule might make it difficult to do, I have no idea. I'm just reporting what I see in terms of the result and how it's harming people's ability to understand the world when they read the news they find on Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

I don’t understand how it’s dishonest. Polling has shown that a majority of Americans, including a majority of democrats, think Biden should step aside. To say his support “tanked” after the debate would be dishonest. To say he’s facing unprecedented and constantly growing pressure is legit though. Every single day, a record number of people call on him to drop out. Okay, maybe it’s 2 federally elected officials in a day. That’s still more than have ever called on a POTUS to drop out of a reelection campaign publicly.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

How about you just down-vote and let the algorithm do its thing? This submission is upvoted more than its down-voted. Period. Complaining aside, end of story.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That’s a pretty indirect way of saying that you want me to shut up and not speak. I plan to continue tho

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

I just find it strange to complain about the very system this site utilizes to aggregate content doing its thing. Op broke no rules and the content is more popular than it is unpopular by the community. I really don't see what the problem is. I can just as easily claim you're trying to stifle content the majority of users evidently like here for some possibly ulterior motive. I can just as easily say you're trying to make OP stfu.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

No replacement, no plan, just

"How can we beat twermp?

I know! Remove his opponent who beat him last time."

Foolish.

I agree with AOC and Sanders, Biden is the right candidate.

I hope Biden doesn't bow to these cowards, and if he does, I hope I'm wrong that this is nothing more than a successful conservative scheme handing twermp the oval office.

Conservatives tried the exact same bullshit four years ago before Biden kicked their asses(despite their "polls") and achieved one of the most successfully progressive presidencies in US history.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (3 children)

You don't need to have a replacement ready. You can run this thing called a primary where people vote on who the replacement should be. We can even gather up the democrats and let them discuss the future of the party and officially nominate a new candidate. We can call that a democratic convention. We have plenty of time.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Except you can't just do that now. We dont have plenty of time. Good luck organizing primaries in all the states again before November. And good luck pressuring the law to allow you to do that.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You're tight about the primaries. But, the democrats can still pick a different candidate at the committee. We have plenty of time for that. We can even do debates and polling before then.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Its different because someone has already been nominated. Its not as easy as just picking someone else at the convention because of various state laws about it. Thats the issue here, well and that there doesnt seem to be any clear alternative that'll bolster one last hoorah.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That would've been a good idea a year or 2 ago

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

We live in the information age. We still have plenty of time. But you're right, it would have been better if we had a real primary to begin with.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

Seems pretty desperate, holding a primary and a convention despite having a good candidate that already won against the conservatives.

Not a remedy to anxiety, switching your horse at the end of the race.

You do not have plenty of time.

The mail in voting process starts August 7 in two weeks, election day is in a little over 3 months.

At maximum, you're in the last 5% of this presidential term.

No plan but to abandon a winning candidate because he's 3 years older than his opponent.

Bananas. Bananas!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

haha no replacement plan? What are you TALKIING about? Have you even beeen paying attention for the past 2 weeks? How much do I need to spell it out for you?

There are MANY plans in place that could ALL easily work and are designed for situations such as this.

Biden steps down, endorses Harris = done. Party united.
Biden steps down, calls for open convention = that's what they're for. 4 days, in out, done. Party United.

What I HAVEN'T seen a plan for is: How those too skittish to jump ship plan to change Biden's trajectory in the polls while he matches Jimmy Carter and continues to sink. Do you have some age-reversal potion I'm not aware of? Have you been door-knocking in battleground states with undecided voters and convincing them otherwise? No? Of course you haven't.

Anything is better than the all-but guaranteed loss of leaving Biden in. Why? BECAUSE THE ELECTORATE TOLD US AS MUCH.

75% of Americans believe Biden is not cognitively fit to run again.
A majority of DEMOCRATS believe he should step down.
Undecided Swing state voters who will decide this election agree and cite age is a chief concern.

Golly, it sure sounds like they're all pointing to something... Hmm... Maybe we run someone a bit younger and not from the Silent Generation?

Speaking of conservatives, they're all praying Biden stays in because they too know he's the weakest candidate.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

You're contending that Harris is the galvinizing force of the progressives?

What are you basing that off of?

She's basically a background character with cop connotations that nobody likes much and has no legislative power.

She does not have mass appeal, voting or otherwise.

As for the irrelevant polls?

Biden was trailing in the polls when he beat Twermp last time, and he has an extremely progressively legislated first-term under his belt with more progressive future plans while twermp has been legally found a rapist, and a convict three dozen times over.

Then you make further incorrect assumptions about me before pretendinf that Biden will lose... because he won last term.

What an illogical argument.

The conservstives are pirouetting on tulips because you're parotting exactly what they've told you to say.

You haven't made a single valid point.

Try again.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

So you're contending that Trump is the galvanizing* force of the progressivess? Tell me, in what realm does it matter who the "galvanizing force" of the progressives is when you can't even fucking win the election?

It doesn't matter what you or I like as so-called progressives; it largely matters what low-info battleground swing-voters think, because they will ultimately be the ones to decide the outcome of this election — And Newsflash — they're leaning away from Biden this time around.

Ah yes, the "irrelevant" Grade-A aggregation of scientific polls for which you are evidently extremely illiterate on. Are you going to point to "crowd sizes," as a substantive measure instead like Biden did? lol, please...

Biden was trailing in the polls when he beat Trump last time

BULLSHIT. No he fucking was not. Biden was 8 points ahead on the eve of election with 538 giving him a 90% victory odds. At this time in 2020, he was up TEN POINTS from where he is now. What the hell are you smoking? I want some of that. Get your facts straight.

I look forward to you finding any polling aggregation short of extreme outliers suggesting otherwise lol.

What an illogical argument.

My thoughts exactly. Still no plan. Still no data.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

"So you're contending that Trump is the galvanizing* force of the progressivess"

No, clearly you are as confused as you seem.

"Tell me, in what realm does it matter who the "galvanizing force" of the progressives is when you can't even fucking win the election?"

In the realm where winning the election is the whole ostebsible point you've been fooled into advocating for biden's abdication.

Are you even thinking before asking these questions? Or at least copy pasting?

They're literally in the previous comment and OP.

"they're leaning away from Biden this time around."

Factually incorrect and what conservative news is reporting.

It doesn't matter what you make up, Biden was trailing in polls in 2020 and beat twermp before twermp was found legally liable for rape and treason, and before biden's incredibly successful progressive first term.

You can try again, though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Oof, so I take it you couldn't find polls showing Biden trailing in 2020? Hahahahahaha!

Yikes, obvious bad faith actor and troll who denies reality in the face of being caught dead-wrong while dodging obvious falsehoods. Unfortunate, demonstrable example of gaslighting. Bystanders beware. Tagged.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Correcting your falsehoods is not gaslighting.

You're lying and making illogical assumptions; I'm calling you out.

Pretty straightforward.

Biden is a good president and candidate.

Twerp is legally liable for rape and treason, not to mention what a terrible everything else he is.

"obvious bad faith actor and troll who denies reality in the face of being caught dead-wrong while dodging obvious falsehoods"

That's literally why I'm calling you out.

You don't need to name yourself as a troll, I'm making sure people are aware of your magamania.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Oh no, you again.... Ugh

https://lemmy.world/comment/11237616

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I didn't know who you were, thanks for the link.

Can't stay away?

That's a good link:

TLDR: beware of conservative trolls and fear-mongering or ignorant cowards trying to convince you that removing a progressive candidate who already beat twermp is a good idea.

Biden has advanced civil rights, sustainable tech, student debt, climate change radically.

And again, Biden already beat twermp even before twermp was found liable for rape and treason.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

I bet these "democrats" are just republicans in hiding.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 months ago

OP, ignore the trolls. I just had a discussion with one who argued in extreme bad faith absent of any evidence. There is clearly a brigading effort taking place.