Young voters overwhelmingly say they would support President Biden over former President Trump in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up if the 2024 presidential election were held today, according to a poll released Wednesday.
In the Economist/YouGov poll — conducted via web-based interviews Dec. 16-18 — more than half (53 percent) of registered voters under 30 said they would support Biden, and less than a quarter (24 percent) said they would support Trump.
Another 10 percent said they would support another candidate, 4 percent said they were not sure, and 9 percent said they wouldn’t vote.
Lots of people did vote for someone else in the 2020 primaries. This good variety of candidates that you claim existed only existed in the early rounds. Once Super Tuesday arrived, it was practically Bernie and Biden (everyone else was so far behind in vote percentages that they might as well not even been on the ballots). After Super Tuesday, the field narrowed even further to be exactly Bernie and Biden in the last remaining contests.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
So, why would someone vote for Biden over Bernie in these contests you’re asking? It’s simple; they liked Biden more than Bernie.
Alright. Why did they like Biden more than Bernie?
There’s any number of reasons for that. I didn’t like Biden at all but off of the top of my head:
I could go on further, but you should understand the themes here.
As an aside, despite not being overwhelmingly delighted with Biden’s presidency, I am happy to not have the daily pants shitting, diaper-baby in the whitehouse headlines that we had during Trump’s four years…and the competency with which Biden largely handled one of the only federal programs I cared about in 2020 (i.e. the distribution of COVID vaccinations) was refreshing after 4 years of complete and utter idiocy in the executive branch.
Yes. The theme is “I don’t like progressive or leftist candidates.” They voted for Biden to fuck over our efforts. They are not our allies. They are fighting us out in the open.
To just see every voter in the 2020 primary as being in the “anti-progressive” camp is to eliminate their possibility for them to change their mind.
We shouldn’t throw them under the bus, but rather seek to persuade them to our side.
If you look at the first two (or somewhat all three) points I raised about why someone might vote Biden over Bernie they are basically based upon perception. Perceptions are moveable. People who voted for Biden in the 2020 primary aren’t a lost cause. In many cases, they were persuaded by propaganda that they thought wasn’t propaganda because it was coming from purportedly liberal sources (I think of MSNBC in particular).
I never said that. I said people voted for Biden specifically to fuck over progressives and leftists. Your own reasons why someone would choose Biden over every other candidate demonstrated this perfectly. You’re right, not every voter in the 2020 primaries was a selfish piece of shit. But every person who voted for Biden in the 2020 primaries was absolutely a selfish piece of shit.
They have no incentive to move when their candidate wins the primary and the general elections.
I don’t think that’s 100% correct. Maybe some of the political insiders directly around Biden see Biden as “their guy”…many voters (myself included) do not see politicians as much of anything except a vehicle for the policies they want in government.
In my opinion, the incentive to move their views winds up being…reality unfolding before their eyes. You see the people in office now and what they’re capable of, and you see what policy positions are and aren’t working…and your perceptions about what is and isn’t possible with certain policies, or certain politicians or even certain political parties…changes.
Hell, dude, the great progressive hope FDR wasn’t exactly a leftist until he realized what a shitty shit burger of a situation the country was in when he took office. People and even politicians change.
Clinton’s presidency was 30 years ago. Biden is to the right of Clinton. We’ve moved precisely nowhere.
Yes. In the form of losing general elections.
Biden isn’t to the right of Clinton no matter how much you want to keep insisting that’s true.
But regardless of the Democrats the other party exists. Reagan was popular amongst basically everyone that voted, Democrats lost three general elections in a row which led to the advent of third way Democrats like Clinton in the first place. Biden losing will not lead to a more progressive candidate winning next election cycle. But it’s very possible that it may lead us further toward fascism.