The Biden Campaign Has a Trump-Fatigue Problem

Joe Biden’s campaign is facing a strategic dilemma. Since the president’s job-approval ratings have been consistently low, his path to reelection depends on making 2024 a comparative choice between himself and Donald Trump, his scary, extremist predecessor. That task is becoming more urgent as evidence emerges that a sizable number of voters either don’t remember or misremember the four turbulent years of the Trump administration. But paradoxically, educating voters about the potential consequences of a Biden defeat could annoy and alienate them by pushing Trump fatigue to new heights.

quindraco,

It is certainly your right to vote for Trump, yes.

Buffalox,

That’s absolutely understandable, the weird part is how media and about 50% of voters don’t.

retrospectology,
@retrospectology@lemmy.world avatar

People haven’t forgotten. That’s not the issue Biden is facing.

ech,

One, fatigue isn’t about forgetting, it’s about not caring. Second, more than one problem can exist at once.

retrospectology,
@retrospectology@lemmy.world avatar

“Trump fatigue” is not why Biden will lose if he does. He has alienated the people who care the most. That is his singular failure in all of this that will cost him his win, a product of total hubris.

quindraco,

I doubt that. If they truly care the most, they’ll vote to make sure Trump loses.

retrospectology,
@retrospectology@lemmy.world avatar

Or they’ll not vote for Biden, since it’s unconscionable to vote for him and reward Democrats for supporting genocide. This is the problem he has created for himself, he’s made it morally impossible to support him, and arrogantly thinks people will out of their own selfishness and fear.

quindraco,

Or they’ll not vote for Biden, since it’s unconscionable to vote for him and reward Democrats for supporting genocide.

Voting for Trump is even more unconscionable, and only liars claim there’s a third choice under FPTP.

kiljoy,

It’s my right to vote for whoever I want. If the system is rigged Biden should have done more to make me want to vote for him instead of Jill Stein.

Dkarma,

That’s hilarious. You’re going to end up with trump and shit on your own face just cuz Biden isn’t perfect.

The system isn’t rigged you incompetent tit. That’s how fptp works.

kiljoy,

I’m not the one that it’s going to fuck🤷🏼‍♂️. I tried to vote for Bernie and got shit on. Let it burn. Idgaf.

WamGams,

You want to take out the guy who through diplomacy has limited the amount of deaths to 30 something thousand, and make way for the guy who wants to finish the job?

Sounds like you are more pro-genocide of Palestinians than Biden is.

ChexMax,

Morally impossible? Geez I guess we should just get ready for more genocide with a side of human rights violations all over our shores too. Sorry, women, black Americans, and immigrants, Democrats would rather make a show of their morals than pick the much much much lesser of two evils. Big picture doesn’t matter here.

If we had to pick a candidate who aligns with all our morals, no one would ever vote. Vote for Biden, and then to make a difference fight on your local level(city) for ranked choice voting! Once you win that fight, try to get it enacted in your county. Do not waste your vote on Trump over this. That’s what staying home or voting independent will do, and once Trump wins, you’ll regret it. (Trust me, I fucked up and voted independent in 2016 for my “morals” Never again.)

Zehzin,
@Zehzin@lemmy.world avatar

Biden’s campaign has a “complicit in genocide” problem

PseudorandomNoise,
@PseudorandomNoise@lemmy.world avatar

Trump won’t have that problem because he won’t care how complicit he is.

Zehzin,
@Zehzin@lemmy.world avatar

Definitely. Trump’s eligibility doesn’t depend on people thinking he’s a genocidal piece of shit. If anything, it improves his chances.

Biden doesn’t have that luxury, though. Hence why it’s a problem.

PseudorandomNoise,
@PseudorandomNoise@lemmy.world avatar

It’s a problem because liberal voters expect a perfect candidate, but conservatives are willing to see the forest through the trees.

Biden’s being held to a standard that no one’s holding Trump to.

Zehzin,
@Zehzin@lemmy.world avatar

There’s a pretty big leap between “perfect candidate” and “unapologetically commiting genocide”.

The reason why no one is holding Trump to Biden’s starddards is that Biden wants votes from people who aren’t the scum of the Earth, since that’s already Trump’s entire electorate.

PseudorandomNoise,
@PseudorandomNoise@lemmy.world avatar

unapologetically commiting genocide

Which is not what Biden’s doing and you know it. Why even put that out there?

Zehzin,
@Zehzin@lemmy.world avatar

It’s exactly what he’s doing, why are you pretending is not?

If he says “sorry for the genocide” I’ll stand corrected and change it to “apologetically committing genocide”

PseudorandomNoise,
@PseudorandomNoise@lemmy.world avatar

Sending US troops to build a pier to provide aid is committing genocide?

Zehzin,
@Zehzin@lemmy.world avatar

Now that’s what I call arguing in bad faith by feigning ignorance 2024 greatest hits

PseudorandomNoise,
@PseudorandomNoise@lemmy.world avatar

Humor me, pretend it’s not feigning ignorance and explain it. What’s Biden doing that rises to the level of genocide?

TropicalDingdong,

I mean you are correct.

Trumps voters don’t care if he is complicit in a genocide.

Bidens voters do care if he is complicit in a genocide.

Its apples and oranges. The two cohorts of voters are looking for different things from their candidates. Its why comparing the two with each others yard-sticks doesn’t make sense.

Buffalox,

How is that a problem for Biden? When Biden criticize aspects of Israeli behavior, and Trump has zero problems supporting Israel no matter what.
Biden is for sure the lesser evil in this aspect too, where he is probably most criticized by people attempting to make both sides equal, when it’s a false equivalence of gigantic proportions.

Zehzin,
@Zehzin@lemmy.world avatar

Yes, he is the lesser evil.

Some people don’t like evil and won’t vote for him until he decides to not do that. That’s a problem for his eligibility.

It’s a lot easier to convince one guy to chill on doing genocide than convincing a million people that it’s ok to do genocide just this time cause it’s important and the other guy is worse

Buffalox,

OK so 70 years of supporting Israel, and suddenly NOW it becomes a problem in the election?
It has absolutely nothing to do with Russian/GOP propaganda to make Biden look bad?
I’m sorry, I just don’t buy that. I’m all for a solution in Gaza, and I’m sure Biden is too, on the other hand, I don’t believe Trump gives a shit.

Zehzin, (edited )
@Zehzin@lemmy.world avatar

I love that I saw this exact argument 4 years ago when he picked Harris as VP. “oh so now police violence is a problem, damn you, Putin”

I don’t know why it took until they killed >10000 children in 6 months for more people to care, but supporting Israel has always been a problem. If his election is threatened by that he can simply stop supporting a genocide or admit that, yes, his belief in letting Israel kill as many people as they want is more important than this election.

Buffalox,

If police violence is a problem, that too is 100% a reason to NOT vote for Trump. Trump wants to give more power to police, and protect them even better when they kill innocent people. Trump wants police to shoot colored people and demonstrants indiscriminately. His policies and actions clearly show that.
You are supporting a fascist with no regard for democracy, either on purpose or unwittingly.

Zehzin,
@Zehzin@lemmy.world avatar

Phew, I’m glad I’m not voting for Trump.

Can we discuss how Biden’s support of genocide is bad now?

Buffalox,

If you are not helping Biden, you are helping Trump win. That’s the problem with the 2 party system in USA.
Maybe one day USA will have a better democracy, and we can have more nuanced debates on US politics.

Dkarma,

Get a clue as to how fptp voting works.

juicy,

Israel has always been a bad actor, but the current gencocide is clearly a low point. And thanks to social media, the mainstream media’s consent generation machinery is losing effectiveness. It’s hard to pretend nothing is happening when people see emaciated children on their instagram feeds. Biden doesn’t need any help making himself look like a sick monster.

ccunning,

Don’t we all…

Soup,

Almost like he should just listen to the voters and also all the fucking scientists and economists if he wants to energize tired voters.

“Stop selling Israel weapons.” “Be more aggressive with climate policy, we’re already late and can’t dilly-dally anymore.” “Oh my god just actually make a fucking effort instead of offering lukewarm responses all the time.”

It’s not hard, and the science backs up the demands.

loie,

“It’s not hard”

You run for President then hotshot

Soup,

A genius rebuttal, why didn’t I think of that?

Remmock,

Yes, hello. I understand you’re giving out Presidental Campaign starter packages?

I’ll take the Newport parents, Ivy League College, multi-millionare basic bundle. That comes with the limited-time “My Parents donated to most of my future colleagues’ war chests” add-on, right?

Do I have to upgrade to get rid of the early-to-mid-life scandal?

TropicalDingdong,

Do I have to upgrade to get rid of the early-to-mid-life scandal?

That depends if you took the ‘media-mogul’ tract or the ‘oil-and-gas magnate’ tract for your “son-of-a-billionaire” class.

Also, if you took the ‘tech-bro’ multi-class early on, that can unlock the “every-crisis-is-an-opportunity” story-line where you buy a floundering media company in an attempt to preserve your image.

Zehzin,
@Zehzin@lemmy.world avatar

Sadly the contract requires you to sell your soul to AIPAC and promise your liver and lungs to Lockheed Martin as collateral

RIPandTERROR,
@RIPandTERROR@sh.itjust.works avatar

Actually I am running for president. I’m just poor AF so you’ll have to use a write in since I’m not really party allegiant or super well known.

It’s not hard.

mozz,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Be more aggressive with climate policy, we’re already late and can’t dilly-dally anymore.

Wellllllllll

mozz,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Welllllllllll

Biden took half a trillion dollars’ worth of action on climate change which he funded by taxing Amazon + friends which ticked emissions down to 40% reduction by 2030 which is way too late and nowhere near enough no but he started working on it the instant he got in office and had to do the whole thing twice because Manchin blew up the first much more aggressive one at the last minute so yes we need to do a hell of a lot more but it seems weird to pick out the ONE guy in American government who has achieved ANY level of forward progress and give him and only him criticism about how important is climate change and we can’t possibly elect him especially since the other guy wants to undo even that step and start blowing up the planet even harder which makes me question a little bit whether you REALLY care about climate change or whether your explicit targeting of the one guy who made some progress on it is maybe

🎶

Just maybe

Focused and directed in service of an agenda which is maybe

🎶

Maybe just maybe NOT

🎶

Aligned with solving climate change

🎶🎶🎶

Especially given the fact that you seem totally uninterested in conversations about solving climate change which do NOT lead in direct and immediate A->B fashion into not voting for Joe Biden

return2ozma,
@return2ozma@lemmy.world avatar

@mozz thoughts on this article? I know a lot of people really do have Trump fatigue and no longer pay attention when the news talks about him.

mozz,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

I read the first little bit. My thoughts are that it would be nice if the article painted this whole issue as a media issue instead of a what-Biden-should-do-better issue. It’s not like they’re wrong in anything they’re saying, but leaving out the WHY aspect of how the average voter is so badly misinformed, leaving room for the reader to conclude that Biden’s campaign just isn’t doing a good job in an otherwise neutral situation, seems like a notable omission.

return2ozma,
@return2ozma@lemmy.world avatar

Is the Biden campaign doing itself a disservice by mostly running on “but Trump”?

mozz,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

I watched most of his speech to the NAACP, after verifying that you were right about him saying he was VP during Covid and it was just as bad as it sounded. He did mention the fact that Trump would be an objective catastrophe and that’s relevant, but I think people already know that; he actually spent most of the speech talking about what he’s done, which I think an overwhelming majority have no idea about beyond a handful of anecdotes. It’s actually so out of line with the popular perception that when he talks about his record (a lot of the same stuff I keep talking about here), it sounds weird and outlandish and comical because a lot of people just have never even heard of it before.

I actually don’t think his campaign is depending mostly on “but Trump,” although I haven’t kept close tabs on it. Are you sure you’re not engaged in an effort to shift the blame for his poor performance onto some tactical failures in his camp whether real or imagined, as opposed to the news media which is overwhelmingly lazy and irresponsible at best, and at worst actively working to undermine him at every turn?

return2ozma,
@return2ozma@lemmy.world avatar

Whenever Biden or his team talks about the economy doing great, voters get confused because they’re not doing so great financially. Then Dem defenders tell them “the economy actually IS doing great so suck it up and vote Biden or you’ll get trump.” Not really a win for voter outreach.

mozz,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

So there’s a really interesting thing that happens with those polls.

If you ask people how the country’s economy is doing, they say it is in the toilet. But, if you ask them how their state is doing compared to that national average, they say it’s well above average.

There are a few different ways to interpret that, but one obvious one is that the situation they can directly observe isn’t as grim as what they see on the news, and so they assume that something weird happened, and the country is terrible (because they trust the news, or memes, or their friends’ Facebook posts, or whatever gives them their information) — BUT that they don’t see it reflected firsthand, because their environment is beating the average.

There are other interpretations of course. It’s impossible to really say. And that is the problem with trying to use indirect qualitative measures to sort out how the economy is doing; you can always (as you did) reframe it into some un-falsifiable emotion based construction that leads only to one inevitable conclusion (things are bad and it’s all Biden’s fault and if you try to tell me numbers for why it’s not, then that makes it his fault even harder). But, I would still assert that measuring the numbers actually is a good way to see what’s happening.

return2ozma,
@return2ozma@lemmy.world avatar

And then people watch videos on YouTube, TikTok, and other social media like this…

Why You’ll Never Achieve The American Dreamyoutu.be/vu7IJ-HDIos

Tolookah,

That makes “Trump worse” sound like a “dem defender” problem and not a Biden team problem then.

return2ozma,
@return2ozma@lemmy.world avatar

Paywall removed: archive.is/SRAKi

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