No. I’m saying that to win the election they need to make sure the middle (lack of a better term) don’t vote not-Biden. It may sound stupid but the message needs to not only be vote to me but also don’t vote against me. And don’t vote against me because Trump is only so effective. Take me for example. I’m going to protest vote Harris or Murkowski but never the Orange Insurrectionist. How can Biden convince me to not vote against him?
No one’s telling you that you have to do anything.
Biden’s far from perfect in my eyes, and it kind of pisses me off when people declare he’s some great president. I’m not saying TO YOU he can’t be that way, but I do think we are all in our bubble, It’s frustrating that people can’t empathize with someone else’s point of view about Biden.
Doesn’t mean I want the world to end.
I would say there’s no conceivable way for Biden to do it.
Rationale: He would have to change too much of who he actually is as a politician. In meeting you halfway, he pulls too far away from tens of millions of others.
Biden is who he is. He’s the classic Veep turned Prez.
Biden ran a couple of times for Prez and didn’t gain much traction. There’s a reason he didn’t run in 2016. He wouldn’t have gotten on the ticket and he knew it. You have to have image and charisma and all that. I fully accept that Biden would never be chosen in a situation where you’re looking for the next wunderkind.
2020 was a very unusual election, in that a sitting president that was very exciting to his core was still rejected by having more people who couldn’t stand him. That’s why Biden was elected. I think Biden has been competent at worst, but his charisma is what it is and if you just need that wow factor in your prez then I guess it’s a demerit. I really don’t care about wow factor, I don’t watch speeches by any pol. Obama was well spoken and had a good image and some actual ability and smarts, but I only care about outcomes. I think Biden has done about as well as expected.
Now he’s running against the same candidate who only looks worse now than he did in 2020 after 1/6 and all that. So what has changed? You aren’t getting the wow factor with Biden, but the same cruddy alternative is there, having learned nothing and only gotten worse.
It’s a vote. I’m not sure why some of us keep need to provide explanations and if we don’t coo the magic words then it’s our fault.
To answer the original poster’s question, I think what always gets the blame (for presidential races) is the electoral college. And while I agree that it’s an outmoded system that should get amended out of the constitution, it’s the political reality we live in.
But some people just can’t accept political reality. For example, all this talk about voting third party. Sensible people realize that there are only two choices for the meal: potato or chicken. Insane proponents insist that meatloaf is better than chicken, or that potatoes are obviously poison, or how they should have been given a say in what options are available on the menu. But the choices are: potato or chicken. Decide.
I love me a good third party candidate - for local offices. That’s where change starts. It does no good to vote for a third party for the highest office in the land, because it just throws the vote away. It’s never going to happen. In this day and age, in this political climate, you’d have a higher chance of being struck by lightning while purchasing a winning lottery ticket. No one in any position of power is going to ask why you voted for a nonsense candidate, nor will they change their behavior accordingly. A vote for an independent gets lumped in an anonymous pool of wasted offal, and treated as such.
Those who want to protest should absolutely do so. There are marches to join, signs to make, like-minded people to shake hands with, neat little rhyming chants (sometimes), and petitions to scribble a signature on. The really good protests involve at least an arrest record, as it indicates you’ve gotten someone’s attention. In the voting booth, though, you get two realistic choices.
I’m particular to the potato, myself.
Honestly I think it is more the argument being made that bothers certain people more than you per se. Which is to say you’ve indicated that if you lived in say Pennsylvania or Michigan, you’d probably vote Biden just out of rational self-interest.
But what I think bugs many people more than a random Californian saying they’re voting Third Party for principled reasons (though that does bother some), is giving debate cover to people in Michigan or Pennsylvania voting Third Party. In certain eyes you’re arguably a negative influencer spreading a message that potentially principles trumps (ahem) petty pragmatism. That distresses people who think a twenty-yr old college student in Ann Arbor might vote Cornell West, because fuck that genocide-enabling Biden. And thus doom the country when Trump wins.
Which all sounds a bit like a cult of conformity, but if doom is the alternative it does tend to lead to strong attitudes. Now certainly some Third Party advocates in this thread think it won’t at all doom the country if Trump is elected (institutions will hold, Trump is too incompetent to become a tyrant). I’m inclined to think it quite possibly won’t. But I also think it might and personally I don’t play even Mt. Everest odds.
Is it reasonable for some (not me, particularly) to be a little PO-'ed at you for expressing your rights and opinions? A bit, I think 
. Opinions are fair game. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do what you want. Just that the push back isn’t out of left field. It’s as rational as you think your own arguments are.
Me personally, probably not. But I used me as representing all not-Biden & not-Trump voters
If you’re representative, than Biden should ignore voters like you, because it would be a waste of time and effort.
Only to an extent, and I’d say a limited extent at that.
Given 1: No conceivable Dem/Rep candidate can get 100% of the third-party vote anyway.
Given 2: The body of firm Biden supporters – likely Biden voters in the 2024 general election – is far larger than the body of third-party voters.
Given 3: The Biden campaign and Biden’s supporters, taken together as a large group, disseminate many different messages and say many things both in favor of Biden and against his opponent.
Accordingly, it’s possible (I’d say highly probable) that “a vote that’s not for Biden is a vote for Trump” has actually been one of the most persuasive things said in favor of Biden. Some number of voters have been persuaded by that statement already – and it’s almost certainly a large enough number that the statement’s apparent failure to win over even more potential voters probably should not be lamented.
That doesn’t change my answer. How far can Biden move from what he is to pick up an unknown proportion of third-party voters?
What I do think is conceivable and probable is that some current undecideds and “don’t cares” and such are reachable. I think Biden can stick on message and get some portion of them without losing those currently in his tent. For voters like yourself and SyncoSmalls and Boudicca and Balthisar, though, who are strident about not voting for Biden today (so you are decided and you do care) … there’s nothing he can conceivably and purposefully do to bring you all in without losing too much of his current support.
(I added the word “purposefully” in there to account for things Biden’s supporters can’t conceive of right now, but end up being impactful. AKA “lucking out” )
Who will be to blame? Probably some guy we haven’t even heard of yet. A ‘Joe The Plumber’, or a ‘Mrs Duffy’ [British reference there].
Well there was 1/6. 1/6 actually happened after the 2020 election, wasn’t taken into account in the vote.
It happened. Trump, the sitting president, told people to go storm the Capitol to physically intimidate office holders into overturning the election. What the actual F.
That guy, Trump, is running again. I’m really interested how adding that event to all things Trump still leaves someone in a place where the most important thing is Biden’s supposedly huge ego. How the “blame” on that falls on Biden or people who will vote for Biden or some level of persuasiveness that you need, this cooing in the ear or soundbite at a press conference that you just gotta have. That it’s someone else’s fault. Instead of yours, for claiming a coup attempt is “no big deal.”
I think one disconnect I think in this argument is that pragmatists do not necessarily like Biden or are Biden “supporters.” They just want you to vote for Joe Biden and emphasize that advocating anything else is reckless to the point of sticking your hand in a grain thresher. Better a lizard than a wizard.
Idealists and optimists hate stolid, cynical, pragmatism. But of course the cynical pragmatists are the only sane ones 
. I mean it is entirely possible that like the heat death of the universe, the decline and destruction of the US as currently constructed is inevitable. Progress is impossible, decline is inexorable - you can only control the rate of decay.
Now, why oh why wouldn’t that cheery thought motivate teenagers to vote the right way and very slightly slow down how fast everything will go to shit so those of us that are middle-aged can better enjoy our declining years 
?
Note: Not my serious opinion of course. Well, maybe 5% my opinion on my worse, more selfish days.
I’m not saying that there is this assumption for all people, just the people to whom this applies. Specifically, and desperately trying not to personalize it given the mod notes, the people in this thread who on the record have stated that they believe that Trump will be worse than Biden.
If a person really believes that there is absolutely no difference between the two, or that Trump is better, I would try to argue against that belief but would not use the argument that they were wasting their vote by not voting for Biden.
You know what, I hope the people who aren’t worried about a second Trump presidency are right. I hope Project 2025 never gets off the ground. I hope he’s stopped from making himself President for life or from enacting policies that harm others here and abroad. I hope he doesn’t get to replace any more Supreme Court justices. I almost envy your certainty.
Doesn’t mean I want to find out, though.
Well hell, that sounds better than just voting against Trump in the first place!
Pres. is a freaking coin toss. It’s either this side, or the other.
(ETA: I too hope for a Democratic congress. And a Democratic President, which will ONLY be accomplished by voting for Democrats.)
Meh. I grew up with the threat of nuclear annihilation. If he wins, he wins. We have great institutions that we can trust. He’ll be gone in four years. Yes, that’s a fact. He’ll be gone, and some other loser will take his place.
I don’t like the man, and I don’t like most of his policies, but I’m not afraid of him. All of this fear-mongering is ridiculous, after all, he was already president for four years, and we survived it, m’kay?
Consequently, I’m going to vote for a candidate that I actually like, despite having no chance of winning. Your game is stupid, and I’m just not playing.
‘We’ survived it?
You and I may have.
I was in the military at the height of the cold war. The difference was that we more or less trusted the Soviets not to do something stupid.
Now, Trump has clearly stated his desire to take the US out of NATO, and even if he doesn’t, we absolutely cannot trust him to not do something, or many things stupid.
At the same time we have Putin, who may support Trump, and has demonstrated absolutely no inhibitions about invading another country for absolutely no valid reason.
If Trump is elected, he could destabilize, or enable the destabilizing of, the west and, consequently, the rest of the world.
During his first term he worked on undermining and weakening those great institutions, either through incompetence (through omission), or by stacking some with his favourite lackies (including his family members). He also tried coercing and strong-arming Zelenskyy into providing assistance to his (Trump’s) personal and bizarre vendetta.
If Trump wins, he could also permanently cease all aid to Ukraine. And if that happens then there’s a good chance that Ukraine will fall and that another eastern European country will fall.
It’s appalling to me that so many are making light of this threat and showing total indifference.
Some of which institutions are considerably attenuated as a result of the four years he was in office. Not just because of him, and indeed it didn’t start there, but the greatness of our institutions is not static, and not something we should passively count on. See especially: Supreme Court.