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Comment by shazbotter | Hacker News Reader

It really does not matter. Biden didn't meaningfully solve anything (and if anything, he made Trump's ascendency easier). Harris would not have solved things either. She'd continue to empower corporations and the wealthy, just like Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush, and Clinton.

You know what does help people? Community building. Feeding people. Organizing workplaces. Forest conservation. Building housing. Forming tenant unions. Organizing anti-ICE demonstrations. Etc.

Actions solve problems commensurate with the time and effort it takes to perform. Voting takes very little effort, and solves very few problems. Community organizing takes a lot of effort and solves lots of problems.

Vote for whomever you want, I'm not going to demonize someone for voting for Harris. But like, that should be the smallest contribution you make by at least two or three orders of magnitude.

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This is malicious nonsense. Anyone who claims there is no difference between the parties at this point is trolling or sufficiently ignorant as to be indistinguishable from a troll.

The Biden Administration got inflation under control, strengthened international relationships and trade, forgave student loan debt, invested in domestic microchip manufacture, prosecuted antitrust, enforced civil rights legislation, added environmental protections, and so much more.

Just because things can't be solved in 4 years when faced with the Senate filibuster and a compromised Supreme Court does not mean that it made no difference. It made an enormous difference, as we have seen from the quick and sharp contrast.

You know what helps people? Not have the federal government trying to criminalize their existence. Having access to clean water and safely inspected food. Predictable economics and pricing instead of tariffs that change day to day.

> Anyone who claims there is no difference between the parties at this point is trolling or sufficiently ignorant as to be indistinguishable from a troll.

Good thing that's not what I said.

Biden dramatically increased Arctic oil drilling, shut down labor strikes, increased police funding and militarization, declared the Covid pandemic over prematurely, deported 4.6 million people (vs Trumps 2 million), reduced protections for lgbtq individuals, and enabled a genocide.

> Not have the federal government trying to criminalize their existence.

Biden is a big part of why we have "truth in sentencing" and "three strikes" laws. See the 1994 violent crime control and law enforcement act. He's literally one of the poster children for the carceral state.

Biden deported over twice as many people as Trump, he eliminated protections for trans youth, he bombed Gaza. Clean air? The man pushed oil drilling. The concessions in the IRA alone will be polluting for generations.

You can convince me there are good Democrats, but not Biden. Biden was a right wing politician. One left of Trump, no doubt, but he would fit right in with a Bush or Reagan.

>shut down labor strikes

Biden could have done better about the railroads, but his administation and his appointees increased union protections, dramatically increased enforcement of punishments for union busting, extended overtime wages to huge classes of new workers and more. You're cherry picking things to complain about and again, if you don't think any of the last three Democratic nominees were any good you're not arguing in good faith.

Holding out for perfection gets you fascism.

These are not cherry picked examples. These are meaningful, material regressions in policy that impact communities I'm either in or close to. Quit suggesting they don't matter, or that somehow they are no big deal. Or even worse, suggesting that when I talk about how he hurt my communities I'm somehow "arguing in bad faith."

Maybe Biden made your life easier and that makes it hard to see how he sacrificed millions of people to make that happen, but it's not bad faith to express these major policy concerns.

And fascism? It didn't come from leftists holding out for perfection. Historically it comes from Liberal (the traditional meaning, not the synonym for democrats) governments not addressing the material needs of their people. Through demagoguery and violence, fascists take over the working class. When the party that used to stand for the working class is pushing austerity and beholden to big business, fascism has no meaningful opponents. Go read some history, what happened here has happened many times in the past, and has nothing to do with purity tests at the ballot box.

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