'america is in crisis! violence at home, war abroad. and he alone can fix it!'
that's the message of biden's campaign this go around, not dissimilar to his last run: things are bad, i can make them better, the fate of our country is at stake.
this was also donald trump's 2016 campaign message. the above is a paraphrasing of a campaign speech trump gave at the time. yet it would not be out of place in joe biden's current campaign.
democracy is at risk, and i'm the best chance of saving us all from extremists! we could sit here and debate the differences between ol' ANTIFA and actual fascists, or 'war abroad' versus 'war involved', but when all the nuance of reality is flattened to a ballot box, it really does feel like picking the lesser of two evils.
but that's not much of a campaign message, is it? and yet they're still trying it!

in the world's most nothing political advertisement, he describes this as all of us being asked what to do to maintain our democracy, begging us to, please, vote to save democracy.
vote for him, specifically, as they're bypassing all the steps in which democracy could choose a different, less-addled, somewhat-less-willing-to-cosign-genocide candidate. where are all the good candidates?, the DNC asks while refusing to support anyone but columbo's piece of shit uncle joe.
but the ad puts biden alongside MLK and those soldiers who what did raise that flag, so that's how you know it's democracy.
The Counter to Populism Is Not Unpopularity
we have a populist authoritarian careening towards the RNC and the DNC have decided for us that genocide joe is our best play. so let's work this logic out. in brief, what do people who like trump actually like about him?
- charisma
(i know, i know, but he sweet-talks county boys like nothing i've ever seen) - track record
("started" "building" the "wall", stimmy cheques, general applied racism) - not an establishment politician
(despite being president for 4 years this still comes up as a factor)
so, for the republican base of 2016 and indeed today, he offers exactly what the room's looking for: a massive shake-up, change all at once via removal of 'bad actors' framed as "saving america's soul"

wait sorry that was a biden talking point. but trump threw in a sweetener that democrats have to carefully mask or risk being ousted: normalized bigotry
trump gave the green light to "locker-room talk" all over the states. consider: being willing to say 'what we're REALLY all thinking' is a laurel primed for rest. the play can continuously be "the thing you really shouldn't be doing" which means establishment politicians can't play along, and the debate gets away from anything interfaceable
the best move most dems can think of is looking to the audience and making a face like jon stewart, in hopes the population will turn their nose up at the populist. "this is unacceptable" they say, as millions of shitbag americans continue to accept it.
we're fighting a man whose merit is open racism. what merits does joe biden actually have?
- charisma?
(in the way that your creepy grandpa does where he makes jokes that are on paper funny but when he delivers them sound like admissions of guilt) - track record?
(bidenomics?? the economy is doing great except for all the people in it! not to mention all the racist tough-on-crime bullshit from the 90s, which leads to-) - perhaps america's most Establishment Politician
as it turns out, being racist is popular with a demographic of people primed to never face consequences, but it's not the early 90s anymore so you can't just say "crack babies" and get a million white yuppie votes
the spec of politic right now is this: change is popular. in any direction. things are terrible, people want something new. extremism is definitionally new or else it's simply discourse.
yet, joe biden is an encapsulation of unchange, of safety, of status quo- he ran in 2020 as the "best chance to beat trump" and he's trying it again despite being the incumbent.
biden is not popular! but he's Safe for other politicians to rally behind, after all he's been here all this time and obama liked him!! he's happily cosigning profitable genocide unlike those radical leftist protestors they keep arresting by the hundreds.
thus, democrats, perhaps in part reliant on trump's legal woes taking him out for them, deem fit to operate in the space of non-popularity. of being the reasonable voice, the adults in the room. they'll take care of the bad guys infiltrating our nation, shut those traffic-blocking radical left protests down, and finally make america great agai- wait a fuck
The choice for voters will not simply be between competing philosophies of government. The choice will be about protecting our democracy and every American's fundamental freedom.
We are running our campaign like the fate of our democracy depends on it, because it does.
-Julie ChΓ‘vez Rodeiguez, Biden Campaign Manager, Jan 2024
democrats are, uh, hoping that people will come out in droves in response to a threat to democracy. woe, if democracy breaks down, what then?! wars, famine, plague, homelessness, inflation! those things would be terrible, and in fact are as we're all still dealing with them.
but can you imagine how much worse it would be under a populist? having the public on your side for every miserable act, every bombed civilian- what we need is a guy who does these things anyways against the will of the people.
we need a man who bypasses checks and balances to sell more arms to israel to slaughter palestinians with. we need a man who denies reality presented to his face, who sends out goons to snap at reporters because if he tried his little heart would tick right out
biden has done the exact same inhumane, inhuman bullshit at the southern border as trump did, but he can't exactly run on "keeping the rapists out of the country", can he? it can only ever hurt you, lefties won't cosign it and the right-wingers have themselves a guy already
these may not be decisions our fellow democrats will be happy with, but how else will we get republicans to clap and still not vote for us? after all, we've budgeted america around arms sales and cheap labor, so don't get mad at us for doing what 'needs to be done'. didn't you hear democracy is at stake??
consider: republicans can run a populist and simply bully out moderate voices. democrats cannot run a populist, because their platform is democracy as intended, war profiteering included. running to preserve democracy assumes democrats want democracy, unchanged.
any change now might upset voters, who thankfully are in great spirits and not at all currently upset.
so i guess we need a man who is popular with no one, and therefor is not a populist. that way, nothing bad happens. in fact, just to be safe, let's make sure nothing happens at all.
