politics

Pulling support from Isreal isn't nearly as popular as someone who is in the progressive / lemmy bubble would think. And besides public opinion, Isreal has a very strong lobby. Also, while there are more vocal American Jews standing against Isreal now, they're far from united against Isreal.

I know it seems like it's a clear win because of the echo chamber in here, but it could cost them not only the presidential election, but down ballot as well, if they go against Isreal. And I've said it before, chasing the Leftist vote is an exercise in futility. They will just move goalposts, and you may very well lose more voters appeasing them than you gain. And the votes you do gain will be fickle.

It sucks to say, but their strategy is solid. And we need to celebrate the small wins to encourage their slow break from unconditional support.

Edit:

Lemmy as a whole - "Political polls are very unreliable and next to useless"

ITT: "A specific poll agrees with my opinion, and thus should be treated as the absolute truth"

Uh huh. Re: echo chambers

I honestly don't think there is any calculus happening here. Biden is a Zionist. It's not outlandish to think there are other high ranking Democrats who are also Zionists enabling him. They might be upset at the optics, but they're not upset at the outcome. The Biden administration also doesn't seem to think this position will cost them the election, so they see no incentive to pause their goals.

They figure that they would lose more votes from people who support Israel than they're currently losing from people who support Palestine so much they would rather have Trump in power (in which case Palestine will be in even more trouble, which isn't a problem for Israel supporters).

but I honestly just don’t understand what’s driving such terrible decision making.

I mean, look around these comments sections and see the apologism. If you bring up any criticism of Biden, you must support Trump! Its 2016 all over again, where voters with legitimate concerns about the candidate are being told to basically stfu. Democrats of a certain vintage think they are owed your vote.

Here's the political calculus for Democrats:

This appears to be a very unusual election. Normally Democrats lead with young voters, and Republicans lead with older voters. But this year, Biden has gained ground with older voters even while losing ground with young voters.

So the first thing to consider is that Biden is trying harder to appeal to older voters than usual for Democrats, and older voters are more likely to support Israel.

Furthermore, older voters are much more likely to vote, which is good news for Biden. This also means that Biden has less reason to maximize turnout than previous Democrats.

The obvious question is why doesn't Biden try to win over young and older voters? I'm sure he would like to, but supporting Palestine isn't the way to do it. Surprisingly, young voters actually don't care that much about Gaza. Furthermore, according to that article "young voters who wanted Biden to pressure Israel to stop attacking Gaza would vote for him at about the same rate as those who didn’t." So supporting Palestine might just be downside risk with older voters.

Putting all this together, and the political calculus favors appealing to older voters on Israel, and trying to find some other issue to win back young voters.

I think it's the same short sighted calculus businesses use. They aren't thinking about the long term. They just want to win this election. And there's a path to victory by grabbing soft conservatives. They don't care that they're obliterating our reputation, the reputation of our intelligence community (who press F to doubt on Israel's claims), and the reputation of the party.

The Democrat's strategy to appeal to their base really seems to be, "Look, we're not as bad at the other guys." And they really aren't realizing that that isn't enough, because it's not just about Israel/Palestine anymore. I really don't think the people who are also repeating this party line (including the ones on Lemmy) are realizing how out of touch this sentiment is especially the younger Millennials/Gen Z.

I've seen my friends get attacked, arrested, and get criminal records from the university encampments and protests, and nothing was done to protect them. In their eyes, Trump would never protect them, but neither did Biden or any other Democrat in power. How can they be trusted to protect the people in the future? Seen from this lens, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that there might be people out there who find voting for Biden unpalatable.

Wtf did you think Biden is? Dark Brandon?

It's his job to do US policy - ie, enabling Israel's genocide, just like all the other mass-murder US policy is responsible for.

He is facing a lot of resistance amongst his electorate for doing his job - therefore he will be handing over to a regime that can perform this sacrosanct aspect of US policy without meeting any resistance from it's electorate.

It's "liberal democracy" working the way it's supposed to in all it's pseudo-democratic glory.

Historically he never does the right thing when it comes to religious motivations.

The purpose of not actually calling it what it is is because most people won't read it. It let's the media "accurately" say the thing they want them to say.

No, Biden has the brand recognition and is the party's best chance to win. His administration does do a terrible job of selling the good things he is doing and he is shooting himself in the foot by not following through on his 'red line' with Rafah, but that isn't enough of a negative to outweigh the lnown factor.

It sucks that winning a first past the post election based on the electoral college is how it works instead of something like ranked choice, but that is where we are at.