In a letter published Wednesday on Medium, an anonymous group of Biden’s campaign staffers demanded the president call for a ceasefire in Gaza, citing concerns that not shifting his policy on the issue could hurt his 2024 chances.
“Biden for President staff have seen volunteers quit in droves, and people who have voted blue for decades feel uncertain about doing so for the first time ever, because of this conflict,” the Medium letter read.
“It is not enough to merely be the alternative to Donald Trump,” the campaigners continued. “The campaign has to shift the feeling in the pits of voters’ stomachs, the same feeling that weighs on us every day as we fight for your reelection. The only way to do that is to call for a ceasefire.”
This thread is wild… is it seriously shocking to people here that Biden campaigners (plurality young people) are upset about his response to the genocide in Gaza?? Yes, obviously we need to vote for him, but it’s crazy that criticism is labeled as astroturfing or attempts to sabotage his chances.
I really hate that every time someone criticizes him, some dumbass replies with “Yeah well Trump is way worse”
Yeah no shit lol, just because I hate the current president doesn’t mean I’m automatically selecting the deranged orange.
That’s why I dislike “approval” polling. I haven’t approved of most of the people I’ve voted for. That’s the point of our system: You vote for people you hate and they do things you don’t like.
Looks at what happens when people vote for someone they like. The bigots coalesce and you get Trump.
Yeah, bigots get a candidates that they like and they went to the polls with a big smile on their face. They had a reason to vote. Everyone else? “Here, have this old out-of-touch jackass that we pushed through the primaries by having all the other candidates drop down right before super tuesday, while keeping Warren in to split votes with Bernie, and having all our buddies in big media tell everyone about the supposed miracle comeback from biden”. Covid won 2020 for biden, but he thinks he’s hot shit. The closest thing to hot shit about him is what’s in his diaper.
Also why the fuck are people working for free lmao
Have you never spent your spare time contributing to something you care about? I spend time contributing to open source code and Wikipedia, previously I’ve spent time building stuff to make a local park nicer. I could definitely see myself spending time campaigning for a political party if I felt the future of my country depended on it.
When you’re doing something like that, spending time on something you have a passion for together with others, it’s typically more fun and fulfilling than tiresome. You should try it some time.
If you want to see any of your political goals come to fruition, volunteering is by far the best way to do that.
Volunteer for local campaigns often. Participate heavily. Consider becoming a citizen lobbyist.
I love the work I do for Citizens Climate Lobby, for instance.
I’m upset too, but there is more than one issue in the world. These people need to put things in perspective. If Trump wins, America is literally over.
So, genocide is a “single issue” which means it should be ignored? How can you hope for any semblance of change if you start by overlooking literal genocide
How can you hope for any semblance of change…
You balance it against your other priorities
It isn’t overlooking it to accept that there’s nothing we can do about it. There will be no viable candidate who opposes Israel, and that’s the unfortunate truth. There are still significant differences however between the two candidates, and I don’t want the one who’s likely to start a domestic genocide to win.
There’s blood on our hands, and we don’t have a way to wipe it off. I’d rather accept it and try to move forward than try in vain to clean them.
How can you hope for any semblance of change
I don’t. I gave up hope a while ago. Feels nice.
It isn’t a literal genocide, but a figurative one, which is the source of the disagreement.
0.0044% of Gazans have been killed. The US killed the same net amount of civilians during the Battle of Mosul, and Gaza is three times as dense as Mosul.
This number will go up, because this war is being brutally waged, and Israel does deserve criticism for it. But words matter, and genocide is a dumb word to use because it has actual meanings, and requires specific intent
0.0044% of Gazans have been killed.
???
The population of the Gaza Strip is just over 2 million (2.048). The amount of Gazans killed in the past three months is 22600, as of today. That is, by my math, 1.13% of the population that has been killed in those three months, or 1 out of every 100 people.
To add to this, genocide (as defined by the UN) does not just include directly killing a particular group:
Definition Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
- Killing members of the group; 2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; 4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; 5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
So in addition to killing 20k+ Gaza civilians, Israel’s response has displaced countless others with their intense and indiscriminate bombing (see points #2, #3, possibly #4). NYT and other sources claim that up to 1.8 million Gazans have been displaced, which NYT claims is 80% of their population. This is in addition to the conditions Gaza was already being subjected to, such as being denied water and electricity (#3) by Israel.
The evidence overwhelmingly shows that this is genocide. “Figurative” is such a sleazy doublespeak way of excusing the behavior here.
Edit: sorry my link should work now
Textbook Case of Genocide is as literal as you can get. From a Jewish Holocaust and “genocide” expert.
Weird because words still have meanings even if this person disagrees.
Pretty sure he knows the definition of “genocide” better than you.
Weird because I don’t
Too bad trump and Biden are the only two people so I just have to be pro genocide.
You don’t have to. You can have your own views and make the best decision available to you given the circumstances.
So you’re saying not to vote? Or that we should write-in a vote for a non-genocider?
No I’m saying that you can vote for someone and not agree with everything they stand for because that’s the best option you have. We do need reforms in America, but is that a reason to not vote or to wait around until all the conditions are perfect for you to vote your ideals?
So if I disagree with one pro-genocide politician less than the other, I should support a pro-genocide candidate? That’s not reasonable, it’s falling prey to a false choice. I hate to paraphrase the Declaration of Independence at Americans, but at least the founders understood when the course of human events made it necessary to dissolve political ties.
So what is the move? It’s clearly wrong to vote for Biden and you say not voting is a waste. So be frank and say what you’re thinking clearly and plainly.
They did say it clearly. But let me see if I can’t help.
You can have a slap in the face
Or a rusty shank to the neck
One or the other.
If you don’t pick, one will be picked for you.
I get not wanting to vote for him. I do. But not all of us get that luxury.
I’m gay. Me and my boyfriend are talking about leaving the country. He’s got one last semester of nursing school. Lots of places are desperate for nurses. We can probably get out. If we do, then I can say we get to move.
If the Republicans win, it won’t just be get to, it will become need to as well. Any queer person who stays is taking a big risk. But not everyone will be able to leave.
Between the push for a fascist theocracy with Trump as the dictator as he uses phrases pulled from the Nazis and gives us their plans under Project 2025, I don’t get the luxury of saying “Well, let’s see if we can’t come back from this.” When we talk about being terrified of a Republican presidency, we are not exaggerating.
This isn’t a light decision to make. I hate it. Even if the dems win, we might still leave. Project 2025 will just turn to Project 2029. Project 2033. Eventually they will win. But in the mean time I have to decide between voting for Joe who supports Isreal
Or risk Trump who supports Isreal, but also supports the same thing here
It’s Biden or Trump
A slap in the face or a rusty shank to the neck
Vote people that has naunces on the downballot.
Just so we’re clear, the source for this article is an anonymous post to Medium that claims to be from 17 staffers.
This is not “news”
https://medium.com/@BidenHQforCeasefireNow/dear-president-biden-we-need-a-ceasefire-now-f48b732b2433
And it didn’t even provide any evidence that volunteers were quitting in droves.
17 does not equal droves
The letter was organized by campaign staffers. Five of them confirmed the authenticity of the letter to West Wing Playbook. Those staffers, who were granted anonymity because of their concern of backlash, said they were motivated to organize their letter out of a sense of moral responsibility.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/03/biden-campaign-anonymous-letter-israel-hamas-00133705
Nice try though to ignore the issue.
You realize that article uses the same source right? It explicitly states it early on.
Yes, and states that the authenticity of those behind it were confirmed. So it’s not “claims to be from 17 staffers”, we know for a fact that it IS from 17 staffers. It is only anonymous to protect them from getting attacked from AIPAC and related groups, as they have been doing to anyone that criticizes Israel and has any prominence.
Where does it say that the identities were confirmed? I’ve read the entire article like 3 times looking for it and can’t seem to find it.
Did you not read the comment of mine you previously replied to? Where I quoted from a Politico article?
Yes, I’m referring to the politico article. Where does it say in the politico article that the identities were confirmed?
Literally the part I quoted above.
It’s good to see that people are putting pressure on Biden to do the right thing vis-a-vis Israel and Gaza. I think it’s the right thing to do and I’ve been so disillusioned to see American democracy reduced to a booster contest between soulless ghouls that must never be challenged or questioned™.
It’s not at all surprising to see toxic, bad-faith rhetoric deployed in his defense, tho. If there’s one thing I can count on from the Dem establishment is that when faced with unsolicited input from young people, out comes the reductionist rhetoric about how anything that isn’t ball-slobbering of their candidate and whatever the party has handed down as its agenda is a vote for fascism.
As it did in 2016, the Democrats are going through energetic disagreements over their future direction as a party- and as it did in 2016, the establishment is going to have to decide whether it can afford to alienate its younger/leftier constituency in order to chase votes to the center
The problem is that younger people often don’t vote. So chasing their votes is a losing strat. Younger citizens need to actually get out there and make sure that they are casting votes, otherwise they will continue to not be taken seriously
I’m sure if younger people were given a reason to give a shit they’d come out and vote. Even the candidates that are supposed to be more relatable to younger voters(Dems) have tone deaf talking points that revolve around the stock market, unemployment, gas prices, and inflation, none of which are an accurate metric that would define economic opportunity for the youth. Kind of a self fulfilling prophecy.
You’re correct but I see you’ve been downvoted by people who think young people “just don’t vote” and this defeatist attitude is prevalent in the democrat fanbase. It’s always “the president can’t do that” when it comes to helping people where obama and biden can only offer breadcrumbs in 12 years, but somehow trump can turn the entire country into a fascist hellhole in just 4 years.
Give young people a reason to vote and they will: https://www.pewresearch.org/2008/11/13/young-voters-in-the-2008-election/
But nah, it’s instead either “they don’t vote so we don’t need to care about them” or “if we shame them hard enough then they must vote for us!” Then when the democrats inevitably lose an election, it’s somehow the voters’ fault as if democrats are owed votes.
well he fired all the staffers who admitted to cannabis use even though he promised not to
hard to work and get the job done with someone who flip flops on everything he says probably quit too
So I can’t volunteer for a campaign if I smoke weed?
This smells like #WalkAway psyop bullshit. Anon letter on Medium as a source, lol please.
The letter was organized by campaign staffers. Five of them confirmed the authenticity of the letter to West Wing Playbook. Those staffers, who were granted anonymity because of their concern of backlash, said they were motivated to organize their letter out of a sense of moral responsibility.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/03/biden-campaign-anonymous-letter-israel-hamas-00133705
Nice try though to ignore the issue.
17 people is not a significant portion of his campaign staff, and the campaign hasn’t even mobilized for staffing heavily yet.
The letter is the latest example of internal rifts not just within the Democratic Party but within the Biden operation over how to approach the conflict. Since the fall, a flurry of protest letters — often written without names attached — have urged the president to support a ceasefire. In November, 500 political appointees and staff members from 40 government agencies anonymously signed one letter, while another letter included the names of over 500 alumni of Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign. White House interns also sent a letter to the president and staffers on Capitol Hill have also sent similar letters to their bosses. Biden supporters have raised questions about the veracity of those numbers, noting that the anonymity makes it impossible to confirm.
How about 500 people? Is that number more significant?
Not particularly, no. Something to the tune of 2-3 million people volunteered for the Biden campaign in 2020
The 500 number isn’t volunteers, but “political appointees and staff members from 40 government agencies”.
Ah well then definitely no.
I jumped to conclusions, at least someone has confirmed it’s legit. Wasn’t ignoring it but the astroturfing “Anon outside any verifiable or published source says” is a problem that keeps recurring.
They are entitled to their opinions, and I’m not even in disagreement - the entire conflict is an abomination and horrendous… but I’m curious who they’d vote for otherwise. No one worth talking about in US politics would chart a different course.
A group of staffers working on President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign warned the president that his volunteers are quitting “in droves” over his handling of Israel’s military response in the Gaza Strip.
“A group”? Two people said a thing? Well lets blast it out there like it’s fuckin’ true! FFS.
This is a garbage article. Newsweek is digging for clicks and does not give a shit about America. Just like all the corporate news sewers: CNN, NBC, ABC, WaPo, NYT who covered Trump relentlessly and repeated whatever insanity he spewed as if he were not a demented rapist fraud who can’t stop lying.
Fuck newsweek for this, whatever they are now is just twitter with a masthead.
The letter was organized by campaign staffers. Five of them confirmed the authenticity of the letter to West Wing Playbook. Those staffers, who were granted anonymity because of their concern of backlash, said they were motivated to organize their letter out of a sense of moral responsibility.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/03/biden-campaign-anonymous-letter-israel-hamas-00133705
Way more than two people. Nice try though to ignore the issue.
“Way more than two” being five? Okay. Is five “droves”?
It is not. Way to hang on to trying to make this legit. It’s bullshit intended to stoke FUD and you’re all onboard. Give it up.
17 people behind the letter alone, discussing the many other people they’ve personally seen quit over the past three months.
What issue? That unpaid interns or those one step below are not agreeing with long-term political decisions that were practically made before they were born and only understand the surface of the subject?
Yeah, thanks. I think I’ll just ignore those as well if I were in a position of power, and you would too.
What is this “moral responsibility,” and why is it just now relevant? There were, are, and will be much bigger and worse issues, like climate change, but no one is talking about moral responsibility and blasting the ones who are in charge like it is happening right now with the Israel/Palestine crisis.
Maybe it is just the age of massive misinformation and propaganda campaigns from all sides (some are engaging much more than others) with which I have a problem. Because, in the end, I applaud people who stand up for what they think is right, like those interns. It just comes across as too selective to be a principle. I mean, the Israel/Palestine issue has been ongoing for what? 50 years? It’s not even the first hot phase or siege of Gaza. And then you start working in politics and then you became aware of the politics and stopped working there? What?
Do you really have no other choice but one of those two over there?
We really have no other choice
Their system automatically makes a winner of the biggest party. In any country that uses that system, it automatically leads to two main parties alternating in power. The advantage is that you don’t need “messy” and “unstable” coalitions, but can have strong leadership with a solid base instead. Except that perhaps string leadership is a dangerous thing to have in many cases, and except that if the balance tends towards 50/50, you can easily have problems getting anything done.
It’s the structure of our “first past the post” system. Basically, each party gets one representative on the presidential ticket. The two major parties have primaries where the top candidates compete in a vote within themselves, and the winner gets put on the presidential ticket for that party.
The obvious problem with that is that the party convention picks the candidate, not the voters. So it’s possible to buy a party’s candidate or for the conventions to snub popular choice in favor of not shaking things up too much in the status quo.
The latter point, the democratic party picking lukewarm candidates that are moderate at best because the establishment doesn’t want to disturb the status quo, has been a problem for a long time and is a major reason democrat voters don’t go to the polls.
Yup, so sayeth both sides of America’s one-party system.
People are afraid to back anyone but the big two. They say things like “throwing your vote away” and “you’re letting them win” if you don’t vote one of the big 2.
I understand their point, but we need a systemic change to our political system for the kind of change we want to happen to actually happen.
“throwing your vote away” and “you’re letting them win”
For the two parties in power, what’s better than convincing people that this is true? Actually making this true.
This isn’t just a thing that’s “said.” It’s actually the case, and it’s been proven both statistically and experimentally. The system has been crafted specifically to cause that outcome, reinforced over decades to ensure that there are no other viable opportunities for choice.
A third party would have to win an absolutely massive percentage of the vote; Ross Perot in 1992 did better than any non-major-party candidate in the prior 80 years or any year since, he won nearly 20% of the popular vote, but took exactly zero electoral votes. (By contrast, a major party politician could conceivably game the electoral college—that is, get exactly 270 electoral votes—and take office with just 23% of the popular vote.) In fact, no third party candidate has taken any electoral votes since 1968; and no third party has beaten the trailing major party since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, who still only came in second.
“The system is perfectly designed to produce the results it’s producing.” If it never produces a third party victory, that’s because it can’t.
Unfortunately, to have any hope of changing it, we have to vote for the people who actually want to keep having elections.
Change can happen internally as well. That’s what happened to the republican party. It’s not the same party it was 20 years ago.
But in order to break the 2 party system, it likely has to be done on a grassroots scale in local elections first and slowly climbing to a national scale.
Change can happen internally, yes. And I hope it does. But the means to do that isn’t “not voting in the general election,” especially when the stakes are so high. The way change happens internally is the same way we break the two-party system, because they have no incentive to change if everything is working fine for them right now.
I’m tired of this black mirror episode, can we go back to the 90’s please?
Though I agree that Biden should be punished for what he’s doing there, I would please like to remind everyone that the alternative guy would probably just chose to “nuke Gaza or something, problem solved, right?” Or some other insanity like that. Please please, vote Biden, as bad as he is
If idiots are too fucking stupid to vote for Biden, because of a religious war…well, it kind of fits in with the past decade of idiocracy. You get what you fucking deserve.
Yeah but the rest of us don’t deserve it
That’s the great part about democracy: Everyone gets the consequences of bad decisions!
Here’s the thing: Politics is dead.
You know what else has broad popular support?
Medicare for All
Free college
Well funded public housing
There’s a much longer list, but you get the idea. It’s not what both parties are the same … it’s that Democrats use the same tired excuses for not doing what is popular and needed.
In 2024 not only are we going to be asked to once again ignore that Democrats are unable to fulfill the most basic functions of a political party, but we’re going to be told we need to vote for somebody who tacitly approved of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
That’s a bridge too far for me. Saying that the other guy is worse may be true, but it still doesn’t take away the reality that the Democratic nominate for POTUS is a genocidal monster.
Hmm, let me see. Ceasefire in a country that has nothing to do with us and doesn’t effect us in the slightest
OR
We elect a literal fascist who actually admitted he will be a dictator and use the military against his enemies at home
Tough choice
Ceasefire in a country that has nothing to do with us and doesn’t effect us in the slightest
a brutal lie in the first part, a gross lie in the second part. mind you, I’m not pushing for any of the two octogenarian that will be elected.
Two people quit = droves.
ROFL. Gotta love sensationalism.
You’re referring to actual appointed staff in his cabinets, not the people volunteering for his campaign and other non-cabinet staff.
Oh… you mean the “anonymous” people that can’t be verified?
The letter was organized by campaign staffers. Five of them confirmed the authenticity of the letter to West Wing Playbook. Those staffers, who were granted anonymity because of their concern of backlash, said they were motivated to organize their letter out of a sense of moral responsibility.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/03/biden-campaign-anonymous-letter-israel-hamas-00133705
Nice try though to ignore the issue.
If you say so. Keep spreading this bullshit and you can enjoy Trump as your dictator. I’m sure he’ll navigate the Palestinian conflict MUCH better.
I’m sorry that reporting factual information is such a problem for you. Disliking Trump and Republicans in general is not a reason for me to be purposefully blind to the actions of those I do support.
“bOtH siDeS!” Right? No one is asking you to be blind to what’s going on, but to shit on the one person that stands a chance to keep us from having a dictatorship?
I sincerely hope you are going to be proud of what you accomplish here.
So, basically, you’re saying we ignore everything Biden does, no matter how terrible, and not bring up that maybe he should be better?
Yes, I agree we should not be blind to the facts. For instance:
support for the president’s response for the Israel-Hamas war had increased among young voters, up by 5 percentage points when compared to a similar poll conducted in October.
Getting a free pass for not being Donald Trump isn’t likely to work twice. Biden isn’t walking into this election running against Trump’s miserable failure of a presidency, he’s running on his record now. And his record is shit. It’s a record of going “Well, my hands are tied” when it’s time to help Americans but also having unlimited will and political capital to send our money to fund a genocide. It’s a record of not cancelling student loans, not legalizing marijuana, not meaningfully addressing climate change, not doing anything about healthcare, not doing anything about education. Biden’s presidency has been one that primarily is about chiding the left, calling us idiots and demanding our votes while flat-out telling us he’s not gonna do anything we ask and that we should be grateful that he’s not gonna send the army to kill us like Trump said he would.
Republicans would also support Israel. All these people who are leaving Biden aren’t doing anyone any favors, including the Palestinians.
Nobody left democrats. It’s just that Biden might lose his nomination (unless American elections don’t work that way for the sitting president… I am just an outsider)
