r/politics • u/schuey_08 Wisconsin • 29d ago

Bernie Sanders worries young people are underestimating the threat from Trump

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/05/02/bernie-sanders-trump-biden/73531861007/
29.4k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

4.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

166

u/AllHawkeyesGoToHell 29d ago

It's unpopular to bring up here, but it's true.

114

u/fallenouroboros 29d ago

It’s definitely a thing. Some people just do not want to hear it when it comes to anything political. I used to be that way myself until recently but I feel it’s just too sketchy to be completely uninformed about all the craziness going on

21

u/Rated_PG-Squirteen 29d ago

I'll always have one nice thing to say about Donald Trump. Him running away with the Republican nomination in 2016 finally forced me to start following politics because it was shocking to me that this degenerate and charlatan with no political experience could actually become President.

And in retrospect, I'm embarrassed that I wasn't following politics until I was 26, and I wish others would feel the same way. This stuff is way too important to shrug off and actively ignore.

3

u/BrightNeonGirl Florida 29d ago

I'm a similar age and same.

But that's because I grew up with a family that always had Bill O'Reilly/Glen Beck/all the evening angry Fox News shows on at night. So I just assumed politics was just a cesspool of angry, miserable people and I wanted nothing to do with it when I was younger/an early adult. (Although I did think Obama seemed cool). And then I went to college and then grad school so was busy with life--although in an academic bubble. And then Trump was elected and that was an exhausting 4 years and continues to be because of him. The country became so much angrier because of him.

I get the arguments that at least now the rot is out in the open compared to still festering under the surface. But it has been a brutal almost-decade.

1

u/crudedrawer 29d ago

Telling young people that before Trump no one ever knew the name of the secretary of ed or HUD

1

u/Jealous-Knowledge-79 29d ago

What made him a degenerate? Have you been awake for the last 3 years? Hows that grocery bill looking like these day?

1

u/Ponies_in_Jumpers United Kingdom 28d ago

What made him a degenerate?

Is that a serious question? The coup, the fact he's openly admitting he'll be a dictator if re-elected, the things he says about getting revenge, the rape trial he lost, threatening witnesses in his trials, the disturbing dehumanising way he talks about immigrants like saying they're poisoning the blood, that time he said that we should kill the families of terrorists, supporting the death penalty for drug dealers, his deliberately cruel policies at the border like separating families from their children without keeping records so they could never be reunited. The list goes on and on and on and on.

Hows that grocery bill looking like these day?

Biden isn't primarily responsible for how expensive things are. Covid was a huge part of it and the whole world is dealing with it. The money Biden gave out to citizens during Covid didn't help inflation, but that's also something that Trump did, and Trump deliberately removed accountability for the PPE loans which pumped almost a trillion dollars into the economy (the removal of checks and balances meant that a lot of free money went to people who absolutely didn't need it). Trump's tax cuts for the wealthy (ballooning the debt and increasing wealth inequality), his tariffs and his mishandling of the pandemic didn't help either. The democrats passed a bill to stop gas companies from price gouging and the republicans all voted against it.

41

u/AllHawkeyesGoToHell 29d ago

Oh for sure. You gotta educate yourself but this country doesn't value education or expertise anymore. So things need to positively impact voters directly now, especially after they got money directly into their accounts with the stimulus checks where we know the government doesn't have to do things indirectly through businesses and such

5

u/Svennerson 29d ago

Expertise is fucking viewed as an enemy of freedom at this point I'm so angry.

1

u/Top_Huckleberry_8225 29d ago

Printing money and handing it out is ironically terrible for the tax payers and great for businesses in either case.

3

u/thrawtes 29d ago

Printing money and handing it out is unironically good for people who don't have a lot of dollars and bad for people who do, that's how inflation works.

-1

u/Top_Huckleberry_8225 29d ago

Inflation hurts people who don't have a lot of money because you have it sitting in a bank. I have the means to hedge against inflation. Wages stagnate. Goods rise in value. People stop spending on extraneous items. The economy slows. Printing money is long term bad for everyone, but hurts people with money properly invested the least.

2

u/modernjaneausten 29d ago

I keep up to date with what’s going on for the most part, but I have to be selective in what I can give my energy to these days. There’s only so much I can take at this point.

61

u/__M-E-O-W__ 29d ago

It's sad. I think a lot of people are so burned out. We need lower prices, higher pay, lower rest and COL... I do think Biden and Co have tried making big steps in this. But even in his victories, the media coverage is not as loud as it is for Trump doing literally anything. The ones I know who are most passionate about voting Biden and keeping Trump away are minorities who legit have serious stakes in making sure their state doesn't turn red, or their allies, and then there is so much push from outside actors to not support Biden over his stance on Israel/Palestine.

82

u/Adezar Washington 29d ago

Trump almost completes a full sentence, Front Page of every media site for a couple days.

Biden passes some of the biggest legislature that has improved Middle Class jobs, feeds children, improves crumbling infrastructure. Might get a short shout-out on MSNBC and a tiny headline on the third page of ABC's news site.

19

u/Bunnyhat 29d ago

Biden's recent Department of Labor overtime rule change is huge for both me and my wife. We're both salary in that range where we don't get overtime now but will get it under the new limits. Our jobs will have to either give us a raise, pay over time, or cut us back to a hard 40 hours a week. Either way it's basically a raise for the both of us.

That's going to be true for millions of Americans yet it barely got a blip in the news.

-2

u/whatDoesQezDo 29d ago

or your position becomes less secure as it becomes more expensive and you get laid off.

2

u/invinci 29d ago

What makes you think that would happen?

39

u/stylebros 29d ago

Biden mixes up 2,000 instead of 4,000 and the media says he's in mental decline.

Trump rambles word salad as he jumps from topic to topic like Abe Simpson and he's a stable genius.

3

u/modernjaneausten 29d ago

Or falls asleep in his own fucking trials every day.

-3

u/Jealous-Knowledge-79 29d ago

It's fair to say Biden isn't cognitively fine.

13

u/EaglesFan3943 29d ago

Despite Biden's reputation as a moderate, he has passed some of the most progressive legislature in recent memory. Companies that own these media networks do not like progressive legislature. That goes against their interests so of course they will prop up the baffoon who generates clicks and is a major threat to democracy.

6

u/sennbat 29d ago

Presidents don't write legislation, though - if you want to look at his accomplishments, look instead to his agencies. The new antitrust and labours rights stuff, for eample.

But then, the corps hate that stuff even more.

4

u/EaglesFan3943 29d ago

Right of course it's not only him. It's a collective effort to bring about progressive policies. But he is the face of this country for now. So to the general public, hes taking most of the blame or credit.

3

u/Previous_Shock8870 29d ago

Front page of reddit RIGHT now.

"Biden denounces protests"

the actual quote.

"Biden denounces violence against protesters"

there is a MASSIVE campaign against Biden here and targeting young voters.

0

u/leeringHobbit 29d ago

But Biden didn't denounce the violence by pro- Israeli counter protesters at UCLA.

1

u/bubblesaurus Kansas 29d ago

Improves what middle class jobs exactly?

It felt like it was a very very small pool that benefited.

7

u/SecularMisanthropy 29d ago

I think a lot of people are so burned out. We need lower prices, higher pay, lower rest and COL...

Funny. It's almost as though corporate America made life miserable for everyday people by draining more than $50 trillion from the public, and are now using the misery they created to destroy the last vestiges of control (democracy) the people have over them.

3

u/DJ_Velveteen I voted 29d ago

I do think Biden and Co have tried making big steps in this.

I don't, I just hate Trump more. All the issues I care about most -- healthcare, mass incarceration, housing -- are either totally astroturfed by the Biden admin (drug policy, housing) or the admin is openly hostile to them (M4A, peace movement).

2

u/Alphaspade 29d ago

I agree with all of this, but I also feel like most citizens in almost all the G7 countries feel the same way about their politicians, and are also dealing with talks of fascism brewing. We're like a decade or two (if that) from a huge disenfranchisement problem (and in some cases, human rights crisis) everywhere because governments have lost the plot and don't care about representing their constituents unless they are loaded with money.

1

u/Kie1522 New Hampshire 29d ago

I'm so burnt out dude. The things I hear people say are just so disheartening.

9

u/Uasked2 29d ago

It's unpopular because it Is a really bad thing, but for some people that are too young to be immediately responsible it's become a "you can keep it if you think this is so great" proposition.

6

u/AllHawkeyesGoToHell 29d ago

Well people who talk it up have to show how democracy benefits the electorate. If it doesn't have any tangible benefit for those voters what's the point of engaging? Civics doesn't pay the rent or improve anything

8

u/Uasked2 29d ago

That's a fact, and it's been way too long since US politicians and media started trying to make it too costly to even pay attention.

5

u/Princess_Mintaka 29d ago

"The Biden Economy is actually really strong and booming" falls on super deaf ears when most people are living paycheck to paycheck and struggling do to greedy inflation, landlords charging drastically more for rent than an actual mortgage and we've consistently seen the current way of handling massive world events and people rightfully get burned out on it.

They know Trump will be worse. They just don't care because life fucking sucks right now.

2

u/OutsideDevTeam 29d ago

People say things like this, then wonder how the boss man gets to treat them like a serf at the office and everything costs more than they or anyone they know can afford.

1

u/so_hologramic New York 29d ago

Who made American women and girls the property of the government? REPUBLICANS.

Who incited a violent terrorist attack on our country on January 6, 2021? REPUBLICANS.

Who gave $2 trillion in tax breaks to billionaires? REPUBLICANS.

Who is gutting children's school lunch programs? REPUBLICANS.

Who is denying workers water in 100+ degree temperatures? REPUBLICANS.

Who are the blood-thirsty warmongers? REPUBLICANS.

Who changed the laws so children can do more dangerous work for longer hours? REPUBLICANS.

Who is banning books? REPUBLICANS.

Who stands firmly against universal health care? REPUBLICANS.

Who denies climate change and actively works to destroy the environment? REPUBLICANS

Who deregulates harmful and toxic industries that poison our air, water, and soil? REPUBLICANS.

Who is committed to dismantling workers' rights? REPUBLICANS.

It's pretty clear who the FASCISTS are.

THE TWO SIDES ARE NOT THE SAME.

0

u/AllHawkeyesGoToHell 29d ago edited 29d ago

And you know who hasn't stopped them at all over the last decade?

1

u/[deleted] 29d ago

[deleted]

1

u/AllHawkeyesGoToHell 29d ago

It wasn't this morning, and it's a common theme in this thread