Arthur Camins, retired science teacher and former director of innovation in engineering and science at Stevens Institute of Technology, intends to vote for Joe Biden.
He explains why:
I supported Bernie Sanders for president. I also would have been thrilled if Elizabeth Warren was nominated. I will now vote for Joe Biden. He is the only potential Democratic nominee at this point. So, either he will be the next president or Trump.
To those who say they cannot bring themselves to vote for him:
To which women, whose right to an abortion are you prepared to say, “Sorry I couldn’t vote for Biden.”
To which deported asylum seekers are you prepared to say, “Sorry I couldn’t vote for Biden.”
To which fellow citizens, denied the right to vote, are you prepared to say, “Sorry I couldn’t vote for Biden.”
To which fellow progressive whose right to organize are you prepared to say, “Sorry I couldn’t vote for Biden.”
To which fellow humans whose climate continues to warm uncontrollably are you prepared to say, “Sorry I couldn’t vote for Biden.”
To which fellow breathers inhaling dirtier air are you prepared to say, “Sorry I couldn’t vote for Biden.”
Biden is very far from ideal but he would do none of the above things listed above, nor would he encourage violence.
Make no mistake, as bad as everything is right now, is can get way worse. History shows us, worse is usually worse and not necessarily “a wake up call” without unimaginable death and suffering. People often rise up, not in times of terror, but i times of rising expectation when things are looking up and with hope they say, “I want more.”
Do you want to preserve your (our) right to organize to set the stage for hope?
Please think about this.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is what I really don’t understand: “He is the only potential Democratic nominee at this point.”
Why are liberals/Democrats accepting this? The convention is almost three months away. There is still plenty of time for some other choice – any other choice at this point. Heck, I’d pick a random person in the cereal aisle of my local grocery store over Biden. He’s clearly in serious cognitive decline. He has credible, corroborated allegations of sexual assault, along with multiple allegations of sexual harassment against him (with video evidence of his frequent unwanted handsiness). He has a documented history of lying and segregationism. He is a tool of corporate America/the banking industry. Why, why, why is he an acceptable nominee to any self-proclaimed liberal when he represents absolutely nothing liberal?
We can certainly have the Biden-is-better-than-Trump debate if and when Biden is actually, officially, the nominee. But he’s not yet and should never be. Even the Republicans tried to boot Trump as their nominee after the “p*ssy” tape came out. How can the Democrats do less when Biden isn’t even the nominee yet?
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Biden has won the majority of votes to be the nominee. No other candidate has. If you vote third party, you help Trump.
I would vote for my dog or my cat over Trump. But they are not going to be on the ballot. Biden is.
Vote for Biden or vote for Trump or throw your vote away and help Trump. That is, unless you want four more years of Trump.
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I’m still asking, why are you willing to accept Biden as the nominee? It’s not set in stone. Bernie is still on the ballot and has the second most votes. Why is Biden’s obvious cognitive decline not disqualifying, especially since you think Trump’s obvious mental problems should disqualify him? Why are Reade’s credible and corroborated allegations not disqualifying? Dr. Ford’s allegations were, in your own words, reason to disqualifiy Brett K (and I agree wholeheartedly). Why should the same standards not be applied and why should Biden not be made to step aside?
You’re falling for the neoliberal lie, There Is No Alternative. There are alternatives, the most obvious one being the person who received the second-most votes.
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Many candidates competed for the nomination. Biden won the majority of delegates. No one else is running against Biden. He has been endorsed by every other candidate who ran. Unless he drops dead, he will be the nominee. Who is your alternative candidate?
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Dienne,
You asked: “why are you willing to accept Biden as the nominee?“
He won the majority of delegates to the Democratic convention.
He has been endorsed by every other Democratic candidate.
He is millions of times better than Trump.
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“I believe that it’s irresponsible for anybody to say, ‘Well, I disagree with Joe Biden — I disagree with Joe Biden! — and therefore I’m not going to be involved.’”
https://apnews.com/a1bfb62e37fe34e09ff123a58a1329fa
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Reade’s allegations are not credible, not just because they have changed so many times over the years, but because the people who supposedly “corroborate” her (but not under oath) also have those stories changed over the years.
What I find odd is that dienne77 posted to object to Trump’s impeachment and apparently did not find any of the many upright and honest impeachment witnesses credible, but she believes Tara Reade’s latest story is the truth and (intentionally?) mischaracterizes it as being “credible and corroborated”.
Nope. The testimony of the right wing Republican Ambassador Gordon Sondland was “credible and corroborated”. And by that I mean that while Sondland had nearly as many problems with credibility as Tara Reade does, there were a myriad of witnesses whose honesty and integrity were unimpeachable who testified under oath and corroborated it. And none of the witnesses had said one thing one day, and another thing a few weeks later, and yet another under oath.
Is Biden better than Trump? It’s an easy question to answer unless you have a different agenda.
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Diane Ravitch,
I’m surprised you let dienne77 post right wing propaganda — the exact words that you can find on every right wing news site like:
“He has credible, corroborated allegations of sexual assault…”
This is a blatant lie –it is a lie that is no different than if dienne77 had posted “Bernie has documented, credible allegations of endorsing Cuban communism’ and “Bernie has documented, credible allegations that he arranged for his stepson to receive a $100,000/year do nothing job from the donations of progressives he scammed.”
If dienne77 had posted that lie about Bernie Sanders, we would know she was a troll. Trolls post lies and propaganda instead of trying to convince other people by truths.
If you read about the successful propaganda efforts of the pro-Trump fake posts directed toward African-Americans to convince them that it was the democrats who were the real racists, you will see that like dienne77, those propaganda efforts buried some truth in their posts to make them seem more legitimate.
And when dienne77 posts, buried among all the right wing propaganda lies that are designed to convince voters that the democrat is absolutely no better than Trump, there are some interesting points. But those points are only thrown in to legitimize the main purpose of the post, which is to promote lies and smears designed to convince voters that Trump’s re-election is not so bad when you consider the alternative — the evil democrat.
Note the most revealing comment:
“We can certainly have the Biden-is-better-than-Trump debate if and when Biden is actually, officially, the nominee.”
dienne77 still believes that whether Biden is better than Trump is something that is DEBATABLE because she absolutely is not announce that is true.
dienne77 will not concede that Biden is better than Trump. And that speaks volumes about her true values.
Is it still DEBATABLE whether replacing Supreme Court Justices like Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Biden picks is better than Trump picks?
dienne77 could have made interesting points with HONEST criticism of Biden, but instead she repeated dishonest right wing propaganda tropes designed to smear Biden’s character. The kind of dishonest lies that we see used against Bernie or Warren. It is a red flag about the person posting.
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If Trump gets a second term, there will be no stopping the plundering. He will most likely get another Supreme Court nominee. He and his herd of vandals will go after the ACA, Medicare and Social Security. A vote for Trump is a vote for giving the 1% even more power and wealth than it already has.
It is important that anyone that expects government to serve the people vote for Biden. He was not my first choice, but he is the right choice now. We should also vote for Democrats in order to flip the legislative branch as well. If we can do this, we may have the opportunity to move this country forward and restore our fractured alliances.
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Trump will likely get another two seats on the Supreme Court if he is re-elected. At the moment, many are praying for Ginsburg to stay alive until at least Jan 21, 2021.
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on top of which, I think that should November come and we saw voters put Trump back into office, the individual and national mood would become so depressed, so dark and so unhappy, that there would simply be no optimism left
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Dennis posted a front page editorial from the Las Vegas Sun a couple of days that resonated deeply with many of us. Here’s a summary of some of the comments they got:
https://lasvegassun.com/news/2020/may/20/readers-divided-in-responses-to-trumps-dictatorial/
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“The ones that completely shut everything down like a dictator are all DEMOKKKRAT GOVERNOR’S. (Expletive) demoKKKrat’s, they have become the enemy of the people.”
Of the comments, this one seems the most interesting to me. The commentator is suggesting that the Democratic governors are like the KKK. The mixing of political metaphor confuses the message in a way that seems very contrived.
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Thank you Arthur Camins and Diane, we must vote D across the board from the presidency to the local dog catcher.
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Apparently, the Democratic Party’s “leadership” would rather lose to Trump than win with a progressive candidate. A vote for Biden in the primary is a vote for Trump in the general election. Centrists will be entirely to blame if Trump wins in November.
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Nonsense.
A vote for Biden is a vote for the candidate who won the majority of Democratic primaries.
Sanders endorsed Biden.
Who will you vote for?
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Apparently the majority of the Democratic Party is centrist.
Who will you vote for between Biden and Trump?
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Neither Trump nor Biden will get my vote. I support a progressive movement to build a third party. Because the Democratic Party is unwilling to advocate for progressive reform(s), we must consider goals extending beyond a single election cycle and a single candidate. If the two corporate-sponsored political parties offered a platform appealing to working class Americans, we’d not be discussing a perceived need to find an alternative. In 2016 the “either/or logical fallacy” was utilized in a failed attempt to bully progressives into voting for Hillary Clinton. How’d that work out for ya?
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In other words, you haven’t any issues with Trump and are throwing your vote away.
You are willing to accept an end to abortion rights, gay right, civil rights, and public schools.
I hope you live in a blue state where your vote doesn’t count.
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If you live in a battleground statute, you are a Trump troll.
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James Eales,
Your point is that you are so angry about African-American voters in the democratic primary not voting for a progressive candidate that you want to punish them by helping Trump win?
Or are you angry that the Democratic Party’s “leadership” didn’t do what you seem to demand they do and order African-American voters to vote for the progressive candidate.
Your post reveals so much racism that I don’t believe you are progressive at all. Because you are saying things that are the exactly opposite of what every progressive leader in real life is saying.
If you share the racist views of fake progressives like “James Eales” — and I do think some white folks who profess to be progressive certainly share those inherently racist views – you will blame the “centrist” African-American voters who just wouldn’t obey their white progressive masters and vote for a progressive.
But I think these kinds of posters are not progressives but are trolls.
A Trump victory doesn’t matter to them.
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Sorry Bernie and Elton…
Sometimes you dream, sometimes it seems
There’s nothing there at all
You just seem older than yesterday
And you’re waiting for tomorrow to call
You draw to the curtains and one thing’s for certain
You’re cozy in your myth based cartoon
The campaigns all paid for, God bless the donee
Let’s go shoot a hole in the doom
Oh, and Joe Biden is riding the fright
Returning to our demos dreams
Comic book chaperones never grow old
Money screened heroes whose stories are told
Oh the blue sequin oldboy who places the blame
On the role of others and wears no shame
Turn off the TV, turn up the lights
Is an electoral savior (D or R) still in sight?
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Well, to me, the only reason we need to support Biden is because he is at least better than the insane possum clown in the White House. I still don’t know if his electability will ever promise anything for undoing all the collateral damages done by Drumptruck and his predecessors. He’s no Trump, but he’s definitely not a kind of guy who would say, “I had a change of heart, and I was wrong at that time.” Sexual assault allegation is just a tip of the iceberg. He voted for a disastrous Iraq War (and he never regret it.). He worked with GOP to cut Social Security and Medicare in the past(again, with no regret.) And now his private phone calls with a former Ukrainian President has been leaked. His possible role in influencing foreign politicians over his son’s job, which ironically turned into the story of Trump’s impeachment, could haunt him if the mainstream media chose to pick it up.
Like many other politicians, he has close ties with powerful patrons and pundits who are not necessarily friends of teachers and educators. He has a lot of things to prove that he is not just different from Trump, but he can serve best for the interests of ordinary citizens, public workers—not the oligarchies, DC politicians, billionaires, autocratic national intelligence regimes (FBI/NSA/CIA).
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“Insane possum clown!” I’ve GOT to remember that one!
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Shouldn’t that be “Insane clown possum”? 🧐
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GregB
Yes. Thank you.
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Please don’t insult possums. We infrequently see them in the neighborhood. They are very cute, scurrying across the street, bothering no one.
(Unlike racoons…one got into the neighbor’s garage &, because he thought the car was safe there, had left all the windows open. The next day, she found the car’s interior–seats, floors, etc., ripped to shreds, & the hood & trunk scratched beyond repair.)
So–perhaps call WH it (still the best reference, IMO} “insane racoon clown,” as it is ripping the country apart.
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A posse of possums? And you’re right about raccoons. Nasty things.
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Yes, they are extremely destructive. We used to have them get up onto our roof & into a crawl space, but now have porcupine fencing up on the siding, which works. Having said that, they are cute, too. Before solving the problem, my husband used to trap them & release them into the woods (yeah, we live by the forest preserve &, of course, they’d come right back!). But he’d have me & our daughter see the animal first–yep, cute! Before we got the fencing, I convinced him to drive to a preserve far away…& that’s another story…
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Does anyone who refuses to vote for Biden, have any evidence that somehow, from the ashes of his defeat in the general election, a new progressive movement will arise that will still have the freedom to organize? History suggests that when things get worse under despotic regimes, they just get worse and people die and suffer. Often, the dictator is only toppled by an external power.
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