Cory Doctorow is rightfully enraged:
This is all downside. If Google complies with the order, it will constitute a privacy breach on a scale never before seen. If they don’t comply with the order, it will starve competitors of the one tiny drop of hope that Judge Mehta squeezed out of his pen. It’s a catastrophe. An utter, total catastrophe. It has zero redeeming qualities. Hope you like enshittification, folks, because Judge Mehta just handed Google an eternal licence to enshittify the entire fucking internet.
Nobody deserves more contempt for Joe Biden’s loss than Joe Biden himself.
The man presided over the worst economy in my lifetime, insisted on running for a second term despite not being mentally or physically up for the task, and then crippled the Harris campaign by barring her from criticizing his policies or his record.
But after what they did to Sanders, and what they’re doing to Mamdani, who’d expect anything different?
Elections have consequences. And centrist Democrats who sabotage good left-wing candidates and then run shit campaigns are much more to blame for those consequences than voters stuck choosing between different flavors of shit.
If you think Harris didn’t criticize the Biden white house because Biden forbid her to you are nuts. There is no way he did that because there’s no way he had the power to do that. What she’s worried about retribution from the old senile man? His power was completely and utterly broken. She didn’t do it cuz she thought it would be bad for her campaign, because it was. You can’t criticize your own record and look good doing it. She was part of that White House.
Really? Cause from what I read, if Harris wanted to keep Biden’s support, Biden demanded she toe the line.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5191087-harris-trump-biden-harris/
If you remember, it wasn’t automatic that Harris replaced Biden. The Dems could have and should have run an abbreviated, competitive primary. Instead, Biden put his campaign dollars and his PR team behind Harris and made sure Harris didn’t have to run in a primary. In exchange, Harris ran a campaign promising America she’d continue Biden’s policies, didn’t criticize any of Biden’s past decisions, and didn’t promote any policies of her own.
Only a weak VP would have taken that deal. A strong politician would have told Biden where to shove it. A strong politician would have come out swinging, saying “this is where I disagree, this is where I would have done differently, this is what I would have done better.” That was the only way to win - after four years of incompetence, failure, and economic disaster, if Biden’s VP wanted to win, she had to break with Biden and promise America the change it demanded.
But Harris was weak and afraid to compete on her own. And we paid the price.
Biden too mentally weak and decrepit to be president but somehow at the exact same time welding unfathomable power. That is a story dumb enough to be “reported” by The Hill lol.
More than one thing can be true and I don’t think Biden reads Lemmy so I’m not trying to send him any messages here.
No, you’re sending a message to Biden’s critics. We should have swallowed our criticisms, gotten in line, voted blue no matter who? Is that right?
Bullshit.
The person most responsible for Trump is Trump.
The second most responsible person is Biden, and the third is Harris, for running a shit campaign after a shit four years of neoliberal rich-get-richer politics and letting Trump win.
The fucking landslide of voters choosing a second Trump term over a second Biden term has nothing to do with a handful of online leftists yelling “don’t waste your time and energy on Biden because he sucks and is obviously going to lose” and/or “we fucking told you so”.
Frankly, it has everything to do with people being better off under Trump’s first term than under Biden. And if y’all don’t drop the “blame voters for not falling in line” bullshit and give us a real progressive candidate to vote for, y’all are going to give us Vance/Trump Jr 2028, with Donald Trump as House Speaker and shadow President Putin-style.
I cannot read this because just skimming it makes me want to vomit. The claim alone that America was better off under Trump puts you firmly on my shit list
I know you’re pissed at losing but wtf is this shit?
This is how you’re going to lose the next election again. If you can’t even rally yourside then wtf are you even doing? We’re almost one year into the second Trump admin and you still haven’t figured out the basics of politics.
The Republicans can hold their nose and vote for a candidate exactly opposite their values. And yet you can’t even support Harris as a valid alternative even as Trump wrecks our country for a year. And you expect me to stand by you and rally with you in the next election?
In any case: Harris (or Biden) would have broken up Google. Period. Quit complaining about things if you can’t even fucking rally or do the basics of politicking. You ain’t helping now.
If every registered voter in the United States had voted, [Trump would have won by an even wider margin.] (https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-election-non-voters-coalition)
Leftists did not sabotage Biden or Harris in 2024. Leftists held their noses and voted. If anything, it was the center and center-right who stayed home out of distaste for Trump.
And that left unity wasn’t enough, because Biden was so unpopular with American voters, and because Harris either couldn’t or wouldn’t offer anything different from Biden.
You guys who demand we vote blue no matter who, who blame the American left for not falling in line behind Harris, are completely misunderstanding the election of 2024. Because the left did vote blue. The left did rally. The left did fall in line. Left-wing criticism of Biden and Harris is not why Harris lost.
You know how we’re going to lose the next election again? If we - by which I mean American moderates, liberals, leftists, progressives, and anti-fascists of all stripes - don’t recognize why Biden and Harris lost. If we pick another corporate Democratic standard bearer who promises to govern like a moderate Republican and shift the party further to the right. Because if Trump or a Trump clone runs in 2028 we’re not going to win by marketing Trump Lite.
If the Democratic Party does not recognize where it went wrong with Clinton, Biden, and Harris, and give the American people the actual hope and change they demand, we will see Trump 2028, Vance 2028, Loomer 2028, or whoever else flatters Trump enough to become the anointed MAGA standard bearer between now and then. And we’ll deserve it.
Also, I gotta say:
This is exactly the opposite of what actually happened.
The Tea Party Movement, the Heritage Foundation, all the other alt-right and far right organizations out there, they recognized that the Republican Party did not share their values. So in 2010 and 2012 they worked their asses off to push Republican primary voters to the right and they primaried the fuck out of moderate Republicans. And after 2012 they realized Trump was exactly what they wanted and they got behind him 100%.
It’s hard to remember now back in 2012, 2016, how much Trump was hated by establishment Republicans. They were all about outsourcing and globalism, he was about tariffs and American manufacturing. They were about immigrant labor, he was about sealed borders. They were trying to transition away from open racism and bigotry, he wasn’t afraid to hate. They thought he was a stupid, vicious, incompetent thug. And he was. And he is. But that was what Republican voters wanted. And Republican voters weren’t afraid to primary Republican politicians and end the careers of Republicans who didn’t support Trump.
And Trump got so popular, dominating Republican voters and controlling Republican primaries, that the entire Republican Party fell in line.
It’s not Republican voters, here in 2025, who have to hold their nose to vote. It’s Republican politicians who have to swallow their doubts and bend the knee to Trump or be primaried out of existence by MAGA voters.
Wouldn’t it be cool if some politician on the left could get that popular?
If you think every Republican believes and agrees with all or even most of Trump, then you are in a bubble.
Republicans outplayed you at the ground level. Part of that is religion and organization, belief and faith in greater purposes even if you vote and support something you don’t necessarily like.
Oh you’ve read me incorrectly. I’m not a Democrat. Go complain to someone else about that.
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/donald-trump/approval-rating/republicans
Lol. Trump has almost a 90% approval rating among Republican voters. That’s not “hold your nose and vote” territory. That’s not “I disagree with Trump but I support him because I’m a loyal Republican” territory. Republican voters love Trump because he gives them what they want. And the Republican establishment saw the writing on the wall and got in line.
Looooool.
Yeah. Because he’s better than Harris to Republicans.
But go talk to Republicans about Tariffs. They kinda disagree with him on that. That’s a “hold your nose and accept it” deal. Many Republicans aren’t racists, but they’ll hold their nose and vote for racism for the good of the party. (See Latinos for Trump and so forth).
You can’t even figure out the basics of politics so you’re gonna lose again at this rate. So lets be clear: no one likes their party that much in American politics. But we all know that “the other side is worse”. Republicans truly don’t agree with much, they just believe Trump is better than the alternative.
If you can’t give that level of support to your side (be it Biden or Harris, or whoever else comes up), you’re gonna lose to the next guy again. Whoever it is after Trump. With any luck Trumpism can be defeated, but Republicans will remember this win from Trump for the rest of their lives. You’re stuck with Trumpism as a philosophy for the next 15+ years at least. I kid you not, because Republicans see and think that its working.
Wait wait wait. Hold on. You believe that Republican voters do not like or support Trump personally? That they disagree with his policies but grudgingly support him because the Democratic alternative is worse? That Trump’s support among Republicans voters is primarily a matter of Party loyalty?
That’s so profoundly the opposite of what I’ve experienced that I can only assume we’re living in different parallel universes.
They aren’t gonna tell you this unless you pretend to be Republican and say things in Republican coded ways to them.
The fact is: they all know that Trump isn’t a classic conservative and they all know that voting for him is a large betrayal of long standing values. They choose to vote for him anyway.
The fact is: Republicans have been working for power and see themselves as the oppressed minority who needs to resort to these tactics to hold onto whatever power they get. Meanwhile, you Democrats don’t even bring a knife to the political gunfight and are losing as the most basic levels.
I’m hoping that the Republicans have overplayed their hands. But if y’all can’t really behind a flawed candidate like Biden (when Republicans obviously can rally behind a felon for the greater good of their party), good fucking luck. Or do you think that Republicans can’t follow the news or some shit?
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Trump had one year to fuck up the US’s COVID response. And he fucked it up pretty badly, mind you.
Biden had four years to fix Trump’s shit. He failed.
We were in a depression. We needed a New Deal. We needed to get help to the people who needed help. What Biden gave us was a “Green New Deal” that gave billions to big greenwashing corporations and nothing to ordinary people; a pathetic attempt at student loan forgiveness; a few hundred dollars in checks that didn’t even cover one month of rent increases, never mind the rent itself.
Unemployment skyrocketed, inflation boomed, and people got more and more insecure about their jobs and homes and their ability to fucking feed their families. And don’t get me fucking started on the refugee crisis.
In May 2020 the median price of a house in the US was 275K. In May 2025 it was 427k. The price of a house almost doubled in five years. Which was great for homeowners but horrible for renters and young people.
(You want to know why so many 20somethings voted Trump? Ask them if they ever expect to own a home. Ask them if they think they’re going to be better off than their parents. Ask them if Biden gave them hope for the future and you’ll get your answer.)
Meanwhile, Biden pointed at the stock market - which was booming, because the rich were getting richer by driving small businesses out of business - and told America the economy was great and only losers and Republicans thought otherwise.
Biden isn’t solely responsible for the COVID depression that we are still in. But he is responsible for pretending it didn’t exist and for not doing shit to help Americans out of it. And we’re all paying the price for his failure.