Gretchen Whitmer responds to calls by some Democrats to vote ‘uncommitted’ in Michigan’s primary on Tuesday

Gretchen Whitmer responds to calls by some Democrats to vote ‘uncommitted’ in Michigan’s primary on Tuesday

Gretchen Whitmer, the Michigan governor, pushed back on calls to not vote for Joe Biden over his handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict, saying on Sunday that could help Trump get re-elected.

“It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that any vote that’s not cast for Joe Biden supports a second Trump term,” she said on Sunday during an interview on CNN’s State of the Union. “A second Trump term would be devastating. Not just on fundamental rights, not just on our democracy here at home, but also when it comes to foreign policy. This was a man who promoted a Muslim ban.”

Whitmer, who is a co-chair of Biden’s 2024 campaign, also said she wasn’t sure what to expect when it came to the protest vote.

Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat who is the only Palestinian-American serving in Congress, urged Democrats last week to vote “uncommitted” in Michigan’s 27 February primary.

  • Doc Avid Mornington@midwest.socialEnglish
    291·
    8 months ago

    Every time people are saying they will vote third party in the general, I argue that it’s important to vote for the best viable candidate, and the time to vote against a Democrat they don’t like is in the primaries. When people start saying no, you can’t even vote against the party leadership’s chosen candidate in a primary, what do you think they’re going to do? BS antidemocratic rhetoric like that is exactly what is most likely to get us another Trump presidency. We start down that road and we can kiss democracy goodbye for good.

    • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
      720·
      8 months ago

      Anyone still spouting “the DNC picked Hillary/Biden” removes the agency of millions of voters who voted for Hillary/Biden in favor of their own preferences and perceived enlightenment. Honestly at this point it’s legitimately just right wing trolls who are still harping on this as far as I can tell.

      • I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world
        143·
        8 months ago

        The DNC admitted on record in court that they cheated and that it was their right to cheat to get their own choices elected. Your endless boot sucking won’t change the fact that we don’t get to choose our leaders in the primary. No, there isn’t a better option, but we don’t have to pretend it’s a decent org.

          • Doc Avid Mornington@midwest.socialEnglish
            113·
            8 months ago

            Pretending that there’s no way for the Democratic leadership to put their thumb on the scale, other than “brainwashing”, when it’s been proven that they did just that, is disingenuous at best. Doing so in defense of the fundamentally antidemocratic proposition that people shouldn’t be able to vote their conscience in the primary is shady as anything. You basically accused me of being a “right wing troll” in a previous comment. Protest too much?

                • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
                  11·
                  8 months ago

                  How do you figure? I was there and remember the primary very well. Bernie was in no way excluded from participating. How is that statement not in good faith? Because I merely disagree with your conspiracy laden conclusions about the role and behavior of a particular political party?

                  Like it or not, political parties are associations of private individuals. Bernie didn’t have to seek their nomination but he did. The DNC definitely had a preference, but in terms of historical black-dog primary candidates, 2016 was hardly unfair. Bernie knew that he had to beat an imposing superdelegate disadvantage. This was not hidden from him. And even then it didn’t matter because he lost by 8 million votes. Call me old fashioned, but removing the agency of 8M people because you don’t like the way they voted doesn’t strike me as “good faith.”

                  But the thing which really gets me is that after 2016, the DNC took the feedback to heart and made a bunch of sweeping changes to the nominating process intended to boost transparency, reduce the possibility of corruption by individuals (eg, DWS), and double the delegate allocation for voters. They did all the stuff “good faith” votergroups wanted, yet somehow, none of the “good faith” conversations about the DNC want to talk about that.

                  • Tinidril@midwest.socialEnglish
                    21·
                    8 months ago

                    To this statement,

                    The DNC admitted on record in court that they cheated and that it was their right to cheat to get their own choices elected.

                    You replied with…

                    if the DNC can just brainwash voters you’d think they’d win more reliably.

                    Your response was clearly a straw man. But maybe you just misunderstood and you were restating what you understood to be their point. But then…

                    Pretending that there’s no way for the Democratic leadership to put their thumb on the scale, other than “brainwashing”, when it’s been proven that they did just that, is disingenuous at best.

                    got the response…

                    So they took Bernie off the ballot then?

                    Now we have a pattern. Low effort straw man arguments are done in bad faith, unless you want to plead to just being an imbecile.

                    BTW: They weren’t my “conspiracy laden conclusions”. That is (I assume) a mistaken attribution, and it is also a mischaracterization of what was said. I just came into the conversation to call you out for your bad faith arguments.