Current Affairs, dated 16 Aug 2020, "An Ineffectual Biden Presidency Is Better For The Left Than An Actively Authoritarian Trump Presidency - The election must be evaluated purely in strategic terms." by Nathan J. Robinson
A bit, but hit that site for the full argument:
The most aggravating part of this is that we are, in fact, backed into a corner here. Because everything possible does have to be done to prevent Trump’s reelection, and in the situation as it is now, that means actively trying to bring about a Biden presidency, nauseating as it is to consider the prospect of coming to the aid of someone who has done nothing for us.
The facts are these: if Donald Trump is reelected, it could well be the end of American democracy as we know it. Yes, yes, we’re leftists, so we’re cynical: “Democracy! You call this democracy? We’ve never had democracy! We have a ruling corporate elite that lets us press a button every four years to legitimize itself!” But it is important to make sure one is only as cynical as the facts require. It’s certainly true that there is an “illusion of choice” in many ways. But it is also true that we have elections, and many people do get to vote in them (unless they have been disenfranchised), and that those elections decide which party has power, and sometimes the results make a difference.
Republicans are far worse than corporate Democrats. This should not be controversial. Climate change? The Obama administration put new environmental regulations in place. Some had loopholes with bad consequences. But Donald Trump essentially wants to let corporations do exactly what they please. If he has his way, there won’t be any such thing as an environmental regulation. This is one of the most important and consequential issues of our day, and “LET IT BURN” versus “We want sensible but utterly inadequate emissions policies” are hugely different positions to take on the issue.
Look at the COVID-19 crisis. The Obama administration actually saw pandemics as a potential problem, though one can expect they, like several Democratic governors, would have handled this the way they handled nearly every important issue: disappointingly. But there is a huge difference between “doing too little” and actively causing mass death by refusing to believe that the virus is real, promoting quack solutions, trying to punish political enemies by withholding medical supplies from them, and encouraging people to flout public safety guidelines and rise up against state governments that try to enforce them. It is the Republican Party that has been most hostile to extending the basic financial cushion that has been keeping many people at a level of subsistence.
[links in original]
_________UPDATE________
In excerpting above the start of the Robinson post was quoted. There is much mid-item content, all aimed at why uninspiring Joe should get your vote, presuming you are a progressive. Some of it:
The time we buy cannot be wasted. “Pressuring Biden” is only a small part of what we have to do. These years will need be used to actually organize and build the left. We know that a Biden presidency will be next to useless, despite all the insistence from his camp that he has The Most Progressive Platform In History. (I remember how Obama talked on the campaign trail and how he governed. You can’t fool me twice.) The main project is to actually build left institutions: independent sources of political power like the DSA, Black Lives Matter, the Sunrise Movement, democratic labor unions, media organizations, etc. We have to come out of this with a powerful movement that can defeat centrist politics.
Ah, but Biden sucks. He sucks! I know he sucks, I’ve spent the whole election cycle writing about how much he sucks, I’ve spent hours upon hours of my life exhaustively researching the million ways in which he sucks. But I do not view elections as moments to declare my ultimate values. I see voting as something that should take five minutes of thought and is based on an assessment of how it helps or hurts us. We can look at elections as strategic opportunities that need to be measured solely by their consequences. I was fine with voting for Hillary Clinton, even though she sucks too. I do not care about my pride. I do not care about showing the DNC that the left won’t be pushed around. The way to show them this is not to press the “destroy everything” button. It is to organize and throw them out. We must be the Count of Monte Cristo, carefully planning our revenge. I do not care if Biden and Harris go into the White House with smirks on their faces, knowing that they beat us. I am not going to destroy the country over a smirk. Biden and Harris are awful, unprincipled people, and I hate when such people win things, because it seems to prove that there is no justice in the world. But frankly, they do not matter to me. Let them think they have beaten the Left. It’s just a skirmish. We will come back in larger numbers soon.
But we cannot do this if we are fighting just to keep this country from lapsing into dictatorship, which is what we will be doing under a Trump second term. Let me ask you this: if Trump did start throwing activists into Guantanamo, what would you be able to do about it? Do you think the courts would save us? Do you think Congressional Democrats would do much more than put out a statement? Never assume that things cannot get worse. History is full of nightmares that nobody saw coming until they were too late.
This election worries me. It worries me because Biden is such an uninspiring candidate, and his campaign is so poorly run. And Trump is formidable. [...]
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I am not Team Joe. I will never be Team Joe. I do not Vote Blue No Matter Who. I vote blue when the consequences of not voting blue are worse than the consequences of voting blue. This election must be thought of as a war to stop an authoritarian government from consolidating power. We must assume we are likely to lose that war until we are certain we have won it. Otherwise, we will look back in a few years and wonder why the hell we let our hatred of Joe Biden lead us to an immediate, outright slide into fascism. I intend to spend the next four years ruthlessly criticizing Joe Biden, exposing every single one of his crimes, and exhorting the left to overthrow the Democratic establishment. A Biden presidency buys us four years before the next right-authoritarian tries to seize power. We have to use that time to organize; we do not get to take a breather.
I am not a liberal, I do not make excuses for anything Biden has done, and I will not be making them in the future. I believe in working to get Biden elected solely because it creates the most favorable conditions for ultimately eliminating the kind of politics Biden represents.
It is a premise expanded at length, but how good is the premise? It is the half-a-loaf argument with saying the half-loaf is moldy and unpalatable, but . . .
The item does not say, by 2024, such and such will differ. The Republican wing of the Democratic Party will have become more entrenched, with greater hubris, and the pattern of featuring actual declared Republicans for some obscure reason may persist, despite its stupidity. Again, this is what exists to rebut Robinson, by enraging the young and progressives with a "fuck you very much" remark from one practiced in such stylistics:
The man is pure nasty poison, and proud over the Biden cramdown after Hillary screwed things up and the pair choose to blame Comey and Bernie.
It is a challenge, but what best reaction it deserves is the question. Robinson makes his case one way, the thought the other way is deny the likes of that bastard the spoils again, and his cohorts might become disenchanted with such a result.
The donors own both tickets and hence do not care which takes November. The insiders lining up with each of the two sides want a win, and will prosper less with a loss. A win will strengthen them.
However - Four more Trump years will undeniably be worse against progress than the four first Trump years, and that frames the dilemma.
BOTTOM LINE: How awful a Biden-Harris presidency will be for four years, or perhaps two in terms of 2022 midterm possibility; and can it be weathered? How can it be worse than Trump having four more years? The fact is, it could be worse.
Robinson downplays that chance, and all "Trump must go" rhetoric ignores: How awful and in how many ways for young and old would a Biden-Harris presidency be, and a reality is it could end up worse than four more Trump years while strengthening the hold the donors and other plutocrats have on the Democratic Party; strengthening Clintonian politics, which have the aim of embracing all the wealthy-class entrenched enemies of progressive hope. What a choice. What a blind bit of guesswork.
_________FURTHER UPDATE________
The past shall be the future; two videos, the short one; the longer one. This is how austerity gets packaged and propagandized as a way to frustrate treating the citizenry decently. It's easy, and the hushed quick exchange in the wings is what "Biden bipartisanship" is. Mediate, on the austerity hoax situation, back then. Clinton not saying Ryan was totally blowing smoke, but that Ryan's austerity proposal was one the Democrats should counter with their own. Not that a postulated need for austerity was pure BS, but that we have to BS it our way. Expect exactly that from Biden-Harris. Cut Pentagon spending, undo the Trump-McConnell-Ryan tax cut and replace it with fair taxation of the wealthy and their accumulated wealth, and Medicare for All can be funded with regular citizens, US, having lower taxation because oligarchs would be contributing a fair share.
Just remember, austerity is a word for unfairness to the 99%.
Remember Obama-Biden, "Yes we can," and then they didn't do it? CHANGE sold out. HOPE sold out. The Obamas now having waterfront Martha's Vineyard. That way, "Yes they could."
Fooled once? Expect it again. Biden knows the hand that feeds him.