If this is the choice we have, I'd rather 4 years of Biden than 4 years of Trump. Let me be clear: I will not be voting for Biden. And this has nothing to do with 'harm reduction' (as someone with roots in the global south, that argument is meaningless to me). Here's why:

Bernie lost for a plethora of reasons we have all feverishly discussed over the past month. But quite possibly the biggest reason he lost was 'orange man bad' i.e. electability. The media handed Biden the title, sure, but there was more appetite for normalcy than a revolution

Look at the 2018 midterm elections: suburban voters want bad orange man out. Look at exit poll info from 2020: voters want bad orange man out. Trump's bogeyman persona limited critique, platforms and discourse all around: "sure, this candidate is bad but have you SEEN Trump?!"

Imagine if Hillary had won. Instead of trying to reclaim obamacare & reminding folks why racism is bad, the left could've captured a palpably populist national mood. Protesters from standing rock, nurses & teachers & indebted students: we'd have haunted Clinton her entire tenure

Imagine how much more the empty rhetoric of identity politics could have been exposed. With no Trump to blackmail us with, we could have attacked our first female president for being just as bad on poverty, war, climate & criminal justice as our first black president had been

Imagine how much the craven tactics of the media could have been exposed. We could have made the "fake news" or anti-establishment arguments without MAGA being thrown our way. Rachel Maddow no longer the resister but the accomplice. Chris Matthews anger not righteous but unhinged

Imagine how much of the 2016 anti-establishment vote could have been operationalized by a growing progressive bloc that would have fled to the DSA anyway. We'd be the anti-trade deal, anti-war, anti-elite Left, capturing populist anger w/o Trump on our turf

I know this analysis doesn't take into account the response to a loss on the Right. Someone else can do that & prove me wrong. But if a 'return to normalcy' captured the electorate to such an extent that we lost our best chance at the presidency, imagine what more Trump would do

4 more years of Trump will make Americans hunger for a mythical normalcy: one where you can bomb brown & black people as long as you joke about it at the white house correspondent's dinner. One where you can implement austerity as long as you don't tweet about it at 3am.

Everything the center has done since 2016--russia, bernie bros, cuba, m4a--will only get more desperate and more hysterical. The little space we have on the left, colonized by fear of the ascendant right. Vote blue no matter who shouted from every rooftop in Manhattan

I'd rather fight a center that is weak in 2020 than one that has had time to recuperate by 2024. But history tells many tales. And times are strange. At the end of the day, whether its Biden or Trump, none of this matters if the Left doesn't get its act together. And quick. /end

Edit: too many people are reading this as an argument to vote for Joe. Its not. I cant in good conscience tell you which god awful candidate to vote for. Who am i to do that? These are musings from the margins, strategizing from the sidelines. Votes matter less than a robust left