Something that I realized about the fediverse is that you seem to be able to criticize the USA as a whole, but if you criticize the Democrats you get downvoted. Democrats suck they are not sacred cows
The Democratic Party on the whole is captured by the donor class as a direct result of Citizens United. This has led to the hollowing out of the grassroots movements that are necessary for a large coalition of diverse interests to compete against the oligarchic cabal that makes up the GOP. This decimated the rank and file operatives that used networking within their communities to create political action and replaced it with endless fundraising emails, even as the primary process was corrupted (Hillary v Bernie, Biden v Bernie) to remove clout from the progressive wing of the party.
This led to the disillusionment of many Democratic voters that they have any say in the nomination process (the last time we had a real primary was Obama 2008 - almost 20 years ago), and the result is a slate of weak centrist candidates that for the most part play lip service to liberal cultural issues while blocking any real progressive economic progress.
The purpose of the Democratic Party apparatus as it exists in 2025 America is to capture and dilute revolutionary energy, so that people don't take to the streets and demand real change. Yes, there are some independents and good folks within the Democratic Party trying to make a change (AOC, Jasmine Crocket) but the power players (Pelosi, Schumer, Jeffries) are still refusing to stand up to the overt fascist takeover of our country.
The system as it exists will not change, and without change, we're barreling into a fascism induced depression and possible civil war that will likely ravage the planet.
Don't just "call them", they actively sabotage them in a way they never do with a reactionary. Labor did it to Corbyn as well, this is deeply ingrained in bourgeois "democracies", if you can vote for somebody who will try to bring change, they've already fucked up a bunch of times.
Their generally decent goals of bombing children in Afghanistan, bombing people in Palestine, starving children in Yemen, starving children in Cuba, starving children in Venezuela, caging children in the US, torturing people in Guantanamo, bombing children in Yugoslavia, and so on? The bill that resulted in the mass enslavement of the US population (highest prison pop. in the world by far) was passed by the Clinton administration, written by Biden.
Are they only powerful enough to do monstrous shit or do they think you're stupid and will buy their hand wringing? They could have forced through Medicare, deliberately chose not to. They could have codified reproduction rights, deliberately chose not to. They're fucking telling you which issues they care about, it's the ones that they actually pass.
My point is that dictator trump and his cronies will pave over the bones of Palestinians and turn Gaza into a Trump resort.
So far, Trump has been slightly better than the Democrats on Gaza, but because democrat supporters refused to acknowledge how bad it was when it was Democrats doing it, they don't realise.
We are critical of them in the primaries and their supporters vote for the same evil assholes we hate and then call us radicals when we won’t support them. I am so sick of having to explain this to people as if they haven’t rat fucked good candidates out of the primaries multiple times.
Nah they hold the "balanced and nuanced perspective" of shutting their eyes, plugging their ears, going "Lalala Free Market Lalala Free Market..." at the top of their lungs where their children can see them.
Why can’t we be critical of democrats by being selective in the primaries?
lol even when you try to do this Pelosi will push the thumb on the scale to get Cuellar, one of the shittiest Democrats (and that's really saying something) reelected over challenger Jessica Cisneros. Or you can even win the primary and then the state party will allow you to languish because you're a working class demsoc instead of a trusted middle-manager of capital. The Dems need people like Cuellar, Sinema, and Manchin so that whenever they have a majority they can still sit around and do fucking nothing until the Republicans come in and shift everything further rightward. Dems love this. Ratchet effect is real. Fuck the Democratic Party. At least the Republicans are honest about how much they hate us.
Voting for genociders and pro-militarized police didn’t stop the genocide or police murdering black people, so I would count it as a very ineffective strategy as well. I rather vote for what I actually believe in than not voting because I will hell not vote for the garbage democrats.
Edit: “Protest vote” lmao, I don’t owe my vote to Democrats.
It’s the compromise for the vulnerable that most often gets brought up in this situation. A protest vote in a broken first-past-the-post election system generally helps the opposition to your vote. Republicans have demonstrated they hate the vulnerable (disabled, poor, debt-ridden) and Democrats are weak in their opposition, but if you want the help those that are vulnerable you would generally not want to subject them to Republicans, whom benefit from your protest vote.
Another argument is that if you fracture the opposition to bootlickers, the bootlickers will win.
the better argument is that our system is both intentionally keeping these groups vulnerable and, in large part, using them as bait to get you to vote the way they want you to; effectively entrapping you into this system so that you remain ignorant of the fact these same vulnerable groups are empowered and the driving force for change outside this country.
Until they realize that empowerment, there will be suffering, and it seems to be accelerationists who want that suffering to drive change. The whole point is that the system is broken in a first-past-the-post democracy.
I can tell you right now those same vulnerable people are not ready to rise up, though I wish that weren’t the case. There are people who still believe in decorum lmao.
We can talk all we want about people recognizing empowerment, but you’re also fighting entrenched propaganda campaigns that keep those same people fearful and against solidarity. Talk to any working class Fox News watching disphit.
Really until I see one of you propose, or enact, ways to counter that propaganda and lead people to understand their empowerment, ima keep doing me and trying to reduce the harm to the vulnerable people as best I can.
Mexico proved that it's possible w/o removing the propaganda; queers, trans, students, leftists, women and indigenous people joined to together to kick out both of the liberal and conservative parties to bring in amlo & sheinbaum's third party for the first time in over a century. Now the pri and the pan are just as irrelevant as a Republican in California or a Democrat in Texas
You're not helping; you're only perpetuating the harm to vulnerable people when you cooperate in the way they want you to.
The system is not broken, it is working as intended. Telling you it's broken is so they can dangle "fixing it" in front of your face like a carrot on a stick, but it will never ever happen for as long as capitalists are allowed to run our world and make decisions for us.
You want "ways to counter that propaganda and lead people to understand their empowerment", the answer is and always has been class consciousness and historical materialism. It starts with you. Pick up a fucking book and seek it out. Cause I'm not seeing any ideas from you either and whether we like it or not, we are all in this together.
I am sorry, but as a black man, I am supposed to be your sacrificial lamb and your fucking compromise for you for what? So you feel safe in your fucking neighborhood? I am sure that all black people and Palestinian Americans will agree when I say: “Fuck you from the bottom of my heart”
No, no, fuck you. I mentioned how democrats use militarized police against black people and you say that is supposed to be a fucking compromise. Fuck you, you racist asshole. Fucking white liberals are the fucking worse. No wonder why both MLK and Malcolm X hated your ass.
Edit: So you believe that everyone in the internet has to be white? Of course, I wouldn’t expect less from a liberal. I am sure that I cannot be black to you because I guess that I will never fit whatever stereotype you have of us in your head.
But I will say this: Democrats increased the funding for the police substantially during the BLM protests, treated us like terrorists and threw the heads of the protests in prison. Biden favorite phrase: “We have to back our boys in blue” and proceeded to triple their budget. Democrats hate black people and they oppress us with a militarized police in our neighborhoods.
White tech-bro liberals have as much soul as a laptop. I've noticed that almost every tech bro Free Market Liberal-tarian i've met has aphantasia, they can't even produce images in their heads to think.
Bro, Biden tripled the budget of cops and you say that they are less harmful?! What is wrong with you?! “Good faith argument” with someone who automatically says that I am lying and who say that people dying should be a compromise, gotcha. My elders MLK, Malcolm X and the Black Panthers have all said that Democrat sucks and the only way forward is socialism. I am going to listen to them instead of you trying to whitesplain to me why Democrats are the best my community got.
Edit: They all died fighting for socialism, not for milquetoast liberties granted in fascism like the ones we get under democrats.
You would think committing a genocide would’ve settled the whole “lesser evil” thing, but the Blue MAGA cult insists there’s a way to commit lesser evil genocide now.
The problem with people with like you is you listen to what the Dems say they’re doing, and don’t bother to confirm what Dems are actually doing. It’s why you’re all terrified of Trump’s immigration policies, and have no clue that Obama & Biden deported way more people.
Youre going to keep doing this lesser evil bit until the dems have you seig heiling while the republicans drain your blood for the ritual to begin Armageddon.
Obama and Biden said they'd legalize weed. They didn't. They failed to put abortion rights into the constitution. I mean I can go on these are just off the top of my head.
They are not immune to legit criticism, however it seems like people get the idea that if you criticize democrats that means you are a die hard Trumper or something...
Didn’t close gitmo. Didn’t end the war on terror. Created the same border camps democrats cry at the gates of for political points. Bailed out the perpetrators of one of this countries most high profile and damaging financial crimes because they held rich peoples stock portfolios hostage. Made pointless concessions on the ACA to republicans who never once cross the isle for even the things they want to pass because they’d rather take the credit themselves.
Those are the ones I’m pulling off the top of my head.
Probably because two political parties isn't enough to truly represent the population.
People shit talk non voters, but these are people who found no representation in the two party system. We can change this. We can have more then two political parties. To think otherwise is to think inside the world's smallest box.
Countries with more parties such as those in Western Europe are also electing fascists. The answer doesn't lie in more parties. China has a majority party and it doesn't get people doing the Sieg Heil
Duverger's Law says that as long as we have this system of voting, we're going to have two, and only two, major parties. It has changed once in history: when the Republicans replaced the Whigs. So, that's what you're looking at: either change the system of voting or replace one of the two parties.
The major political parties may have only changed names once, but the most common stance in modern political science is that we are in the 6th political party alignment in US history.
You must be on some weird ass instance. I see tons of reasonable anger at democrats and Republicans alike. I don't see upvotes for baseless tribal click bait like this tho
Oh, and the anti immigrant, anti education, anti living wage, anti trans, super genocidal facists are sooooo much better, right?
Or were you talking about the fucking nobody who had literally ZERO chance of winning? There were really going to win it all and save everybody, what happened?
Yeah, Lemmy.ml is a full on Tankie Instance. They worship people like Mao Zedong and promote Donald Trump. They promote anarchism in the USA, and a strong nationalist centralized government in Chin and Russia. Capitalism is the cause of everything that has ever gone wrong ever, according to them. They are simultaneously "leftists", both sides bad centrists, and conservative advocates.
It's a wack ass instance, a lot of other instances defederate from ml, hexbear, lemmygrad, and other tankie instances.
I'll keep saying it, the DNC is a sunk cost. You will keep trying to get them to stand up for you; get them to care; get them to fight. They will keep taking your energy; taking your money; and taking your vote and do nothing with it.
Big donors have recognized it. It's time for the people to recognize it too. That means you.
Running a feckless campaign that refused to break with Biden's admin on genocide is why we got this living hell. And running the most unlikeable woman in the country in 2016 is what made 2024 even a possibility.
I'll vote Democrat as long as the alternative is fascism.
But fuck me, I'd love to vote for something else. And I'll be honest, I have no idea how we get anything better.
I hear people saying to organize, but I can't even imagine what that takes. I wonder if most Americans feel as helpless as I do in the face of this absolute bullshit.
Depends on what you mean by "much"? I'd argue the Democrats, on the whole, are liberals, not fascists.
I'd certainly prefer progressives and leftists though.
The support for Israel whole they genocide Palestine, thought... ugh. That can certainly be viewed as fascism, although where you draw the distinction between fascism and imperialism is up for debate. Not that imperialism is good either, just saying.
Yeah, I don't buy that. Liberalism and Conservatism have different ideological foundations, philosophical traditions, and political histories.
If you don't know the difference, that's on you.
I have to make a lot of leaps to guess what you mean by "conservative liberal". Do you mean a modern "social liberal economic conservative"? Aka a neoliberal?
Cuz yeah US Dems and Repubs are almost all economically neoliberal, sure. Is that what you mean?
The hard fact is that what the population votes for is what the population gets. They have completely given up their agency and just accept this impotent logic of "we'll take whatever the most obvious/most apparently easy option is, that isn't a Republican". It's a cyclical problem, the voters don't care enough to force politicians to be good, and the politicians don't care enough to court voters.
At the same time, "what the population votes for is what the population gets" ignores that we are often only presented with crappy options to start with.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say "you get what you fight for, and if you don't fight you get what you get."
I... haven't really fought for anything. I believed the right things. I voted as best I could. But that clearly didn't stop this.
I want to protect my ego and say I'm not a coward. Is there a distinction to be made between cowardice and simply not knowing what to do? I don't know. I just know I'm trying my best, but maybe that's just not enough.
At the same time, “what the population votes for is what the population gets” ignores that we are often only presented with crappy options to start with.
It does not ignore that, rather it explicitly takes that into account.
The caveat to my statement would ONLY be "so long as we're using this system."
Nah. Both parties suck. Repubs damage, Dems half ass do damage control, then sit around making minor changes and act like they're saviors. The geriatric fucks that hold seats have no semblance of understanding the current world and so we fall behind the curve further every year. Easy things that are obvious never get passed because those get bribed. Sick of the whole system obviously.
Republicans are the problem. Democrats are pretending to be the solution but are also the problem.
The reason Democrats deserve more hate is because they divert people from organising a solution to the problem. At least Republicans are honest about how much they suck.
They got so heated about pro Palestinian stuff on TikTok that they handed Donald Trump authority to ban any website he feels like by executive fiat. Then TikTok didn’t get banned and Trump got for credit for saving it.
i thought it was most liberals given that the nucleus of the "both sides" argument during the election was to characterize conservatives' bad faith arguments about both the democrats and republicans being the same when it came to ghoulish behavior.
It's not that they suck. My problem with them, as an independent, is they've positioned themselves as the moral high ground party while in fact they have no moral leg to stand on. Their leadership had a historic moral test when it comes to the Gaza genocide and they failed it. They had another test to put a great candidate to prevent another Trump presidency, but they bowed down to their corporate masters and picked Kamala.
It's that level of fundamentalism and holier than thou attitude that alienates many people like me. They have zero fighting tactics against Republicans besides clutching pearls and shaming. Kamala's website up until the election day had no "agenda section". You can't really tell what her campaign is about. I guess she's perfect enough and shouldn't be questioned, otherwise "racism and sexism".
They need a complete reset and redo of the party and its principles. Until then, I'm a non voter.
It's a symptom of our two-party voting system. I lost faith in the Democratic party's ability to do anything effectual a long fuckin time ago, the game is rigged for the rich and it will be until we wipe them from the face of the earth.
I downvoted. Not because you criticized democrats, but because your stupid post says you get downvoted for that. No you fucking don't. You almost always get up voted for it. This is a garbage bait post.
It's an unfortunate trait of the reddit migrations. That place was crawling with die-hard liberals, not entirely dissimilar to scabies. It stands to reason a few of the uninitiated would find their way here.
In spite of how I started this comment, we must remember that they are of the working class, and further division is a benefit exclusive to the capitalist.
I feel that the further we sink into full-blown fascism, the more of them will become aware, and may be counted among allies one day soon.
I plan to speak to those who are willing to listen and learn. But beware the contentious fool, ever seeking a debate but never trying for understanding.
I agree, but the fact that they even came here gives me hope that they are open to change. It's the ones who stayed on reddit are the lost causes, I think.
Well everybody already knows that.
Like.. The power dynamics of "vote lesser evil, vote for minority candidate, vote for a compromising pseudo-progressive party because it's still something, abstain and stay pure, better face true fascists than traitors, etc." has been around since representative regimes emerged.
Yet everyone has to find his/her political and moral stance in this shitshow. And answers will differ, sometimes for legitimate reasons, sometimes because of total bs. That's all there is to it and it's not exactly news.
As a trans person i am currently eating shit for breakfast every day to protect myself, my friends, and humanity. Lesser evil is starting to look like "not being murdered" sometimes
We are ALL going to Hell, FAST (choose your doom(CC,WWIII,etc).
We are all in the same car, here -like it, or not.
One party, …I’ll let you guess which 😉, has the accelerator pinned to the mat. “We’ll be there in 5 minutes, Boys!! HELL ON EARTH HERE WE COME!”
The other party, is simply driving at half that speed. Results are the same. They are flawed. But they CAN slow the car to give us a bit more time to “brace for impact”. But they too bought into Hell as a destination.
But ya, we’re ALL fucked no matter how much you pledge to one party or the other. One party just whispers in your ear and it’s a bit more gentle while they fuck your already ragged ass.
The other party just dry-humps you violently until your blood provides enough lube for them to finish while pounding their chest as you lie there, bleeding out of your ass on the nice, clean sheets.
The problem with this is that it assumes both parties act independently.
You know how right now how Republicans are willing to use every loophole, cite ancient forgotten laws, and violate every norm? That's always been possible. You can't actually write a constitution to constrain bad-faith actors. You can always come up with a bogus interpretation to do what you want.
If this is possible, you have to ask, why did leaders ever try to follow the law in good faith? How was it ever possible to establish a norms-based stability when either side could knock over the board at any moment?
The answer is that good-faith interpretation of the law fails when people only do so out of principle. It succeeds when good-faith interpretation is a peace treaty. Both sides agree to follow the law in good faith, as the alternative is complete chaos as both sides try to twist every loophole.
Democrats are a bunch of liberal arts majors that have forgotten that Democracy and the rule of law does not exist because everyone worships them as high ideals. They exist because they are a compromise, a peace treaty.
Republicans break norms. In response, Dems latch on even tighter to the norms. Instead, they should be seeking to break them at every opportunity they can. They need to be as ruthless as the Republicans, and even more so.
Following the rule of law is hard. It means giving up power and results that you could otherwise achieve by violating the rule of law.
Right now, only Democrats are trying to obey every norm and precedent. As such, Republicans have nothing to lose by violating these. It's all upside to them. Their bad behavior is the direct result of Democratic cowardice. If Democrats were willing to give as well as they get, we could actually have a rules-based order again. Paradoxically, a prerequisite for rules to be effective is that both sides need to be willing to violate them.
if someone told you that, that's what their sex life was like; you would assume that they're a damaged person who needs psychiatric help and those psychiatrist would try to help steer them away from sex partners like that and towards healthier sex partners.
even our neighbors to the south have learned this fact and made their own sex lives better; but we americans are like battered spouses who keep bouncing back and forth between the same 2 abusive lovers because we both refuse to accept how damaged we truly are and because the more damaged among us keep re-inforcing the propaganda that voting democrat or republican is the only "grown up" choice to make as the "adults in the room".
we're only destined for hell if we keep rejecting a third party; places like mexico have already proved that things get A LOT better once you stop carrying the propaganda that third party is "throwing away" your vote.
(or atleast until you get the america's attention and they send in their military and bankers to force you back into those abusive relationships... again).
The Zionist Regime must fall. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Organize in your community to raise awareness of your country's complicity (e.g. weapons manufacture, university/college affiliations) and organize in your workplace to use your power as a worker to sabotage the conflict, especially if you are in ports or manufacture.
During the run up to the election I'll admit i was guilty of this because it was so important for TFG to lose. I wish our bullshit system allowd for more than a fascist and center right party.
Now? Fuck that they aren't leading like they should.
Depends, is it an article about Trump? Democrats are saints who can't fail, only be failed.
Is it an article about Democrats doing nothing that hasn't been removed by the mods yet? You'll probably not be downvoted for saying "Biden should have done more of his promises and getting Trump arrested should have been the priority."
What I don't understand - and please explain if you can - is why Bernie and like-minded people like AOC etc don't break away from the likes of the Clintons and the Harrises and form their own party. Surely there must be some systemic hurdle keeping them from at least attempting right?
It's because a lot of the criticism attributed to "the Democrats" it's just general criticism about the government and has nothing to do with a Democrats specifically.
I really feel like as soon as a Democrat gets in the office people forget that the other half of the government is fucking Republicans that will do anything to stop Democrats from getting what they want... That's the entirety of what Turtleman is made of.
Any and all politicians are open to scrutiny imo. They are PUBLIC servants and as such they should get called on their collective bull shit.
The democratic party has failed us in a massive way. That's just facts. The republican party is a circus with an orange ring leader. None are doing their jobs in a way that truly helps the people, when they enter politis they start thinking of themselves and how lobbying can make them rich. There are only a few exceptions, Bernie, AOC etc...
Please understand that the democrats are further right than most countries mainstream right wing parties in Europe noone really likes that Germany elected the CDU (politically similar to the democrats) but we're all very pleased that afd didn't get a majority. Vote for the least damaging candidate and work on the system by protesting. Noone thinks Biden and Harris are saints, they're just the least harmful option.
US Republicans are not democratic to begin with, they're a christi fascist group that should have no right to exist as it inllinly makes the world better for a tiny tiny group of people over the backs of everyone else.
Having said that, the US Democrats are a godawful bunch of spineless dweebs that deserve everything that is coming for them. They lost the US elections because they still don't understand what they should be, what their voter base wants or what that country needs.
It’s been 8 years of the lesser evil with Democrats and I’m sick of them. I cannot in good conscience support them any longer because they have time and again chosen to maintain the status quo.
The Biden administration did many things to help Americans, most notably the Inflation Reduction Act and the student debt forgiveness. But most of it is being dismantled by the current administration. And the Dems knew this would be the case. Yet they chose to go the executive order route or the highly diluted down IRA. It’s not the people’s problem that you cannot get your party members in line. Why would we vote for you if you cannot deliver?
Nancy Pelosi chose not to even allow the bill to prevent members of Congress from insider trading. Republicans are using it to line their pockets like never before. You want to have your cake and eat it too. Well the people are sick of your hypocrisy and it showed in the elections.
It’s been more than a month of rapid fire gutting of the US government. What has the party done as the main opposition besides “coming up with a strategy”? Because it’s impossible to do anything meaningful without revealing how much you have gained from the system.
The Democrats who truly care about change need to spin off their own party. That’s the only way enough people will be mobilized to make a meaningful difference in the next elections.
Why does being downvoted here even matter at all like who cares. Democrats have lost the plot and only care about identity politics. Policy don’t help the average everyday people.
The Democratic Party as a whole is like milk in your fridge that's a week past its "best by" date.
The Republican Party is milk that a dog vomited on a Texas in July sidewalk.
We're drinking one of them, because no alternative is possible in the near term.
It's possible to vote for Democrats in 2026 and '28 and '30 and '32 while we build an alternative that can have electoral success, or takeover the Democratic Party from within or heck turn the Republican Party into a party worth supporting...
So keeping with your analogy, you're going against ever bit of legitimate survival advice from every single person that has any knowledge on survival, and you think you're still making the right choice?
In any situation where clean water isn't an option you still don't drink things that will sicken you.
You can work to purify whatever liquid you have (which can be the easiest or worst option), you can leave the area and try to find safer sources of water, or you can piss in your own mouth for a while and try to do one of the other two things in the mean time.
Voters like you, however, drink the spoiled milk, diarrhea in your own mouths, while promising if you keep doing it you'll get around to purifying your own milk laden shits if you just keep funding genocide.
You can't change a rotted system from within anymore than you can survive on contaminated water. At best you're making your life so much worse while deluding yourself into thinking you're doing the right thing.
Ok awesome, you're across the street yelling saying to drink better milk without actually having any better milk. That doesn't make the situation any better
More like I'm showing you a 150 year old water purification technique that is proven to work and you're concerned it might not taste as good and requires too much work so you'll just keep drinking your own recycled shit and cry that there's no solutions.
Yeah, you're showing me a picture of that pure milk as if it's a choice to drink it.
Unless you can actually give me that pure 150 year refined technique and not just say it can be better, shut up about it. Especially when you demanding the pure milk means we have to throw out the week old milk leaving us only the dog vomit milk.
Great. You just want people to drink spolied milk and are gloating because they don't get a meaningful choice. You don't care if you have to also have the dog vomit as long as no one gets a better choice than the spoiled milk, ever.
No, id much rather everyone on the block have better milk all around. But while you and your neighbors are refusing to drink the week old milk and dying of thirst, I'm over here trying to come up with an actual game plan with my spoiled milk instead of just screaming at others to drink better milk without actually having any source of better milk.
I don't see your cow anywhere, but yet you act as if one's going to magically appear cause you want it to.
No, I'm just so fucking tired of neighbors yelling how much better the milk is everywhere else like we don't fucking know that. And unless you actually have a plan to get better milk, just saying drink better milk and throw that out doesn't really mean much.
I do believe the requirement is that you just need to be specific. Republicans generally suck all around right now so that's a valid statement.
However, if you're going to complain about Democrats you need to say something like, "the leadership sucks" or, "there's too many rich people influencing the party!"
Spamming as a conservative on multiple posts? This is the same type of posts you see on conservative reddit, always pointing out both sides, when there's almost none of the same type of opinionated posts when referring to Republicans. I know you like to blame Dems, but Republicans are the ones actually promoting and using racism , and fascism right? Where's the criticism against them with such vigor as your post. Your the reason why Reddit has been so aggressive with their banning. Also because your barely mention Rs in good faith. Yes dema has their problems, but Republicans are far worst people.
I think this is a fair POV. No one is perfect. Thinking that you cannot criticise something you are part of, you like, or are somehow related to, is just childish.
I don't care about any of the two political parties.
I just vote based on who sounds the least insane, greedy, fake, and qualified for the job.
And maybe someone who doesn't suck billionaire toe and can tax the rich.
For sure, about %90 of them voted No to Sander's stop weapon sale to Israel resolution. They are worthless pieces of shits which would switch to the republican party at the blink of an eye had they thought their position in the Democrat party was insecure.
If I thought that the democrat party was the only viable option to defeat Trump would I vote for democrats instead of say, voting a third party? Without a second of doubt, yes. We don't even need to debate whether the Democrat party is marginally better than the Republican party or not. The main important difference is that if Trump wins (which he did) half of the country is going to cheer for every vile shit he does (which they do) and this will enable them to carry this vile shit into their personal lives (which they also do).
On the other hand if Kamala were to do such vile shit (granted there is imo %0 chance she could be this worse on almost all matters) at least she would get booed by the people who voted for her. There is a very big difference between how much these reactions enable a president to do even more extreme shit or not and whether if people are encouraged to replicate such behaviour on a local level or not.
So instead of waiting until the last 90 days and then suddenly going "DON'T VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS OR REPUBLICANS LETS CHANGE THE COURSE OF HISTORY WOHOO", start working from now to make the third options more viable. Then it will be more sincere and useful.
The United States of America is more important then the Democratic Party.
With state level electoral reform, we could give 3rd parties the freedom to participate in the electoral process without a spoiler effect.
No more hostage situation, more options, elections could be a competition to defeat the republicans/make things better, more democracy.
Who could say no to more democracy?
Republicans? Why of course they would say no. They are passing legislation in red states to protect First-past-the-post voting. In Alaska they held a referendum last election to go back to FPTP voting because Sarah Palin was kept out of office by their Ranked Choice voting system. It didn't pass, the people dont want FPTP anymore in Alaska.
How about the blue states and the democrats that are elected there. Do they support democracy? I guess that would depend on if they are still using FPTP when the mid term elections are hopefully held.
It's not to late, we can have more choices in the voting booth. We can have more then one chance to defeat the republicans.
well said. you can pretty much extrapolate this line of thought to every soc-dem, left-of-center, liberal party in the world. they make a wiener water government, blame people when they lose elections and are left wondering why people didn't called their wiener water government a bouillabasse or an onion soup.
Paradoxically, it might actually be. Progressives might actually have an easier time getting elected as Republicans than Democrats.
Remember, Republicans don't actually have platforms anymore. Their base just views it as a football game; they don't actually believe in anything; they just want to win. They nominate celebrities and whoever can simply channel enough raw energy and emotion.
Progressives could run as Republicans, billing themselves as "Radical Republicans," promising to rekindle the fire of the post-Civil War party. They could say they support strong borders, but flip the table on Republicans by running on a strong social safety net.
Remember, the policies progressives champion are actually quite popular among the working white working class Republican base. They just hate that it's Democrats championing the policies. So if progressives simply run as Republicans instead, well that barrier drops away.
If Republicans don't actually believe in anything anymore, and they only run on grievance and vibes, why not just run progressives as Republicans? Run as a Republican and condemn Democrats as being servants of the wealthy. Do it with an R next to your name, and the Republican base will eat it up. Remember, they don't actually believe in anything. If you can offer them the rage and "winning" that they so desperately want, your actual policies are irrelevant. It's entirely possible for progressives to win running as Republicans. In fact, it's probably easier for progressives to win as Republicans than as Democrats now.
I don’t think progressives would have much success, because I think the Republican political machine would rally to outspend them in the primary, just as the Democratic political machine does.
I think Green Party politician Peter Camejo said it most succinctly: "Democrats are not the answer."
And they aren't. The Democrats have so successfully neutered the left that nobody has any idea what leftist talking points even are. People are so desperate that they voted for Donald fucking Trump. Twice.
The answer is not to embrace Republicans. The answer is to burn the Democratic Party to ashes. They need to go the way of the Whigs. They're simply irredeemable at this point.
If that's not possible, honestly I think progressives would have better luck running as Republicans than Democrats. Republicans don't really have an ideology anymore. They're all just celebrity, vibes, and raw emotion. Maybe progressives should start running as "radical Republicans," declaring that their intention is to resurrect the spirit of the post-Civil War party. That honestly is probably the quickest way we have now of actually getting progressives elected.
One thing about the Republican party is that it's much more vulnerable to outside disruption and takeover. Trump proved that. The Democratic party meanwhile goes to great lengths in its organization and primary structure to prevent outside usurpers from coming in and grabbing the nomination in a big populist wave.
I mean, i usually get modest upvotes when i talk about this sort of thing. I believe if we actually want to stop this fall into authoritarianism, our first step is to take control of the Democratic Party. How do you do that? Don’t vote for Neo liberals and ignore everyone who cries that unless you vote blue no matter who the republicans will win. That obviously doesn’t work, and democrats work against leftist policies. They whole time leading up to the election it was all “now is not the time” well i played their game and lost. Now it’s time.
I legitimately haven't seen anyone defend democrats. They're like the IRS: necessary, but no one likes them.
What I have seen is "democrats suck!" as a general deflection anytime someone mentions how bad this current administration is, how it could have been prevented, or what we need to do in the future...
Democrats are only necessary if your goal is to maintain the illusion that America is a democracy which serves the people while maintaining the status quo.
Democrats are a net negative. What is necessary is something we don't have and haven't had, a true leftist party. The lack of that necessary party is what has led us to this current situation.
The Republicans being bad doesn't make the Democrats good. Especially when they are complicit.
I have seen plenty and Democrats are not like the IRS. They are not necessary at all. They are just one right wing party that should disappear and be taken by an actual left wing party. The fact that you think that they are necessary shows how deep the ingraining of the necessity of a bipartisan oligopoly has run in the populous.
Is this leap because of the .ml on their name? I'm not trying to agitate you but it took me too long to understand how Putin was a part of this conversation. I could also just be dumb or missed something.
They aren't wrong that the Dems are a right wing party and we deserve better, especially when compared to European politics.
If you told a lib they can't drive because they're too drunk they'd tell you only a paid Putin troll would say it and drive off yelling about democracy
That's even worse. At least your politicians have shares in US companies and get bribes, what's your excuse for white knighting a corporate party from a country you can't even vote in?
It's exactly this racism as a first recourse to defend your oligarchy that has your settler country in the shitter. America can't die fast enough i stg.
Naw, It totally depends on how you downvote Democrats.
The majority of the anti-magats know the Democrats suck. We also know that the magats suck worse, and then the green and libertarians worse yet.
If you give any form of indication that you think the Democrats are worse than the magats, That's a downvote.
Most of the existing Democrats aren't particularly cozy with the Democratic leadership, or honestly even with the full scope of their intent, But the f if we're going to not download you for promoting something worse.
Because we are tired of arguing nuance, while out enemied threaten to literally exterminate us. At this point, any straying from the left is a profound moral failing. It's usually some kind if bigotry, or support of unscientific ideas.
Most people wanted to stop sending money for wars, and Democrats kept sending money for wars. Most people wanted to defund the police and democrats tripled the police budget. That is not a democracy. That is the total opposite of a democracy.
Thank you for the links! So grants and budget proposals, that makes sense. Those are the only 2 vehicles for the white house to add funding, right? The white house cant just “increase the police budget” right?
The problem with American democracy is the voting system. A party that isn't either thre democrats or the republicans will never win because people know if they vote for anything else there vote will be pointless.
America needs preferential voting but will never implement it because it would mean the two party system will be demolished (which is in neither of the two party's best interest.)
A lot of western countries have preferential voting, and, while it helps a little, it's very much not a silver bullet. Just look at Australia or Germany.
I think of it like this, democrats are rectal cancer, but rebublicans are gushing arterial spray. Not all, of course. Generalizations are lazy. But the choice is clear, and that choice is rectal cancer.
Democrats can not and should not be shielded from blame for their inactions, however, with all the low hanging fruit we got right now THIS is what you post?
Democrats are shit. However, saying democrats are shit right before a presidential election when the only options are literally fascism, democrat, and third parties with ~zero chance of breaking even 4% of the vote, you're an idiot and deserve to be downvoted.
Genocide deniers suck, including the uyghur and tibetan genocide deniers, including the american native and middle eastern genocide deniers... They all suck...
You mean like the ethnically and religiously diverse muslim delegations from around the world that investigated the claims of uyghur genocide and declared them unfounded?
Here is an article trying to spin it from voice of america, a state funded US media outlet:
I think the claims of genocide in Tibet are kinda goofy, given the US is trying to prop up some child-tongue-sucking theocratic feudalists to install as their regime.
1 in 5 black men in the US above 35 have been in jail, the numbers aren't even close in Xinjiang, no matter the source you use. Reeducation camps in a (so far very successful) war against terrorism =/= genocide. Go watch Little Chinese Everywhere (Chinese travel vlogger) videos on Xinjiang, especially in Kashgar, judge for yourself whether a genocide is going on there.
Thing is: kinda? With Palestine you were able to find new footage every day of innocents being exterminated, there's never been even remotely anything compared to that in Xinjiang
Everyone in China has a smartphone, as you probably known people pay 90% of the time using QR codes with WeChat or Alipay. It's not believable that there isn't footage of the "horrendous concentration camps" plastered all over western media, if there was any footage, we'd be exposed to it nonstop
What I constantly hear is deflections about how voting doesn't matter, but it fucking does, yes the Democrats suck but they are better, it's not even close.
Fight back and do everything you can to change what's going on and blame Democrats but don't sell out an entire election cycle to literal Satan to make that point
it sure is and yeah i was being exagatory for effect but if you're just going to pretend there isn't some very real damage being done that could have been prevented then the .ml brainrot is real
You can label me with whatever epithet you want, but the reality is that voting Democrat was the correct choice to minimize damage. Is that where it ends? No. Should the Democrats be raked over the coals for their current and past inaction? Absolutely.
The reality is, if anyone who is upset with the Democrats truly wanted change, they would understand that change is slow. "Teaching the party a lesson" has historically only resulted in a shift to the right. Direct action is the only thing that works. But while that effort continues, I’d certainly prefer if the checks and balances of the government weren’t being actively weakened and exploited.
I live in Oakland, California. Our recently-former mayor was just charged with corruption for taking bribes to get into office by promising contracts to moneyed interests. I'd sure like a Bernie type of person in charge of my city.
Is CA deeply progressive? Sorta; it's viewed that way by a lot of people. Our AG is one of the ones fighting the Trump admin. Are we fucked regardless? I'd say yes. Your comment displays a lack of awareness of how bad things are.
At this point, we do need to burn the Democratic Party to ashes. We need to put it out of its misery and let It needs to go the way of the Whigs. Some things simply can't be repaired.
There have been many countries caught in this same authoritarian trap that we're in now. And one common lesson is that you need to give up on the captured opposition if you want to have any hope of actually ending the authoritarian regime.
Democrats are going to lose again in 2028. They're going to yet again nominate a corporate centrist and yet again try the failed policy of appealing to Republican suburbanites. That's all these clowns know.
How many times do they have to lose elections before we give up on these fucking losers? They lost in 2016, they lost in 2024, and they would have lost in 2020 if it weren't for Covid.
The only reason to vote for Democrats is a pragmatic approach - they're better than the alternative. But they don't actually have that pragmatic argument anymore, and they haven't for a long time. They've been completely unelectable for a decade at this point.
They're a party of losers. Just absolute, irredeemable losers. They are fundamentally incapable of winning a presidential election now. They just don't have it in them.
We need to let them go. It's ritual self-mutilation to keep trying to prop up the dead corpse that is the Democratic party. It's dead man. It's time to let it go.
If you REALLY want to receive some righteous hate, criticize the people who boycotted voting because none of the choices measured up to their standards. People will defend the moral correctness of refusing to vote more than they'll defend their right to vote.
Most states were really spoiled for choices that election, too. I think that there were a dozen candidates on my ballot!
If you don't like either R or D, then don't vote for them. Vote for somebody else. If everybody who didn't vote had voted for an alternative or independent candidate instead, that would've been HUGE.
Yeah and how are things turning out for Palestinians and trans people? Do you think if the US pulled support for Isreal the fighting in Gaza would have stopped? Isreal would have turned to another country for their help and the US would have lost access to their intelligence in the middle east. A loss for the US and a gain for Russia or China. Neither choice is a good one one for the Palestinians. With the Democrats Netanyahu was on a leash, with Trump the leash is off. They are screwed as are anyone in the US who isn't white and straight. White Supremacists in other western countries are emboldened. Putin and Xi are laughing.
The Democratic Party got wallopped in the last election because they stood up for marginalized. They got trounced in 2010 because they fought to provide access to healthcare to those who couldn't get it. Biden tried to forgive student loans and young people couldn't bother to show up to the pols in 2022. Lazy edge lord potheads don't show up to vote
They lost in 2024 because they couldn't address the economy and kept sending billions to Israel as it was committing a very public genocide lol, not because they stood up for people.
The largest plurality (29%) of people who voted for Biden in 2020 but stayed home in 2024 said that Gaza was their biggest reason for not voting. The Democrats aren't considering pulling their support for Israel, but they have been fighting internally over being less supportive trans people. The idea that they lost because they just wouldn't stop fighting for marginalized people is just not connected to reality, and it's very possible they'll be standing up for even less people by 2026.
This article covers it, but it unfortunately doesn't link to the actual poll. I first learned it from a news podcast, so I can't point you to the original source.
And when pushed on it, the Democrats backed off instead of defending them. This should have won them the election by your logic, but it didn't. Could it be your logic is flawed?
The Democratic Party on the whole is captured by the donor class as a direct result of Citizens United. This has led to the hollowing out of the grassroots movements that are necessary for a large coalition of diverse interests to compete against the oligarchic cabal that makes up the GOP. This decimated the rank and file operatives that used networking within their communities to create political action and replaced it with endless fundraising emails, even as the primary process was corrupted (Hillary v Bernie, Biden v Bernie) to remove clout from the progressive wing of the party.
This led to the disillusionment of many Democratic voters that they have any say in the nomination process (the last time we had a real primary was Obama 2008 - almost 20 years ago), and the result is a slate of weak centrist candidates that for the most part play lip service to liberal cultural issues while blocking any real progressive economic progress.
The purpose of the Democratic Party apparatus as it exists in 2025 America is to capture and dilute revolutionary energy, so that people don't take to the streets and demand real change. Yes, there are some independents and good folks within the Democratic Party trying to make a change (AOC, Jasmine Crocket) but the power players (Pelosi, Schumer, Jeffries) are still refusing to stand up to the overt fascist takeover of our country.
The system as it exists will not change, and without change, we're barreling into a fascism induced depression and possible civil war that will likely ravage the planet.
Because half the time they don’t have primaries and the other half they call anyone making good arguments “unelectable radicals”
Don't just "call them", they actively sabotage them in a way they never do with a reactionary. Labor did it to Corbyn as well, this is deeply ingrained in bourgeois "democracies", if you can vote for somebody who will try to bring change, they've already fucked up a bunch of times.
This is funny to me, because in many red states there aren't even Democrat candidates to oppose Republicans.
There were four republicans running unopposed on my ballot in 2024.
Their generally decent goals of bombing children in Afghanistan, bombing people in Palestine, starving children in Yemen, starving children in Cuba, starving children in Venezuela, caging children in the US, torturing people in Guantanamo, bombing children in Yugoslavia, and so on? The bill that resulted in the mass enslavement of the US population (highest prison pop. in the world by far) was passed by the Clinton administration, written by Biden.
Are they only powerful enough to do monstrous shit or do they think you're stupid and will buy their hand wringing? They could have forced through Medicare, deliberately chose not to. They could have codified reproduction rights, deliberately chose not to. They're fucking telling you which issues they care about, it's the ones that they actually pass.
well I hope that if you come out of this you come out with a better electoral system I'll say that
So far, Trump has been slightly better than the Democrats on Gaza, but because democrat supporters refused to acknowledge how bad it was when it was Democrats doing it, they don't realise.
Genocide apologia
We are critical of them in the primaries and their supporters vote for the same evil assholes we hate and then call us radicals when we won’t support them. I am so sick of having to explain this to people as if they haven’t rat fucked good candidates out of the primaries multiple times.
...when they bother with having primaries at all.
Exactly. Like fuck off with that bullshit. We tried it your way. Now we are here. Take accountability for the first time ever, lib.
Accountability for their actions and learning from mistakes is actually a Russian psyop paid for by Fox News /s
Nah they hold the "balanced and nuanced perspective" of shutting their eyes, plugging their ears, going "Lalala Free Market Lalala Free Market..." at the top of their lungs where their children can see them.
lol even when you try to do this Pelosi will push the thumb on the scale to get Cuellar, one of the shittiest Democrats (and that's really saying something) reelected over challenger Jessica Cisneros. Or you can even win the primary and then the state party will allow you to languish because you're a working class demsoc instead of a trusted middle-manager of capital. The Dems need people like Cuellar, Sinema, and Manchin so that whenever they have a majority they can still sit around and do fucking nothing until the Republicans come in and shift everything further rightward. Dems love this. Ratchet effect is real. Fuck the Democratic Party. At least the Republicans are honest about how much they hate us.
Voting for genociders and pro-militarized police didn’t stop the genocide or police murdering black people, so I would count it as a very ineffective strategy as well. I rather vote for what I actually believe in than not voting because I will hell not vote for the garbage democrats.
Edit: “Protest vote” lmao, I don’t owe my vote to Democrats.
It’s the compromise for the vulnerable that most often gets brought up in this situation. A protest vote in a broken first-past-the-post election system generally helps the opposition to your vote. Republicans have demonstrated they hate the vulnerable (disabled, poor, debt-ridden) and Democrats are weak in their opposition, but if you want the help those that are vulnerable you would generally not want to subject them to Republicans, whom benefit from your protest vote.
Another argument is that if you fracture the opposition to bootlickers, the bootlickers will win.
the better argument is that our system is both intentionally keeping these groups vulnerable and, in large part, using them as bait to get you to vote the way they want you to; effectively entrapping you into this system so that you remain ignorant of the fact these same vulnerable groups are empowered and the driving force for change outside this country.
Until they realize that empowerment, there will be suffering, and it seems to be accelerationists who want that suffering to drive change. The whole point is that the system is broken in a first-past-the-post democracy.
I can tell you right now those same vulnerable people are not ready to rise up, though I wish that weren’t the case. There are people who still believe in decorum lmao.
We can talk all we want about people recognizing empowerment, but you’re also fighting entrenched propaganda campaigns that keep those same people fearful and against solidarity. Talk to any working class Fox News watching disphit.
Really until I see one of you propose, or enact, ways to counter that propaganda and lead people to understand their empowerment, ima keep doing me and trying to reduce the harm to the vulnerable people as best I can.
Mexico proved that it's possible w/o removing the propaganda; queers, trans, students, leftists, women and indigenous people joined to together to kick out both of the liberal and conservative parties to bring in amlo & sheinbaum's third party for the first time in over a century. Now the pri and the pan are just as irrelevant as a Republican in California or a Democrat in Texas
You're not helping; you're only perpetuating the harm to vulnerable people when you cooperate in the way they want you to.
The system is not broken, it is working as intended. Telling you it's broken is so they can dangle "fixing it" in front of your face like a carrot on a stick, but it will never ever happen for as long as capitalists are allowed to run our world and make decisions for us.
You want "ways to counter that propaganda and lead people to understand their empowerment", the answer is and always has been class consciousness and historical materialism. It starts with you. Pick up a fucking book and seek it out. Cause I'm not seeing any ideas from you either and whether we like it or not, we are all in this together.
I am sorry, but as a black man, I am supposed to be your sacrificial lamb and your fucking compromise for you for what? So you feel safe in your fucking neighborhood? I am sure that all black people and Palestinian Americans will agree when I say: “Fuck you from the bottom of my heart”
No, no, fuck you. I mentioned how democrats use militarized police against black people and you say that is supposed to be a fucking compromise. Fuck you, you racist asshole. Fucking white liberals are the fucking worse. No wonder why both MLK and Malcolm X hated your ass.
Edit: So you believe that everyone in the internet has to be white? Of course, I wouldn’t expect less from a liberal. I am sure that I cannot be black to you because I guess that I will never fit whatever stereotype you have of us in your head.
But I will say this: Democrats increased the funding for the police substantially during the BLM protests, treated us like terrorists and threw the heads of the protests in prison. Biden favorite phrase: “We have to back our boys in blue” and proceeded to triple their budget. Democrats hate black people and they oppress us with a militarized police in our neighborhoods.
Don't be silly dude everyone knows only white liberals are smart enough to operate a computer. Everyone else is a bot or a troll.
White tech-bro liberals have as much soul as a laptop. I've noticed that almost every tech bro Free Market Liberal-tarian i've met has aphantasia, they can't even produce images in their heads to think.
Bro, Biden tripled the budget of cops and you say that they are less harmful?! What is wrong with you?! “Good faith argument” with someone who automatically says that I am lying and who say that people dying should be a compromise, gotcha. My elders MLK, Malcolm X and the Black Panthers have all said that Democrat sucks and the only way forward is socialism. I am going to listen to them instead of you trying to whitesplain to me why Democrats are the best my community got.
Edit: They all died fighting for socialism, not for milquetoast liberties granted in fascism like the ones we get under democrats.
Lol, never takes much to make blueMAGA fascists take the mask off
Who*
well said
You would think committing a genocide would’ve settled the whole “lesser evil” thing, but the Blue MAGA cult insists there’s a way to commit lesser evil genocide now.
The problem with people with like you is you listen to what the Dems say they’re doing, and don’t bother to confirm what Dems are actually doing. It’s why you’re all terrified of Trump’s immigration policies, and have no clue that Obama & Biden deported way more people.
You’re in a cult.
Youre going to keep doing this lesser evil bit until the dems have you seig heiling while the republicans drain your blood for the ritual to begin Armageddon.
Hold up. You believe the Dems & GOP are swapping out frontline ICE and CBP agents during power transitions?
This is why no one takes Dem voters seriously. Y’all believe the press releases matter more than the material actions.
Battered spouse syndrome
Now this fucking guy is on .ml too?
#bothSides
If you somehow managed to reduce all of American politics into two sides, neither democrats nor republicans would be on yours.
Yes, actually. Both genocidal as a matter of fact.
Obama and Biden said they'd legalize weed. They didn't. They failed to put abortion rights into the constitution. I mean I can go on these are just off the top of my head.
They are not immune to legit criticism, however it seems like people get the idea that if you criticize democrats that means you are a die hard Trumper or something...
Didn’t close gitmo. Didn’t end the war on terror. Created the same border camps democrats cry at the gates of for political points. Bailed out the perpetrators of one of this countries most high profile and damaging financial crimes because they held rich peoples stock portfolios hostage. Made pointless concessions on the ACA to republicans who never once cross the isle for even the things they want to pass because they’d rather take the credit themselves.
Those are the ones I’m pulling off the top of my head.
I mean didn't Trump also promise that and not deliver
Nobody hates Democrats as much as Democrats do.
Probably because two political parties isn't enough to truly represent the population.
People shit talk non voters, but these are people who found no representation in the two party system. We can change this. We can have more then two political parties. To think otherwise is to think inside the world's smallest box.
Countries with more parties such as those in Western Europe are also electing fascists. The answer doesn't lie in more parties. China has a majority party and it doesn't get people doing the Sieg Heil
Duverger's Law says that as long as we have this system of voting, we're going to have two, and only two, major parties. It has changed once in history: when the Republicans replaced the Whigs. So, that's what you're looking at: either change the system of voting or replace one of the two parties.
The major political parties may have only changed names once, but the most common stance in modern political science is that we are in the 6th political party alignment in US history.
Nobody gets betrayed by democrats as much as democrats do.
Pelosi and the DNC have hated the left more than they hate the right for a good long time, yeah.
Back up. Put abortion rights in the constitution? I cant take you seriously.
Edit: 9 people are ignorant and need a civics lesson. Constitutional amendments were. never. on. the. table.
You must be on some weird ass instance. I see tons of reasonable anger at democrats and Republicans alike. I don't see upvotes for baseless tribal click bait like this tho
Nah, post something to /c/memes saying the US is a fascist nation and has been so for decades, it's upvotes galore.
Imply the democrats have anything to do with it, and suddenly what's the time in Moscow, how does Xi's dick taste like, yadda yadda
ah, now I get the Hexbear sidebar clock joke
Oof sounds bad
Everyone here that defends democrats knows they're not the best people.
Still immensely better than the alternative.
Yup, cause democrats made sure to bring Zelensky in front of the media to just yell at him and renounce our support to save lives.
Democrats were saving lives by bombing children in Gaza.
What the fuck are you on about? What do you think you're responding to?
blueMAGA liberals would personally dismember every child in Gaza to keep the war in Ukraine going another six months
Genocidal fascists are indeed "not the best people"
Oh, and the anti immigrant, anti education, anti living wage, anti trans, super genocidal facists are sooooo much better, right?
Or were you talking about the fucking nobody who had literally ZERO chance of winning? There were really going to win it all and save everybody, what happened?
You were the one saying genocidal fascists are merely "not the best people".
Anti-immigrant: Democrats adopted Republican immigration policy.
Anti-education: Democrats wanted to expel students who weren't pro-genocide enough.
Anti-living wage: Democrats' last word on raising the federal minimum wage was Sinema's thumbs down.
Anti-trans: Democrats ran hateful Republican anti-trans talking points in their own ads.
Super genocidal: Democrats have spent the past year shoveling weapons to Netanyahu to be used to murder Palestinians.
Democrats seem to think so since they keep emulating them.
You loved every last one of the past SUCCESSES of the Democratic Party to move themselves closer to the fascism you will never even think of opposing.
"Oh man what the fuck why did you diddle and torture my dog what the fuck is wrong with you?"
"Oh and that dude is much better? He wanted to skin him alive then kill him"
Yeah, Lemmy.ml is a full on Tankie Instance. They worship people like Mao Zedong and promote Donald Trump. They promote anarchism in the USA, and a strong nationalist centralized government in Chin and Russia. Capitalism is the cause of everything that has ever gone wrong ever, according to them. They are simultaneously "leftists", both sides bad centrists, and conservative advocates.
It's a wack ass instance, a lot of other instances defederate from ml, hexbear, lemmygrad, and other tankie instances.
I'll keep saying it, the DNC is a sunk cost. You will keep trying to get them to stand up for you; get them to care; get them to fight. They will keep taking your energy; taking your money; and taking your vote and do nothing with it.
Big donors have recognized it. It's time for the people to recognize it too. That means you.
Running a feckless campaign that refused to break with Biden's admin on genocide is why we got this living hell. And running the most unlikeable woman in the country in 2016 is what made 2024 even a possibility.
Dems have fucked up terribly.
You're absolutely right
That about sums it up.
I'll vote Democrat as long as the alternative is fascism.
But fuck me, I'd love to vote for something else. And I'll be honest, I have no idea how we get anything better.
I hear people saying to organize, but I can't even imagine what that takes. I wonder if most Americans feel as helpless as I do in the face of this absolute bullshit.
Unfortunately, much of what the Democrats represent is fascism.
Depends on what you mean by "much"? I'd argue the Democrats, on the whole, are liberals, not fascists.
I'd certainly prefer progressives and leftists though.
The support for Israel whole they genocide Palestine, thought... ugh. That can certainly be viewed as fascism, although where you draw the distinction between fascism and imperialism is up for debate. Not that imperialism is good either, just saying.
Liberals are the only people in history to vote for fascists to prevent class solidarity, and they've done it every time.
If you scratch a liberal, a fascist bleeds.
So conservatives are... what? Not a group of people? Or in your view, are conservatives just fascists already?
Conservative liberals have the same ideology as liberals, just the pace is different. American politics have fucked too many people's brains.
Yeah, I don't buy that. Liberalism and Conservatism have different ideological foundations, philosophical traditions, and political histories.
If you don't know the difference, that's on you.
I have to make a lot of leaps to guess what you mean by "conservative liberal". Do you mean a modern "social liberal economic conservative"? Aka a neoliberal?
Cuz yeah US Dems and Repubs are almost all economically neoliberal, sure. Is that what you mean?
The hard fact is that what the population votes for is what the population gets. They have completely given up their agency and just accept this impotent logic of "we'll take whatever the most obvious/most apparently easy option is, that isn't a Republican". It's a cyclical problem, the voters don't care enough to force politicians to be good, and the politicians don't care enough to court voters.
It really isn't, study after study has shown that popularity has basically no effect on policy.
...the candidate the population votes for. Did you need that to say "who"?
At the same time, "what the population votes for is what the population gets" ignores that we are often only presented with crappy options to start with.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say "you get what you fight for, and if you don't fight you get what you get."
I... haven't really fought for anything. I believed the right things. I voted as best I could. But that clearly didn't stop this.
I want to protect my ego and say I'm not a coward. Is there a distinction to be made between cowardice and simply not knowing what to do? I don't know. I just know I'm trying my best, but maybe that's just not enough.
It does not ignore that, rather it explicitly takes that into account.
The caveat to my statement would ONLY be "so long as we're using this system."
Please focus more on accurate logic.
All you guys suck, democrats enabled the rise of fascism by being impotent cowards trying to get the scraps left behind by the republicunts.
Everyone should still vote for them becuase they are better than the only other option in your dogshit political system.
Vote as far left as possible all the way up, if it ends up as trump v clinton then it should be the lefter of the two.
Nah. Both parties suck. Repubs damage, Dems half ass do damage control, then sit around making minor changes and act like they're saviors. The geriatric fucks that hold seats have no semblance of understanding the current world and so we fall behind the curve further every year. Easy things that are obvious never get passed because those get bribed. Sick of the whole system obviously.
Republicans are the problem. Democrats are pretending to be the solution but are also the problem.
The reason Democrats deserve more hate is because they divert people from organising a solution to the problem. At least Republicans are honest about how much they suck.
Democrats don't do damage control, they actively build the machinery for the next republican to be even more brutal.
They got so heated about pro Palestinian stuff on TikTok that they handed Donald Trump authority to ban any website he feels like by executive fiat. Then TikTok didn’t get banned and Trump got for credit for saving it.
I will never forget kente clothes.
Liberals think Democrats aren't half to blame for this shitty country being the way it is.
Who you calling a liberal?
The ones who get their undies twisted when we criticize Democrats.
Some liberals.
i thought it was most liberals given that the nucleus of the "both sides" argument during the election was to characterize conservatives' bad faith arguments about both the democrats and republicans being the same when it came to ghoulish behavior.
I genuinely feel like that was a coordinated campaign to erode voter trust and motivation with some trolling thrown in on top.
Catch any single lib and ask them straight up; “Do you think both sides are the same?”
I'm not interested in what libs think about that. I already know.
Can you give me the TL:DR?
https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
It's not that they suck. My problem with them, as an independent, is they've positioned themselves as the moral high ground party while in fact they have no moral leg to stand on. Their leadership had a historic moral test when it comes to the Gaza genocide and they failed it. They had another test to put a great candidate to prevent another Trump presidency, but they bowed down to their corporate masters and picked Kamala.
It's that level of fundamentalism and holier than thou attitude that alienates many people like me. They have zero fighting tactics against Republicans besides clutching pearls and shaming. Kamala's website up until the election day had no "agenda section". You can't really tell what her campaign is about. I guess she's perfect enough and shouldn't be questioned, otherwise "racism and sexism".
They need a complete reset and redo of the party and its principles. Until then, I'm a non voter.
It's a symptom of our two-party voting system. I lost faith in the Democratic party's ability to do anything effectual a long fuckin time ago, the game is rigged for the rich and it will be until we wipe them from the face of the earth.
I downvoted. Not because you criticized democrats, but because your stupid post says you get downvoted for that. No you fucking don't. You almost always get up voted for it. This is a garbage bait post.
As in criticizing Democrats on their merits or criticizing Democrats as equally bad as Republicans? Big difference between the two.
I'll do you one better, I can't stand either party
I just especially dislike Republicans right now because they're in power
It's an unfortunate trait of the reddit migrations. That place was crawling with die-hard liberals, not entirely dissimilar to scabies. It stands to reason a few of the uninitiated would find their way here.
In spite of how I started this comment, we must remember that they are of the working class, and further division is a benefit exclusive to the capitalist.
I feel that the further we sink into full-blown fascism, the more of them will become aware, and may be counted among allies one day soon.
I plan to speak to those who are willing to listen and learn. But beware the contentious fool, ever seeking a debate but never trying for understanding.
.world got the liberals that were too delusional for reddit.
I agree, but the fact that they even came here gives me hope that they are open to change. It's the ones who stayed on reddit are the lost causes, I think.
Well everybody already knows that. Like.. The power dynamics of "vote lesser evil, vote for minority candidate, vote for a compromising pseudo-progressive party because it's still something, abstain and stay pure, better face true fascists than traitors, etc." has been around since representative regimes emerged. Yet everyone has to find his/her political and moral stance in this shitshow. And answers will differ, sometimes for legitimate reasons, sometimes because of total bs. That's all there is to it and it's not exactly news.
As a trans person i am currently eating shit for breakfast every day to protect myself, my friends, and humanity. Lesser evil is starting to look like "not being murdered" sometimes
As a trans person, you know a lot of that was happening last year. And the year before, too, right?
I won't pretend it wasn't bad before, but this shit is ramping up now faster than ever, and it's not the left writing this dreck into law.
It was never "the left", it was, and is, Democrats, another right wing party, also co-signing this.
If it's so important to fight this... Why aren't the Dems, in office, doing so? They seem to just be acting like "Business as normal"...
Looook,
We are ALL going to Hell, FAST (choose your doom(CC,WWIII,etc).
We are all in the same car, here -like it, or not.
One party, …I’ll let you guess which 😉, has the accelerator pinned to the mat. “We’ll be there in 5 minutes, Boys!! HELL ON EARTH HERE WE COME!”
The other party, is simply driving at half that speed. Results are the same. They are flawed. But they CAN slow the car to give us a bit more time to “brace for impact”. But they too bought into Hell as a destination.
But ya, we’re ALL fucked no matter how much you pledge to one party or the other. One party just whispers in your ear and it’s a bit more gentle while they fuck your already ragged ass.
The other party just dry-humps you violently until your blood provides enough lube for them to finish while pounding their chest as you lie there, bleeding out of your ass on the nice, clean sheets.
That about sums it up from my perspective.
The problem with this is that it assumes both parties act independently.
You know how right now how Republicans are willing to use every loophole, cite ancient forgotten laws, and violate every norm? That's always been possible. You can't actually write a constitution to constrain bad-faith actors. You can always come up with a bogus interpretation to do what you want.
If this is possible, you have to ask, why did leaders ever try to follow the law in good faith? How was it ever possible to establish a norms-based stability when either side could knock over the board at any moment?
The answer is that good-faith interpretation of the law fails when people only do so out of principle. It succeeds when good-faith interpretation is a peace treaty. Both sides agree to follow the law in good faith, as the alternative is complete chaos as both sides try to twist every loophole.
Democrats are a bunch of liberal arts majors that have forgotten that Democracy and the rule of law does not exist because everyone worships them as high ideals. They exist because they are a compromise, a peace treaty.
Republicans break norms. In response, Dems latch on even tighter to the norms. Instead, they should be seeking to break them at every opportunity they can. They need to be as ruthless as the Republicans, and even more so.
Following the rule of law is hard. It means giving up power and results that you could otherwise achieve by violating the rule of law.
Right now, only Democrats are trying to obey every norm and precedent. As such, Republicans have nothing to lose by violating these. It's all upside to them. Their bad behavior is the direct result of Democratic cowardice. If Democrats were willing to give as well as they get, we could actually have a rules-based order again. Paradoxically, a prerequisite for rules to be effective is that both sides need to be willing to violate them.
As I like to say, "The moral high road is filled with corpses"
Well said!
In short, fire with fire. …can’t fight a war with one hand tied to your balls, etc.
Dems have forgotten this. They need a leader to remind them and lead the charge.
if someone told you that, that's what their sex life was like; you would assume that they're a damaged person who needs psychiatric help and those psychiatrist would try to help steer them away from sex partners like that and towards healthier sex partners.
even our neighbors to the south have learned this fact and made their own sex lives better; but we americans are like battered spouses who keep bouncing back and forth between the same 2 abusive lovers because we both refuse to accept how damaged we truly are and because the more damaged among us keep re-inforcing the propaganda that voting democrat or republican is the only "grown up" choice to make as the "adults in the room".
we're only destined for hell if we keep rejecting a third party; places like mexico have already proved that things get A LOT better once you stop carrying the propaganda that third party is "throwing away" your vote.
(or atleast until you get the america's attention and they send in their military and bankers to force you back into those abusive relationships... again).
Can you criticize Israel here or is it full of pro genecide bots trying to run a narrative?
You can on lemmy.ml, lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net
Better than under the Democrats, so far. But let me guess, you were denying the severity of the genocide when it was the Democrats doing it.
This place is pretty far left dude lol. You wont find anyone pro israel here.
You can indeed. This isn't .world.
The Zionist Regime must fall. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Organize in your community to raise awareness of your country's complicity (e.g. weapons manufacture, university/college affiliations) and organize in your workplace to use your power as a worker to sabotage the conflict, especially if you are in ports or manufacture.
During the run up to the election I'll admit i was guilty of this because it was so important for TFG to lose. I wish our bullshit system allowd for more than a fascist and center right party.
Now? Fuck that they aren't leading like they should.
It's exhausting.
Umm... Even us on .world agree that Dems are controlled opposition and useless if we want any actual change.
Not on the .world I've seen
Depends, is it an article about Trump? Democrats are saints who can't fail, only be failed.
Is it an article about Democrats doing nothing that hasn't been removed by the mods yet? You'll probably not be downvoted for saying "Biden should have done more of his promises and getting Trump arrested should have been the priority."
What I don't understand - and please explain if you can - is why Bernie and like-minded people like AOC etc don't break away from the likes of the Clintons and the Harrises and form their own party. Surely there must be some systemic hurdle keeping them from at least attempting right?
It's because a lot of the criticism attributed to "the Democrats" it's just general criticism about the government and has nothing to do with a Democrats specifically.
I really feel like as soon as a Democrat gets in the office people forget that the other half of the government is fucking Republicans that will do anything to stop Democrats from getting what they want... That's the entirety of what Turtleman is made of.
Any and all politicians are open to scrutiny imo. They are PUBLIC servants and as such they should get called on their collective bull shit.
The democratic party has failed us in a massive way. That's just facts. The republican party is a circus with an orange ring leader. None are doing their jobs in a way that truly helps the people, when they enter politis they start thinking of themselves and how lobbying can make them rich. There are only a few exceptions, Bernie, AOC etc...
Blasphemer! They are the golden calf! Kneel before your genocidal god else you will get more genocide!
Please understand that the democrats are further right than most countries mainstream right wing parties in Europe noone really likes that Germany elected the CDU (politically similar to the democrats) but we're all very pleased that afd didn't get a majority. Vote for the least damaging candidate and work on the system by protesting. Noone thinks Biden and Harris are saints, they're just the least harmful option.
US Republicans are not democratic to begin with, they're a christi fascist group that should have no right to exist as it inllinly makes the world better for a tiny tiny group of people over the backs of everyone else.
Having said that, the US Democrats are a godawful bunch of spineless dweebs that deserve everything that is coming for them. They lost the US elections because they still don't understand what they should be, what their voter base wants or what that country needs.
It’s been 8 years of the lesser evil with Democrats and I’m sick of them. I cannot in good conscience support them any longer because they have time and again chosen to maintain the status quo.
The Biden administration did many things to help Americans, most notably the Inflation Reduction Act and the student debt forgiveness. But most of it is being dismantled by the current administration. And the Dems knew this would be the case. Yet they chose to go the executive order route or the highly diluted down IRA. It’s not the people’s problem that you cannot get your party members in line. Why would we vote for you if you cannot deliver?
Nancy Pelosi chose not to even allow the bill to prevent members of Congress from insider trading. Republicans are using it to line their pockets like never before. You want to have your cake and eat it too. Well the people are sick of your hypocrisy and it showed in the elections.
It’s been more than a month of rapid fire gutting of the US government. What has the party done as the main opposition besides “coming up with a strategy”? Because it’s impossible to do anything meaningful without revealing how much you have gained from the system.
The Democrats who truly care about change need to spin off their own party. That’s the only way enough people will be mobilized to make a meaningful difference in the next elections.
Libs think they're the party it's so sad lmao
Why does being downvoted here even matter at all like who cares. Democrats have lost the plot and only care about identity politics. Policy don’t help the average everyday people.
The Democratic Party as a whole is like milk in your fridge that's a week past its "best by" date.
The Republican Party is milk that a dog vomited on a Texas in July sidewalk.
We're drinking one of them, because no alternative is possible in the near term.
It's possible to vote for Democrats in 2026 and '28 and '30 and '32 while we build an alternative that can have electoral success, or takeover the Democratic Party from within or heck turn the Republican Party into a party worth supporting...
If all the milk in my fridge is spoiled, I throw it out. Maybe try that?
Aye, we need a new system.
Here you go. This is an option. There is historical precedent. The tea party, to name one example.
Great. Now you're dying of thirst and the only milk left is the dog throw up vomit.
You can't game the system by just saying you would do it better. That's not how it works.
So keeping with your analogy, you're going against ever bit of legitimate survival advice from every single person that has any knowledge on survival, and you think you're still making the right choice?
In any situation where clean water isn't an option you still don't drink things that will sicken you.
You can work to purify whatever liquid you have (which can be the easiest or worst option), you can leave the area and try to find safer sources of water, or you can piss in your own mouth for a while and try to do one of the other two things in the mean time.
Voters like you, however, drink the spoiled milk, diarrhea in your own mouths, while promising if you keep doing it you'll get around to purifying your own milk laden shits if you just keep funding genocide.
You can't change a rotted system from within anymore than you can survive on contaminated water. At best you're making your life so much worse while deluding yourself into thinking you're doing the right thing.
Ok awesome, you're across the street yelling saying to drink better milk without actually having any better milk. That doesn't make the situation any better
More like I'm showing you a 150 year old water purification technique that is proven to work and you're concerned it might not taste as good and requires too much work so you'll just keep drinking your own recycled shit and cry that there's no solutions.
Yeah, you're showing me a picture of that pure milk as if it's a choice to drink it.
Unless you can actually give me that pure 150 year refined technique and not just say it can be better, shut up about it. Especially when you demanding the pure milk means we have to throw out the week old milk leaving us only the dog vomit milk.
Genocide supporters like you deserve to drink dog vomit.
Great. You just want people to drink spolied milk and are gloating because they don't get a meaningful choice. You don't care if you have to also have the dog vomit as long as no one gets a better choice than the spoiled milk, ever.
No, id much rather everyone on the block have better milk all around. But while you and your neighbors are refusing to drink the week old milk and dying of thirst, I'm over here trying to come up with an actual game plan with my spoiled milk instead of just screaming at others to drink better milk without actually having any source of better milk.
I don't see your cow anywhere, but yet you act as if one's going to magically appear cause you want it to.
Your positions indicate otherwise.
So far it looks like you're gloating that no one has anything decent to drink.
No, I'm just so fucking tired of neighbors yelling how much better the milk is everywhere else like we don't fucking know that. And unless you actually have a plan to get better milk, just saying drink better milk and throw that out doesn't really mean much.
So you just want people to shut up.
Well, step one is to quit ordering people to be silent about drinking your shitty spoiled milk.
How can anyone read this childish nonsense and still think liberals are serious people?
Genocide supporting monster. You should be forced to drink dog vomit.
Just because you're an overgrown child who sees everything through primary school metaphors doesn't mean other people aren't doing things, by the way.
Fucking deranged that you Nazi fucks care more about deaths that haven't actually happened then the ones that have.
I'll grab water, or run to a corner store to grab a non spoiled gallon...
I cannot tell you how sick of these pithy little infantalising pseudo-analogies I am.
No, genocide is not like "milk that is past it's expectation date". Talk like a damn adult.
How about a nice contrived trolley problem metaphor. Everyone loves those.
Yeah. Drop another adult word to prove how strong you are!
Unsurprising that you consider talking like an adult to be worthy of criticism
80 million Dem voters (depicted as "crowd of NPCs" meme): "We are voting for Democrats in the near term because there is no other option"
I do believe the requirement is that you just need to be specific. Republicans generally suck all around right now so that's a valid statement.
However, if you're going to complain about Democrats you need to say something like, "the leadership sucks" or, "there's too many rich people influencing the party!"
That's been my experience so far 🤷
Spamming as a conservative on multiple posts? This is the same type of posts you see on conservative reddit, always pointing out both sides, when there's almost none of the same type of opinionated posts when referring to Republicans. I know you like to blame Dems, but Republicans are the ones actually promoting and using racism , and fascism right? Where's the criticism against them with such vigor as your post. Your the reason why Reddit has been so aggressive with their banning. Also because your barely mention Rs in good faith. Yes dema has their problems, but Republicans are far worst people.
The demos current lack of action against the monkey business going on now is s loudass tell about how sympathetic they are
Fuck both sides of the shitbird
I think this is a fair POV. No one is perfect. Thinking that you cannot criticise something you are part of, you like, or are somehow related to, is just childish.
I don't care about any of the two political parties. I just vote based on who sounds the least insane, greedy, fake, and qualified for the job. And maybe someone who doesn't suck billionaire toe and can tax the rich.
For sure, about %90 of them voted No to Sander's stop weapon sale to Israel resolution. They are worthless pieces of shits which would switch to the republican party at the blink of an eye had they thought their position in the Democrat party was insecure.
If I thought that the democrat party was the only viable option to defeat Trump would I vote for democrats instead of say, voting a third party? Without a second of doubt, yes. We don't even need to debate whether the Democrat party is marginally better than the Republican party or not. The main important difference is that if Trump wins (which he did) half of the country is going to cheer for every vile shit he does (which they do) and this will enable them to carry this vile shit into their personal lives (which they also do).
On the other hand if Kamala were to do such vile shit (granted there is imo %0 chance she could be this worse on almost all matters) at least she would get booed by the people who voted for her. There is a very big difference between how much these reactions enable a president to do even more extreme shit or not and whether if people are encouraged to replicate such behaviour on a local level or not.
So instead of waiting until the last 90 days and then suddenly going "DON'T VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS OR REPUBLICANS LETS CHANGE THE COURSE OF HISTORY WOHOO", start working from now to make the third options more viable. Then it will be more sincere and useful.
The United States of America is more important then the Democratic Party.
With state level electoral reform, we could give 3rd parties the freedom to participate in the electoral process without a spoiler effect.
No more hostage situation, more options, elections could be a competition to defeat the republicans/make things better, more democracy.
Who could say no to more democracy?
Republicans? Why of course they would say no. They are passing legislation in red states to protect First-past-the-post voting. In Alaska they held a referendum last election to go back to FPTP voting because Sarah Palin was kept out of office by their Ranked Choice voting system. It didn't pass, the people dont want FPTP anymore in Alaska.
How about the blue states and the democrats that are elected there. Do they support democracy? I guess that would depend on if they are still using FPTP when the mid term elections are hopefully held.
It's not to late, we can have more choices in the voting booth. We can have more then one chance to defeat the republicans.
::: spoiler Videos on Electoral Reform
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out.
STAR voting
Alternative vote
Ranked Choice voting
Range Voting
Single Transferable Vote
Mixed Member Proportional representation :::
well said. you can pretty much extrapolate this line of thought to every soc-dem, left-of-center, liberal party in the world. they make a wiener water government, blame people when they lose elections and are left wondering why people didn't called their wiener water government a bouillabasse or an onion soup.
No one is implying that Republicans are any way the solution.
Centrists assume literally all criticism of their wing of the party comes from their right.
Paradoxically, it might actually be. Progressives might actually have an easier time getting elected as Republicans than Democrats.
Remember, Republicans don't actually have platforms anymore. Their base just views it as a football game; they don't actually believe in anything; they just want to win. They nominate celebrities and whoever can simply channel enough raw energy and emotion.
Progressives could run as Republicans, billing themselves as "Radical Republicans," promising to rekindle the fire of the post-Civil War party. They could say they support strong borders, but flip the table on Republicans by running on a strong social safety net.
Remember, the policies progressives champion are actually quite popular among the working white working class Republican base. They just hate that it's Democrats championing the policies. So if progressives simply run as Republicans instead, well that barrier drops away.
If Republicans don't actually believe in anything anymore, and they only run on grievance and vibes, why not just run progressives as Republicans? Run as a Republican and condemn Democrats as being servants of the wealthy. Do it with an R next to your name, and the Republican base will eat it up. Remember, they don't actually believe in anything. If you can offer them the rage and "winning" that they so desperately want, your actual policies are irrelevant. It's entirely possible for progressives to win running as Republicans. In fact, it's probably easier for progressives to win as Republicans than as Democrats now.
I don’t think progressives would have much success, because I think the Republican political machine would rally to outspend them in the primary, just as the Democratic political machine does.
I hate to break it to you but I've definitely heard that on Lemmy a few times
No you haven't
I think Green Party politician Peter Camejo said it most succinctly: "Democrats are not the answer."
And they aren't. The Democrats have so successfully neutered the left that nobody has any idea what leftist talking points even are. People are so desperate that they voted for Donald fucking Trump. Twice.
The answer is not to embrace Republicans. The answer is to burn the Democratic Party to ashes. They need to go the way of the Whigs. They're simply irredeemable at this point.
If that's not possible, honestly I think progressives would have better luck running as Republicans than Democrats. Republicans don't really have an ideology anymore. They're all just celebrity, vibes, and raw emotion. Maybe progressives should start running as "radical Republicans," declaring that their intention is to resurrect the spirit of the post-Civil War party. That honestly is probably the quickest way we have now of actually getting progressives elected.
One thing about the Republican party is that it's much more vulnerable to outside disruption and takeover. Trump proved that. The Democratic party meanwhile goes to great lengths in its organization and primary structure to prevent outside usurpers from coming in and grabbing the nomination in a big populist wave.
i Wish my wife was a democrat
The only instance I've noticed that on is midwest.social.
I mean, i usually get modest upvotes when i talk about this sort of thing. I believe if we actually want to stop this fall into authoritarianism, our first step is to take control of the Democratic Party. How do you do that? Don’t vote for Neo liberals and ignore everyone who cries that unless you vote blue no matter who the republicans will win. That obviously doesn’t work, and democrats work against leftist policies. They whole time leading up to the election it was all “now is not the time” well i played their game and lost. Now it’s time.
You get two options with a history of nepotism and complacency. Independent parties stand no chance due to the funding.
Yes, democrats suck, but it's still better than voting for soulless fascists.
Join us on hexbear and lemmygrad
I legitimately haven't seen anyone defend democrats. They're like the IRS: necessary, but no one likes them.
What I have seen is "democrats suck!" as a general deflection anytime someone mentions how bad this current administration is, how it could have been prevented, or what we need to do in the future...
Democrats are only necessary if your goal is to maintain the illusion that America is a democracy which serves the people while maintaining the status quo.
Democrats are a net negative. What is necessary is something we don't have and haven't had, a true leftist party. The lack of that necessary party is what has led us to this current situation.
The Republicans being bad doesn't make the Democrats good. Especially when they are complicit.
See, this is people defending the Dems lmao. Not a single falsehood, but it's downvoted all the same.
I have seen plenty and Democrats are not like the IRS. They are not necessary at all. They are just one right wing party that should disappear and be taken by an actual left wing party. The fact that you think that they are necessary shows how deep the ingraining of the necessity of a bipartisan oligopoly has run in the populous.
`The fact that you think that they are necessary shows how deep the ingraining of the necessity of a bipartisan oligopoly has run in the populous.
This is the crux and can not be overstated.`
Let me guess, a left wing party that sucks it up to putin?
What's your take on putins brutal invasion of Ukraine for example?
Is this leap because of the .ml on their name? I'm not trying to agitate you but it took me too long to understand how Putin was a part of this conversation. I could also just be dumb or missed something.
They aren't wrong that the Dems are a right wing party and we deserve better, especially when compared to European politics.
If you told a lib they can't drive because they're too drunk they'd tell you only a paid Putin troll would say it and drive off yelling about democracy
No, it's just what centrists say about anyone to the left of Netanyahu.
I'm european BTW.
What do you think about putins brutal invasion of Ukraine?
That's even worse. At least your politicians have shares in US companies and get bribes, what's your excuse for white knighting a corporate party from a country you can't even vote in?
I'm a socialist. Fuck Putin, free Ukraine.
It's that easy.
Thank you! Yes, IMO it is that easy
Now SausageCat avoided the question ...
Yes, deflecting is THAT easy! Now you can turn any criticism into your own minute of hate and avoid engaging in self criticism.
Hey, it's worked out so well for your country!
Be easier to just post the entire bag of thought terminating cliches you have instead of doing it one by one so everyone can save some time.
We can even pretend we haven't seen all the same ones with the same wording from every other milquetoast lib.
It's exactly this racism as a first recourse to defend your oligarchy that has your settler country in the shitter. America can't die fast enough i stg.
Lazy.
What I hear is a lot of complaints and very few ideas of what to do about it. The Democrats can be forced to suck less.
Then you probably should have done that before the genocide
This thread kind of disproved itself
Naw, It totally depends on how you downvote Democrats.
The majority of the anti-magats know the Democrats suck. We also know that the magats suck worse, and then the green and libertarians worse yet.
If you give any form of indication that you think the Democrats are worse than the magats, That's a downvote.
Most of the existing Democrats aren't particularly cozy with the Democratic leadership, or honestly even with the full scope of their intent, But the f if we're going to not download you for promoting something worse.
Because we are tired of arguing nuance, while out enemied threaten to literally exterminate us. At this point, any straying from the left is a profound moral failing. It's usually some kind if bigotry, or support of unscientific ideas.
This is stupid
A democratic that is average at democracy is better than a conservative who is great at authoritarianism.
"average at democracy" is when you aggressively expand the world's largest police state while persuing a policy of genocide.
Most people wanted to stop sending money for wars, and Democrats kept sending money for wars. Most people wanted to defund the police and democrats tripled the police budget. That is not a democracy. That is the total opposite of a democracy.
Tripled the police budget?
Yes, Joe “We have to back the blue” Biden tripled the police budget during and after the BLM protests
What police budget?
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/white-house-adds-334-mln-boost-community-policing-hire-more-officers-2023-11-02/
https://www.yahoo.com/news/president-biden-2023-budget-increases-154615051.html
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/31/us/biden-police-budget-increase/index.html
Not seeing the word triple there at all, weird.
Also curious what police budget he doubled, I thought congress handled money
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/white-house-adds-334-mln-boost-community-policing-hire-more-officers-2023-11-02/
https://www.yahoo.com/news/president-biden-2023-budget-increases-154615051.html
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/31/us/biden-police-budget-increase/index.html
Thank you for the links! So grants and budget proposals, that makes sense. Those are the only 2 vehicles for the white house to add funding, right? The white house cant just “increase the police budget” right?
The problem with American democracy is the voting system. A party that isn't either thre democrats or the republicans will never win because people know if they vote for anything else there vote will be pointless.
America needs preferential voting but will never implement it because it would mean the two party system will be demolished (which is in neither of the two party's best interest.)
A lot of western countries have preferential voting, and, while it helps a little, it's very much not a silver bullet. Just look at Australia or Germany.
It's not just that. It's that politicians get to pick the voters through voter purges,gerrymandering, I'd requirements etc.
I think of it like this, democrats are rectal cancer, but rebublicans are gushing arterial spray. Not all, of course. Generalizations are lazy. But the choice is clear, and that choice is rectal cancer.
I'ts possible to acknowledge that Democrats Suck while simultaneously acknowledging that electing one was the only chance to avoid a Trump presidency.
Democrats can not and should not be shielded from blame for their inactions, however, with all the low hanging fruit we got right now THIS is what you post?
Democrats are shit. However, saying democrats are shit right before a presidential election when the only options are literally fascism, democrat, and third parties with ~zero chance of breaking even 4% of the vote, you're an idiot and deserve to be downvoted.
CPC -> Communist Party of China
Genocide deniers suck, including the uyghur and tibetan genocide deniers, including the american native and middle eastern genocide deniers... They all suck...
You mean like the ethnically and religiously diverse muslim delegations from around the world that investigated the claims of uyghur genocide and declared them unfounded?
Here is an article trying to spin it from voice of america, a state funded US media outlet:
https://www.voanews.com/a/arab-league-visits-china-s-xinjiang-region-rejects-uyghur-genocide/7131285.html
I think the claims of genocide in Tibet are kinda goofy, given the US is trying to prop up some child-tongue-sucking theocratic feudalists to install as their regime.
Y'all kidnapped the Panchen Lama and don't consider Tibet to be independent.
"What do you mean genocide? They only imprisoned an entire population based on their religion..."
1 in 5 black men in the US above 35 have been in jail, the numbers aren't even close in Xinjiang, no matter the source you use. Reeducation camps in a (so far very successful) war against terrorism =/= genocide. Go watch Little Chinese Everywhere (Chinese travel vlogger) videos on Xinjiang, especially in Kashgar, judge for yourself whether a genocide is going on there.
Wow a travel blogger said they didn't see any signs of genocide?!? Case closed boys!
Thing is: kinda? With Palestine you were able to find new footage every day of innocents being exterminated, there's never been even remotely anything compared to that in Xinjiang
Is it possible that the travel bloggers simply didn't go to the concentration camps?
Everyone in China has a smartphone, as you probably known people pay 90% of the time using QR codes with WeChat or Alipay. It's not believable that there isn't footage of the "horrendous concentration camps" plastered all over western media, if there was any footage, we'd be exposed to it nonstop
The people levelling the accusations in the first place didn't go to China at all, sooo....
How are they going to go to concentration camps that don’t exist?
Democrats are able to hold those who commit crimes in their party accountable, thst alone is enough difference to disqualify Republicans entirely.
What I constantly hear is deflections about how voting doesn't matter, but it fucking does, yes the Democrats suck but they are better, it's not even close.
Fight back and do everything you can to change what's going on and blame Democrats but don't sell out an entire election cycle to literal Satan to make that point
all that does is irreversible damage
American Civil Religion is very real
it sure is and yeah i was being exagatory for effect but if you're just going to pretend there isn't some very real damage being done that could have been prevented then the .ml brainrot is real
Yeah, the effect is that you look like a blueMAGA fanatic
You can label me with whatever epithet you want, but the reality is that voting Democrat was the correct choice to minimize damage. Is that where it ends? No. Should the Democrats be raked over the coals for their current and past inaction? Absolutely.
The reality is, if anyone who is upset with the Democrats truly wanted change, they would understand that change is slow. "Teaching the party a lesson" has historically only resulted in a shift to the right. Direct action is the only thing that works. But while that effort continues, I’d certainly prefer if the checks and balances of the government weren’t being actively weakened and exploited.
Vote Green when you can, and push on your representatives in between elections.
if a third party was possible under current electoral governance the green party would absolutely not be better
Yes but only democrats can say that.
Grassroots campaigns for small local government positions building gradual power for progressives to replace them. Do your part.
I'm sure this will fix the frustration of people who already live in deeply progressive states.
I live in Oakland, California. Our recently-former mayor was just charged with corruption for taking bribes to get into office by promising contracts to moneyed interests. I'd sure like a Bernie type of person in charge of my city.
Is CA deeply progressive? Sorta; it's viewed that way by a lot of people. Our AG is one of the ones fighting the Trump admin. Are we fucked regardless? I'd say yes. Your comment displays a lack of awareness of how bad things are.
ok, you win! this is by far the smartest response. everyone else is like lets tear shit down without an actual plan of replacing at the same scale.
Join PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation)
Pumpkin Spice Latte?
Party for Socialism and Liberation
Bad faith, I see
I've actually lived under this brand of "socialism". Have you?
(I think I've got the answer to this question)
At this point, we do need to burn the Democratic Party to ashes. We need to put it out of its misery and let It needs to go the way of the Whigs. Some things simply can't be repaired.
There have been many countries caught in this same authoritarian trap that we're in now. And one common lesson is that you need to give up on the captured opposition if you want to have any hope of actually ending the authoritarian regime.
Democrats are going to lose again in 2028. They're going to yet again nominate a corporate centrist and yet again try the failed policy of appealing to Republican suburbanites. That's all these clowns know.
How many times do they have to lose elections before we give up on these fucking losers? They lost in 2016, they lost in 2024, and they would have lost in 2020 if it weren't for Covid.
The only reason to vote for Democrats is a pragmatic approach - they're better than the alternative. But they don't actually have that pragmatic argument anymore, and they haven't for a long time. They've been completely unelectable for a decade at this point.
They're a party of losers. Just absolute, irredeemable losers. They are fundamentally incapable of winning a presidential election now. They just don't have it in them.
We need to let them go. It's ritual self-mutilation to keep trying to prop up the dead corpse that is the Democratic party. It's dead man. It's time to let it go.
nice, even more self-mutilation talk. lets remove the opposition without offering a viable alternative. that'll show it to these fascist pigs...
(i've lived this shit through too. it hasn't panned out yet either)
If you REALLY want to receive some righteous hate, criticize the people who boycotted voting because none of the choices measured up to their standards. People will defend the moral correctness of refusing to vote more than they'll defend their right to vote.
Most states were really spoiled for choices that election, too. I think that there were a dozen candidates on my ballot!
If you don't like either R or D, then don't vote for them. Vote for somebody else. If everybody who didn't vote had voted for an alternative or independent candidate instead, that would've been HUGE.
Yeah and how are things turning out for Palestinians and trans people? Do you think if the US pulled support for Isreal the fighting in Gaza would have stopped? Isreal would have turned to another country for their help and the US would have lost access to their intelligence in the middle east. A loss for the US and a gain for Russia or China. Neither choice is a good one one for the Palestinians. With the Democrats Netanyahu was on a leash, with Trump the leash is off. They are screwed as are anyone in the US who isn't white and straight. White Supremacists in other western countries are emboldened. Putin and Xi are laughing.
Good lord, Democrats are delusional
The Democratic Party got wallopped in the last election because they stood up for marginalized. They got trounced in 2010 because they fought to provide access to healthcare to those who couldn't get it. Biden tried to forgive student loans and young people couldn't bother to show up to the pols in 2022. Lazy edge lord potheads don't show up to vote
They lost in 2024 because they couldn't address the economy and kept sending billions to Israel as it was committing a very public genocide lol, not because they stood up for people.
Yeah that's probably why the GOP ran non stop ads about transvestites playing in school sports.
The largest plurality (29%) of people who voted for Biden in 2020 but stayed home in 2024 said that Gaza was their biggest reason for not voting. The Democrats aren't considering pulling their support for Israel, but they have been fighting internally over being less supportive trans people. The idea that they lost because they just wouldn't stop fighting for marginalized people is just not connected to reality, and it's very possible they'll be standing up for even less people by 2026.
Could you spare a link to that 29%? I'm curious
This article covers it, but it unfortunately doesn't link to the actual poll. I first learned it from a news podcast, so I can't point you to the original source.
That was enough to find a link to the poll. Thanks!
And when pushed on it, the Democrats backed off instead of defending them. This should have won them the election by your logic, but it didn't. Could it be your logic is flawed?
Good lord, blueMAGA faithful really have taken leave from reality entirely