And I mean, the Democratic party doesn't exist in a vacuum. If you don't try to change anything, of course the awful "moderates" stay in charge. But it is possible to overtake them, just look at Mamdani. But some people won't even try that because "it's a lost case"…
He now holds the primary attendance record in NYC. It was only 30% of eligible voters, up from 21% in the last election. That’s literally all it takes. We just need to show the fuck up.
Congressional primaries see less than 15% attendance. We’ve been letting retirees pack our ballots with centrists for 40 years, then complain about our choices in the general elections. We wouldn’t be calling for term limits if we consistently participated in primaries.
No "progressive" will have an answer for you on this. Voting isn't the answer, blah blah blah. But it seems no one ever really tried. Otherwise maybe they'd just organize people into voting in every primary.
No "progressive" will have an answer for you on this. Voting isn't the answer, blah blah blah. But it seems no one ever really tried. Otherwise maybe they'd just organize people into voting in every primary.
Mamdani also won the primaries because Harris/Biden and the DNC being punished in the presidential election weakened them just enough that they couldn't strangle Mamdani politically anymore. Not that they didn't and still try.
The DNC could not have offered him less support in his primary campaign. He won over the city with 50k volunteers going door-to-door, a strong social media campaign, and his focus on the concerns of the working class New Yorker.
And Kamala losing galvanized that volunteer effort. Mamdani would not have won the primary if Kamala were currently sitting in the White House. Kamala losing did huge damage to the brand of every corporate Democrat. Kamala winning would have showed that that kind of candidate is still viable. Cuomo would have coasted to an easy victory.
"vote blue no matter who" is peak martyrdom politics.
Do you know why Mamdani won the primaries? Because he actually promises change. The argument wasn't to never vote Democrats. The argument was to punish them unless they produce a decent candidate.
If Harris wasnt punished, the DNC that is fighting Mamdani by and large would have been to strong and most likely had prevented Mamdani.
“vote blue no matter who” is peak martyrdom politics.
"Martyrdom politics is when you want to prevent fascists from murdering people instead of embracing it in the hopes that it will cause the people's hearts to spontaneously fill with l'Internationale after seeing how nobly marginalized groups are murdered!"
Uh, okay.
Do you know why Mamdani won the primaries?
Because NYC has enough progressives to elect a progressive in a Dem primary, and progressives decided to actually turn out for once?
If Harris wasnt punished, the DNC that is fighting Mamdani by and large would have been to strong and most likely had prevented Mamdani.
Did you just forget the lesson of Nuremberg? You're supposed to punish people who commit crimes against humanity. Doesn't matter what party they belong to. Doesn't matter what other good they might be capable of doing. You must have been a huge fan of Operation Paperclip. After all, we couldn't hang those evil Nazi scientists, we can use their talents!
The Democrats support Fascist commiting genocide in Palestine.
Did you follow any of the primary debates? How all the other DNC candidates sucked up to Israel how they would go there first? How the Zionist lobby rabidly spouted accusations of Antisemitism against Mamdani?
If Harris/Biden,who declared themselves loyal Zionists had won, these campaigns would have hit even stronger.
It is the fact that people understood the genocidial status quo of the party has to end, that gave Mamdani the momentum.
The Democrats support Fascist commiting genocide in Palestine.
Luckily, you threw your support behind the fascists who want the Zionists to commit even more genocide in Palestine, creating glorious martyrs for some vaguely leftist cause in the US that never seems to actually rear its head!
This is definitely not martyrdom politics though!
Any number of dead Palestinians, after all, is worth you feeling smug showing the shitlibs what for.
If Harris/Biden,who declared themselves loyal Zionists had won, these campaigns would have hit even stronger.
It is the fact that people understood the genocidial status quo of the party has to end, that gave Mamdani the momentum.
lmao
Yes, that's it. The mayor of New York was elected on the strength of his foreign policy positions.
The point is that socialism cannot be achieved by electoral means. At best, if the masses in the street really pressure those in power, you get social democracy. That being said the choice for Americans was neoliberalism or fascism. The reasons for fascism winning go deeper than "the left was to whinny", but that's beside the point being made here.
There are goals before socialism that ARE achievable electorally which are still worth pursuing in the meantime, like stalling fascists, or prevent genocide of immigrants and queer folks
Apparently that very controversial position makes us shitlibs instead of people who would like to not be abducted by unmarked secret police and taken to a black site while we try to organize socialist political movements.
Playing devil's advocate here. It's probably much easier to grow a resistance against fascism than neoliberalism, as neoliberalism is comfortable enough for most people.
People here keep using that word uncomprehendingly like they're a dumb AI matching & associating on the root liberal.
Neoliberalism is free market capitalism, a conservative ideology embraced by Margaret Thatcher & Ronald Reagan.
Democrats are for many things: environmental regulation, social safety nets, market regulation, spending on social programs, labor protections, consumer protections, etc.
That's a far cry from free, unregulated markets.
The Democratic platform is a far cry from proper safety nets and regulations.
Every Democratic president since Clinton was a neoliberal. Now that Trump is going with protectionism, they are in essence more neoliberal than the Republicans.
In the most recent elections, Kamala talked good shit initially, until her corporate allies talked her down, and like the good little neoliberal she is she started sputtering out market-based "solutions" to everything.
Every Democratic president since Clinton was a neoliberal.
Nah: they passed the ACA, expanded Medicaid, passed Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms, started the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, tried to ban non-compete clauses, tried to enact rules for "click to cancel" subscriptions & end junk fees, standardized disclosure of fees for finance services, voted in the FTC to enforce right to repair, sustained social programs.
That & much more happened after Clinton (whereas Republicans defunded Medicaid, added restrictions, defunded SNAP, defunded school lunch programs, rolled much of this back).
The ACA is not that different from Romneycare or the old Republican HEART bill that was proposed in opposition to Clinton's attempts at passing universal healthcare. It remains a market-based solution.
The establishment of the CFPB, like the passing of the ACA, was a stripped-down pro-market version of what could have been.
In terms of foreign policy, the Democrats have enthusiastically supported and continued to support the globalisation of capital through such agreements as NAFTA and continued various imperialist adventures (Obama's use of drones is legendary).
In terms of workers rights, a lot of the bullshit from the Reagan years is still alive and well, unquestioned by the mainstream of either big party (it is frequently said on Lemmy and elsewhere that nearly everything wrong with modern America can be traced back to Reagan). Antitrust measures remain largely unenforced.
Stuff like this is well within the preview of other neoliberal parties like Fianna Fail/Fine Gael or the CDU. They too have limited market-based "solutions" to social problems. Just tax carbon emissions and the market will fix climate change. Stimulate more housebuilding and homelessness will be solved. This pattern continues.
Only during Biden's term was there some deviation from the old formula, in the form of stimulus checks and more investment in infrastructure, along with some support of trade unions. These were good steps in a shift towards the social-liberal wing of the party. Kamala leaned into this early in the campaign but then towards the end she decided it was better to get the endorsement of people like Dick Cheney.
The matter is simple.
Yes or no: are they for market regulation & intervention?
Yes.
Therefore, they're not neoliberal.
You can hue & cry all you want, but words mean things.
If you want a word that means not anti-market, then find that word.
Neoliberal isn't it.
Your criticisms of those social programs & market regulations only amount to claiming they don't go far enough even though they definitely are market regulations & interventions.
If they weren't social programs & market regulations, then the Republicans wouldn't have anything to cut & deregulate as they are doing: the current administration is rescinding consumer & labor protections proposed by the previous administration & they're restricting & defunding major public programs (Medicaid, SNAP, medical research, public health programs, national weather service, public broadcasting).
While you seem to take these programs & regulations for granted, treat them like nothing, & act like they weren't a significant undertaking that could only barely scrape through our political obstacle course, they make a significant difference in people's lives.
What Republicans offer with their senseless trade war & cuts isn't protections to the working class, but the illusion of protections to some domestic businesses while exploiting other domestic businesses (reliant on international trade), labor (losing protections from defunded regulatory agencies & programs), consumers (shafted with consumer protection losses, tariff costs, less affordable goods & services) & while transferring income from the poor to the rich.
Calling market regulation & social programs neoliberal indicates you don't know the meaning of words.
Market intervention & regulation isn't free, unregulated market, ie, neoliberalism.
Any policy in support of a mixed economy with regulated markets suffices to not be neoliberal.
Comrade, the only people who are for complete nonintervention are right-"libertarians".
To call the Democratic ideal a mixed market is kinda wild. Nearly everything that could be privatized already is, besides perhaps the post office.
I will not pretend that the current programs are not significant or that cutting them will not kill people. But the fact of the matter is that it's peanuts compared to the social-democracy that reigned in Western Europe for most of the Cold War or even the social-liberalism of the pre-Reagan US.
I am not sure what your talk of the Republicans has to do with this. I am certain they're not really neolibs though. They're fascists, or close to it.
We need never be afraid of the vote of informed Americans. It is only the ignorant voter we have to fear, ignorant politically, no matter how fine his house or how expensive his schooling. Such people have never experienced democracy; they have merely enjoyed its benefits. It is hard to explain what democracy is; it is necessary to participate in it to understand it.
The former Berlin businessman I referred to earlier told me that he blamed his own group, people with the time and the money and the opportunity to know better, for what happened to Germany. "We ignored Hitler," he said. "We considered him an unimportant fellow, not quite a gentleman, not of our own class. We considered it just a little bit vulgar to bother with him, to bother with politics at all."
They thought of the government as "They." The only possible route to a clear conscience in politics is to accept political responsibility, either as an active member of the party in power or as an equally active member of the loyal opposition.
If you don’t try to change anything, of course the awful “moderates” stay in charge.
Trying to change thing is exactly what the Uncommitted movement tried to do. And while they failed to move the needle in the 2024 election, in 2028, the Democrats will have to think a lot more about whether they want to keep losing in exchange for supporting genocide.
Remember, it's always "the most important election ever." Every election is billed as that. But sometimes you need to be willing to accept a short-term loss in exchange for long-term progress. Myopically focusing on just the election right in front of you is how we got into this mess in the first place.
Kamala losing gave space for someone like Mamdani to win. It's clear that corporate DNC centrism is a toxic losing brand. If Kamala had won, it is extremely unlikely that Mamdani would have won the NYC primary.
Trying to change thing is exactly what the Uncommitted movement tried to do
Where did I say anything bad about them? It was about the primary and not about the general election.
I actually get your point in theory as you could see elections in a game theory type of setting. The problem is that the last elections have been "the most important election ever" because well… they have gotten increasingly more significant and important. 2016 allowed Trump to shift the Supreme Court long-term and change decades-old consensus. It alone almost got him to do a coup. 2020 could have very well literally enabled that, and 2024 well… just look at everything that is happen. This is not the beginning of fascism, that's well some steps inside.
I get the theory, and if the opponent was a McCain I could even understand your thought. But if it's the election of 1930, where every vote counts to defeat the bigger evil, it's not the time to sit it out for future benefits.
You know how before the elections we say that it's not the time to nitpick the Democratic Party because it's more important to have it win so that the fascist won't win?
Well, now we are not before elections, which means that now it is the time to nitpick the Democratic Party.
I feel like a lot of people are doubling down now because the Democrats on the one hand show utter incompetence and unwillingness to fight Fascism in the US and on the other hand keep up their support for Fascism and genocide by Israel.
Everyone understands in their subconcious but many deny in their conciousness that things will not get better without a struggle. So going down the "i did harm reduction, you were all wrong, lalalala" route makes them feel like they did something and helps to not come to terms that they have been strung along by the Democrats for all those years.
"Sure, I could have voted against murdering everyone in the bus, but I'm only one person, so what's the point?" isn't exactly the position I would expect. Or, for that matter, respect.
The analogy is of stopping a vehicle by hitting the brakes.
You object that one individual has all the control in the situation.
I point out that if it the brakes were only hit by a vote of everyone in the vehicle, it wouldn't be less vile to abstain from voting than it would be to abstain from hitting the fucking brakes.
No, because the squeaking sound would still happen in the case of the crash if it was.
You didn't avert Palestinian genocide by murdering other minorities. You literally opted to make it worse. Congratulations. The hundreds of thousands of additional dead and displaced Palestinians thank you for your concern.
This is such a tired narrative. You guys really want to focus on the leftists when half the country voted for an authoritarian?
Every movement has its radical fringe. Virtue signaling either your ideological purity or your solidarity with the only viable opposition are equally feeble attempts at clinging to a notion of victory in the face of total defeat.
EDIT: I wasn't expecting this comment to generate discussion but since it did, let me elaborate on what I meant by "total defeat." The defeat is not an electoral loss, it's the fact that we have relinquished so much political power that all we have left is voting for one of a set of compromised politicians every few years. It's a tired argument because it assumes that it's possible to vote our way out of the mess we're in, and it simply isn't. We need to attack the point of production because it's where the ruling class derives its power. And arguing about our sham elections is getting us nowhere.
Wonder where all those people are? Immediately after the election for several months lemmy was full of people blaming how shitty things turned out on anyone but themselves. “It’s the Democrats fault I didn’t vote even though I know trump is a fascist POS!”
NOBODY thinks the dems are great. They’re fucked up.
But they’re not Alligator Auschwitz fucked up. They’re not screw the country with tariffs fucked up. They’re not ICE Gestapo fucked up.
But that’s not the non-voters fault because this is better than some neo-lib winning.
Do you have any evidence that the next democratic president will close Trump's new immigration camps? Because they didn't the last time. They kept all of Trump's aggressive immigration programs and even expanded them. If history is any guide, the next democratic president will be just as cruel to immigrants as Trump is now. Biden didn't let up at all from Trump's cruel treatment of immigrants. Democrats just adopted the Republican immigration polices wholesale.
Obviously the Republicans, but we're not voting republican we're voting Democrat right? So why the fuck don't they reverse the policies we hate? Parlimanatarian says we can't :ccc oh our friends the Republicans won't vote for it, we have to be bIpArTiSaN
we’re not voting republican we’re voting Democrat right?
Many people are abstaining instead of voting for either party or a write in.
I don't like the idea of a 3rd party president without 3rd party representation in the senate/house/local government positions first, but I'd prefer that people vote 3rd party over not voting at all because they don't like the 2 party system.
I just do not believe a majority of leftists are refusing to vote, while at the same time understanding why they'd be dissilusioned with the "only sane option" that has so clearly demonstrated they do not actually have the will to make the changes they campaign on. Which results in a swing back the other direction by independents giving Republicans power, who WILL actually use any means necessary to put in place their horrible agenda.
Only 73% of the voting aged population is registered. Only 65% of the voting population voted. I'm not sure what the ideological breakdown of non voters is, but I'm positive leftists are in there.
Build out the infrastructure for fascism fucked up
Genocide supporting fucked up
Refusing to fight against MAGA fucked up
Taking money from the poor and working class, and giving it to the rich fucked up
Bragging about how many people they deported fucked up
Not giving people fair immigration trials fucked up
Some of us think that those things are kind of a big deal. Are Democrats better than Trump? Sure. Is a Neo-lib better than Trump? Sure, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to vote for a party that openly fights against the things I believe in, like:
Sure, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to vote for a party that openly fights against the things I believe in
Thanks, the lives of marginalized folk thank you from inside Alligator Auschwitz. I'm so glad you just couldn't bring yourself to vote against the literal Nazis.
If the Democrat Party continues the way it has, they will look exactly like the current Republican party in the next decade. Republicans will be full puritanical. Supporters of the DNC will still be supporting the lesser evil. The only solution is for intelligent voters to take the stick of fear out of their asses and go full support for better candidates in primaries or other parties. The people who continue to run our two party system will not give up their power.
If the Democrat Party continues the way it has, they will look exactly like the current Republican party in the next decade.
If they see that the majority of the voting population is voting for Republicans, it make sense that Democrats will adopt more Republican-leaning policies. They don't care about serial non voters. They care about swing voters and their voting base.
It's magical thinking to assume otherwise. People who don't want either party are too lazy to organize even a protest vote write-in name.
And how has that been working out? The Democrats keep losing because they keep abandoning their voting base, while trying to pull in Republican voters. Republican voters aren't generally going to start voting for Democrats, but there's a giant pile of leftist waiting for a party that actually fights for them. Maybe the Democrats should try appealing to them instead.
They do. Check out Mamdani, who had record-breaking voters turn out. Remember FDR? They voted so hard for him, that Congress had to set up term-limits. It turns out that this "Leftists don't vote meme" is bullshit. Leftists just don't want to vote for Right-Wingers, which is why they never show up for Democrats.
If the Democrat Party continues the way it has, they will look exactly like the current Republican party in the next decade.
This is exactly the same blinkered view that was peddled in 2000, and in 2010, by useful idiots for the Republican Party. Do you not know how far the Dems have fucking come in the past 30 years, both socially and economically?
Maybe listening to people who think worsening the genocide in Gaza is Left Praxis(tm) because it hurts Shitlibs like AOC and Bernie aren't a good resource for American politics?
The only thing I can think of that improved socially is federal recognition of same sex marriage, but that was actually set in motion by state level judicial rulings. I can't think of any economic improvements.
I think you mean fighting unions, and failing to deliver on the less-than-bare-minimum that he set out to forgive on student debt. It wasn't sabatoged, it was because he was too busy boming innocent people, backing a genocide, and writing checks to his rich friends to get things done for the voters.
Just one of the things they say they'll do for popularity but their 'big' donors don't support, so they compromise or fail heartlessly. Sabotage would require opposition. The two parties have been playing the extortion game far too long.
But the next Democratic president isn't going to close that place. Likely they will expand it. That's what happened with the last Democratic president.
Oh, were you planning on electing Republicans again and backing NIMBY politicians and then being surprised when they act like Republicans and NIMBYs, like when Obama made repeated efforts to close Gitmo?
I'm sure the kids that the US bombed are super grateful that you were so eager to chose genocide over winning an election. I'm so glad you just couldn't bring yourself to vote against literal child-killers
I’m sure the kids that the US bombed are super grateful that you were so eager to chose genocide over winning an election. I’m so glad you just couldn’t bring yourself to vote against literal child-killers
Don't worry, I'm sure you know what's best for Palestinians far more than... [checks notes] Palestinians
Really it reads similar to the disaffected anti-establishment arguments that some folks in the US put forward to defend their support of Trump - with the difference that Palestinians 1) do not vote in US elections and 2) have really good fucking reasons to cling to hope in any kind of change at all.
Not that Trump ever offered that in any way that would help people, but I cannot blame them for grasping at straws. Most seem aware of the fact that US imperialism is inevitable either way.
Ah yes, Truly Enlightened Voters like you realize that Trump having performed Zionist bootlicking above and beyond what even the Republicans, the more Zionist of the two pro-Zionist parties in our society, were willing to do in his last term and promising an even greater expansion of support to the murderous apartheid state, is actually No Difference At All with the Dem candidate backing away from unconditional Zionism.
God, I'm so glad these Both Sides Bad takes are so prevelent here, it would be really awful if it was all cope to avoid the fact that you helped literal Nazis win who have been helping the Nazis in Israel to a far greater degree than the other Zionists.
You don't vote for everything at once. You vote on what's on the ballot. Palestine wasn't on the ballot. Concentration camps, fascism, economic meltdown, removal of the social safety, women's rights, and the rule of law were.
You decided that you were okay with all that bullshit because of something else unrelated. And look - Israel is acting worse than ever now because Trump doesn't even pretend to be against genocide.
You chose this, and you should lose sleep over it.
No, I was not OK with all of that bullshit, which is why I voted against it. If you are going to disagree with me, that's fine. But I'll start taking you seriously when you stop making up stuff about me.
You just called out people for not voting against the Dems in the comment I was replying to.
It's easier to keep your talking points consistent when you aren't a troll who has to keep track of which lies they're telling in which conversation threads.
Well, I called out people who proudly voted for genocide and bombing children. I wanted the Democrats to fight against "Concentration camps, fascism, economic meltdown, removal of the social safety..." and fight for "....women's rights, and the rule of law...", but they weren't. The Democrats were doing the opposite.
Yes, those would have been better if Kamala had won.
Economic meltdown, removal of the social safety, rule of law
I'm not convinced those would have been fixed if she would have won, as they were not fixed by any of her Democratic predecessors. The same predecessors that she made every indication she would follow.
The system sucks but you're never getting any of the things you want from it without the Democratic party. Leftists should be taking over the party instead of abandoning it. Or letting themselves get played into abandoning it by those who want to disempower the left. The system guarantees that we get two parties and we're not going to take the GOP so the Dems are really it. It sucks but it is what is, you can't wield the state without first wielding one of the two parties. There is no other realistic path to power under the system.
We're not going to get the things that we want from the Democratic party. They've been overwhelmingly clear that they would rather keep losing elections than give us any of those things. Why would I keep investing in a party that openly and strongly tells me "No, go fuck yourself. We're gonna keep bombing children" ?
If you want to try and fix the Democrats, then go get em tiger. I have no problems with others trying to fix it from the inside. But I'm not wasting my time with them.
I voted for Harris, am I allowed to be mad that the Democrats are still gung ho about Israeli genocide yet? Or do I need to shout blue no matter who for another few decades?
Not voting and voting for trump were both stupid choices. But attacking people who didn't vote for trump instead of those who did is fucking bananas and I don't get the point of this. Are we expecting a resounding vote in 2028 for Harris again is going to fix everything? Come the fuck on.
Being pissed about Israeli genocide and thinking that it's okay to welcome in Nazis who promise to intensify the genocide if you feel really strongly that reducing genocide isn't good enough are two entirely different concepts.
Asspatting the latter is a request for them to play purity politics if we ever get a chance to vote again. And if we dig ourselves out of this fucking hole, the last thing I want to see is for us to jump right back into it because "The Dems aren't opposing genocide enough! We NEED to let the pro-genocide candidate win and murder a few million extra people to teach the DNC a lesson!"
People were saying up to a year before the election that they wouldnt vote democrat unless they stopped supporting genocide. Maybe if reductionists like you hadn't been shouting over them calling them russian trolls and pledging your undying support to the democratic candidate no matter who they are, then they would have seen how it was affecting their polls and pivoted. Instead you continue to prove to them that they can get away with anything. I dont uderstand the obtuse refusal to see that laying down an ultimatum and drawing a line in the sand is the only bargaining power you have, even if you dont intend to follow through with it, it wouldve been worth withholding support from biden and harris as long as possible.
True but it's a minor point. Even if every single lefty held the line it wouldn't have made a difference. The people who didn't vote were mostly disengaged normal people and the blame for that is squarely on the Democrats for sucking absolute shit on purpose because of big money in politics.
Have some perspective, pick better fights with worse people. I personally find it extremely unmoving when the left chastises people over politics so good job emulating one of their worst and least politically effective qualities.
Instead, I humbly suggest you try to inspire a shred of hope among the cynical and apathetic - but deep down actually very cool people of the Earth🌠
I feel like takes like this come from people with no long term memory. Do you remember the pro-palestinian crowd begging Kamala Harris to even pretend like she'd do something to help? And she basically told them to vote for Trump? Blame the Democratic party for choosing to be fascism-light instead of actual resistance.
If the "online lefties" were so powerful a block perhaps Dem's leadership should have courted their vote. If they were so minor a block that "online lefties" should be ignored then you're targeting the wrong people.
But you know this already, I told you before the election that way to win the "no genocide" vote isn't to try convince them to vote "yes genocide". It's to try convince the leaders to stop supporting genocide.
This post is the same punching down shit you were doing before the election.
Are we talking about the same Democratic Party who put forward Kamala "I believe we should follow the law" Harris as their only candidate for president?
How you people manage to convince yourselves that a Democratic Party win would achieve anything at all for trans rights, is beyond belief!
Honestly i get both sides of this, like im in the UK and probably not going to vote Labour next election because theyve gone really out of their way to show the left how much they hate us, despite the fact its probably going to come down to Labour or reform, but the difference is here smaller parties are actually somewhat viable. So i think in the US it does make sense to vote Dem no matter what in the actual election, but put your effort into getting actual leftits on the ballot in the first place like Mamdani.
I'm getting pretty tired of people victimizing themselves to such an absurd level while people are actually dying because they've been kicked off medicaid.
That feeling when Democrats are turning on trans people. Pretending the Democrats will save us as a Fool's errand. Pretending that trans people wouldn't be on the chopping block if the Democrats had federal office is naive.
Some Democrats, reeling from Republican attacks tying their party to transgender rights issues, are privately furious at their leaders and explicitly warning they need a better strategy going into 2026.
"Blue team hates me (please ignore the significant successes of socialists in primaries where progressives actually bother to fucking show up), therefore, it's okay to let marginalized groups get murdered!"
Sorry that a core tenet of leftism to so many people like you is "The lives of the marginalized have to be EARNED to get MY support"
"Blue Circus wasn't ENTERTAINING enough for me to vote against death camps for immigrants"
If both sides stopped taking online potshots at each other and recognized that both groups are willing to utilize the second amendment in support of each other from the government, we'd be in a much better place.
If both sides stopped taking online potshots at each other and recognized that both groups are willing to utilize the second amendment in support of each other from the government
Bruh, neither group has used the second amendment even in defense of themselves in any appreciable numbers. We have, what, one leftist who dared to open carry and got shot for it?
Completely missed my point. Stop blaming the voters and start blaming the politicians who refuse to put regular people's lives above the wishes of their wealthy benefactors.
These people are children utterly incapable of holding leaders responsible for their actions. It's just a sports game to them. All that matters is that their color wins.
Then make it easier for people to show up. Have locations open for a whole week. Universal mail in ballots. Compulsory voting. Hell, why not digitize it like Estonia did 20 years ago.
Voters aren't the problem. The problem is voter suppression. Partially by FPTP, partially by our oppressive economy. Stop blaming the many and start blaming the few
I mean, I fully agree voting needs to be much easier. Vote by mail, whatever. No argument at all.
But no- you can't explain 90 MILLION people not voting based on voter suppression. That's just an absolute BS excuse.
Too many people are lazy and too many have been told "oh it's the DNC", etc. It's not. Primaries have like 30% turnout AT BEST. 90 million didn't show up to vote against a fascist in the general.
People need to be told- "hey, it's you. YOU need to go vote." They've been absolved of responsibility time and time again. When you tell people that it's not their fault then they have zero incentive to correct any kind of behavior.
You sound like an abusive parent. Probably should seek therapy. You also reminded me of this well worded Tumblr post. Here's the text
Everyone will not just
If your solution to some problem relies on “If everyone would just…” then you do not have a solution. Everyone is not going to just. At [no] time in the history of the universe has everyone just, and they’re not going to start now.
Again. Stop blaming the many, start blaming the few.
If your "choices" are stage three stomach and stage four lung cancer, you shouldn't choose a cancer. You should start chemotherapy.
All US elites and the political system are cancer. You need to fundamentally change the political system and both cancers are fighting it right now. The lung cancer and the stomach cancer aren't enemies of each other. They are metastasis of the same disease.
You know, you dont have to keep playing the game of the dealer that is stacked against you. If the game only lets you loose, you need to toss over the table.
You don't have to stop playing the game to work to change the game/dealer. You could vote for harm reduction and try to overthrow the government at the same time. Hedge your bets.
No noo noooo, stay online, keep posting, keep complaining about "the left" and whoever that may include. If we shame enough people on lemmy finally we can shift the narrative and get our no matter who blue in to, idk, reduce funding on ice to half of the new inflated Trump budget.
Voting isn't all you can do, and we're here now. If all you're doing is yelling about an election from half a year ago and don't organize, your just as performative as the people you trash talk.
"not voting because the dems are complicit" was always gop propaganda to keep people from voting dem
the problem is that seemingly all of the news channels are owned by the gop and whoever they bought. that makes people manipulated. what to do about that?
I don't get it. First the centrists were called leftist, just because they are left of right. Now stalinists are considered leftist, even though they have way more in common with fascists than even the centrists.
It's a little late now that there's camps, sure. If people had refused harder to put up with shitty democrats in the past, like.. decades past.. then the dems would've lost to past republicans who weren't quite dictators.
In that alternate past where the dems actually lose for being center-right corporatists, they would've had to get some kind of spine or plan or... something.. earlier to protect our public news and education from authoratarian misinformation and maybe prevented this bullshit.
In this current world that we actually have though... I mean you saw we elected Biden, right? And you saw how much good that did -- right? We need somebody on our side with some teeth and rolling over for milquetoast donation collectors is not going to get it for us.
If genocide isn't a red line for you then you don't have red lines. You will literally vote for rounding up trans people and gassing them as long as the opposing candidate wants to torture them before execution because "it's the lesser evil"
My not voting for democrats had zero impact because theres no popular vote.
I'm trans and I spent all of 2024 trying to point out that the Democrats were making a catastrophic mistake by continuing to arm the genocidal settlers and expecting everyone to forget just in time for the election. That fell on deaf ears. Here we are now with the consequences clear to see and all I can conclude is that some people will never learn.
I sincerely doubt that anyone was 'empowered' by that. Trump had a playbook he was going to follow from the start and the Democrats surrendered the election by refusing to meaningfully restrain Israel in any way.
Biden said he was going to be a transitional, 1-term president. Then around January of 2024, his staff start reporting that he wants to race.
And then the absolutely mind boggling handling of the race from that point on: failing to advertise their wins, ignoring the public's pain points, and transitioning from the incumbent to another candidate with no primary process, among others.
The Democrats played their part by absolutely doing nothing to stop Trump's momentum. They could have at least fought back by LYING to their base and leftists to rally up, but they even failed at that.
Pretend you're a Republican politician that wants to enact project 2025 which is unpopular with your constituents. Does the guy leading the charge winning the popular vote give you more or less plausible deniability when it comes to your next campaign and you're trying to distance yourself from it? How can't you see "he won the popular vote" being a great excuse for them on every level to support him? And the opposition has to excuse not supporting the "popular" platform. If you're trying to rationalize not voting as it not mattering just stop, you fucked up but it's ok, don't let the cognitive dissonance help them
If you’re trying to rationalize not voting as it not mattering just stop, you fucked up but it’s ok, don’t let the cognitive dissonance help them
I watched Bush get elected while losing the popular vote and he invaded two countries. You are welcome to think that Trump losing the popular vote would be meaningful, I don't think it matters.
If you’re trying to rationalize not voting as it not mattering just stop, you fucked up but it’s ok, don’t let the cognitive dissonance help them
If you're trying to sway me with this, just stop you fucked up, but it's ok.
I watched Bush get elected while losing the popular vote and he invaded two countries
Did I say Dems are good and bad things wouldn't happen under them? Do you just not understand the concept of degrees of effect? What a disingenuous thing to bring up
If you’re trying to sway me with this, just stop you fucked up, but it’s ok.
What even are you trying to say? You're indecipherable from satire
Vote for the candidate you want in the PRIMARY. In the general, it’s a good idea to vote against the one that’s a complete facist/dictator/whatever. If you’re trans and you didn’t vote Harris in the general, you voted against your own interests and the interests of other LGBTQ+ folks and should be giving serious thought to that.
Under our bullshit election system my vote had zero impact, there is no popular vote for president. There was no primary because the democrats pretended that Joe Biden's brain was still working until it was far too late to have any primary.
If you’re trans and you didn’t vote Harris in the general, you voted against your own interests and the interests of other LGBTQ+ folks and should be giving serious thought to that.
I voted for the communists, the entire combined vote for all third parties would not have changed how my state went.
As far as I'm concerned the Democrats are the ones to blame for the situation we are now in, not the people who didn't vote for them.
The number one killer of gay and trans Palestinians is Israel using US weapons. I am opposed to politicians like Biden and Trump and their respective co-conspirators arming and defending genocidal settlers.
I’m a first world campist for… saying that supporting LGBT murder is bad?
No, you are a first world campist because you clearly love genocide, killing LGBT people and capitalism as long as it's team blue doing it. Just making observations based on the stuff I see you regularly regurgitate onto the internet.
The number one killer of gay and trans Palestinians is Israel using US weapons. I am opposed to politicians like Biden and Trump and their respective co-conspirators arming and defending genocidal settlers.
Luckily, you're 100% in support of the #1 killer of gay and trans Yemenis and of gay Iranians! Go Good Camp!
No, you are a first world campist because you clearly love genocide, killing LGBT people and capitalism as long as it’s team blue doing it.
lmao
Feel free to quote me on any of that.
Sorry that you think opposition to Israel doesn't count if I didn't support Nazis murdering people of color at home and abroad, and the murder of LGBT folk by religious fanatics. Sorry that you're so enamored with genociding LGBT folk that you'll support any fascist you can find to achieve it.
Any other sieg heils you'd like to throw out, like "A Curse Upon The Jews"?
Your moral fortitude will be appreciated when we share a camp/ You understand the lesson they'll learn is just "the people are fascist". Why the fuck would they try to cater to voters who can't be relied on? Look how piss scared the establishment is because Mamdani won a primary? Yeah, the Presidency didn't have one because Biden was an idiot and Pelosi blocked it at the last second, enabling genocide at home isn't going to do shit for Palestine or to teach the DNC
I do think "vote blue not matter who" has shown that the current establishment will happily hold the transgendered community hostage to sell out the working class.
Just because people's deaths are only aggregated in statistics. People who die because of a lack of healthcare or commit suicide because of their economic situation, doesn't mean its not also important to fight for. Doesn't make as good of a headline though.
Kamala embraced Trump's border wall, Biden didn't do anything when Netanyahu crossed his "red line", and Obama bailed out the banks while carrying the torch from Bush by conducting the most drone strikes out of any other president.
The Democrats have started moving Rightstarting in the 1990s, not left.
Ultimately, it would be more productive for the center to yell at the establishment for supporting corruption and unpopular policies rather than turning left.
Look at how much more vitriol there was for a leftist mayoral candidate from the establishment than there was towards the leaders who do nothing while a dictator consolidates power. Apparently, its fine not to vote for a democrat if you personally think it will cause tons of economic damage in this case, but not the other.
The entire NY mayor “controversy” has been astronomically blown out of proportion by bad actors. The vast majority of Democratic voters in the rest of the country don’t give a fuck one way or the other. But it looks great for the Republicans if the Democrats are in-fighting, and on Lemmygrad it looks great if the “establishment” Democrats are losing (never mind that Mamdani would get bodied 100x worse than Kamala on a national stage).
Apparently not voting in America is "voting for Trump", but it's "not voting for Harris".
One can only conclude that either:
Trump was the default in the voting ballot but nobody got told about it.
That "rationale" is a piece of political propaganda meant to exonerate the Democrat Party leadership from their unwillingness actually try and attract voters with actual policies that appeal to them in order to win against Trump, by blaming the very people they didn't even try to appeal to.
republicans/regressives (read nazis) actually get in line and vote for the R next to any name that they've heard in the last week (if not just because it has an R), which means that they actually get shit done (making things worse, but they all get behind it is my point).
On the other hand, democrats/leftists/progressives all sit here and fight one another because of reasons, some good, and some just a little silly in the grand scheme of things. This group doesn't know how to effectively work together to slowly and surely get to the same end goal.
The differences here are why regressives are able to rat fuck an entire nation, collectively, because they don't bicker with each other, their allies, about the smaller details.
The democrats/leftists/progressives are too busy trying to fight hundreds of different problems/battles that would all be solved (eventually, mind you, not right away like we wish it would be) by banding together and keeping the movement momentum going AFTER winning the election.
For an example, gaza and trans rights issues. Both VERY valid issues, and they should be discussed. What happened was those same groups focused way too much on the smaller details instead of the big picture. What SHOULD have happened was we voice our concerns on the issues, vote for the person (at this time, Harris) who had the highest chance of those issues being solved, and then keeping the fire going by continuing to press these concerns to THAT administration.
Look at it this way, even though it is too late: if Kamala had won, you'd be able to sit there and protest any actions that weren't being made towards your/your groups issues, and if we could all get on the same god damned page, you would have more allies who are more at ease with the current admin who could protest with you, because things aren't dire enough for them to focus on them and theirs (read fuck you, got mine). Under the orange buffoon, you can now get deported for protesting anything, let alone trans rights and gaza genocide. So, those allies you could've had are now being deported, killed, or arrested, and that makes others scared to protest with you.
TL;DR: Allowing the nazis to win because democrats/leftists/progressives can't see the bigger picture, and choose to focus on their own issues only (or at the very least, make it their highest priority when we should know that's not how it works, unfortunately) is the reason we have the orange shitler in office right now. This group is trying to fight 100 different battles, while regressives lock step and take away all the good we had achieved, instead of banding together and just doing the literal bare minimum (vote in the "neo-lib"). Full stop.
Its been over a year and people still are freaking out about this? And not the fact that the democrats have basically rolled over at every turn to trump and the GOPs demands?
The dems did not do s good job mobilizing their voter base. A bunch of people didnt like genocide. A bunch of people didnt like Biden. A bunch of people held their nose and voted for him the first time when he said he would get rid of student loans and be a one term president. He reneged on almost every single promise he made. He then committed genocide. People didnt like it. The DNC shoved him and Kamala down everyone's throats instead of having an actual election. They've fucked themselves 3 cycles in a row now and then start complaining about socialists.
They were all vote blue no matter who when it was Biden or Kamala but now Mamdani won in NY and they're all teaming up with the Republicans to stop him. Maybe thats why they keep fucking losing - they dont want to listen to their own base.
What do regular people want? Higher taxes on the rich, more affordable housing and food, Healthcare for all, and good education. All they've done is say well this will hurt billionaires feelings so we cant do it.
I hate that evil Emperor Palpatine. That's why I support Dedra Meero for Emperor. She's a real firecracker that believes in the righteousness of the Empire to maintain order.
Stalinists are not leftists. They're just conservatives cosplaying as leftists, and if you know anything about the actual history of conservatism (not the "respecting traditions" kind), them calling anyone they don't like a "liberal" makes much more sense...
This is exactly right. I frequently call these extremists right wingers because that’s basically what their attitudes amount to. They are right: liberalism leads to fascism. Capitalism is obviously a problem that needs abolishing. These are all things socialists believe because we’re socialists.
The problem is that harm reduction is no small thing. It’s not avoiding a scrape on the knee or having a pool instead of a hose. We’re talking about real human beings who are suffering, to paraphrase Chomsky. How privileged do you need to be to think it’s hardcore communists or nothing?
"Democrats talking about how they totally have to keep backing a genocide, bombing kids, torturing innocent people, screwing over their voter-base, voting the way their rich donors tell them to, in order to win elections"
"Trans people in the US who are 1 electoral loss away from being put in camps"
No, I blame the voters that chose this, and the politicians who ran on it. I also blame the party that built out the infrastucture that fascism is currently using for all of this. I don't blame the ones that voted against it.
But I guess someone thinking that supporting genocide is bad even if you do it while pinky-promising you're a leftist is confusing for someone who bootlicks campist instances that play apologist for the Uyghur and Ukrainian genocides.
"I can't believe the US is giving bombs to Israel! 😤
Time to elect the guy who will send American jets to run sorties on Palestine for Israel directly! 😊"
Christ, you lot would've sat on your asses during WW2 because "The British Empire is bad too!" as Hitler genocided all the minorities he wanted in Europe.
I didn't elect him. In fact, I very proudly voted against that PoS. But please, keep making up facts about me. That sounds super productive, and will totally get me to vote for the genocidal, child-killing party next time around.
Christ, you lot would’ve sat on your asses during WW2 because “The British Empire is bad too!” as Hitler genocided all the minorities he wanted in Europe.
But your whinging about
That sounds super productive, and will totally get me to vote for the genocidal, child-killing party next time around.
Is pointless because you were never going to vote Dem anyway, since you couldn't even bring yourself to vote Dem even for the sake of opposition to the genocide you supposedly care so much about and against literal Nazis.
As a trans person, how dare you use my people's name to justify genocide. Most trans people saw right through that shit, as they realized that a party that was willing to sacrifice one minority group on the pyre would be willing to do so to another. And...well..that's exactly what happened. The same corporate Dems that enabled genocide are now tripping over themselves to eagerly join the rollback of the rights of trans people.
Its mostly solid blue state leftists who refuse to vote dem. Them voting would literally make no difference at all in the national outcome, and when it would have mattered in primaries the democrat party decided they knew better anyway.
Unless you think all the people vocally refusing to vote dem are in swing states, your problem is with the rigged primary and electoral collage system, not leftist in places like california who dont want to support team blue.
Its mostly solid blue state leftists who refuse to vote dem.
That presumes a level of rationality in the electorate which is extremely questionable by the practical results we repeatedly see. Not helped by the fact that many of those who refrained from voting in swing states in 2024 did so, by their own admission, on the strength of left issues and the insufficiently left leaning of the Dem candidate.
Them voting would literally make no difference at all in the national outcome,
For a group that constantly goes on about the importance of abstaining from voting as a means of delegitimizing the results of an election, they don't seem to realize, by your characterization, the value of the importance of demonstration of an overwhelming popular vote defeat of the 'winning' candidate as delegitimizing the results of an election.
and when it would have mattered in primaries the democrat party decided they knew better anyway.
What.
Unless you think all the people vocally refusing to vote dem are in swing states, your problem is with the rigged primary and electoral collage system, not leftist in places like california who dont want to support team blue.
Fucking Christ, I don't know how many times I have to say this, but there can be more than one problem at once. Yes, really!
These days, most of the voices saying they'll leave a centrist presidential candidate hanging are fake. BlueSky got brigaded by fake posters with this message for about five days a little bit ago.
I voted for Jill Stein in 2016 and regret it. I don't think I'm the only one. I think that next time around, we'll have a stronger primary strategy and fewer walkouts if we fail.
FWIW I agree with you. Anyone who abstains from voting because neither side perfectly aligns with their own politics is an idiot and, in a first past the post system like the USA, actively helping the party that they most disagree with.
Unless you literally mean "being put in camps", you shouldn't use this as a metaphor for less dangerous events.
Also ... why do you even think it would be better otherwise. A reminder - the other mainstream option was that party that didn't even care about picking a popular enough candidate. Almost a kingdom inside the nation. They literally imitated Idiocracy, thinking that'll be popular.
Anyway, as someone in Russia - I both appreciate that you over there still have some democracy and wish for you to see the fake parts of it as early as possible.
I would usually agree with you, but your argument died with the Democratic Party “moderates” refusing to compromise in NY too.
Fucking what
Mamdani is not going to win without Dem moderates, because Dem moderates still make up a good deal of the party. Luckily, Dem moderates are generally inclined to vote for the party candidate regardless of their preference for a less radical candidate, just like progressives are generally inclined to vote for moderate party candidates regardless of their preference for a more radical candidate. Unless serial sexual harasser Cuomo rockets ahead in the polls, Mamdani's victory as a democratic socialist and progressive will happen because we came together after the primary as anti-Republican and anti-vote splitter.
Even if that were true, how the FUCK does that justify not engaging in harm reduction? "Dem moderates don't like socialists, therefore, let Alligator Auschwitz be the new path forward"?
You do understand that “DNC support” just means advertising money, right?
Our nation needs to stop blaming Big Lettuce for their lack of salad ads while they get fat on McDonald’s every day. Stop rewarding the candidates with the financial means to find you in your living room and research the candidates on your ballot.
The DNC establishment is refusing to support Mamdani after he won the primaries
Mamdani is currently courting endorsements from top Dem players, many of whom have spoken positively of Mamdani but refrained from an explicit endorsement at this time. Their failure to immediately jump into endorsing a clearly popular candidate who won the primaries is damning on a personal level, but far from "The DNC is refusing to compromise!" at this juncture.
In the 2024 US Presidential election, one of two candidates was going to win: Trump or Harris. FPTP+EC guarantees that.
Every person who didn't vote in that race was half a vote for the worst candidate. More to the point, every person who didn't vote in a handful of critical states was more than an entire vote for the worst candidate.
Remember how pretty much every thread leading up to the election had a bunch of chodes hollering about gEnOcIdE, only in reference to Democrats? And then the moment the election was over, that essentially stopped? I wonder why.
US military aid to Israel is a long story. The US has very longstanding agreements with Israel which all administrations must abide by. And I know this is hindsight, but how's that Palestinian genocide going since Jan 20, 2025? All fixed now, yes? Wait, it's gotten worse? Who could have seen that coming?
The Democrats lost millions of votes across the country at every level of the polls. If there are that many leftists that can tank the Democrats, then they should have been doing everything they could to pander to that base instead of pulling out the most vile Republicans from 20 years ago. Or they lost millions of votes because they spent 4 years telling people who got laid off, and could no longer afford rent and groceries that the economy was stronger than ever and they would keep the course. The Democrats banked hard on being Republican light and were blown away that they lost millions of votes. They still insist on doubling down on centrist bullshit because they don't want to enact the actual societal changes that everyone knows need to occur.
The party's incompetence is its own; the results of an election are on us.
"But the anti-fascist coalition wasn't exciting enough! And they weren't competent enough for my tastes! So I decided to let the fascists win" is abso-fucking-lutely on the voter.
More than one actor can be guilty at once. Shocking, I know.
the Democrats were not "the anti-fascist coalition", the politicians at least were pretty uniformly agreed on continuing their preferred genocide.
You were arguing that their genocidal behavior was a lesser evil than what the Republicans are capable of. That may be true, but it doesn't suddenly make the Democrats an anti-fascist coalition.
The Democrats were literally the anti-fascist coalition against the Republicans openly promising fascism. Sorry that you think Alligator Auschwitz is just "business as usual".
If supporting Israel, a fascist state, in foreign policy makes one fascist (a point of view equivocating support with total identification that I strongly disagree with, mind) the vast majority of the US is fascist, including a supermajority of Dem voters, and you aren't going to win a democratic election on an anti-fascist platform.
Harris expressed a shift away from the unconditional Zionism of Biden and was punished by voters for it. Surely that will teach the DNC to [checks notes] support Israel less.
"But we let the MORE Zionist candidate win because we OPPOSE Zionism!"
Damn bang-up job of expressing that, like beating a dog for not coming to you fast enough when ordered.
the genocidal terror entity couldn't do the genocide it's been doing without endless US bombs, air defenses, and aircraft carriers attacking their enemies that are blockading them. The Democrats have participated in this genocide because as Biden said: "if Israel didn't exist we would have to create one to protect our interests in the region"
If "winning" means electing people to represent me who then go on to co-sign a genocide I would rather lose and be done with the charade.
She did nothing of the sort, and any lip service given it was too little too late. They swapped her in at practically the last minute, long after the point where there could have been a primary. Maybe someone who wasn't already vice president during a literal genocide could have stood a better chance.
Both candidates are zionist, The outcome is the same. Republicans are architects of the final solution, but Democrats would willingly participate as long as it polled well and was spread out on a manageable timeline that was not too visible.
the genocidal terror entity couldn’t do the genocide it’s been doing without endless US bombs, air defenses, and aircraft carriers attacking their enemies that are blockading them.
"Israel couldn't do it if the Houthis weren't suppressed!"
Fucking lol.
If “winning” means electing people to represent me who then go on to co-sign a genocide I would rather lose and be done with the charade.
Congratulations, you get your wish. Now millions more people will be murdered, including millions more Palestinians. Congratulations on being an even bigger Palestinian genocide supporter than Joe fucking Biden! It's no small achievement, so if you want, I can find you a sticker to wear proudly, if you like.
She did nothing of the sort, and any lip service given it was too little too late. They swapped her in at practically the last minute, long after the point where there could have been a primary. Maybe someone who wasn’t already vice president during a literal genocide could have stood a better chance.
Love the scattershot reply to a simple statement. Keep beating that dog, it'll come to you eventually.
"Please stop bombing children", "Please stop backing a genocide", "Please stop handing out our taxes to your rich friends", "Please stop making healthcare the number one reason for bankruptcy", "Please stop sending people to torture prisons", "Please make minimum wage a livable wage"
"... exactly perfect"
I think your definition of "exactly perfect" might be different from mine.
There will always be an excuse. My personal favorite was the people on here saying that they could NEVER vote for Biden because he hadn't called for a ceasefire. If he could only do that one thing they would vote for him! But of course, he wouldn't, because Biden was too deep in thrall to the Zionists to do even that much.
Of course, when Biden called for a ceasefire, they simply pretended like they'd never said that, or that calling them out on that position was somehow an endorsement of the ongoing genocide.
It makes even their legitimate criticisms ring hollow, because it all ends up sounding like self-serving bullshit.
I'd like to see any kind of evidence that progressives supported fascism. Also, if Harris did want the progressive vote, then yes, she should have done better.
Realism and tribalism are different things. I don't love democrats but I sure as hell have a mountain of proof that they're the only shot we have at avoiding fascism.
I'm really not, and if anything I think you are the one barking up the wrong tree. And wow did you ever get defensive. Not even sure you understand what I said the first time, given what you said.
Thank you. I really don't get those people.
And I mean, the Democratic party doesn't exist in a vacuum. If you don't try to change anything, of course the awful "moderates" stay in charge. But it is possible to overtake them, just look at Mamdani. But some people won't even try that because "it's a lost case"…
He now holds the primary attendance record in NYC. It was only 30% of eligible voters, up from 21% in the last election. That’s literally all it takes. We just need to show the fuck up.
Congressional primaries see less than 15% attendance. We’ve been letting retirees pack our ballots with centrists for 40 years, then complain about our choices in the general elections. We wouldn’t be calling for term limits if we consistently participated in primaries.
Well that and ranked choice, right?
He won majority first round. Granted, I’d love to see ranked-choice in our federal elections, but that didn’t matter in Mamdani’s case.
Would people have felt empowered to vote for him first if it wasn't ranked choice?
I believe so. The massive increase in zero prime voters (people who haven’t voted in a primary before) was due to his grassroots campaign.
No "progressive" will have an answer for you on this. Voting isn't the answer, blah blah blah. But it seems no one ever really tried. Otherwise maybe they'd just organize people into voting in every primary.
No "progressive" will have an answer for you on this. Voting isn't the answer, blah blah blah. But it seems no one ever really tried. Otherwise maybe they'd just organize people into voting in every primary.
Mamdani also won the primaries because Harris/Biden and the DNC being punished in the presidential election weakened them just enough that they couldn't strangle Mamdani politically anymore. Not that they didn't and still try.
The DNC could not have offered him less support in his primary campaign. He won over the city with 50k volunteers going door-to-door, a strong social media campaign, and his focus on the concerns of the working class New Yorker.
And Kamala losing galvanized that volunteer effort. Mamdani would not have won the primary if Kamala were currently sitting in the White House. Kamala losing did huge damage to the brand of every corporate Democrat. Kamala winning would have showed that that kind of candidate is still viable. Cuomo would have coasted to an easy victory.
They are either trying to trick people into not voting against the GOP or they have been tricked themselves.
“Both sides are the same” has been a bad faith argument I’ve heard from conservatives for decades.
Worse. They think martyrdom and purity politics are preferable to making any sort of actual difference. They have to keep their souls pure, you see.
It's religion for the irreligious.
Good thing, too, because that explanation would only increase my contempt for them, LOL!
The bravery of... Throwing LGBTQ+ people under the bus and trying to force violent conflict. Nah. I don't buy it.
"vote blue no matter who" is peak martyrdom politics.
Do you know why Mamdani won the primaries? Because he actually promises change. The argument wasn't to never vote Democrats. The argument was to punish them unless they produce a decent candidate.
If Harris wasnt punished, the DNC that is fighting Mamdani by and large would have been to strong and most likely had prevented Mamdani.
"Martyrdom politics is when you want to prevent fascists from murdering people instead of embracing it in the hopes that it will cause the people's hearts to spontaneously fill with l'Internationale after seeing how nobly marginalized groups are murdered!"
Uh, okay.
Because NYC has enough progressives to elect a progressive in a Dem primary, and progressives decided to actually turn out for once?
Jesus fucking Christ.
Did you just forget the lesson of Nuremberg? You're supposed to punish people who commit crimes against humanity. Doesn't matter what party they belong to. Doesn't matter what other good they might be capable of doing. You must have been a huge fan of Operation Paperclip. After all, we couldn't hang those evil Nazi scientists, we can use their talents!
The Democrats support Fascist commiting genocide in Palestine.
Did you follow any of the primary debates? How all the other DNC candidates sucked up to Israel how they would go there first? How the Zionist lobby rabidly spouted accusations of Antisemitism against Mamdani?
If Harris/Biden,who declared themselves loyal Zionists had won, these campaigns would have hit even stronger.
It is the fact that people understood the genocidial status quo of the party has to end, that gave Mamdani the momentum.
Luckily, you threw your support behind the fascists who want the Zionists to commit even more genocide in Palestine, creating glorious martyrs for some vaguely leftist cause in the US that never seems to actually rear its head!
This is definitely not martyrdom politics though!
Any number of dead Palestinians, after all, is worth
you feeling smugshowing the shitlibs what for.lmao
Yes, that's it. The mayor of New York was elected on the strength of his foreign policy positions.
Utter insanity.
The Zionist lobby in New York went rampant against Mamdani. So yes, the primary was heavily influenced by foreign politics.
https://truthout.org/articles/zionists-tried-to-make-nyc-race-about-israel-zohran-mamdani-didnt-give-in/
The point is that socialism cannot be achieved by electoral means. At best, if the masses in the street really pressure those in power, you get social democracy. That being said the choice for Americans was neoliberalism or fascism. The reasons for fascism winning go deeper than "the left was to whinny", but that's beside the point being made here.
There are goals before socialism that ARE achievable electorally which are still worth pursuing in the meantime, like stalling fascists, or prevent genocide of immigrants and queer folks
Okay, so, which is easier for socialists to organize under? Neoliberalism, or fascism?
Neoliberalism, obviously. Kamala probably wouldn't be in favour of people being abducted off the street and shoved into unmarked vans.
Apparently that very controversial position makes us shitlibs instead of people who would like to not be abducted by unmarked secret police and taken to a black site while we try to organize socialist political movements.
Playing devil's advocate here. It's probably much easier to grow a resistance against fascism than neoliberalism, as neoliberalism is comfortable enough for most people.
Don't you see? Only when it's all ashes can we start the utopia. /s
People here keep using that word uncomprehendingly like they're a dumb AI matching & associating on the root liberal.
Neoliberalism is free market capitalism, a conservative ideology embraced by Margaret Thatcher & Ronald Reagan. Democrats are for many things: environmental regulation, social safety nets, market regulation, spending on social programs, labor protections, consumer protections, etc. That's a far cry from free, unregulated markets.
The Democratic platform is a far cry from proper safety nets and regulations.
Every Democratic president since Clinton was a neoliberal. Now that Trump is going with protectionism, they are in essence more neoliberal than the Republicans.
In the most recent elections, Kamala talked good shit initially, until her corporate allies talked her down, and like the good little neoliberal she is she started sputtering out market-based "solutions" to everything.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250126160126/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/25/us/politics/harriss-economic-pitch-capitalism-for-the-middle-class.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20250213014747/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/14/business/harris-economic-plan-wall-street.html
Nah: they passed the ACA, expanded Medicaid, passed Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms, started the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, tried to ban non-compete clauses, tried to enact rules for "click to cancel" subscriptions & end junk fees, standardized disclosure of fees for finance services, voted in the FTC to enforce right to repair, sustained social programs. That & much more happened after Clinton (whereas Republicans defunded Medicaid, added restrictions, defunded SNAP, defunded school lunch programs, rolled much of this back).
You just have a memory deficiency.
The ACA is not that different from Romneycare or the old Republican HEART bill that was proposed in opposition to Clinton's attempts at passing universal healthcare. It remains a market-based solution.
The establishment of the CFPB, like the passing of the ACA, was a stripped-down pro-market version of what could have been.
In terms of foreign policy, the Democrats have enthusiastically supported and continued to support the globalisation of capital through such agreements as NAFTA and continued various imperialist adventures (Obama's use of drones is legendary).
In terms of workers rights, a lot of the bullshit from the Reagan years is still alive and well, unquestioned by the mainstream of either big party (it is frequently said on Lemmy and elsewhere that nearly everything wrong with modern America can be traced back to Reagan). Antitrust measures remain largely unenforced.
Stuff like this is well within the preview of other neoliberal parties like Fianna Fail/Fine Gael or the CDU. They too have limited market-based "solutions" to social problems. Just tax carbon emissions and the market will fix climate change. Stimulate more housebuilding and homelessness will be solved. This pattern continues.
Only during Biden's term was there some deviation from the old formula, in the form of stimulus checks and more investment in infrastructure, along with some support of trade unions. These were good steps in a shift towards the social-liberal wing of the party. Kamala leaned into this early in the campaign but then towards the end she decided it was better to get the endorsement of people like Dick Cheney.
The matter is simple. Yes or no: are they for market regulation & intervention? Yes. Therefore, they're not neoliberal.
You can hue & cry all you want, but words mean things. If you want a word that means not anti-market, then find that word. Neoliberal isn't it.
Your criticisms of those social programs & market regulations only amount to claiming they don't go far enough even though they definitely are market regulations & interventions. If they weren't social programs & market regulations, then the Republicans wouldn't have anything to cut & deregulate as they are doing: the current administration is rescinding consumer & labor protections proposed by the previous administration & they're restricting & defunding major public programs (Medicaid, SNAP, medical research, public health programs, national weather service, public broadcasting). While you seem to take these programs & regulations for granted, treat them like nothing, & act like they weren't a significant undertaking that could only barely scrape through our political obstacle course, they make a significant difference in people's lives.
What Republicans offer with their senseless trade war & cuts isn't protections to the working class, but the illusion of protections to some domestic businesses while exploiting other domestic businesses (reliant on international trade), labor (losing protections from defunded regulatory agencies & programs), consumers (shafted with consumer protection losses, tariff costs, less affordable goods & services) & while transferring income from the poor to the rich.
Calling market regulation & social programs neoliberal indicates you don't know the meaning of words. Market intervention & regulation isn't free, unregulated market, ie, neoliberalism. Any policy in support of a mixed economy with regulated markets suffices to not be neoliberal.
Comrade, the only people who are for complete nonintervention are right-"libertarians".
To call the Democratic ideal a mixed market is kinda wild. Nearly everything that could be privatized already is, besides perhaps the post office.
I will not pretend that the current programs are not significant or that cutting them will not kill people. But the fact of the matter is that it's peanuts compared to the social-democracy that reigned in Western Europe for most of the Cold War or even the social-liberalism of the pre-Reagan US.
I am not sure what your talk of the Republicans has to do with this. I am certain they're not really neolibs though. They're fascists, or close to it.
—Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government
Trying to change thing is exactly what the Uncommitted movement tried to do. And while they failed to move the needle in the 2024 election, in 2028, the Democrats will have to think a lot more about whether they want to keep losing in exchange for supporting genocide.
Remember, it's always "the most important election ever." Every election is billed as that. But sometimes you need to be willing to accept a short-term loss in exchange for long-term progress. Myopically focusing on just the election right in front of you is how we got into this mess in the first place.
Kamala losing gave space for someone like Mamdani to win. It's clear that corporate DNC centrism is a toxic losing brand. If Kamala had won, it is extremely unlikely that Mamdani would have won the NYC primary.
Every election since I could vote (early 2000s) has been the most important.
Why? Because the results built the Supreme Court that curtailed every progressive policy achievement and accelerated our current descent into fascism.
Without GWB you don't have Roberts or Alito. Without Trump you don't have Gorsuch, Cavanaugh, or Barrett.
Those fuckers have lifetime appointments. One lost election sets us back decades. The only good time for a protest vote is the primary.
Literal accelerationism. Jesus fucking Christ.
Where did I say anything bad about them? It was about the primary and not about the general election.
I actually get your point in theory as you could see elections in a game theory type of setting. The problem is that the last elections have been "the most important election ever" because well… they have gotten increasingly more significant and important. 2016 allowed Trump to shift the Supreme Court long-term and change decades-old consensus. It alone almost got him to do a coup. 2020 could have very well literally enabled that, and 2024 well… just look at everything that is happen. This is not the beginning of fascism, that's well some steps inside.
I get the theory, and if the opponent was a McCain I could even understand your thought. But if it's the election of 1930, where every vote counts to defeat the bigger evil, it's not the time to sit it out for future benefits.
You know how before the elections we say that it's not the time to nitpick the Democratic Party because it's more important to have it win so that the fascist won't win?
Well, now we are not before elections, which means that now it is the time to nitpick the Democratic Party.
I feel like a lot of people are doubling down now because the Democrats on the one hand show utter incompetence and unwillingness to fight Fascism in the US and on the other hand keep up their support for Fascism and genocide by Israel.
Everyone understands in their subconcious but many deny in their conciousness that things will not get better without a struggle. So going down the "i did harm reduction, you were all wrong, lalalala" route makes them feel like they did something and helps to not come to terms that they have been strung along by the Democrats for all those years.
Better light myself on fire! That'll show those Dems!
Talk about careful wording lol. Very well done.
"we deserve non-squeaky brakes, and I won't use the squeaky ones!"
The analogy does not hold up when change can be affected by the individual.
"Sure, I could have voted against murdering everyone in the bus, but I'm only one person, so what's the point?" isn't exactly the position I would expect. Or, for that matter, respect.
Was this responding to my comment because I don't see any logical connection?
The analogy is of stopping a vehicle by hitting the brakes.
You object that one individual has all the control in the situation.
I point out that if it the brakes were only hit by a vote of everyone in the vehicle, it wouldn't be less vile to abstain from voting than it would be to abstain from hitting the fucking brakes.
I object that you oversimplify to gross misrepresentation.
Is the squeaking sound in your analogy the genocide of Palestinians?
No, because the squeaking sound would still happen in the case of the crash if it was.
You didn't avert Palestinian genocide by murdering other minorities. You literally opted to make it worse. Congratulations. The hundreds of thousands of additional dead and displaced Palestinians thank you for your concern.
This is such a tired narrative. You guys really want to focus on the leftists when half the country voted for an authoritarian?
Every movement has its radical fringe. Virtue signaling either your ideological purity or your solidarity with the only viable opposition are equally feeble attempts at clinging to a notion of victory in the face of total defeat.
EDIT: I wasn't expecting this comment to generate discussion but since it did, let me elaborate on what I meant by "total defeat." The defeat is not an electoral loss, it's the fact that we have relinquished so much political power that all we have left is voting for one of a set of compromised politicians every few years. It's a tired argument because it assumes that it's possible to vote our way out of the mess we're in, and it simply isn't. We need to attack the point of production because it's where the ruling class derives its power. And arguing about our sham elections is getting us nowhere.
Wonder where all those people are? Immediately after the election for several months lemmy was full of people blaming how shitty things turned out on anyone but themselves. “It’s the Democrats fault I didn’t vote even though I know trump is a fascist POS!”
NOBODY thinks the dems are great. They’re fucked up.
But they’re not Alligator Auschwitz fucked up. They’re not screw the country with tariffs fucked up. They’re not ICE Gestapo fucked up.
But that’s not the non-voters fault because this is better than some neo-lib winning.
Do you have any evidence that the next democratic president will close Trump's new immigration camps? Because they didn't the last time. They kept all of Trump's aggressive immigration programs and even expanded them. If history is any guide, the next democratic president will be just as cruel to immigrants as Trump is now. Biden didn't let up at all from Trump's cruel treatment of immigrants. Democrats just adopted the Republican immigration polices wholesale.
Do you have any evidence that I won’t win a $60 million dollar lottery prize next week? I play the lottery occasionally…
You're giving lots of examples of things that Democrats didn't start, but chose to continue. Which party started those things?
Obviously the Republicans, but we're not voting republican we're voting Democrat right? So why the fuck don't they reverse the policies we hate? Parlimanatarian says we can't :ccc oh our friends the Republicans won't vote for it, we have to be bIpArTiSaN
That's a valid point, but
Many people are abstaining instead of voting for either party or a write in.
I don't like the idea of a 3rd party president without 3rd party representation in the senate/house/local government positions first, but I'd prefer that people vote 3rd party over not voting at all because they don't like the 2 party system.
I just do not believe a majority of leftists are refusing to vote, while at the same time understanding why they'd be dissilusioned with the "only sane option" that has so clearly demonstrated they do not actually have the will to make the changes they campaign on. Which results in a swing back the other direction by independents giving Republicans power, who WILL actually use any means necessary to put in place their horrible agenda.
Only 73% of the voting aged population is registered. Only 65% of the voting population voted. I'm not sure what the ideological breakdown of non voters is, but I'm positive leftists are in there.
As opposed to this post that is taking accountability for what happened?
The thing you're complaining about, this post is that thing.
But the Democrats are:
Some of us think that those things are kind of a big deal. Are Democrats better than Trump? Sure. Is a Neo-lib better than Trump? Sure, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to vote for a party that openly fights against the things I believe in, like:
Thanks, the lives of marginalized folk thank you from inside Alligator Auschwitz. I'm so glad you just couldn't bring yourself to vote against the literal Nazis.
If the Democrat Party continues the way it has, they will look exactly like the current Republican party in the next decade. Republicans will be full puritanical. Supporters of the DNC will still be supporting the lesser evil. The only solution is for intelligent voters to take the stick of fear out of their asses and go full support for better candidates in primaries or other parties. The people who continue to run our two party system will not give up their power.
If they see that the majority of the voting population is voting for Republicans, it make sense that Democrats will adopt more Republican-leaning policies. They don't care about serial non voters. They care about swing voters and their voting base.
It's magical thinking to assume otherwise. People who don't want either party are too lazy to organize even a protest vote write-in name.
And how has that been working out? The Democrats keep losing because they keep abandoning their voting base, while trying to pull in Republican voters. Republican voters aren't generally going to start voting for Democrats, but there's a giant pile of leftist waiting for a party that actually fights for them. Maybe the Democrats should try appealing to them instead.
Do those giant piles go to the voting booths, or are they pinky promising to do so when the general election comes around, next time?
They do. Check out Mamdani, who had record-breaking voters turn out. Remember FDR? They voted so hard for him, that Congress had to set up term-limits. It turns out that this "Leftists don't vote meme" is bullshit. Leftists just don't want to vote for Right-Wingers, which is why they never show up for Democrats.
This is exactly the same blinkered view that was peddled in 2000, and in 2010, by useful idiots for the Republican Party. Do you not know how far the Dems have fucking come in the past 30 years, both socially and economically?
Maybe listening to people who think worsening the genocide in Gaza is Left Praxis(tm) because it hurts Shitlibs like AOC and Bernie aren't a good resource for American politics?
The only thing I can think of that improved socially is federal recognition of same sex marriage, but that was actually set in motion by state level judicial rulings. I can't think of any economic improvements.
You mean like supporting unions and forgiving student debt? Or do you not count that because republicans sabotaged it?
I think you mean fighting unions, and failing to deliver on the less-than-bare-minimum that he set out to forgive on student debt. It wasn't sabatoged, it was because he was too busy boming innocent people, backing a genocide, and writing checks to his rich friends to get things done for the voters.
Just one of the things they say they'll do for popularity but their 'big' donors don't support, so they compromise or fail heartlessly. Sabotage would require opposition. The two parties have been playing the extortion game far too long.
https://ontheissues.org/Bill_Clinton.htm
https://ontheissues.org/Kamala_Harris.htm
Feel free to compare and contrast.
But the next Democratic president isn't going to close that place. Likely they will expand it. That's what happened with the last Democratic president.
Oh, were you planning on electing Republicans again and backing NIMBY politicians and then being surprised when they act like Republicans and NIMBYs, like when Obama made repeated efforts to close Gitmo?
I'm sure the kids that the US bombed are super grateful that you were so eager to chose genocide over winning an election. I'm so glad you just couldn't bring yourself to vote against literal child-killers
They're still being bombed but now Gaza will have a Trump Tower too thanks to people like you.
Fixed that for you
Confidently incorrect. Bravo.
What is incorrect about that? The party made it very clear that they wanted to keep sending weapons, instead winning the election.
Don't worry, I'm sure you know what's best for Palestinians far more than... [checks notes] Palestinians
Yeah that seems anything but decisive.
Really it reads similar to the disaffected anti-establishment arguments that some folks in the US put forward to defend their support of Trump - with the difference that Palestinians 1) do not vote in US elections and 2) have really good fucking reasons to cling to hope in any kind of change at all.
Not that Trump ever offered that in any way that would help people, but I cannot blame them for grasping at straws. Most seem aware of the fact that US imperialism is inevitable either way.
Ah yes, Truly Enlightened Voters like you realize that Trump having performed Zionist bootlicking above and beyond what even the Republicans, the more Zionist of the two pro-Zionist parties in our society, were willing to do in his last term and promising an even greater expansion of support to the murderous apartheid state, is actually No Difference At All with the Dem candidate backing away from unconditional Zionism.
God, I'm so glad these Both Sides Bad takes are so prevelent here, it would be really awful if it was all cope to avoid the fact that you helped literal Nazis win who have been helping the Nazis in Israel to a far greater degree than the other Zionists.
What the fuck are you talking about.
You don't vote for everything at once. You vote on what's on the ballot. Palestine wasn't on the ballot. Concentration camps, fascism, economic meltdown, removal of the social safety, women's rights, and the rule of law were.
You decided that you were okay with all that bullshit because of something else unrelated. And look - Israel is acting worse than ever now because Trump doesn't even pretend to be against genocide.
You chose this, and you should lose sleep over it.
No, I was not OK with all of that bullshit, which is why I voted against it. If you are going to disagree with me, that's fine. But I'll start taking you seriously when you stop making up stuff about me.
You just called out people for not voting against the Dems in the comment I was replying to.
It's easier to keep your talking points consistent when you aren't a troll who has to keep track of which lies they're telling in which conversation threads.
Well, I called out people who proudly voted for genocide and bombing children. I wanted the Democrats to fight against "Concentration camps, fascism, economic meltdown, removal of the social safety..." and fight for "....women's rights, and the rule of law...", but they weren't. The Democrats were doing the opposite.
Those were all on the ballot if Kamala had won.
Yes, those would have been better if Kamala had won.
I'm not convinced those would have been fixed if she would have won, as they were not fixed by any of her Democratic predecessors. The same predecessors that she made every indication she would follow.
You don't think the last few Dem presidents helped move the economy in the right direction?
The system sucks but you're never getting any of the things you want from it without the Democratic party. Leftists should be taking over the party instead of abandoning it. Or letting themselves get played into abandoning it by those who want to disempower the left. The system guarantees that we get two parties and we're not going to take the GOP so the Dems are really it. It sucks but it is what is, you can't wield the state without first wielding one of the two parties. There is no other realistic path to power under the system.
We're not going to get the things that we want from the Democratic party. They've been overwhelmingly clear that they would rather keep losing elections than give us any of those things. Why would I keep investing in a party that openly and strongly tells me "No, go fuck yourself. We're gonna keep bombing children" ?
If you want to try and fix the Democrats, then go get em tiger. I have no problems with others trying to fix it from the inside. But I'm not wasting my time with them.
I voted for Harris, am I allowed to be mad that the Democrats are still gung ho about Israeli genocide yet? Or do I need to shout blue no matter who for another few decades?
Not voting and voting for trump were both stupid choices. But attacking people who didn't vote for trump instead of those who did is fucking bananas and I don't get the point of this. Are we expecting a resounding vote in 2028 for Harris again is going to fix everything? Come the fuck on.
Sure are.
Because you did the right thing to help your country, despite being upset about a single issue.
You are not part of the problem.
Being pissed about Israeli genocide and thinking that it's okay to welcome in Nazis who promise to intensify the genocide if you feel really strongly that reducing genocide isn't good enough are two entirely different concepts.
Asspatting the latter is a request for them to play purity politics if we ever get a chance to vote again. And if we dig ourselves out of this fucking hole, the last thing I want to see is for us to jump right back into it because "The Dems aren't opposing genocide enough! We NEED to let the pro-genocide candidate win and murder a few million extra people to teach the DNC a lesson!"
People were saying up to a year before the election that they wouldnt vote democrat unless they stopped supporting genocide. Maybe if reductionists like you hadn't been shouting over them calling them russian trolls and pledging your undying support to the democratic candidate no matter who they are, then they would have seen how it was affecting their polls and pivoted. Instead you continue to prove to them that they can get away with anything. I dont uderstand the obtuse refusal to see that laying down an ultimatum and drawing a line in the sand is the only bargaining power you have, even if you dont intend to follow through with it, it wouldve been worth withholding support from biden and harris as long as possible.
True but it's a minor point. Even if every single lefty held the line it wouldn't have made a difference. The people who didn't vote were mostly disengaged normal people and the blame for that is squarely on the Democrats for sucking absolute shit on purpose because of big money in politics.
Have some perspective, pick better fights with worse people. I personally find it extremely unmoving when the left chastises people over politics so good job emulating one of their worst and least politically effective qualities.
Instead, I humbly suggest you try to inspire a shred of hope among the cynical and apathetic - but deep down actually very cool people of the Earth🌠
As a trans person, you can suck my girl dick. I am not a cudgel to be used by shitty libs to sheepdog votes for their nonexistent policy.
Trans rights keep being eroded, regardless of who is in power, because the Democratic Party isn't doing anything to preserve them.
CIA ass post
Holy blame shifting, Batman!
The dems are literally rolling over for fascism. They are complicit.
I feel like takes like this come from people with no long term memory. Do you remember the pro-palestinian crowd begging Kamala Harris to even pretend like she'd do something to help? And she basically told them to vote for Trump? Blame the Democratic party for choosing to be fascism-light instead of actual resistance.
Man you keep just making a variation on the same "fuck the leftists" line over and over again.
Fascism is not a break from the previous administration, but a continuation.
Libs are still crying about their loss of power, still doing nothing to resist.
If the "online lefties" were so powerful a block perhaps Dem's leadership should have courted their vote. If they were so minor a block that "online lefties" should be ignored then you're targeting the wrong people.
But you know this already, I told you before the election that way to win the "no genocide" vote isn't to try convince them to vote "yes genocide". It's to try convince the leaders to stop supporting genocide.
This post is the same punching down shit you were doing before the election.
When asked what Kamala's opinion was about Trans people and protections, all she said is "they should follow the law".
The fuck is that non answer
Are we talking about the same Democratic Party who put forward Kamala "I believe we should follow the law" Harris as their only candidate for president?
How you people manage to convince yourselves that a Democratic Party win would achieve anything at all for trans rights, is beyond belief!
Honestly i get both sides of this, like im in the UK and probably not going to vote Labour next election because theyve gone really out of their way to show the left how much they hate us, despite the fact its probably going to come down to Labour or reform, but the difference is here smaller parties are actually somewhat viable. So i think in the US it does make sense to vote Dem no matter what in the actual election, but put your effort into getting actual leftits on the ballot in the first place like Mamdani.
Blaming people for not voting for shit candidates isn’t going to accomplish what you’re hoping for, just saying.
I would have voted left if I was physically allowed to.
But also you did have a candidate that came in last minute and was a republican-sympathizer.
Do you actually blame them?
Fucking hate this narrative. Go after republicans at least half as much as you go after leftists and we wouldn't be here.
I'm getting pretty tired of people victimizing themselves to such an absurd level while people are actually dying because they've been kicked off medicaid.
That feeling when Democrats are turning on trans people. Pretending the Democrats will save us as a Fool's errand. Pretending that trans people wouldn't be on the chopping block if the Democrats had federal office is naive.
Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/13/democrats-moderates-transgender-issues-strategy-00189123
Ah, this Pug Jesus. Always angry at leftists showing they're just Republican lite. Got it.
OP admits that they would cast a vote to put trans people in camps if the situation was right. This meme is ridiculous coming from a person like that.
Complaining about lefties not supporting a party that hates lefties is not going to fix the problems at hand
"Blue team hates me (please ignore the significant successes of socialists in primaries where progressives actually bother to fucking show up), therefore, it's okay to let marginalized groups get murdered!"
Sorry that a core tenet of leftism to so many people like you is "The lives of the marginalized have to be EARNED to get MY support"
"Blue Circus wasn't ENTERTAINING enough for me to vote against death camps for immigrants"
If both sides stopped taking online potshots at each other and recognized that both groups are willing to utilize the second amendment in support of each other from the government, we'd be in a much better place.
Bruh, neither group has used the second amendment even in defense of themselves in any appreciable numbers. We have, what, one leftist who dared to open carry and got shot for it?
Completely missed my point. Stop blaming the voters and start blaming the politicians who refuse to put regular people's lives above the wishes of their wealthy benefactors.
These people are children utterly incapable of holding leaders responsible for their actions. It's just a sports game to them. All that matters is that their color wins.
Politicians represent voters.
If people don't show up, why do you expect to get represented?
Zohran won the primary because people came out. And it was still appalling at 30% turnout.
How hard is it to just agree that if you want to be represented you need to show up?
Then make it easier for people to show up. Have locations open for a whole week. Universal mail in ballots. Compulsory voting. Hell, why not digitize it like Estonia did 20 years ago.
Voters aren't the problem. The problem is voter suppression. Partially by FPTP, partially by our oppressive economy. Stop blaming the many and start blaming the few
I mean, I fully agree voting needs to be much easier. Vote by mail, whatever. No argument at all.
But no- you can't explain 90 MILLION people not voting based on voter suppression. That's just an absolute BS excuse.
Too many people are lazy and too many have been told "oh it's the DNC", etc. It's not. Primaries have like 30% turnout AT BEST. 90 million didn't show up to vote against a fascist in the general.
People need to be told- "hey, it's you. YOU need to go vote." They've been absolved of responsibility time and time again. When you tell people that it's not their fault then they have zero incentive to correct any kind of behavior.
You sound like an abusive parent. Probably should seek therapy. You also reminded me of this well worded Tumblr post. Here's the text
Again. Stop blaming the many, start blaming the few.
Ahh OK. We'll just treat them like they have zero responsibility like spolled kids. Surely they'll turn around. /s
Pro tip- your approach has done Jack shit for decades so
I can't imagine what a spoiled brat you must be when something like "take responsibility for your actions and inaction" must sound like "abuse."
Refusing to vote in a way that steers us away from the worst imaginable disaster is totally a fix though! /s
Just look where we are today. Sure glad we dodged that bullet of Kamala Harris!!! /s
If your "choices" are stage three stomach and stage four lung cancer, you shouldn't choose a cancer. You should start chemotherapy.
All US elites and the political system are cancer. You need to fundamentally change the political system and both cancers are fighting it right now. The lung cancer and the stomach cancer aren't enemies of each other. They are metastasis of the same disease.
wat
You know, you dont have to keep playing the game of the dealer that is stacked against you. If the game only lets you loose, you need to toss over the table.
You don't have to stop playing the game to work to change the game/dealer. You could vote for harm reduction and try to overthrow the government at the same time. Hedge your bets.
No no, ten minutes to fill in a mail-in ballot will critically damage their extensive efforts towards Revolution(tm).
This is actually a good metaphor if you swap out "chemotherapy" with "essential oils and clean eating".
"essential oils and clean eating" = arguing online and calling politicians
"Chemotherapy" = actual revolution
No noo noooo, stay online, keep posting, keep complaining about "the left" and whoever that may include. If we shame enough people on lemmy finally we can shift the narrative and get our no matter who blue in to, idk, reduce funding on ice to half of the new inflated Trump budget.
Just whatever you do, don't do anything outside!!
Voting for Jill Stein is the real true political revolution!!!!! Totally in no way helping republicans!
Voting isn't all you can do, and we're here now. If all you're doing is yelling about an election from half a year ago and don't organize, your just as performative as the people you trash talk.
Voting for third parties = "jacking off and wanting to be blown for it while everyone who voted for a democrat be scorned forever more"
Voting for Jill Stein is the real true political revolution!!!!! Totally in no way helping republicans!
Boy there's a "b b b b both sides same!" if I ever saw one. Unreal.
They're only going to do half the things I want! Better protest-no-vote in the party that wants to kill me!
I can't find any news story about camps opening up for trans people, is this just random meming or is there substance to the claim?
You choose violence today I see. Wew lad this comment section.
"not voting because the dems are complicit" was always gop propaganda to keep people from voting dem
the problem is that seemingly all of the news channels are owned by the gop and whoever they bought. that makes people manipulated. what to do about that?
I'm both of these people at the same time. Voting for centrists doesn't work
Folks, OP is a well known anti-socialist who routinely creates messy drama. Nothing to see here, move along.
They do also post quite a lot of nice historical content, which I quite appreciate. Maybe go enjoy that.
I don't get it. First the centrists were called leftist, just because they are left of right. Now stalinists are considered leftist, even though they have way more in common with fascists than even the centrists.
I can explain! Reality is whatever OP needs it to be so that they are right and you are wrong.
I can promise that non-harm reduction leftists who aren't Stalinists outnumber those who are.
It's a little late now that there's camps, sure. If people had refused harder to put up with shitty democrats in the past, like.. decades past.. then the dems would've lost to past republicans who weren't quite dictators.
In that alternate past where the dems actually lose for being center-right corporatists, they would've had to get some kind of spine or plan or... something.. earlier to protect our public news and education from authoratarian misinformation and maybe prevented this bullshit.
In this current world that we actually have though... I mean you saw we elected Biden, right? And you saw how much good that did -- right? We need somebody on our side with some teeth and rolling over for milquetoast donation collectors is not going to get it for us.
If genocide isn't a red line for you then you don't have red lines. You will literally vote for rounding up trans people and gassing them as long as the opposing candidate wants to torture them before execution because "it's the lesser evil"
My not voting for democrats had zero impact because theres no popular vote.
I'm trans and I spent all of 2024 trying to point out that the Democrats were making a catastrophic mistake by continuing to arm the genocidal settlers and expecting everyone to forget just in time for the election. That fell on deaf ears. Here we are now with the consequences clear to see and all I can conclude is that some people will never learn.
How far in the ground was your head when the media kept calling his popular vote win a public mandate? You can't see how that empowered him? Really?
I sincerely doubt that anyone was 'empowered' by that. Trump had a playbook he was going to follow from the start and the Democrats surrendered the election by refusing to meaningfully restrain Israel in any way.
Or just read the room at all.
Biden said he was going to be a transitional, 1-term president. Then around January of 2024, his staff start reporting that he wants to race.
And then the absolutely mind boggling handling of the race from that point on: failing to advertise their wins, ignoring the public's pain points, and transitioning from the incumbent to another candidate with no primary process, among others.
The Democrats played their part by absolutely doing nothing to stop Trump's momentum. They could have at least fought back by LYING to their base and leftists to rally up, but they even failed at that.
Truly the best way to fumble the ball.
Pretend you're a Republican politician that wants to enact project 2025 which is unpopular with your constituents. Does the guy leading the charge winning the popular vote give you more or less plausible deniability when it comes to your next campaign and you're trying to distance yourself from it? How can't you see "he won the popular vote" being a great excuse for them on every level to support him? And the opposition has to excuse not supporting the "popular" platform. If you're trying to rationalize not voting as it not mattering just stop, you fucked up but it's ok, don't let the cognitive dissonance help them
I watched Bush get elected while losing the popular vote and he invaded two countries. You are welcome to think that Trump losing the popular vote would be meaningful, I don't think it matters.
If you're trying to sway me with this, just stop you fucked up, but it's ok.
Did I say Dems are good and bad things wouldn't happen under them? Do you just not understand the concept of degrees of effect? What a disingenuous thing to bring up
What even are you trying to say? You're indecipherable from satire
Bush was a republican, I was providing an example of how little 'winning' the popular vote matters at all.
I was mocking your feigned concern, I did it by quoting back what you just said to me: "just stop you fucked up, but it’s ok."
No you weren't. Again, do you just not understand the concept of degrees of effect? That's the entire point that you're ignoring.
And I'm very concerned about you. It is not feigned
Vote for the candidate you want in the PRIMARY. In the general, it’s a good idea to vote against the one that’s a complete facist/dictator/whatever. If you’re trans and you didn’t vote Harris in the general, you voted against your own interests and the interests of other LGBTQ+ folks and should be giving serious thought to that.
Under our bullshit election system my vote had zero impact, there is no popular vote for president. There was no primary because the democrats pretended that Joe Biden's brain was still working until it was far too late to have any primary.
I voted for the communists, the entire combined vote for all third parties would not have changed how my state went.
As far as I'm concerned the Democrats are the ones to blame for the situation we are now in, not the people who didn't vote for them.
Stay strong. You're doing the right thing and will have comrades in arms when it comes to it.
Don't let lib shit-for-brains make you believe anything else. I hope we'll see the day they're all destroyed along with the reactionaries.
That's literally a pro-genocide vote considering their foreign policy positions, Jesus fucking Christ
Says the person trying to browbeat others into voting for politicians directly complicit in the slaughter.
You've already made it very clear you're a first world campist, don't really see any reason to take your opinions seriously.
I'm a first world campist for... saying that supporting LGBT murder is bad?
Uh, sorry that you support LGBT murder so strongly?
The number one killer of gay and trans Palestinians is Israel using US weapons. I am opposed to politicians like Biden and Trump and their respective co-conspirators arming and defending genocidal settlers.
No, you are a first world campist because you clearly love genocide, killing LGBT people and capitalism as long as it's team blue doing it. Just making observations based on the stuff I see you regularly regurgitate onto the internet.
Luckily, you're 100% in support of the #1 killer of gay and trans Yemenis and of gay Iranians! Go Good Camp!
lmao
Feel free to quote me on any of that.
Sorry that you think opposition to Israel doesn't count if I didn't support Nazis murdering people of color at home and abroad, and the murder of LGBT folk by religious fanatics. Sorry that you're so enamored with genociding LGBT folk that you'll support any fascist you can find to achieve it.
Any other sieg heils you'd like to throw out, like "A Curse Upon The Jews"?
Your moral fortitude will be appreciated when we share a camp/ You understand the lesson they'll learn is just "the people are fascist". Why the fuck would they try to cater to voters who can't be relied on? Look how piss scared the establishment is because Mamdani won a primary? Yeah, the Presidency didn't have one because Biden was an idiot and Pelosi blocked it at the last second, enabling genocide at home isn't going to do shit for Palestine or to teach the DNC
I do think "vote blue not matter who" has shown that the current establishment will happily hold the transgendered community hostage to sell out the working class.
Just because people's deaths are only aggregated in statistics. People who die because of a lack of healthcare or commit suicide because of their economic situation, doesn't mean its not also important to fight for. Doesn't make as good of a headline though.
It's like no one remembers how relatively left the Dems have moved in the past 30 fucking years.
You are completely hallucinating.
Kamala embraced Trump's border wall, Biden didn't do anything when Netanyahu crossed his "red line", and Obama bailed out the banks while carrying the torch from Bush by conducting the most drone strikes out of any other president.
The Democrats have started moving Right starting in the 1990s, not left.
Dems haven't moved left since FDR.
Sorry that you have no memory of Dem policy since the 1990s and how it differs from today, I hope your ability to process events in the past returns.
so, do you have any specific examples?
Ultimately, it would be more productive for the center to yell at the establishment for supporting corruption and unpopular policies rather than turning left.
Look at how much more vitriol there was for a leftist mayoral candidate from the establishment than there was towards the leaders who do nothing while a dictator consolidates power. Apparently, its fine not to vote for a democrat if you personally think it will cause tons of economic damage in this case, but not the other.
The entire NY mayor “controversy” has been astronomically blown out of proportion by bad actors. The vast majority of Democratic voters in the rest of the country don’t give a fuck one way or the other. But it looks great for the Republicans if the Democrats are in-fighting, and on Lemmygrad it looks great if the “establishment” Democrats are losing (never mind that Mamdani would get bodied 100x worse than Kamala on a national stage).
You already had camps tbh, you've had them for many years now
Apparently not voting in America is "voting for Trump", but it's "not voting for Harris".
One can only conclude that either:
They're currently one Adderall fueled tweet away from being locked in cages, the electoral loss has already occurred.
Ah shit, here we go again.
I'll pose an interesting question:
is it more important to maintain your personal morality, or potentially break it to protect people in imminent danger?
The problem, in my mind:
republicans/regressives (read nazis) actually get in line and vote for the R next to any name that they've heard in the last week (if not just because it has an R), which means that they actually get shit done (making things worse, but they all get behind it is my point).
On the other hand, democrats/leftists/progressives all sit here and fight one another because of reasons, some good, and some just a little silly in the grand scheme of things. This group doesn't know how to effectively work together to slowly and surely get to the same end goal.
The differences here are why regressives are able to rat fuck an entire nation, collectively, because they don't bicker with each other, their allies, about the smaller details.
The democrats/leftists/progressives are too busy trying to fight hundreds of different problems/battles that would all be solved (eventually, mind you, not right away like we wish it would be) by banding together and keeping the movement momentum going AFTER winning the election.
For an example, gaza and trans rights issues. Both VERY valid issues, and they should be discussed. What happened was those same groups focused way too much on the smaller details instead of the big picture. What SHOULD have happened was we voice our concerns on the issues, vote for the person (at this time, Harris) who had the highest chance of those issues being solved, and then keeping the fire going by continuing to press these concerns to THAT administration.
Look at it this way, even though it is too late: if Kamala had won, you'd be able to sit there and protest any actions that weren't being made towards your/your groups issues, and if we could all get on the same god damned page, you would have more allies who are more at ease with the current admin who could protest with you, because things aren't dire enough for them to focus on them and theirs (read fuck you, got mine). Under the orange buffoon, you can now get deported for protesting anything, let alone trans rights and gaza genocide. So, those allies you could've had are now being deported, killed, or arrested, and that makes others scared to protest with you.
TL;DR: Allowing the nazis to win because democrats/leftists/progressives can't see the bigger picture, and choose to focus on their own issues only (or at the very least, make it their highest priority when we should know that's not how it works, unfortunately) is the reason we have the orange shitler in office right now. This group is trying to fight 100 different battles, while regressives lock step and take away all the good we had achieved, instead of banding together and just doing the literal bare minimum (vote in the "neo-lib"). Full stop.
@[email protected] is right, whether you like it or not.
Its been over a year and people still are freaking out about this? And not the fact that the democrats have basically rolled over at every turn to trump and the GOPs demands?
The dems did not do s good job mobilizing their voter base. A bunch of people didnt like genocide. A bunch of people didnt like Biden. A bunch of people held their nose and voted for him the first time when he said he would get rid of student loans and be a one term president. He reneged on almost every single promise he made. He then committed genocide. People didnt like it. The DNC shoved him and Kamala down everyone's throats instead of having an actual election. They've fucked themselves 3 cycles in a row now and then start complaining about socialists.
They were all vote blue no matter who when it was Biden or Kamala but now Mamdani won in NY and they're all teaming up with the Republicans to stop him. Maybe thats why they keep fucking losing - they dont want to listen to their own base.
What do regular people want? Higher taxes on the rich, more affordable housing and food, Healthcare for all, and good education. All they've done is say well this will hurt billionaires feelings so we cant do it.
Stalinists are not leftists. They're just conservatives cosplaying as leftists, and if you know anything about the actual history of conservatism (not the "respecting traditions" kind), them calling anyone they don't like a "liberal" makes much more sense...
This is exactly right. I frequently call these extremists right wingers because that’s basically what their attitudes amount to. They are right: liberalism leads to fascism. Capitalism is obviously a problem that needs abolishing. These are all things socialists believe because we’re socialists.
The problem is that harm reduction is no small thing. It’s not avoiding a scrape on the knee or having a pool instead of a hose. We’re talking about real human beings who are suffering, to paraphrase Chomsky. How privileged do you need to be to think it’s hardcore communists or nothing?
Fuck you all. See you in hell.
ITT: A bunch of people who think getting Trump elected was the right thing to do, because harm reduction is bad.
Sorry are civilians carpet-bombed in america? Are they throwing white phosphorus at your family? How can you play the victim lmao
"Democrats talking about how they totally have to keep backing a genocide, bombing kids, torturing innocent people, screwing over their voter-base, voting the way their rich donors tell them to, in order to win elections"
"Trans people in the US who are 1 electoral loss away from being put in camps"
Fixed that for you
Hey guess what? More than one actor can be at fault at once! Yes, really!
But you lot refuse to put any blame on those poor, innocent non-voters who just wanted a little holsum fascism for accelerationist reasons 🥺
No, I blame the voters that chose this, and the politicians who ran on it. I also blame the party that built out the infrastucture that fascism is currently using for all of this. I don't blame the ones that voted against it.
I never expected you to be such a supporter of Harris voters!
That's because you've never been interested in my views. You seem to be only interested in taking cheap shots, instead of understanding.
That was sarcasm, genius.
You're unbearable. No wonder Lemmy.world defederated from the other socialist spheres on Lemmy. Y'all have a bubble that you need kept intact.
Let me guess, you don't endorse Zohran Mamdani?
On the contrary, I adore Mr. Mamdani.
But I guess someone thinking that supporting genocide is bad even if you do it while pinky-promising you're a leftist is confusing for someone who bootlicks campist instances that play apologist for the Uyghur and Ukrainian genocides.
But you were sarcastically correct, because you would rather make things up and yell at people, than fully understand their position, genius
I see I'll have to explain this in simpler terms.
I'm pointing out that the only people who voted against fascism were Harris voters, not the non-voters you're asspatting.
Thank you for putting trans people in camps.
Thank you for bombing children
"I can't believe the US is giving bombs to Israel! 😤
Time to elect the guy who will send American jets to run sorties on Palestine for Israel directly! 😊"
Christ, you lot would've sat on your asses during WW2 because "The British Empire is bad too!" as Hitler genocided all the minorities he wanted in Europe.
I didn't elect him. In fact, I very proudly voted against that PoS. But please, keep making up facts about me. That sounds super productive, and will totally get me to vote for the genocidal, child-killing party next time around.
For Harris?
No, I very proudly voted against that PoS as well
Yeah people might be in camps, but at least you have your feeling of moral superiority. Yay you!
So not only was I correct in saying
But your whinging about
Is pointless because you were never going to vote Dem anyway, since you couldn't even bring yourself to vote Dem even for the sake of opposition to the genocide you supposedly care so much about and against literal Nazis.
Narrator: "He did in fact vote for this."
As a trans person, how dare you use my people's name to justify genocide. Most trans people saw right through that shit, as they realized that a party that was willing to sacrifice one minority group on the pyre would be willing to do so to another. And...well..that's exactly what happened. The same corporate Dems that enabled genocide are now tripping over themselves to eagerly join the rollback of the rights of trans people.
Its mostly solid blue state leftists who refuse to vote dem. Them voting would literally make no difference at all in the national outcome, and when it would have mattered in primaries the democrat party decided they knew better anyway.
Unless you think all the people vocally refusing to vote dem are in swing states, your problem is with the rigged primary and electoral collage system, not leftist in places like california who dont want to support team blue.
That presumes a level of rationality in the electorate which is extremely questionable by the practical results we repeatedly see. Not helped by the fact that many of those who refrained from voting in swing states in 2024 did so, by their own admission, on the strength of left issues and the insufficiently left leaning of the Dem candidate.
For a group that constantly goes on about the importance of abstaining from voting as a means of delegitimizing the results of an election, they don't seem to realize, by your characterization, the value of the importance of demonstration of an overwhelming popular vote defeat of the 'winning' candidate as delegitimizing the results of an election.
What.
Fucking Christ, I don't know how many times I have to say this, but there can be more than one problem at once. Yes, really!
happy cake day!
Thanks!
Unlike elections, we're not forced to choose just one thing we can have a problem with.
If you didn't vote or voted 3rd party, I put you in the same group as MAGAts.
You're just as dumb. But it's even more disturbing because you shouldn't be.
Yeah we should really vote just for the interests of the 0.0some% of the population
These days, most of the voices saying they'll leave a centrist presidential candidate hanging are fake. BlueSky got brigaded by fake posters with this message for about five days a little bit ago.
I voted for Jill Stein in 2016 and regret it. I don't think I'm the only one. I think that next time around, we'll have a stronger primary strategy and fewer walkouts if we fail.
FWIW I agree with you. Anyone who abstains from voting because neither side perfectly aligns with their own politics is an idiot and, in a first past the post system like the USA, actively helping the party that they most disagree with.
There's that story about a boy who cried "wolf".
Unless you literally mean "being put in camps", you shouldn't use this as a metaphor for less dangerous events.
Also ... why do you even think it would be better otherwise. A reminder - the other mainstream option was that party that didn't even care about picking a popular enough candidate. Almost a kingdom inside the nation. They literally imitated Idiocracy, thinking that'll be popular.
Anyway, as someone in Russia - I both appreciate that you over there still have some democracy and wish for you to see the fake parts of it as early as possible.
Look at them all doing somersaults in the comments trying to justify their shitty decisions. Jokers all of them
They’d rather rail against Israel while helping to elect Trump than lift a finger to help their fellow citizens.
Because Holocaust Harris and Wehrmacht Waltz were going to save your ass?
Just for the love of anything please go read what Harris used to do with trans people as a prosecutor.
Also, go look up her stance on interviews. She fucking "States Rights" full-GOP the issue the time she was asked.
Stop. This. Dickriding.
And pick up a fucking gun
Political comments like these from liberals make me glad Trump won.
I hope all you liberals and Americans are getting the suffering you deserve and then some.
Fucking what
Mamdani is not going to win without Dem moderates, because Dem moderates still make up a good deal of the party. Luckily, Dem moderates are generally inclined to vote for the party candidate regardless of their preference for a less radical candidate, just like progressives are generally inclined to vote for moderate party candidates regardless of their preference for a more radical candidate. Unless serial sexual harasser Cuomo rockets ahead in the polls, Mamdani's victory as a democratic socialist and progressive will happen because we came together after the primary as anti-Republican and anti-vote splitter.
Even if that were true, how the FUCK does that justify not engaging in harm reduction? "Dem moderates don't like socialists, therefore, let Alligator Auschwitz be the new path forward"?
As a New Yorker…who gives a fuck?
You do understand that “DNC support” just means advertising money, right?
Our nation needs to stop blaming Big Lettuce for their lack of salad ads while they get fat on McDonald’s every day. Stop rewarding the candidates with the financial means to find you in your living room and research the candidates on your ballot.
Mamdani is currently courting endorsements from top Dem players, many of whom have spoken positively of Mamdani but refrained from an explicit endorsement at this time. Their failure to immediately jump into endorsing a clearly popular candidate who won the primaries is damning on a personal level, but far from "The DNC is refusing to compromise!" at this juncture.
Also, see the two points of the edit.
TIL: it's the voters fault when a political party is incompetent.
In the 2024 US Presidential election, one of two candidates was going to win: Trump or Harris. FPTP+EC guarantees that.
Every person who didn't vote in that race was half a vote for the worst candidate. More to the point, every person who didn't vote in a handful of critical states was more than an entire vote for the worst candidate.
Remember how pretty much every thread leading up to the election had a bunch of chodes hollering about gEnOcIdE, only in reference to Democrats? And then the moment the election was over, that essentially stopped? I wonder why.
US military aid to Israel is a long story. The US has very longstanding agreements with Israel which all administrations must abide by. And I know this is hindsight, but how's that Palestinian genocide going since Jan 20, 2025? All fixed now, yes? Wait, it's gotten worse? Who could have seen that coming?
The Democrats lost millions of votes across the country at every level of the polls. If there are that many leftists that can tank the Democrats, then they should have been doing everything they could to pander to that base instead of pulling out the most vile Republicans from 20 years ago. Or they lost millions of votes because they spent 4 years telling people who got laid off, and could no longer afford rent and groceries that the economy was stronger than ever and they would keep the course. The Democrats banked hard on being Republican light and were blown away that they lost millions of votes. They still insist on doubling down on centrist bullshit because they don't want to enact the actual societal changes that everyone knows need to occur.
Fascism abroad wasn't enough, we needed fascism at home too.
The party's incompetence is its own; the results of an election are on us.
"But the anti-fascist coalition wasn't exciting enough! And they weren't competent enough for my tastes! So I decided to let the fascists win" is abso-fucking-lutely on the voter.
More than one actor can be guilty at once. Shocking, I know.
Two wrongs, as they say, don't make a right. Or in this case, I guess, they do make a Right.
Happy cake day!
Thanks!
the Democrats were not "the anti-fascist coalition", the politicians at least were pretty uniformly agreed on continuing their preferred genocide.
You were arguing that their genocidal behavior was a lesser evil than what the Republicans are capable of. That may be true, but it doesn't suddenly make the Democrats an anti-fascist coalition.
The Democrats were literally the anti-fascist coalition against the Republicans openly promising fascism. Sorry that you think Alligator Auschwitz is just "business as usual".
as long as you're not Palestinian the Democrats are "anti-fascist™"
If supporting Israel, a fascist state, in foreign policy makes one fascist (a point of view equivocating support with total identification that I strongly disagree with, mind) the vast majority of the US is fascist, including a supermajority of Dem voters, and you aren't going to win a democratic election on an anti-fascist platform.
Harris expressed a shift away from the unconditional Zionism of Biden and was punished by voters for it. Surely that will teach the DNC to [checks notes] support Israel less.
"But we let the MORE Zionist candidate win because we OPPOSE Zionism!"
Damn bang-up job of expressing that, like beating a dog for not coming to you fast enough when ordered.
If "winning" means electing people to represent me who then go on to co-sign a genocide I would rather lose and be done with the charade.
Both candidates are zionist, The outcome is the same. Republicans are architects of the final solution, but Democrats would willingly participate as long as it polled well and was spread out on a manageable timeline that was not too visible.
"Israel couldn't do it if the Houthis weren't suppressed!"
Fucking lol.
Congratulations, you get your wish. Now millions more people will be murdered, including millions more Palestinians. Congratulations on being an even bigger Palestinian genocide supporter than Joe fucking Biden! It's no small achievement, so if you want, I can find you a sticker to wear proudly, if you like.
Love the scattershot reply to a simple statement. Keep beating that dog, it'll come to you eventually.
TIL voters are powerless because their vote doesn't matter unless it "sends a message" /s
The message: "If you're not exactly perfect, I'll stand aside and let fascists get elected."
"Please stop bombing children", "Please stop backing a genocide", "Please stop handing out our taxes to your rich friends", "Please stop making healthcare the number one reason for bankruptcy", "Please stop sending people to torture prisons", "Please make minimum wage a livable wage"
I think your definition of "exactly perfect" might be different from mine.
All those concerns are solved now, huh?
Respectfully, do you have any kind of brain damage, maybe a memory issue? You seem to be only able to think or plan a few months ahead at a time.
There will always be an excuse. My personal favorite was the people on here saying that they could NEVER vote for Biden because he hadn't called for a ceasefire. If he could only do that one thing they would vote for him! But of course, he wouldn't, because Biden was too deep in thrall to the Zionists to do even that much.
Of course, when Biden called for a ceasefire, they simply pretended like they'd never said that, or that calling them out on that position was somehow an endorsement of the ongoing genocide.
It makes even their legitimate criticisms ring hollow, because it all ends up sounding like self-serving bullshit.
Yeah, it's so disheartening to see so many people usher in Trump while pretending to be moral little angels.
"It's not my fault I supported fascism, Kamala Harris should of done better" - Lemmy progressives
I'd like to see any kind of evidence that progressives supported fascism. Also, if Harris did want the progressive vote, then yes, she should have done better.
This is an incredibly vague statement.
Any two party system is the mathematically-inevitable result of first-past-the-post voting, nothing more or less.
As is evidenced by "every time in US history a new political party rose in prominence, another fell away, leaving just two again."
Clap your hands and believe is the solution, I see.
Realism and tribalism are different things. I don't love democrats but I sure as hell have a mountain of proof that they're the only shot we have at avoiding fascism.
We will never escape conservatism if people like you keep it up
You're standing up for those on the left who didn't vote blue. In my book that's most of why 2024 is the year we went full on fascist
Unfortunately for you, the side that wants to kill you does think in binary.
I'm really not, and if anything I think you are the one barking up the wrong tree. And wow did you ever get defensive. Not even sure you understand what I said the first time, given what you said.