If you’re always on the defence, you are losing long term.
Voting might stop a problem from getting worse, but it’s not a viable solution to fix the underlying issues that require real systemic change to occur and that cannot happen from inside the system.
So vote, do all you can to stop it from getting worse. But remember that to fix it you need to fight for a revolution.
You can fight to install progressives at the local level while voting defensively at the national level. Local progressive movement are not only a LOT easier to pull off, but will help create widespread acceptance of progressive ideals as they get good outcomes. Then you expand to the state level and house, then the senate, then you're well positioned to push for a progressive in the presidency.
These are good examples of what it takes, however, including primary participation and grassroots activism. In addition, the NYC mayoral featured ranked choice voting.
In other words, Duverger’s Law can’t simply be ignored in FPTP systems like those of the US, and anyone who suggests otherwise (like saying you should vote non-strategically to defeat the MAGA opposition) is either terribly ill-informed or, more likely, is working for the opposition.
This is true, but it's also important to be aware that if all americans ever do is vote then things will never improve. It's important to vote still, but it can't end there
Or, hear me out, you just let people vote for progressives if they want and don't blame them for dems losing. Maybe look at why people stopped voting after Obama? Maybe he happy that people vote at all because it allows more votes for progressives/dems in the local level, even if it doesn't help at the national level? Cuz dems have a lot of issues, not just leftists "not" voting for them. (sure, some don't but iirc they're actually the highest % dem voting block, even if they are much smaller in population. )
I'm not blaming them for dems losing, and they can vote however they want, I'm not stopping them. This isn't about how you can and can't vote, it's about how to make your vote work to prevent situations like we're in right now, while also pushing for longer-term outcomes, and we can all have - and share - our opinions on how to do that.
Personally, I think it's counter-productive to refuse to actively vote to prevent our current situation in the name of ideals or whatever else. It's going to take years if not decades to fix the damage being done right now, in all likelihood. But you're welcome to have your own opinion on that matter.
if that sort of voting prevented this situation at all we wouldn't be here?
Do you think supporting the lesser evil magically makes the two parties put forward BETTER candidates? All that shit does is lead to parties racing to the bottom, voters getting fucking tired of it and either stop voting, or look at trump and go "at least he isn't a politician he'll do something different" and vote for him. Dems refuse to do shit about it but run shit after shit after shit. When they had huge turnout for Obama's message of "change" and now their message with biden is "nothing will fundamentally change" which.... cool. Great. Way to energize your voters. "Not trump" isn't enough. and until the DNC learns that, they can fuck themselves as they aren't improving or preventing shit. I'll always vote, but I'm voting for candidates that are the most worthy of a fucking vote.
if that sort of voting prevented this situation at all we wouldn’t be here?
Is your stance that Harris would have been doing the same shit Trump is doing, had she been elected instead? That it wouldn't have been any better? If that's what you're positing... I strongly disagree, and I really don't know how you can even start to back that claim up.
Regardless, vote how you want. I've had this conversation with enough people with your exact stance to know that there's nothing I can say to change your mind and there's nothing you're going to say to change mine, so continue doing you and I'll continue doing me.
No, you’ve said voting defensively prevents exactly what is happening. As if people don’t vote defensively. As if we are not here.
Harris being run is WHY we are here. The DNC thinking they can get away with being antidemocratic (attacking third parties, suing to get them off the ballot, don’t get me started on the “victory fund” bullshit) is WHY WE ARE HERE. It’s on them. The DNC has fucked itself since after Obama. That’s why so many normal ass people haven’t voted since Obama. I’m not talking super principled leftists. I’m talking normie shit. They don’t vote anymore because it’s fucking garbage. Because even if the DNC won they wouldn’t do anything of substance to help. Half of what happened in Palestine was in collab WITH Biden, planned by him and passed on to Trump. Maybe it would’ve been slower. Draw out the suffering more, but it wouldn’t have been changed for the better, which is the problem. Better than the worst imaginable isn’t good enough for people.
What I said was that voting defensively makes your vote work towards preventing this sort of thing, whereas voting third party does not. Protest votes, ballot spoilage, 3rd party votes and similar actions make a statement, but so does voting for progressives down ballot.
To put it succinctly, people voting 3rd party didn't cause the current situation, but they did nothing to prevent or obstruct the current situation, either.
Yeah, people seem to forget history. Often institutions become so sclerotic that the only way forward is to work outside of them. Look what it took to defeat slavery in the US. Slaveholders had co-opted both major parties. Abolitionists tried for decades to work within the existing two party system, voting "lesser evil" election after election. In the end, this strategy failed at ending slavery. It took the founding of a new party, the Republican Party, to really make progress on abolition. It ended up leading to the Civil War, but slavery would have continued for another generation at least if abolitionists had just kept voting defensively election after election.
So you're saying they just stopped voting for a few elections and let the bigots have free reign for a few elections? Or did they keep voting for the lesser evil in the mean time? Because that's what this discussion is actually about, and your example doesn't seem to apply.
No. They didn't vote lesser of two evils. You need to get out of the headspace that the only option is to vote for one of the two parties. That's an ahistorical viewpoint. They just voted Republican until their candidate won. The Republican party was only founded after "voting for the lesser evil" failed after decades of trying. This is what I mean when I say people need to learn their history. We've been in this situation before, and our ancestors did not escape it by voting for the lesser evil.
We live in a two party system. We're going to have two parties. However, the parties themselves are not eternal. We'll always have two parties, but which parties those are can change. And often it's easier to completely swap out parties than to reform one from within.
If you want to create a new party in the US, the only way to do so is to destroy one of the existing parties. Namely, that means making the other party completely electorally nonviable.
Imagine if the most liberal 20% of the electorate simply refused to ever vote for the Democratic Party again and switched over to the DSA. Yes, that would mean losing for a few cycles. But again, history shows that sometimes you have to put up with pain now for a better future later. Centrists will slander this as "accelerationism," but this isn't really that. You're not hoping things get worse before they get better. You're just recognizing that the only way to create a new party is to destroy an old one. Politics becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you make one of the existing parties nonviable, then a power vacuum is created, and the whole electoral alignment shifts. If leftists completely abandoned the Democrats, the Democratic party would completely collapse. It would go the way of the Whigs. When a party dies, the electoral coalitions realign. And they would realign around the old Republican Party and the new DSA or other chosen party.
I know this is hard. But really, this is just learning from history. Yes, it means you sometimes lose ground in the short term to gain ground in the long term. And that is hard. It's painful. But compare that to what we've been doing instead - hoping to gain ground in the short term while losing even more in the long term. Voting for Democrats now is just voting for the lock on the ratchet. They have no real desire to change anything. At best you get a temporary reprieve from creeping fascism, while nothing changes in the circumstances that lead to the fascism.
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But remember that to fix it you need to fight for a revolution.
Nah. We got LGBTQ+ marriages without a revolution. Civil Rights got better for a time. You're going to have to give examples in the last 20 years where a revolution worked. Meaning, the government wasn't taken over by an authoritarian and/or military leader.
To be fair, both of those were won with plenty of violence and took decades to accomplish.
The first Pride was a riot started most likely by a black trans woman who refused to be grabbed by the cops during one of their usual roundups of gay people and threw the first punch (brick to the face?) that set off a brawl across the whole area. IIRC, 100 cops were injured in the fight. But it still took nearly 50 years for gay marriage to be completely legal in the US. 1969 was when Stonewall happened, 2015 was the Supreme Court ruling (and that can be repealed at any time, like they did with abortion). Even the first state to officially write it into law, Massachusetts, only happened in 2004.
MLK Jr credited the Black Panthers being armed and willing to do what he couldn't as a major part of why he had the success that he did. And his protests were already illegal, risking possible prison time for those involved if they weren't done very carefully. And even after 10 years, Civil Rights laws were only written after a week of riots and billions of dollars in property damage sparked by his murder. 10 years of protests, but it took less than a week for the laws to be drafted and signed into law when entire city districts started to get burnt to the ground.
However, revolutions can be cultural as well. Gay marriage is a great example with actual polling numbers to present. By the time that the Supreme Court ruled on it, polls said that the country was equally split on the issue while as of 2021 a full 70% of the US apparently supports gay marriage.
First of all, Civil Rights wasn't a revolution. Second, that's one of the reasons I said in the last 20 years, the military wouldn't let that happen again.
Yeah, I agree. Too many people on Lemmy are too keen on being revolutionaries and tearing the system down. They forget that most revolutions just wind up installing equally corrupt governments, and quite honestly, I think a lot of people romanticize revolutionary figures and dream of being like them. It’s a tempting thing, to be a part of something so big that it topples a world order.
But stable governments are really hard to build and they take time to solidify. They should not be discarded unless absolutely necessary. I don’t think we’re at that point in the West yet, even in America. Capitalism has its problems and needs reform, but Communism clearly isn’t the answer either. I think the socialist models in Europe are good models to follow, but they’re not perfect either.
It’s not because we got into a new millennium that human’s violent nature (aka nature’s nature) is suddenly going to disappear. Voting and protesting is for sustaining peacetime. And that does only part of the legwork. A very long traumatic war is the best breathing ground for peace. But it never lasts. Because the sons of grandsons stop telling the tales, because it was so long ago and we’re better now
That’s so obviously not what I’m saying. Your argument is that we don’t need revolutions anymore or that they don’t happen. I’m not saying they always have the result we want, but they happen.
The irony is that your LGBTQ argument is partially responsible for the attempted revolution of Jan 6. We have Trump because the South couldn’t stomach having 8 years of a descendant of slaves as president. Your country never made peace after the civil war, in a way your last revolution never properly landed, which is why there’s as many confederate flags in the south as American flags.
If you’re not sure about Nepal, then look into it. You’d be surprised.
Hence the crabby letters and the protests. Right now in the US, there are a lot of issues that are popular, and Democratic candidates can be pressured into movement on those issues. Republican candidates have to obey Dear Leader or face getting primaried by the propaganda machine, hence billion-dollar ballrooms and no accountability for the $1.776 billion slushfund.
...or the inadvisable elective war on Iran.
If Americans were more literate about their elections (which is a prerequisite for democracy to work) then we wouldn't be in this mess.
One counterexample does not make it untrue. I have the same complaint regarding Obama's failure to rise to the moment after the slaying of Michael Brown in 2014 and the Ferguson unrest. That incident demonstrated that law enforcement was due some severe reformation. It did happen, and the high rate of officer-involved homicide entered public consciousness and the Overton Window. We've actually seen some police reform since in some counties, but not coming from Obama or the Congress of the time.
It doesn't take every time. But it does sometimes.
Right now things are severe, especially now that SCOTUS can pretty much veto anything it wants (including the Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments). The US public may have to resort to noncooperation, general strikes or even civil war to create a governmental system that is public-serving. At least those of us who survive will have to try.
But for now, we're focused on the midterm elections, to see if we really can push enough of the GOP out to stop Trump and his push towards autocracy. Things are going to get far worse if the Republican party is able to lock in a permanent majority in both houses of Congress, and that's exactly what they're trying to do.
So your complaint is that we're not moving far enough fast enough?
I share your frustration, especially as the Trump regime is moving fast and breaking things, breaking laws and then defying either courts or Congress to stop them since much of law enforcement is on its side.
I don't know if we're still at the point where we can a) get the Democrats back into sweeping power and b) depend on them to make sweeping reforms of elections and the US Supreme Court, and then start to rebuild what the Trump regime has destroyed, or if we're already doomed to a one-party system and need to focus on organizing resistance like a general strike. Spelling it out like that, it seems like a long shot.
Part of it depends on how the 2016 2026 mid-term elections go, if they go. I suspect that swing voters may still be under the influence of the massive far-right propaganda machine that dominates social media and mainstream news. If that's the case then the US will fall to one party autocracy and then to civilization collapse.
All that said, so long as we do have elections, it's still worthy to consider voting defensively, especially if the alternative is voting third party or not at all.
They might reform SCOTUS now that their careers, and possibly their very lives, depend on it.
I do fear they might not do enough. The damage caused by allowing this Supreme Court to run amok is overwhelming and might not be easily reversible. They need to not merely add term limits and expand the court (possibly to over a hundred) and mandate an enforceable code of ethics, but it may be time to strip SCOTUS of jurisdiction so that they no longer have total veto power over legislation and executive action.
Curiously, term limits might require an amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Stripping them of jurisdiction only requires legislation.
You're going to be able to find instances where it doesn't fully work, where positions don't evolve. Obama era Democrats were mostly neoliberal, which factored into why Trump was able to take power.
But that shouldn't stop you from voting against the guy who is going to do more damage.
You’re going to be able to find instances where it doesn’t fully work
What you mean is it never works when it actually matters. The two pivotal moments of Biden's presidency was the rail workers gearing up to strike and the protests around support of Israel. In both instances he and nearly every Democratic politician told voters to go fuck themselves.
Which is infuriating enough and the only thing more irritating is the endless number of people like yourself trying to tell us that didn't happen.
I'm not saying it didn't happen. I'm saying it distracted enough voters from the threat of the GOP, of Trump, of Project 2025, of the white Christian nationalist movement, that they allowed it all to happen.
Now Palestine is even worse off, as are the rail workers. As are we all.
Your position raises a valid concern. The human species just might not be able to organize from the left well enough to stop the right with a charismatic strongman, a base of uneducated soldiers and the financial support of the ownership class. The left may, in fact, be unable to organize due to internal differences. It sucks if that's the case. I hope not, but I haven't ruled it out.
The left may, in fact, be unable to organize due to internal differences.
The politician you expect me to vote for tells me to go fuck myself and you call it "internal differences".
Yeah okay bud.
You're speaking as if there's equal blame here. There isn't. Liberals have treated leftists like second class voters for decades rather than making real concessions. They're calling all the shots and that means they own all the responsibility.
And curiously, you think the solution is to let the Republicans, who hate you even more and have now set up concentration camps, win.
I do not refute that some of the Democratic organizations are captured by corporate interests, but the Republicans are even more captured, and pose a dire threat to the meager democratic features of the US political system.
Leave your electoral apologia out the /c/:
Your votes all amounted to empowering Nazis back into power. You refuse to directly act, because it's inconvenient to your positions.
Voting is exactly how the electoral college elected them 5 times. Thrice against you, twice for you.
That's the problem. More people voted for Biden than voted for Harris or Clinton. Democrats were unmotivated to stop Trump from winning, and in all three elections, he was a greater threat no matter who was running against him.
I don't like the EC either. In fact, no-one other than the far right likes the EC.
That's not a power I personally have, though there have been two attempts to amend the Constitution to eliminate it, and currently there is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which is only a couple of states away from having legal force.
The worst of Democrats, establishment Democrats who focus on serving their donors are not fascist. They're neoliberal, and granted, neoliberalism makes states vulnerable to fascist movements (a problem faced in the EU, Australia and Canada as well as the US) but that doesn't actually make them fascist.
In Australia, you can vote for whoever you want first, and then you just have to make sure to put the better big party before the worst big party.
In America, your voting system is fucked, so you only get three options: Democrat, Republican, no preference. Abstaining is no preference. Abstaining and saying you want to burn down the system, is still no preference. You gotta make a good choice with your vote, so you can move on to making change on the ground with your hands and your feet and your voice. If you spend all day at your keyboard talking about how abstinence actually means whatever you want it to mean, then you're not making change, you're just getting mad.
Abstaining is actually voting Republican, because of the voter demographics wherein Republicans have a dedicated chunk of zealots who will vote 100% of the time, and the Democrats having no such thing
Because the third parties in question this time (and most times) were spoiler candidates for the Democrats, a Republican abstaining does not necessarily mean +1 for Dems
Democracy means you have the freedom to elect a fascist government if you want to, and that's exactly what the American people have done. They exercised their freedom to choose Trump over Harris.
American people don't get very many freedoms. They don't get the freedom to vote third party. They don't get the freedom to vote "neither of the above". They don't get the freedom to use the popular vote. But they do get the freedom to choose between the two big candidates, and that's the freedom they exercised.
Okay, sure. You can let the fascists turn America into a monarchy and find out if a communist revolution is easier in a monarchy than a neoliberal capitalist democracy. That's clearly what you want to happen.
find out if a communist revolution is easier in a monarchy than a neoliberal capitalist democracy
I don't think it is but people like you set yourself in opposition to any radical change so long as you live in the comfort of a neoliberal capitalist democracy. See the problem?
For example, I was in full favor of the rail strike back in 2022. Sure it's no revolution, but shutting down railways certainly would have been radical and led to some powerful concessions being made by oligarchs to American workers. And let me guess, you opposed the strike and supported Joe Biden, 44 Democratic senators and 36 Republican senators who decided to block it right?
So it's not me who's choosing revolution under monarchy instead of neoliberal capitalist democracy.
That's because you have to show up and show up in numbers. Too many on the left cry about not having a perfect candidate, don't show up, and then wonder why the Dems keep going right when the left doesn't show up. Then, surprise, they have no representation and throw away 20 years of progress.
I don't care for Biden or trump, but I wasn't dumb enough not to see where we are right now before the vote was cast, so I showed up. So many stayed home that trump got elected with the popular vote despite not getting many more votes than he did last time.
But hey, we didn't vote in the woman who had some bad policies and could be worked with because one bad policy was worth throwing everything away. So we got the country we collectively voted (or sat out) for
Republicans, are by nature, essentially a mono culture. Conservativism demmands conformity. Hate taxes, Hate foreigners, hate "the gays", hate science and edumacashun.
Democrats, while not Progressive, pick up everyone else, which includes progressives. Progressives, tend to be open and accepting of what is different.
Except increasingly, they are not. Just with the last election, because every Democrat didn't 100% say "Fuck Israel, Free Palestine", then now all Democrats are evil and should never be supported.
Ya'll are single issue voting just as bad as the shitty Republicans will single issue vote on say, No Abortion.
The Democrats aren't great, but they exist as the compromise based system our Government SHOULD BE.
And maybe they would run more Progressive types and shift back Left but why should they bother right now? They could run some hyper progressive trans candidate who hatees Israel, but that candidate says one "wrong" thing on one issue and the mob turns on them and says "SeE, aLl DeMoCrAts aRe bAd."
That said, I am still not entirely convinced that a lot of the "All Dems Suck" rhetoric isn't the Left side version of bad foreign actors that have turned the GOP into the MAGA Nazi party.
Having read their comment, probably “because every Democrat didn’t 100% say “Fuck Israel, Free Palestine”, then now all Democrats are evil and should never be supported.”
That’s them observing progressives disagree with a party stance then refuse to vote for the party over that single issue. The extrapolation is that progressives are more likely to become single issue voters, therefore more difficult to cater to, therefore maybe not worth the effort from the party’s perspective.
It's important to note that both Bush and Trump won their initial election by the electoral college and lost the popular vote. So not only do you not have to get >50%, you don't even have to get a plurality of votes to win.
Also, Roger Stone just happened to participate in both elections, and both had fuckery involved.
It's funny how well liberals like yourself understand the electoral college in this context. But then if I say a non-voter in a deep blue state didn't have any bearing on Trump getting elected and suddenly the principle matters.
Libertarianism is societal cancer and those Stein voters would have supported Trump over Harris anyway since the MAGA GOP is basically a Libertarian system (the fuck you got mine Government) at its core.
Sometimes there is a Green option on the ballot, and in those cases, you should vote Green! The US Green Party has had a solid leftist platform for decades, including ending support for Israel, universal healthcare, free college, and more.
Thank fuck someone is saying this. There are a few posters in c/progressivepolitics that seem to be saying Democrats have to pass all their purity tests or you shouldn’t vote and that’s nuts because it hands Republicans elections. Luckily they usually get downvoted
Looks like there's 3 Democrat senators who tried to abolish the Electoral College in 2024. You should go see what those three guys are doing now, and if you can volunteer to help them. Maybe if they get enough popular support, they can try again. You should go and see if they have a plan for next steps, if maybe there's a candidate in your local primaries that they support.
Liberal concessions is what allowed the deaf & blind to be segregated from public life, until one too many of us had enough. Directly intersect every time you can.
I don't know a thing about this skullgrid person, but 'reee' is a 4chan thing making fun of autistic/nd people. Certainly something we can move beyond when wanting to say people are angry.
Hey, it's great that you're doing that! I don't want to demean what you're doing, which, after all, is the most anyone could reasonably ask of you, but that isn't going to result in an actual revolution is it? At least not in the next five years?
With that in mind, is it not also reasonable to ask that every few years you go to a ballot box and tick a box if that might result in slightly fewer of your neighbours being deported?
I guess this is what you do if there are only two candidates running and they are "100% Hitler' and "99% Hitler". Fortunately, I've never encountered this situation, but I'd really be in a moral dilemma if I did.
We should have a "None of the above" option on the ballot. If "None of the above" got the most votes, then they'd have to run another election with all new candidates.
There are a number of election system models better than the ones used in United States elections. Sadly, our elected officials get more power with the system as it is, and it's difficult to organize general strikes around election reform...or court reform for that matter. And I say that since the US Supreme Court has succeeded in vetoing the VRA and is carving into the 14th and 15th amendments.
... don't you think a lot of Trump votes were defensive votes against Hilary/Harris? Telling people to vote against the worse candidate is morbid and devoid of hope.
Elections should be restructured so people aren't forced into 1-on-1 battles. People naturally have more diverse beliefs than a left/right spectrum. The current system was gamed into crisis. Time for an amendment
Do you think that is going be easier with a Democrat in charge or Trump? Given that Trump has already done everything possible to destroy what little voter rights Americans do have. And may not be done.
At this point wouldn't be surprised if he made up some bullshit excuse to cancel the fall elevations all together.
A MAGA Idiot voting for Trump "defensively" against 5 Trans Athletes and non existent people eating cats and dogs un Ohio, are not voting defensivrly, they are stupid and voting stupidly because god for they actually not accept blatant and obvious lies.
Pretty sure America is the most obvious place this would be referencing.
It has to be a FPTP country, and it has to be a country with so few possible parties that the choices are bad or worse. Not to mention it has to be a country with free and fair elections.
Elections in the US are far removed from free and fair, especially now we're past Louisiana v. Callais and SCOTUS can and will veto any efforts by Congress to reform them.
Ellie Mystal pointed out that was a risk of civil war: If congress were to strip SCOTUS of jurisdiction (no longer decides what is Constitutional or not) and the court then responds by saying that law is unconstitutional, the blue states side with Congress while the red states side with the Court, and we have a crisis that cannot be resolved by institutional procedure.
Personally, I'd like to see more of They've made their ruling, now let them enforce it. But as we recently saw with the Virginia redistricting referendum, their governor obeyed in advance.
That's possible, but the US doesn't have the institutional capacity for civil war. I think that while the possibility of violence is high, actual civil conflict is low.
Civil war will certainly not look like the first one with battle lines, though if we see an interstate conflict, we might see fights over strategic points. The experts I've read suggest there would be flash strikes coordinated the way that flash mobs are, only armed.
We certainly have enough firearms to make for a bloody mess.
Aren't you Butch Ware, the Green Party vice presidential nominee and candidate for governor of California, and therefore an American?
Elsewhere in this thread, Gormadt told you to run for office. You said "I did", and linked to a news story about Butch Ware messing up the paperwork to run for California governor. So it seemed like you were saying you're Butch Ware, an American.
It's an outrageous claim, but I am not in the habit of disagreeing with people about who they are. Though I may see fit to question perceived inconsistencies.
Here's the thing that bothers me with the whole harm reduction/purity test/don't let perfect be the enemy of the good argument when it comes to US politics:
Saying that I should vote for the person who agrees with me on some stuff even if it's not everything kind of assumes that for some list of policy stances, they're all essentially equivalent. Not saying mean things about minorities is put on the same level as continuing to run a massive, racist prison and policing system or a massive military that is essentially only used for killing foreigners to exploit their resources. It's insane to argue that I should be able to overlook these truly reprehensible and harmful actions because they're a bit better on some smaller thing.
Even if you ignore the bad things that are still done by the less bad party, structurally, the systems we have in place all but guarantee that we will repeatedly have more of the worse party every election or so and that they will have access to tools that let them abuse their power. So at best, voting for the lesser evil just slightly delays the greater evil. If we just go vote every few years then go back to brunch and trust that the people we elected will be doing a good job, nothing will ever change. We never see these blue no matter who people go "I know it sucks, lets do this for now, but here is the plan for the next few years to make sure we can get a better option in the future."
The way things work now, even if a politician says they agree with you, you just have to trust them. There is no real recourse for holding them accountable if they were lying. You just have to let them do whatever they were going to do, maybe write some strongly worded letters, and then in 2/4/6 years you end up having to vote for them again because of the way the system is fucked. And as long as they are taking corporate money, they aren't representing you. You can't trust anything they say.
If a Democrat came around who:
Didn't take corporate money and seemed trustworthy.
Promised significant democratic reforms in both how elections work and the government works so that we can actually have real choices next time.
Promised to significantly reduce the military so we couldn't keep doing imperialism everywhere.
Promised to significantly reduce the police and surveillance state so that they won't have the capacity to keep spying on us and disrupting real opposition.
Then I would 100% vote for them and even canvas for them even if I disagreed with them on some other issues that I cared about. At least then we'd be moving forward. We'd have a chance to do better in the future. But they're not going to do that because the people who have made it into power benefit from things as they are, so they're not going to change that. As things are now, we're just stuck in an endless loop, slowly drifting towards oblivion.
To be clear, just not voting and doing nothing else isn't super helpful either, but the key is we need to get everyone on board with an organized plan to fix things. The people who show up every election just to tell you that actually trying to organize a new party is bad, voting for the progressive in the party primary is dividing the party, and you can't complain too much about the bad things the lesser evil does because it'll hurt our chances next time are NOT HELPING.
The question then is how do we do this? We have a bunch of people who know the system is fucked, but there's no direction for them to express that. How do they even begin to fight? "Let's organize a new party for this purpose!" Ok now we have yet another 3rd party to divide the vote even further. (Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/927/) "Lets all pick this existing party and use it for this purpose!" Ok, which one? The DNC? They're part of the problem and actively work against progressive candidates in primaries. Sure, we sometimes get the win, but those victories often take all of our time and attention just to secure one relatively small seat of power that is useless without winning way more of them. Another existing 3rd party? Can we get people to agree which one to join? This is where the leftist infighting argument holds some water. There are a few existing parties of varying lefty persuasion, but people aren't necessarily going to agree with all their policies, so getting people to compromise on one of them when we have no central organized structure is borderline hopeless. And that's before you even consider the collective action problem of getting enough people to take the leap that they aren't worried about the splitting the vote issue.
And regardless of what path we decide to take, how do we spread this message to get people on board? All of the major channels for mass communication are captured by corporate interests. Even social media, which had the hope of being a place where the people could talk to each other directly, has become almost useless for that function since the corporations that own them control the algorithms that allow messages to spread beyond their starting group.
And I already know someone is going to say something to the effect of "Don't worry about the big picture. It's too big for you to handle, so try to do things locally that are more possible." To that I say: Holy shit we are running out of time. The government keeps getting more and more fascist, he environment is falling apart and will kill us at some point, and technological advances in surveillance and military technology are going to keep making it easier for the powerful to cling onto power without care for what people want. Getting on your town's school board or something sounds nice and all, but it's like being on the Titanic and telling people to grab some buckets. Like I said earlier, even winning a single seat in congress doesn't mean much if it took our entire movement's collective effort to get that seat while the capitalists used their money to win the rest of them.
I really don't know what to do, but I'm so fucking sick of hearing people chastising people for not wanting to just keep doing what we've always been doing when that clearly hasn't been working and not only not helping to change things, but actively working to disrupt the efforts of people who do want to try to change things.
EDIT: Just to add my own personal anecdote to this: In 2020 I both volunteered for Bernie's campaign and worked on the campaign for a progressive congressional candidate in my district. The mood felt so optimistic. We were all working so hard to try to change things and for a while it seemed like it had a chance... and then we just straight up lost both elections to some absolute pieces of shit. Our incumbent representative was such a fucking terrible person he might as well have been a Republican.
Not that this has any bearing on the broader argument, I just want to share how my own experiences have shaped my feelings on this, but the broader pattern kind of reinforces that.
EDIT: Perhaps I should clarify my view a bit. Any vote preventing the worst candidate from taking office is a good one. Especially in our First-Past-the-Post system.
They were yelling at me to not vote Platner, to start a single man revolution.
I'm ready for one, I hate our system, the democratic establishment is aiding fascism as much as the terrorist republicans. But not voting for the guy advocating for policy to help working class people, that calls out both democrats and republicans, that both parties are spending against...
That's just shooting ourselves in the foot at that point. People will die if a republican wins. Healthcare will be pulled back further. Etc etc.
You would think the people yelling at you to read theory would understand it themselves.
From Marx: dialectical thinking, I can work with 3rd party advocacy while recognizing the material and concrete situations as the exist currently and make strategic decisions.
From Lenin: being a single individual starting a revolution would do nothing buy get myself killed and harm the building of a revolution. The first person who dies would not be a billionaire in such an ill conceived violent revolution without mass support and parallel alternative systems to capitalism to support revolutionaries.
This image I've been resonating with as, of course, I've been attacked by the right, but now I've been fending off the authoritarian left and I think this is where the whole "horseshoe theory" really comes from. It's just authoritarianism.
It doesn't feel that the Democrats will actually listen much anymore, we're shouting we're drowning at the top of our lungs everyday and they're like "Thoughts and prayers with a pride flag."
if the progress can be so easily undone by fascists, as we’re seeing right now all over the world, then maybe this strategy is not adequate, no?
if you need a victory every time to maintain a steady progress, and they need a victory once to undo it all, you’re playing a game you’re almost certain of losing.
we need a to organize towards a revolution, and a new system
this is easier said than done, of course. i'm not gonna deny that. and i don't know exactly what is to be done, precisely, i am not knowledgeable and experienced enough to answer that. but one thing is certain, liberal democracy brought us into fasicsm, it's not gonna get us out of it.
You're right. We need mass protests, civil disobedience, direct action, mutual aid, and preparation for a revolution.
I thought America was heading in that direction in 2024 with all of those student encampments to protest the genocide in Gaza. That could have been the beginning of something big. But people don't really care about Gaza anymore, because they have bigger problems at home, what with ICE and all that. Americans can't really do Gaza anymore, they're stuck doing No Kings instead. Because of all the abstainers in the 2024 election who didn't abstain in 2020, it's now harder for Americans to do direct action and start a revolution.
I thought America was heading in that direction in 2024 with all of those student encampments to protest the genocide in Gaza. That could have been the beginning of something big.
You're right. It could have.
Until Joe Biden told them all to go fuck themselves.
Reactionary blame mindset vs progressive solutions mindset.
Going forward, I think we need to stick together and protect each other to limit the influence of ICE. The first priority is survival and community defence until the Nazis are removed from power. The US midterms are in 5 months, and if they go well, the senate and house will be stocked with progressives who are more interested in opposing Trump than appealing to corporate donors. That's something Americans can have an impact on right now by volunteering in primary campaigns. If the house and senate are full of progressives, then Trump's powers will be limited. They can use the bureaucracy to slow him down.
Then, if the fascists are slowed down, it will be safer for immigrants and queer people to hit the streets with us and protest against all of these injustices. And we can use that momentum to get more people into mutual aid networks and engaged in helping progressives like Mamdani take the reigns of government. Those mutual aid networks will be useful later. The progressive electoral movements will help people like AOC win the 2028 primaries. If we get the right person into the D nomination, then Trump's third term bid is fucked and he can go die in a mcdonalds parking lot of a cholesterol attack.
If that progressive wins, or if a moderate wins, then it will be time to capture that anger left over from the R's term and tell people the pot is still scorching hot, we still have work to do. Get some direct action done, join those aid networks, practice resisting the cops and the capitalists in civil disobedience actions. And when it all hits critical mass, those networks will be the supply lines of the armed revolution. We can hit the reigns of capital with deadly force and dismantle the state apparatus, turning the means of production over to the communities and the unions. That moment is a decade or two away in the very best case scenario. We need to protect our people until then. We need to get more workers into unions and more socialists into government, so that we have the structure to run the economy without the cops or the IRS or the rest of the state.
America's democracy sucks, but it's the best government out there.
You yanks are so far up your own you can’t see anything. Heck, Canada is flawed, but just across the bloody lakes there’s already a government better than the USA.
Say you haven’t travelled the world without saying you haven’t travelled the world.
Yeah and how far has that gotten us? Why are we still dealing with issues and acting like they're solved? Especially now, this is not viable. We'll kill the earth before we manage to fix anything.
And in protest, you've let the other guy win. Now you have your very own Stasi in the streets and your tax dollars are being spent on bombing schools and celebratory UFC fights. You... sure showed them, haven't you.
Ahh the neoliberal "its the voters who are the problem" fever dream, where Democrats can never fail, they can only be failed by voters.
A fever dream which has resulted in the Democratic party having a lower approval rating than Trump. Surely defending Democrats as an institution and blaming voters will gather more people to your coalition and help stop Trump.
You gotta get it through your head homie. You blaming voters for the failures of the Democrats: Its why Trump won in both 16 and 24. You're the problem if you take issue with how voters vote.
Kinda wild to suggest some random nobody on lemmy has any reason to feel guilty. Do you think Biden feels any guilt for going around congress twice to ship weapons to Israel? I doubt it.
I've never shipped a single bomb in my life. Hell I've never even slapped somebody.
If Joe Biden can sleep at night then I sure as hell can.
We needed a coalition of voters to stop Trump. Excusing Dems and blaming voters destroys our ability to build that coalition.
People who do that are wreckers. So stop being a wrecker. If you have this opinion and want to blame voters, fine, but keep it entirely to yourself.
You do know that it's possible to do both, right? Putting the blame on third party voters does not absolve the Democratic party, and it's weird that people keep presenting it that way.
It's only part of a strategy, but yes, it takes time. I think we might see what happens when general discontent of the public becomes severe enough that they develop class consciousness. Well, those of us who survive the misery will get to see it.
I was thinking about those red states where they're now eliminating the last remaining black districts. In so many red states the real election is the Republican primary, since whoever wins that will win the general no matter how abhorrent they are. So why don't all the now effectively-disenfranchised voters start voting in the Republican primary for the least-awful Republican? I can't imagine the reaction of Louisiana Republicans if busloads of elderly black people started showing up to "their" primary after church on Sunday.
That might actually make a difference between a true MAGA loyalist who will vote as Dear Leader directs him to do at all times, and, someone who in fact will not manifest 11,780 votes for Trump if they aren't actually there to be found.
Even the current congressional Republicans have their factions who take offense to Trump portraying himself as Jesus, or conjuring a slush fund of $1.776 billion, or giving himself, his family and his businesses permanent amnesty from tax audits.
Ignore the ivory towers atop which the officials sit. Cleanly above your protests, so that they might see the horizon beyond your squabbling. Had the people consumed the choices, and rebuked the officials, maybe they would not have to choose between marauders and raiders.
We do not yet know what it takes to organize the people to seize power from the ownership class. It's a race we're falling behind with every hour as the far-right propaganda engine that dominates social media and televised news is able to better draw people in and tell them what to think.
Eventually, there will enough of us dead, and enough of us discontent and set on revenge that we're willing to fight just because we have nothing left to lose. But American history has shown that we can also have incremental revolutions, usually steps of reform in response to hardship driven by inequity.
Once group A "seizes the power from the ownership class" THEY BECOME THE OWNERSHIP CLASS.
This is history, this is how it works. It's very foolish to believe what you see on TV or what you're told when reality has never gone that way ever not once.
Voting has positively impacted the world, democracy has moved mountains.
Remember when people tried to say Hillary was just as corrupt? Now it's Kamala sat atop her ivory tower and is a marauder and/or a raider. They're just as bad as Trump. It's equal.
Don't vote, destroy your system from the outside. Let Trump win, let it burn.
That is this guys message. And as cute this idea is when you're 16 or whatever, once reality hits it's not what you're describing.
Destroying, decaying and damaging a system hurts the lowest rung first and the highest rung, never.
Voting does make change. It doesn't when every election bozos like you try to dissuade more people from voting.
You enjoy your preaching? My message is the same as everyone else's here. Voting isn't enough. A choice between two corporate representatives, one rabid and the other cleanly presented, is not a fucken choice. You don't have to like it but every system gets gamed and eventually the people oppressed by that system must destroy it in order to gain a better quality of life. The writing is on the wall, everything is going down but the stock market. Wake up.
If not voting was a candidate it'd win every election in a landslide. Dopes like you create an ouroboros of self confirmation, a self fulfilling prophecy. Voting doesn't work, so why vote and now that people don't vote, voting doesn't work. So why vote?
It's a crap message stemming from a misunderstanding of the problem of our system. People have to buy into it. It's "cool" not to buy into it.
"If NoT VoTiNg WaS.." Bitch I voted. Every fucken time, and these monsters continued to tear the world apart, destroy anything I ever built, and say fuck you I got mine. I HAVE BEEN VOTING THIS ENTIRE TIME AND SHIT IS STILL BEINF CONSOLIDATED AT LIGHT SPEED. TRUMP STILL HAPPENED. THE NEXT TIME SOMEONE SAYS JUST VOTE HARDER IM GONNA THROW UP. Voting is the peaceful alternative, but ask the fucking miners at Blair Mountain how well voting worked for them compares to praxis. You sound ignorant as fuck. Every right we ever had came from the people getting fed up their blood was being spilled, their dead filling the cemeteries for the pockets of oligarchs. Fuck off with this "people like you" bullshit. I've been here and its not FUCKING working.
Go read your first message to me, sweetheart. You grandstanded saying I wanted Trump to win. Dont act like I responded to your posted comment. It was the other way around.
Because in reality that is what people like you are pushing even if you don't realize it.
Who else is in the ivory tower besides Trump? Biden? Obama? Clinton? Kamala? Bernie? Who the fuck are you talking about? It's nonsense, when reality collides with your ideals you realize how fuckin stupid it is. You literally accused all of those people of being in an ivory tower and acting as raiders. Those are your words.
If not voting was a candidate it'd win every election. That's the problem. That's why they hand the candidacy to Clinton, that's why they can assert Kamala and not worry
Not like people are gonna vote anyway, they're penny pinching for votes. The decent politicians cannot afford to campaign on the same scale and the fact nobody comes out to vote means pound for pound, spending money on elections isn't entirely worth it
Go vote. That's the solution. Tell other people to vote. Believing a system that people aren't buying into doesn't work is a misunderstanding of the system.
Democracy is an adversarial system. Politicians are never your friends. Voting is the act of choosing your adversary. Your representatives work for you and must be pushed while in office.
This kind of post isn't helpful. It's useless finger wagging at this point that isn't actually going to substantively change things and it does nothing to challenge Democratic ineffectiveness.
Is the Democratic party better than the Republicans? Sure. But during the whole time Biden was in office that didn't stop my rights from eroding in the state I live in and the current Democratic status quo is to claim that standing for some civil rights is a problem. I won't say some things didn't get better but an improving economy didn't help with the cost of living for those of us who actually have to live in THIS economy.
The general argument though, is that if you vote for the lesser of two evils, therefore you're picking the opponent that you feel you are most likely going to nudge on the issues. The DNC ran a postmortem, claimed that they were going to be open and honest about the results, then hid the results when it contradicted their pro-Israel stance.
Nevermind that our leaders are fighting corruption and fascism with strongly worded letters, while the establishment is engaged in actively trying to destroy any momentum from their left while they seek out this mythical centrist Republican that'll vote for them. Am I supposed to feel okay with a party who's establishment thinks my rights are optional? Are brown people supposed to feel safe when out government is engaged in active ethnic cleansing and the opposition is dog whistling about how much they love strong borders? Are people of middle eastern descent supposed to feel okay when the opposition party supports a genocide?
Are we supposed to be convinced that a political party is willing to pay attention to protests and act on them, when they can't even be bothered to be transparent about and learn from a postmortem that told them actual fucking genocide is a line in the sand that enough people are unwilling to cross that it'd cost them one of the most consequential fucking elections of century?!
Voting blue is a tool, but how is doing it no matter who going to be meaningful when the Democrats won't learn from their mistakes, will double down on their harms, will throw their own candidates under the bus for being too far left, and will continuously shift rightward?
I'm all for not letting the perfect get in the way of the good, and I have absolutely followed through on the "picking your opponent" mindset, but you actually have to have good on the board.
Too bad the people who need to hear this aren't listening. I tried to make the same argument in 24 and constantly got responses that didn't amount to anything more than
Nope, I'm gonna take my ball and go home, who cares if temu Hitler wins? Both sides blah blah blah
Then, yeah, you're stuck between a proverbial rock and a hard place. But when we're talking about general Republicans vs. general Democrats, there's a significant difference between what we can expect of them. Jamelle Bouie makes a case for that difference (on Youtube)
What's their opinions on genocide? It's literally the worst possible thing you can do. Is there a significant difference between them or do they both support genocide?
In a lot of cases, both of them take contributions from and are supported by AIPAC, but that's why it's a matter of voting against the one that wants to dismantle USAID, by doing so killing a fuckton of children.
People not voting based on principle factors significantly into how we're now watching Trump implement Project 2025.
It's a system that is willfully rigged to force you to choose between bad choices hence establish contrived consent. But we're going to be subject to the consequences of the election whether or not we vote ethically or pragmatically.
Doesn't genocide kill a fuckton of children? If the system only gives you options where a fuckton of children get killed then the system needs to change and you aren't doing that by voting for the lesser evil that's still evil.
Which is why voting is not the only thing we need to be doing.
Americans failing to vote is how we lost USAID, an action which also caused the death of a fuckton of children. If the US wasn't afraid of black women in office, a lot of dead people would, in fact, be very much alive, and more reasonable minds would be trying to solve the crisis in Gaza.
I refuse to continue the "lesser evil" BS that got us here. Either the Dems put up actual progressives (and not the crap like Biden that people like to praise as "the most progressive president") or don't whine when people like me look elsewhere at the ballot box. Third party candidates actually do the legwork in red states to get votes unlike Dem presidential candidates.
Congratulations on sticking to your purity test and voting third party. Look at all the third party members in Congress and the white house.... Oh wait.
Considering, again, I live in a deep red state my vote for anyone outside conservatives matters about the same. So I might as well stick with who I actually want representing me and not just representing who I slightly less prefer murdering.
You know, in 2024 there was some talk about whether to dispute the results of the election. But people saw that you'd chosen to let Trump win the popular vote, so they figured you wanted Trump to win, and they didn't bother to demand a recount.
Even if everyone who voted third party voted for Harris, she still wouldn't have won the popular vote, and that's assuming all of them would have voted Harris and not Trump if forced like beyond at gunpoint (somehow like they can't even pick to just be shot) which is extremely unlikely.
Who said I abstained? I literally said I voted third party and was discussing third party voters. Why are you now needing to include people who don't vote at all? I voted third party in 2020 also so it's not like the Dems lost my vote between those years.
In FPTP, voting for a third party -- even when it's some major figure like Ross Perot or Bull Moose Teddy Roosevelt -- is doing the same as abstaining.
By voting defensively we can control the damage. But we're obligated to do more than just vote.
If everyone who voted for Biden had voted for Harris, she would have won the popular vote.
And if Biden had kept his campaign promises instead of just supporting genocide like you and every other centrist wanted, his VP might have had a record worth running on.
I vote for progressive candidates in the primary. For example, I voted for Bernie in the primary both times.
Morons like you however appear to not vote in primaries. Most of you idiot "both sides" fucks don't even know what they are. Very surprising to hear that from you. Then again, if you knew what they were then you wouldn't have accused me of voting for the centrist, which I assume you did since that's all you idiots parrot.
I today's world, I will judge the capacity of anyone who think "both candidates are the same" in any elections. We have seen in real time how rights conquered through decades can be destroyed in a matter of months
I can't imagine a better method to sow voter apathy than making sure a strike blocking, genocide supporting senile geriatric white man won the 2020 Democratic primaries.
You're saying that after a strike blocking, genocide supporting senile geriatric white man won the 2020 Democratic primaries "they" decided instead of running a legitimate 2024 primary the best way to combat voter apathy would be to appoint a strike blocking, genocide supporting young black woman?
Joe Biden went around congress twice to ship bombs to be used in a genocide. He's far more culpable in the genocide than I ever could be. So let me see you say:
"Fuck you Joe Biden. Fuck you 1000 times over."
Because if you're not willing to hold Joe Biden and I to the same standard you're not a voice worth listening to.
I just read a story about an American toddler who was left with a violent uncle when his mother was deported. She didn't have the option to take him with her, and the uncle murdered him a few months later.
But sure, it's better that you vote for a third party rather than the only party that could have stopped these atrocities from happening.
Reminder that Obama began mass deportations, Trump began family separation, Biden maintained them and rised ICE's budget.
If you blame only one party for the state of this nation, you are part of the problem.
I will acknowledge that one party is significantly worse. Absolutely no doubt about it. Democrats are there to protect the status quo republicans create. Voting for BS neoliberal democratic candidates only makes things worse.
Also, elections are usually decided by razor thin margins. If the polls show that a third party is going to eat 2% of the democratic vote, they will be forced to push their candidates to pander to progressives and adopt their policies. But it would be much much better if you participate in the primaries to ensure progressives win the primaries in all levels of government.
Obama began mass deportations, got the nickname deporter-in-chief. I stated that Trump began family separation. While it is true that Biden reversed some policies, he didn't reverse the majority and most influential Trump policies, including family separation .
I said no lies. One side inches towards fascism, the other one runs towards fascism. they are a ratchet system .
It's so insanely disingenuous, and wildly historically inaccurate, to pretend that immigration enforcement now isn't far more cruel (purposely) than under Obama or Biden.
And listen, Obama's deportation numbers are a huge fucking problem that I have with him. But the reality is that he did it while giving people due process.
Anyone who was alive and sentient during that time knows that what's happening now is 1000x more racist, evil, violent, cruel, and fundamentally unfair.
The disingenuous part is that you are arguing with absolutely no one. I have acknowledged that in every comment made. I keep saying conservatives are worse. it's clear and obvious and if you keep arguing about that point then you're an idiot.
What is also disingenuous is that by focusing about how bad the worst party is. you sort of excuse the less evil but still evil democrats. Who usually do the same things as conservatives just in a more subdued and polite way and with less slurs.
if we had Hillary then Biden then Kamala instead of Trump-Biden-Trump things would be better now, but we would still be fucked, just less aggressively. Technically better, but still a bad outcome.
you think you're playing the trolley problem:
and you think you are the good guy by fucking over minorities and working class people. Instead of doing anything to stop the trolley.
Have you registered to vote in the primaries?
If not then you're just a small internet troll. Just yelling online because you think politics are a sport and your just want your team to win. even of they are also horrible.
Except that's the same thing as abstaining. At least in state and federal elections, even popular third party options like Ross Perot or Bull-Moose Teddy Roosevelt don't get elected.
it will show very clearly, what policies and type of candidate get how many votes and what policies they need to adopt if they want your vote back. and seeing how elections are won on razor thin margins, they will adopt those policies.
Abstaining is great for the establishment, less people to pander. they want people to give up, they want the public to not vote.
Are you familiar with Brexit? a fringe idea that ended becoming reality because UKIP was taking a few percentage votes from the Tories. so Tories promised a Brexit referendum. by doing so Brexit went from a fringe idea to part of the Overton window.
Voting third party is a seriously strong move. Voting lesser evil leads to Trump.
By my understanding, the Brexit vote didn't work out for the UK public, and retrospectively they didn't fully understand the consequences of what they voted for.
Very much the way that Trump voters didn't understand what they were getting, even though he told everyone who he was.
Historically, at least in the US, voting third party has not been the flex you appear to believe it is.
my point is that voting third party is a really good way to get what you want. and it's more powerful than voting one of the two main parties. not how good Brexit was.
Then you made your point poorly, and I'm not sure if you're confused or are wittingly trying to confuse and deceive me.
Voting a third party in the US doesn't get third party candidates elected. In fact, AIPAC is sponsoring opponents of candidates who have pledged not to take AIPAC contributions in order to dilute the vote. Election strategists are putting money behind the notion that third-party candidates serve as spoilers to principal candidates with whom they share platforms.
I am fully aware that there is no hope for a third party to ever win. but my point is that voting third party is still a very powerful tool. Even with first past the post.
I have provided an historical case study (don't agree with the outcome, but the strength of third party vote is undeniable).
And I would appreciate it if we can at least agree that the US 2 party system works as a ratchet to fuck everyone over (except the rich). Regardless of one party being objectively worse.
Oh, I agree that the two party system does serve as a ratchet, and has since the 19th century with a few exceptions. I do believe it needs to be changed in order for the US to become a public-serving state. Since the 21st century, though, the Republican party has become an existential threat to even the meager democratic features of the US.
And given that third parties will typically be closer to the Democrats than Republicans in their platforms, third-party votes will displace Democratic votes more often than Republican votes. And in the current political clime, that is a problem.
you know, people can just... leave america, for somewhere else.
its a sinking ship anyways and you see the little libs sticking to they're party thinking that voting is important by default and willfully ignoring there issue inherent to your country. its not a political group worth defending and the republicans are mental, our nations really haven't given a shit about many of us so id say leaving is fairly justified. hope you can bail.
Having grown up in the 1970s and 1980s, when racial tolerance and women's lib was hammered into me even via Sesame Street (it was just after the Civil Rights movement and all fresh on everyone's minds) I am terrified of the possibility that our voting population is so obtuse that they'd be afraid of officials that are not all white Christian men.
Though part of Trump's popularity in his 2015-2016 campaign was due to reactionary offense to Obama. So we Americans may just be that lowbrow.
Every vote is a concession.
Your ancestors fought through bloodshed, bones, and teeth to allow you the priviledge to post liberal concessions in the centralized internet.
Concessions is what tyrants abuse.
Be like water, unstoppable, and unyielding. Never allow yourself to become a swamp.
Love all these calls for a revolution that none of those rallying for will ever participate in. Radical idea begin with small steps. It’s not that hard. Vote in primaries, vote against insane people in general elections. Eventually the flow of water reverses.
No one on this thread is ever gonna start a fucking revolution. Stop pretending like you are above everyone because your plan is some radical overtaking of the government. It’s a fantasy.
No one on this thread is ever gonna start a fucking revolution
Well... I'm working on the whole revolution thing by advocating a new political theory of anarchism, that I hope will lead to a new sort of revolution. It's called anarcho-antirealism. We advocate for a revolution in which the workers take back control of the means of perception from the capitalist media, alongside a material revolution for the means of production. But it'll be decades before we can do much rebelling, so right now I'm focused on protecting our community and growing our movement through direct aid and local electoral change.
Protecting the community, local elections, volunteering, and organizing/participating in protests is a great example of how to change institutions. You can make your neighborhood better, change the lives in big ways of those you can reach, and hopefully that impact spreads further than your local circle.
People should be less focused on unrealistic and radical world shaping events (unless somehow the opportunity arises) and more on the small changes a single, ordinary human without connections or influence can make.
By growing a cause in number, “revolution” sparks. Not through talking shit on Lemmy.
I am glad you choose to waste your time commenting on your choice to defeat your political inactions on a leftist network the Zionists have infiltrated.
Since you have acquiesced to your Führer‘s tyranny, can you simply return to licking your Nazis’ boots and leave us intersectionists alone? Our “small steps” were crushed by electoralists. So my comment is for the ignorant, the uneducated, the unlearned.
If you’re always on the defence, you are losing long term.
Voting might stop a problem from getting worse, but it’s not a viable solution to fix the underlying issues that require real systemic change to occur and that cannot happen from inside the system.
So vote, do all you can to stop it from getting worse. But remember that to fix it you need to fight for a revolution.
You can fight to install progressives at the local level while voting defensively at the national level. Local progressive movement are not only a LOT easier to pull off, but will help create widespread acceptance of progressive ideals as they get good outcomes. Then you expand to the state level and house, then the senate, then you're well positioned to push for a progressive in the presidency.
See: Zohran Mandani, Katie Wilson...
Next could be Nithya Raman?
These are good examples of what it takes, however, including primary participation and grassroots activism. In addition, the NYC mayoral featured ranked choice voting.
In other words, Duverger’s Law can’t simply be ignored in FPTP systems like those of the US, and anyone who suggests otherwise (like saying you should vote non-strategically to defeat the MAGA opposition) is either terribly ill-informed or, more likely, is working for the opposition.
duverger's "law" is literally a tautology and has no predictive power at all
The name is a historical artifact of his 1950s phrasing. It’s a tendency theorem with scope conditions.
Cox, Riker, Lijphart, and Clark+Golder have all reformulated the law as a conditional strategic-equilibrium claim.
that’s a lot of ink spilled for “literally a tautology”
This is true, but it's also important to be aware that if all americans ever do is vote then things will never improve. It's important to vote still, but it can't end there
And the national party does everything it can to make sure you're stuck with trumpist shit like Henry Cuellar.
Or, hear me out, you just let people vote for progressives if they want and don't blame them for dems losing. Maybe look at why people stopped voting after Obama? Maybe he happy that people vote at all because it allows more votes for progressives/dems in the local level, even if it doesn't help at the national level? Cuz dems have a lot of issues, not just leftists "not" voting for them. (sure, some don't but iirc they're actually the highest % dem voting block, even if they are much smaller in population. )
I'm not blaming them for dems losing, and they can vote however they want, I'm not stopping them. This isn't about how you can and can't vote, it's about how to make your vote work to prevent situations like we're in right now, while also pushing for longer-term outcomes, and we can all have - and share - our opinions on how to do that.
Personally, I think it's counter-productive to refuse to actively vote to prevent our current situation in the name of ideals or whatever else. It's going to take years if not decades to fix the damage being done right now, in all likelihood. But you're welcome to have your own opinion on that matter.
if that sort of voting prevented this situation at all we wouldn't be here?
Do you think supporting the lesser evil magically makes the two parties put forward BETTER candidates? All that shit does is lead to parties racing to the bottom, voters getting fucking tired of it and either stop voting, or look at trump and go "at least he isn't a politician he'll do something different" and vote for him. Dems refuse to do shit about it but run shit after shit after shit. When they had huge turnout for Obama's message of "change" and now their message with biden is "nothing will fundamentally change" which.... cool. Great. Way to energize your voters. "Not trump" isn't enough. and until the DNC learns that, they can fuck themselves as they aren't improving or preventing shit. I'll always vote, but I'm voting for candidates that are the most worthy of a fucking vote.
Is your stance that Harris would have been doing the same shit Trump is doing, had she been elected instead? That it wouldn't have been any better? If that's what you're positing... I strongly disagree, and I really don't know how you can even start to back that claim up.
Regardless, vote how you want. I've had this conversation with enough people with your exact stance to know that there's nothing I can say to change your mind and there's nothing you're going to say to change mine, so continue doing you and I'll continue doing me.
No, you’ve said voting defensively prevents exactly what is happening. As if people don’t vote defensively. As if we are not here.
Harris being run is WHY we are here. The DNC thinking they can get away with being antidemocratic (attacking third parties, suing to get them off the ballot, don’t get me started on the “victory fund” bullshit) is WHY WE ARE HERE. It’s on them. The DNC has fucked itself since after Obama. That’s why so many normal ass people haven’t voted since Obama. I’m not talking super principled leftists. I’m talking normie shit. They don’t vote anymore because it’s fucking garbage. Because even if the DNC won they wouldn’t do anything of substance to help. Half of what happened in Palestine was in collab WITH Biden, planned by him and passed on to Trump. Maybe it would’ve been slower. Draw out the suffering more, but it wouldn’t have been changed for the better, which is the problem. Better than the worst imaginable isn’t good enough for people.
What I said was that voting defensively makes your vote work towards preventing this sort of thing, whereas voting third party does not. Protest votes, ballot spoilage, 3rd party votes and similar actions make a statement, but so does voting for progressives down ballot.
To put it succinctly, people voting 3rd party didn't cause the current situation, but they did nothing to prevent or obstruct the current situation, either.
She said she'd do the exact same amount of genocide in Gaza. She would absolutely let Israel start a war with Iran.
Yeah, people seem to forget history. Often institutions become so sclerotic that the only way forward is to work outside of them. Look what it took to defeat slavery in the US. Slaveholders had co-opted both major parties. Abolitionists tried for decades to work within the existing two party system, voting "lesser evil" election after election. In the end, this strategy failed at ending slavery. It took the founding of a new party, the Republican Party, to really make progress on abolition. It ended up leading to the Civil War, but slavery would have continued for another generation at least if abolitionists had just kept voting defensively election after election.
So you're saying they just stopped voting for a few elections and let the bigots have free reign for a few elections? Or did they keep voting for the lesser evil in the mean time? Because that's what this discussion is actually about, and your example doesn't seem to apply.
No. They didn't vote lesser of two evils. You need to get out of the headspace that the only option is to vote for one of the two parties. That's an ahistorical viewpoint. They just voted Republican until their candidate won. The Republican party was only founded after "voting for the lesser evil" failed after decades of trying. This is what I mean when I say people need to learn their history. We've been in this situation before, and our ancestors did not escape it by voting for the lesser evil.
We live in a two party system. We're going to have two parties. However, the parties themselves are not eternal. We'll always have two parties, but which parties those are can change. And often it's easier to completely swap out parties than to reform one from within.
If you want to create a new party in the US, the only way to do so is to destroy one of the existing parties. Namely, that means making the other party completely electorally nonviable.
Imagine if the most liberal 20% of the electorate simply refused to ever vote for the Democratic Party again and switched over to the DSA. Yes, that would mean losing for a few cycles. But again, history shows that sometimes you have to put up with pain now for a better future later. Centrists will slander this as "accelerationism," but this isn't really that. You're not hoping things get worse before they get better. You're just recognizing that the only way to create a new party is to destroy an old one. Politics becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you make one of the existing parties nonviable, then a power vacuum is created, and the whole electoral alignment shifts. If leftists completely abandoned the Democrats, the Democratic party would completely collapse. It would go the way of the Whigs. When a party dies, the electoral coalitions realign. And they would realign around the old Republican Party and the new DSA or other chosen party.
I know this is hard. But really, this is just learning from history. Yes, it means you sometimes lose ground in the short term to gain ground in the long term. And that is hard. It's painful. But compare that to what we've been doing instead - hoping to gain ground in the short term while losing even more in the long term. Voting for Democrats now is just voting for the lock on the ratchet. They have no real desire to change anything. At best you get a temporary reprieve from creeping fascism, while nothing changes in the circumstances that lead to the fascism.
The Republican Party was formed in 1854 and Lincoln was elected president running as a republican in 1860.
credit to slrpnk.net instance admins for sharing this often:
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finally, a real fucking take.
Nah. We got LGBTQ+ marriages without a revolution. Civil Rights got better for a time. You're going to have to give examples in the last 20 years where a revolution worked. Meaning, the government wasn't taken over by an authoritarian and/or military leader.
To be fair, both of those were won with plenty of violence and took decades to accomplish.
The first Pride was a riot started most likely by a black trans woman who refused to be grabbed by the cops during one of their usual roundups of gay people and threw the first punch (brick to the face?) that set off a brawl across the whole area. IIRC, 100 cops were injured in the fight. But it still took nearly 50 years for gay marriage to be completely legal in the US. 1969 was when Stonewall happened, 2015 was the Supreme Court ruling (and that can be repealed at any time, like they did with abortion). Even the first state to officially write it into law, Massachusetts, only happened in 2004.
MLK Jr credited the Black Panthers being armed and willing to do what he couldn't as a major part of why he had the success that he did. And his protests were already illegal, risking possible prison time for those involved if they weren't done very carefully. And even after 10 years, Civil Rights laws were only written after a week of riots and billions of dollars in property damage sparked by his murder. 10 years of protests, but it took less than a week for the laws to be drafted and signed into law when entire city districts started to get burnt to the ground.
However, revolutions can be cultural as well. Gay marriage is a great example with actual polling numbers to present. By the time that the Supreme Court ruled on it, polls said that the country was equally split on the issue while as of 2021 a full 70% of the US apparently supports gay marriage.
Widespread riots gave us the Civil Rights. Crack open Wikipedia for a minute on that champ.
First of all, Civil Rights wasn't a revolution. Second, that's one of the reasons I said in the last 20 years, the military wouldn't let that happen again.
I don't give a shit what you call it.
Point is it wasn't brought about by voting. Certainly not by voting for pro-corporate trash.
It would have been if the government hadn't acquiesced.
Wow it's almost like change can occur without literal revolution after all!
Not lasting change.
Yeah, I agree. Too many people on Lemmy are too keen on being revolutionaries and tearing the system down. They forget that most revolutions just wind up installing equally corrupt governments, and quite honestly, I think a lot of people romanticize revolutionary figures and dream of being like them. It’s a tempting thing, to be a part of something so big that it topples a world order.
But stable governments are really hard to build and they take time to solidify. They should not be discarded unless absolutely necessary. I don’t think we’re at that point in the West yet, even in America. Capitalism has its problems and needs reform, but Communism clearly isn’t the answer either. I think the socialist models in Europe are good models to follow, but they’re not perfect either.
Afghanistan, Nepal,…
It’s not because we got into a new millennium that human’s violent nature (aka nature’s nature) is suddenly going to disappear. Voting and protesting is for sustaining peacetime. And that does only part of the legwork. A very long traumatic war is the best breathing ground for peace. But it never lasts. Because the sons of grandsons stop telling the tales, because it was so long ago and we’re better now
Wtf? Are you saying the Taliban is a good government? lmao
Nepal, I'm not sure. Afghanistan wipes out any good will in your comment.
That’s so obviously not what I’m saying. Your argument is that we don’t need revolutions anymore or that they don’t happen. I’m not saying they always have the result we want, but they happen.
The irony is that your LGBTQ argument is partially responsible for the attempted revolution of Jan 6. We have Trump because the South couldn’t stomach having 8 years of a descendant of slaves as president. Your country never made peace after the civil war, in a way your last revolution never properly landed, which is why there’s as many confederate flags in the south as American flags.
If you’re not sure about Nepal, then look into it. You’d be surprised.
Hence the crabby letters and the protests. Right now in the US, there are a lot of issues that are popular, and Democratic candidates can be pressured into movement on those issues. Republican candidates have to obey Dear Leader or face getting primaried by the propaganda machine, hence billion-dollar ballrooms and no accountability for the $1.776 billion slushfund.
...or the inadvisable elective war on Iran.
If Americans were more literate about their elections (which is a prerequisite for democracy to work) then we wouldn't be in this mess.
This simply isn't true. Biden witnessed the protests regarding him supporting Israel and he told them to go fuck themselves.
One counterexample does not make it untrue. I have the same complaint regarding Obama's failure to rise to the moment after the slaying of Michael Brown in 2014 and the Ferguson unrest. That incident demonstrated that law enforcement was due some severe reformation. It did happen, and the high rate of officer-involved homicide entered public consciousness and the Overton Window. We've actually seen some police reform since in some counties, but not coming from Obama or the Congress of the time.
It doesn't take every time. But it does sometimes.
Right now things are severe, especially now that SCOTUS can pretty much veto anything it wants (including the Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments). The US public may have to resort to noncooperation, general strikes or even civil war to create a governmental system that is public-serving. At least those of us who survive will have to try.
But for now, we're focused on the midterm elections, to see if we really can push enough of the GOP out to stop Trump and his push towards autocracy. Things are going to get far worse if the Republican party is able to lock in a permanent majority in both houses of Congress, and that's exactly what they're trying to do.
Oh wow. Such a victory.
Give me a fucking break.
Women's rights were rolled back nationwide, but a few counties had some minor police reform!
Incremental progress! /s
It's certainly progress in the direction centrists want: toward fascism.
So your complaint is that we're not moving far enough fast enough?
I share your frustration, especially as the Trump regime is moving fast and breaking things, breaking laws and then defying either courts or Congress to stop them since much of law enforcement is on its side.
I don't know if we're still at the point where we can a) get the Democrats back into sweeping power and b) depend on them to make sweeping reforms of elections and the US Supreme Court, and then start to rebuild what the Trump regime has destroyed, or if we're already doomed to a one-party system and need to focus on organizing resistance like a general strike. Spelling it out like that, it seems like a long shot.
Part of it depends on how the
20162026 mid-term elections go, if they go. I suspect that swing voters may still be under the influence of the massive far-right propaganda machine that dominates social media and mainstream news. If that's the case then the US will fall to one party autocracy and then to civilization collapse.All that said, so long as we do have elections, it's still worthy to consider voting defensively, especially if the alternative is voting third party or not at all.
They won't. You know they won't. Stop trying to pretend like you think otherwise. Nobody is buying it.
Trump was convicted of 34 felonies and we depended on Democrats to make sure he was sentenced. They did not.
They might reform SCOTUS now that their careers, and possibly their very lives, depend on it.
I do fear they might not do enough. The damage caused by allowing this Supreme Court to run amok is overwhelming and might not be easily reversible. They need to not merely add term limits and expand the court (possibly to over a hundred) and mandate an enforceable code of ethics, but it may be time to strip SCOTUS of jurisdiction so that they no longer have total veto power over legislation and executive action.
Curiously, term limits might require an amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Stripping them of jurisdiction only requires legislation.
My complaint is that centrists demand we accept a token effort as a complete permanent solution.
Name one centrist that has changed their mind on genocide. One.
No, they literally can't. Kamala chose to lose rather than change the dems stance on Israel. They chose genocide over winning.
Why didn't they do so thrice when they were in power?
You're going to be able to find instances where it doesn't fully work, where positions don't evolve. Obama era Democrats were mostly neoliberal, which factored into why Trump was able to take power.
But that shouldn't stop you from voting against the guy who is going to do more damage.
Voting is the least an activist might do.
What you mean is it never works when it actually matters. The two pivotal moments of Biden's presidency was the rail workers gearing up to strike and the protests around support of Israel. In both instances he and nearly every Democratic politician told voters to go fuck themselves.
Which is infuriating enough and the only thing more irritating is the endless number of people like yourself trying to tell us that didn't happen.
I'm not saying it didn't happen. I'm saying it distracted enough voters from the threat of the GOP, of Trump, of Project 2025, of the white Christian nationalist movement, that they allowed it all to happen.
Now Palestine is even worse off, as are the rail workers. As are we all.
Your position raises a valid concern. The human species just might not be able to organize from the left well enough to stop the right with a charismatic strongman, a base of uneducated soldiers and the financial support of the ownership class. The left may, in fact, be unable to organize due to internal differences. It sucks if that's the case. I hope not, but I haven't ruled it out.
The politician you expect me to vote for tells me to go fuck myself and you call it "internal differences".
Yeah okay bud.
You're speaking as if there's equal blame here. There isn't. Liberals have treated leftists like second class voters for decades rather than making real concessions. They're calling all the shots and that means they own all the responsibility.
And curiously, you think the solution is to let the Republicans, who hate you even more and have now set up concentration camps, win.
I do not refute that some of the Democratic organizations are captured by corporate interests, but the Republicans are even more captured, and pose a dire threat to the meager democratic features of the US political system.
Maybe you're an accelerationist?
Leave your electoral apologia out the /c/: Your votes all amounted to empowering Nazis back into power. You refuse to directly act, because it's inconvenient to your positions.
Voting is exactly how the electoral college elected them 5 times. Thrice against you, twice for you.
That's the problem. More people voted for Biden than voted for Harris or Clinton. Democrats were unmotivated to stop Trump from winning, and in all three elections, he was a greater threat no matter who was running against him.
I don't like the EC either. In fact, no-one other than the far right likes the EC.
Then directly demolish it. Ensure it never exist.
Blue Nazis are still Nazis.
That's not a power I personally have, though there have been two attempts to amend the Constitution to eliminate it, and currently there is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which is only a couple of states away from having legal force.
The worst of Democrats, establishment Democrats who focus on serving their donors are not fascist. They're neoliberal, and granted, neoliberalism makes states vulnerable to fascist movements (a problem faced in the EU, Australia and Canada as well as the US) but that doesn't actually make them fascist.
Because your shitty genocidal wing of the party keeps betraying them.
Positions evolve in the direction you want. Which is why we're here.
In Australia, you can vote for whoever you want first, and then you just have to make sure to put the better big party before the worst big party.
In America, your voting system is fucked, so you only get three options: Democrat, Republican, no preference. Abstaining is no preference. Abstaining and saying you want to burn down the system, is still no preference. You gotta make a good choice with your vote, so you can move on to making change on the ground with your hands and your feet and your voice. If you spend all day at your keyboard talking about how abstinence actually means whatever you want it to mean, then you're not making change, you're just getting mad.
Abstaining is actually voting Republican, because of the voter demographics wherein Republicans have a dedicated chunk of zealots who will vote 100% of the time, and the Democrats having no such thing
If you're a republican, abstaining is voting democrat.
Yes, OP's point is also that generally speaking Republicans are less likely to abstain.
It's not though. The fewer people vote, the more likely it is for Republicans to win
Not in the same way that the inverse is true, no
Mathematically it's the exact same situation but flipped.
This isn't pure math, it's electoral politics.
Because the third parties in question this time (and most times) were spoiler candidates for the Democrats, a Republican abstaining does not necessarily mean +1 for Dems
And instead of asking yourself why Democratic politicians are failing to inspire loyalty you blame the voters of a democracy?
Hot take bud.
Democracy means you have the freedom to elect a fascist government if you want to, and that's exactly what the American people have done. They exercised their freedom to choose Trump over Harris.
American people don't get very many freedoms. They don't get the freedom to vote third party. They don't get the freedom to vote "neither of the above". They don't get the freedom to use the popular vote. But they do get the freedom to choose between the two big candidates, and that's the freedom they exercised.
You very much can vote for an alternative party in the United States. I have voted Green in several elections.
If that's all democracy is then it's benefits have been vastly overstated and I see no reason to protect it.
Okay, sure. You can let the fascists turn America into a monarchy and find out if a communist revolution is easier in a monarchy than a neoliberal capitalist democracy. That's clearly what you want to happen.
I don't think it is but people like you set yourself in opposition to any radical change so long as you live in the comfort of a neoliberal capitalist democracy. See the problem?
For example, I was in full favor of the rail strike back in 2022. Sure it's no revolution, but shutting down railways certainly would have been radical and led to some powerful concessions being made by oligarchs to American workers. And let me guess, you opposed the strike and supported Joe Biden, 44 Democratic senators and 36 Republican senators who decided to block it right?
So it's not me who's choosing revolution under monarchy instead of neoliberal capitalist democracy.
It's you.
Nah, you're way off. I was actually pretty furious with AOC for voting to force an end to the strike.
Your problem is, you see everyone else as an enemy, and assume all kinds of nonsense about them out of fear.
Why is that relevant? To the concentration camps and death squads we are dealing with today?
Where did they say that's all it was?
Then tell me what benefits I'm supposed to enjoy. Because representation apparently isn't on the table.
That's because you have to show up and show up in numbers. Too many on the left cry about not having a perfect candidate, don't show up, and then wonder why the Dems keep going right when the left doesn't show up. Then, surprise, they have no representation and throw away 20 years of progress.
I don't care for Biden or trump, but I wasn't dumb enough not to see where we are right now before the vote was cast, so I showed up. So many stayed home that trump got elected with the popular vote despite not getting many more votes than he did last time.
But hey, we didn't vote in the woman who had some bad policies and could be worked with because one bad policy was worth throwing everything away. So we got the country we collectively voted (or sat out) for
"Loyalty" to a party is not a good thing, for one.
That's pretty rich coming from someone arguing we are morally obligated to vote for Democratic politicians. You can't get any more loyal than that.
Did I mention morality? First Past the Post is an enormously flawed voting system. But until we get rid of it, that's the system we have.
You did.
Republicans, are by nature, essentially a mono culture. Conservativism demmands conformity. Hate taxes, Hate foreigners, hate "the gays", hate science and edumacashun.
Democrats, while not Progressive, pick up everyone else, which includes progressives. Progressives, tend to be open and accepting of what is different.
Except increasingly, they are not. Just with the last election, because every Democrat didn't 100% say "Fuck Israel, Free Palestine", then now all Democrats are evil and should never be supported.
Ya'll are single issue voting just as bad as the shitty Republicans will single issue vote on say, No Abortion.
The Democrats aren't great, but they exist as the compromise based system our Government SHOULD BE.
And maybe they would run more Progressive types and shift back Left but why should they bother right now? They could run some hyper progressive trans candidate who hatees Israel, but that candidate says one "wrong" thing on one issue and the mob turns on them and says "SeE, aLl DeMoCrAts aRe bAd."
That said, I am still not entirely convinced that a lot of the "All Dems Suck" rhetoric isn't the Left side version of bad foreign actors that have turned the GOP into the MAGA Nazi party.
Because they're losing without us.
Because you will never be happy anyway. May as well shift right and try to push towards the perfect Nqzi candidates like MAGA.
How do you know?
Having read their comment, probably “because every Democrat didn’t 100% say “Fuck Israel, Free Palestine”, then now all Democrats are evil and should never be supported.”
That’s them observing progressives disagree with a party stance then refuse to vote for the party over that single issue. The extrapolation is that progressives are more likely to become single issue voters, therefore more difficult to cater to, therefore maybe not worth the effort from the party’s perspective.
Also voting 3rd party is voting Republican because it's akin to abstaining. All those Jill Stein voters are basically Maga.
i always found it weird when people say voting 3rd party is like not voting.
is there no second round for the 2 most voted when the most voted doesn't reach 50%?
No, that's literally the fucking problem
There is not. Bill Clinton won the presidency with something like 42% of the vote in 1992.
Neither Trump Nor Bush won more than 50% of the vote to secure their first term in office.
Not in a first-past-the-post system; you're thinking of a two-round system.
It's important to note that both Bush and Trump won their initial election by the electoral college and lost the popular vote. So not only do you not have to get >50%, you don't even have to get a plurality of votes to win.
Also, Roger Stone just happened to participate in both elections, and both had fuckery involved.
Not in America. If you vote third party, your vote doesn't get counted in the big race.
Those votes do get counted. For example, we know that in 2024 Stein got 862,049 votes.
I mean it doesn't have any bearing on electing the president
It's funny how well liberals like yourself understand the electoral college in this context. But then if I say a non-voter in a deep blue state didn't have any bearing on Trump getting elected and suddenly the principle matters.
It has just as much bearing as voting for any other candidate.
Who's both siding now?
Libertarianism is societal cancer and those Stein voters would have supported Trump over Harris anyway since the MAGA GOP is basically a Libertarian system (the fuck you got mine Government) at its core.
You're not wrong, however, Stein was Green Party not libertarian.
You're thinking of Gary "what is Aleppo" Johnson
Both were spoiler candidates
Thanks for the correction.
And god the fucking Green Party. Inswear those jokers exist only to make Socialists looklike wackjobs.
Sometimes there is a Green option on the ballot, and in those cases, you should vote Green! The US Green Party has had a solid leftist platform for decades, including ending support for Israel, universal healthcare, free college, and more.
Unfortunately, doing so provokes the spoiler effect, and harms your own interests.
I agree.
Thank fuck someone is saying this. There are a few posters in c/progressivepolitics that seem to be saying Democrats have to pass all their purity tests or you shouldn’t vote and that’s nuts because it hands Republicans elections. Luckily they usually get downvoted
"Purity tests." And the test is just don't do a genocide.
Fucking literally.
"Purity test" just means "I have no standards and I expect you to abandon yours."
How did Biden & Obama free ICE Slavery & Guantanamo again?
Exhibit A. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good in a first past the post voting system, or you lose hard
Where is the good?
Centrists think genocide is "the good".
Yes, obviously to anyone paying attention. How does letting republicans get elected help get rid of first past the post though?
Then what populist do I motion to get rid off the electoral college?
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5043206-senate-democrats-abolish-electoral-college/
Looks like there's 3 Democrat senators who tried to abolish the Electoral College in 2024. You should go see what those three guys are doing now, and if you can volunteer to help them. Maybe if they get enough popular support, they can try again. You should go and see if they have a plan for next steps, if maybe there's a candidate in your local primaries that they support.
What did they vote on regarding ICE thrice?
If you want to lay down and die that's your perogative.
The rest is self righteousness.
Why would I lay, when there’s victims to intersect, and people to empower?
I wish you the best.
Obama literally tried to close it and Republicans fought tooth and nail to stop that.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/02/23/top-republicans-slam-obamas-plan-to-close-guantanamo/
https://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/republican-senators-guantanamo-114223
https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/conyers-10-years-later-and-congressional-republicans-still-refuse-to-close-guantanamo-detention-center
Damn Democratic Senators and their Nazi ways!
Why didn't Obama do another executive order to bypass the Senate‽
ML users : reeeee
at least you and them can bond over your shared joy of using ableism to make points!
I don't know a thing about this skullgrid person, but 'reee' is a 4chan thing making fun of autistic/nd people. Certainly something we can move beyond when wanting to say people are angry.
Precisely!
I am allowed to be angry at electoralists for never leading a revolution, and genociding us, again, again, and again.
I grow tired of liberal
concessionslies. Time to crack those chains and free the enslaved.So why aren't you leading a revolution?
It's a LOT safer, and more comfortable to throw insults and point fingers.
I am, a neighbor at a time.
I already have a canteen going.
Something everyone enjoys.
I wonder why Americans can't even free food.🤔
Hey, it's great that you're doing that! I don't want to demean what you're doing, which, after all, is the most anyone could reasonably ask of you, but that isn't going to result in an actual revolution is it? At least not in the next five years?
With that in mind, is it not also reasonable to ask that every few years you go to a ballot box and tick a box if that might result in slightly fewer of your neighbours being deported?
I guess this is what you do if there are only two candidates running and they are "100% Hitler' and "99% Hitler". Fortunately, I've never encountered this situation, but I'd really be in a moral dilemma if I did.
We should have a "None of the above" option on the ballot. If "None of the above" got the most votes, then they'd have to run another election with all new candidates.
We would still have centrists going "I am looking for a 99.6% Hitler."
There are a number of election system models better than the ones used in United States elections. Sadly, our elected officials get more power with the system as it is, and it's difficult to organize general strikes around election reform...or court reform for that matter. And I say that since the US Supreme Court has succeeded in vetoing the VRA and is carving into the 14th and 15th amendments.
Better do of the other acceptably functional democratic models that don't result in a 2 party system. Proportional representation, instant-runoff, …
I am too tired at the moment to really talk, but here are the systems we need to no longer need defensive voting.
Approval Voting
And
Sequential Proportional Approval Voting
Every dumbass voting this down is EXACTLY why we have Dumbass as president.
... don't you think a lot of Trump votes were defensive votes against Hilary/Harris? Telling people to vote against the worse candidate is morbid and devoid of hope.
Elections should be restructured so people aren't forced into 1-on-1 battles. People naturally have more diverse beliefs than a left/right spectrum. The current system was gamed into crisis. Time for an amendment
The system needs to be changed, absolutely.
Do you think that is going be easier with a Democrat in charge or Trump? Given that Trump has already done everything possible to destroy what little voter rights Americans do have. And may not be done.
At this point wouldn't be surprised if he made up some bullshit excuse to cancel the fall elevations all together.
A MAGA Idiot voting for Trump "defensively" against 5 Trans Athletes and non existent people eating cats and dogs un Ohio, are not voting defensivrly, they are stupid and voting stupidly because god for they actually not accept blatant and obvious lies.
Your Americentrism is repugnant. Please keep it in your country.
Pretty sure America is the most obvious place this would be referencing.
It has to be a FPTP country, and it has to be a country with so few possible parties that the choices are bad or worse. Not to mention it has to be a country with free and fair elections.
How many countries fit that bill?
Elections in the US are far removed from free and fair, especially now we're past Louisiana v. Callais and SCOTUS can and will veto any efforts by Congress to reform them.
SCoTUS has neither a military nor a law enforcement arm. With enough political will there is nothing they can do to stop court reform.
Lol
Ellie Mystal pointed out that was a risk of civil war: If congress were to strip SCOTUS of jurisdiction (no longer decides what is Constitutional or not) and the court then responds by saying that law is unconstitutional, the blue states side with Congress while the red states side with the Court, and we have a crisis that cannot be resolved by institutional procedure.
Personally, I'd like to see more of They've made their ruling, now let them enforce it. But as we recently saw with the Virginia redistricting referendum, their governor obeyed in advance.
That's possible, but the US doesn't have the institutional capacity for civil war. I think that while the possibility of violence is high, actual civil conflict is low.
Civil war will certainly not look like the first one with battle lines, though if we see an interstate conflict, we might see fights over strategic points. The experts I've read suggest there would be flash strikes coordinated the way that flash mobs are, only armed.
We certainly have enough firearms to make for a bloody mess.
Scroll up. You’re scaring the Aussies, Bri’ish, & Deutsche in this /c/.
Finding @[email protected] was talking about omnium California midterms took a secondary retort to press.
Ahistorical take, or rhetorical?
Aren't you Butch Ware, the Green Party vice presidential nominee and candidate for governor of California, and therefore an American?
Elsewhere in this thread, Gormadt told you to run for office. You said "I did", and linked to a news story about Butch Ware messing up the paperwork to run for California governor. So it seemed like you were saying you're Butch Ware, an American.
Lol wait is this actually Butch Ware? No shot...
It's an outrageous claim, but I am not in the habit of disagreeing with people about who they are. Though I may see fit to question perceived inconsistencies.
Here's the thing that bothers me with the whole harm reduction/purity test/don't let perfect be the enemy of the good argument when it comes to US politics:
Saying that I should vote for the person who agrees with me on some stuff even if it's not everything kind of assumes that for some list of policy stances, they're all essentially equivalent. Not saying mean things about minorities is put on the same level as continuing to run a massive, racist prison and policing system or a massive military that is essentially only used for killing foreigners to exploit their resources. It's insane to argue that I should be able to overlook these truly reprehensible and harmful actions because they're a bit better on some smaller thing.
Even if you ignore the bad things that are still done by the less bad party, structurally, the systems we have in place all but guarantee that we will repeatedly have more of the worse party every election or so and that they will have access to tools that let them abuse their power. So at best, voting for the lesser evil just slightly delays the greater evil. If we just go vote every few years then go back to brunch and trust that the people we elected will be doing a good job, nothing will ever change. We never see these blue no matter who people go "I know it sucks, lets do this for now, but here is the plan for the next few years to make sure we can get a better option in the future."
The way things work now, even if a politician says they agree with you, you just have to trust them. There is no real recourse for holding them accountable if they were lying. You just have to let them do whatever they were going to do, maybe write some strongly worded letters, and then in 2/4/6 years you end up having to vote for them again because of the way the system is fucked. And as long as they are taking corporate money, they aren't representing you. You can't trust anything they say.
If a Democrat came around who:
Didn't take corporate money and seemed trustworthy.
Promised significant democratic reforms in both how elections work and the government works so that we can actually have real choices next time.
Promised to significantly reduce the military so we couldn't keep doing imperialism everywhere.
Promised to significantly reduce the police and surveillance state so that they won't have the capacity to keep spying on us and disrupting real opposition.
Then I would 100% vote for them and even canvas for them even if I disagreed with them on some other issues that I cared about. At least then we'd be moving forward. We'd have a chance to do better in the future. But they're not going to do that because the people who have made it into power benefit from things as they are, so they're not going to change that. As things are now, we're just stuck in an endless loop, slowly drifting towards oblivion.
To be clear, just not voting and doing nothing else isn't super helpful either, but the key is we need to get everyone on board with an organized plan to fix things. The people who show up every election just to tell you that actually trying to organize a new party is bad, voting for the progressive in the party primary is dividing the party, and you can't complain too much about the bad things the lesser evil does because it'll hurt our chances next time are NOT HELPING.
The question then is how do we do this? We have a bunch of people who know the system is fucked, but there's no direction for them to express that. How do they even begin to fight? "Let's organize a new party for this purpose!" Ok now we have yet another 3rd party to divide the vote even further. (Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/927/) "Lets all pick this existing party and use it for this purpose!" Ok, which one? The DNC? They're part of the problem and actively work against progressive candidates in primaries. Sure, we sometimes get the win, but those victories often take all of our time and attention just to secure one relatively small seat of power that is useless without winning way more of them. Another existing 3rd party? Can we get people to agree which one to join? This is where the leftist infighting argument holds some water. There are a few existing parties of varying lefty persuasion, but people aren't necessarily going to agree with all their policies, so getting people to compromise on one of them when we have no central organized structure is borderline hopeless. And that's before you even consider the collective action problem of getting enough people to take the leap that they aren't worried about the splitting the vote issue.
And regardless of what path we decide to take, how do we spread this message to get people on board? All of the major channels for mass communication are captured by corporate interests. Even social media, which had the hope of being a place where the people could talk to each other directly, has become almost useless for that function since the corporations that own them control the algorithms that allow messages to spread beyond their starting group.
And I already know someone is going to say something to the effect of "Don't worry about the big picture. It's too big for you to handle, so try to do things locally that are more possible." To that I say: Holy shit we are running out of time. The government keeps getting more and more fascist, he environment is falling apart and will kill us at some point, and technological advances in surveillance and military technology are going to keep making it easier for the powerful to cling onto power without care for what people want. Getting on your town's school board or something sounds nice and all, but it's like being on the Titanic and telling people to grab some buckets. Like I said earlier, even winning a single seat in congress doesn't mean much if it took our entire movement's collective effort to get that seat while the capitalists used their money to win the rest of them.
I really don't know what to do, but I'm so fucking sick of hearing people chastising people for not wanting to just keep doing what we've always been doing when that clearly hasn't been working and not only not helping to change things, but actively working to disrupt the efforts of people who do want to try to change things.
EDIT: Just to add my own personal anecdote to this: In 2020 I both volunteered for Bernie's campaign and worked on the campaign for a progressive congressional candidate in my district. The mood felt so optimistic. We were all working so hard to try to change things and for a while it seemed like it had a chance... and then we just straight up lost both elections to some absolute pieces of shit. Our incumbent representative was such a fucking terrible person he might as well have been a Republican.
Not that this has any bearing on the broader argument, I just want to share how my own experiences have shaped my feelings on this, but the broader pattern kind of reinforces that.
Based AF
EDIT: Perhaps I should clarify my view a bit. Any vote preventing the worst candidate from taking office is a good one. Especially in our First-Past-the-Post system.
Don't let .ml see this.
They were yelling at me to not vote Platner, to start a single man revolution.
I'm ready for one, I hate our system, the democratic establishment is aiding fascism as much as the terrorist republicans. But not voting for the guy advocating for policy to help working class people, that calls out both democrats and republicans, that both parties are spending against...
That's just shooting ourselves in the foot at that point. People will die if a republican wins. Healthcare will be pulled back further. Etc etc.
You would think the people yelling at you to read theory would understand it themselves.
From Marx: dialectical thinking, I can work with 3rd party advocacy while recognizing the material and concrete situations as the exist currently and make strategic decisions.
From Lenin: being a single individual starting a revolution would do nothing buy get myself killed and harm the building of a revolution. The first person who dies would not be a billionaire in such an ill conceived violent revolution without mass support and parallel alternative systems to capitalism to support revolutionaries.
This image I've been resonating with as, of course, I've been attacked by the right, but now I've been fending off the authoritarian left and I think this is where the whole "horseshoe theory" really comes from. It's just authoritarianism.
3rd option voters seething at a reasonable strategy.
Add a 3rd option for "neither" and if that one wins the two other candidates get executed.
It doesn't feel that the Democrats will actually listen much anymore, we're shouting we're drowning at the top of our lungs everyday and they're like "Thoughts and prayers with a pride flag."
Disclaimer: This strategy takes decades or centuries to have any effect.
Disclaimer: this is how long progress takes. People used to plant trees knowing they would never get to enjoy their shade.
if the progress can be so easily undone by fascists, as we’re seeing right now all over the world, then maybe this strategy is not adequate, no?
if you need a victory every time to maintain a steady progress, and they need a victory once to undo it all, you’re playing a game you’re almost certain of losing.
Yep, welcome to the game. Fascists always have the advantage because it's exponentially easier to destroy than it is to meaningfully build.
So, are you proposing some other game, or just leaving the table?
They don't.
What do you suggest?
I had a boss from russia who had a quote on the wall. Something like, yeah America's democracy sucks, but it's the best government out there.
It's definitely not though. Like not even close.
It was probably this quote, which is less about America specifically and more about democracy in general:
It probably was based on that, but it was more like a poem. This was like 15-20 years ago.
we need a to organize towards a revolution, and a new system
this is easier said than done, of course. i'm not gonna deny that. and i don't know exactly what is to be done, precisely, i am not knowledgeable and experienced enough to answer that. but one thing is certain, liberal democracy brought us into fasicsm, it's not gonna get us out of it.
You're right. We need mass protests, civil disobedience, direct action, mutual aid, and preparation for a revolution.
I thought America was heading in that direction in 2024 with all of those student encampments to protest the genocide in Gaza. That could have been the beginning of something big. But people don't really care about Gaza anymore, because they have bigger problems at home, what with ICE and all that. Americans can't really do Gaza anymore, they're stuck doing No Kings instead. Because of all the abstainers in the 2024 election who didn't abstain in 2020, it's now harder for Americans to do direct action and start a revolution.
You're right. It could have.
Until Joe Biden told them all to go fuck themselves.
And hoards of liberals defended him for it.
Reactionary blame mindset vs progressive solutions mindset.
Going forward, I think we need to stick together and protect each other to limit the influence of ICE. The first priority is survival and community defence until the Nazis are removed from power. The US midterms are in 5 months, and if they go well, the senate and house will be stocked with progressives who are more interested in opposing Trump than appealing to corporate donors. That's something Americans can have an impact on right now by volunteering in primary campaigns. If the house and senate are full of progressives, then Trump's powers will be limited. They can use the bureaucracy to slow him down.
Then, if the fascists are slowed down, it will be safer for immigrants and queer people to hit the streets with us and protest against all of these injustices. And we can use that momentum to get more people into mutual aid networks and engaged in helping progressives like Mamdani take the reigns of government. Those mutual aid networks will be useful later. The progressive electoral movements will help people like AOC win the 2028 primaries. If we get the right person into the D nomination, then Trump's third term bid is fucked and he can go die in a mcdonalds parking lot of a cholesterol attack.
If that progressive wins, or if a moderate wins, then it will be time to capture that anger left over from the R's term and tell people the pot is still scorching hot, we still have work to do. Get some direct action done, join those aid networks, practice resisting the cops and the capitalists in civil disobedience actions. And when it all hits critical mass, those networks will be the supply lines of the armed revolution. We can hit the reigns of capital with deadly force and dismantle the state apparatus, turning the means of production over to the communities and the unions. That moment is a decade or two away in the very best case scenario. We need to protect our people until then. We need to get more workers into unions and more socialists into government, so that we have the structure to run the economy without the cops or the IRS or the rest of the state.
You yanks are so far up your own you can’t see anything. Heck, Canada is flawed, but just across the bloody lakes there’s already a government better than the USA.
Say you haven’t travelled the world without saying you haven’t travelled the world.
May the next fuck around generation appreciate our sacrifice.
Yeah and how far has that gotten us? Why are we still dealing with issues and acting like they're solved? Especially now, this is not viable. We'll kill the earth before we manage to fix anything.
We will if we keep expecting the “one weird trick”
What it will take is coordinated action, applied consistently, not this “I’ll fix everything immediately” bullshit people keep falling for.
Remember, everything takes forever except arms sales for genocide. That's immediate.
ftfy..
And in protest, you've let the other guy win. Now you have your very own Stasi in the streets and your tax dollars are being spent on bombing schools and celebratory UFC fights. You... sure showed them, haven't you.
Ahh the neoliberal "its the voters who are the problem" fever dream, where Democrats can never fail, they can only be failed by voters.
A fever dream which has resulted in the Democratic party having a lower approval rating than Trump. Surely defending Democrats as an institution and blaming voters will gather more people to your coalition and help stop Trump.
You gotta get it through your head homie. You blaming voters for the failures of the Democrats: Its why Trump won in both 16 and 24. You're the problem if you take issue with how voters vote.
"VOTING IS SO IMPORTANT"
"So you have to vote how I tell you."
"Also everything is your fault, we've done nothing wrong."
Fuckin dems lol.
Whatever soothes your conscience.
Kinda wild to suggest some random nobody on lemmy has any reason to feel guilty. Do you think Biden feels any guilt for going around congress twice to ship weapons to Israel? I doubt it.
I've never shipped a single bomb in my life. Hell I've never even slapped somebody.
If Joe Biden can sleep at night then I sure as hell can.
Imagine basing your system of morality on whether or not some other person might feel guilty about a thing.
Wow, dude, talk about ideals.
Who was talking about my entire system of morality?
I just don't feel guilty when I don't vote for genocide supporters. Pretty simple stuff.
We needed a coalition of voters to stop Trump. Excusing Dems and blaming voters destroys our ability to build that coalition. People who do that are wreckers. So stop being a wrecker. If you have this opinion and want to blame voters, fine, but keep it entirely to yourself.
I think the people who say they're part of the coalition of voters, but also say not to vote, are the wreckers.
You do know that it's possible to do both, right? Putting the blame on third party voters does not absolve the Democratic party, and it's weird that people keep presenting it that way.
Except that's exactly what it ends up doing.
The effect of an individual vote is indistinguishable from it not having any effect at all.
The infinitesimal power of the vote.
It's only part of a strategy, but yes, it takes time. I think we might see what happens when general discontent of the public becomes severe enough that they develop class consciousness. Well, those of us who survive the misery will get to see it.
I was thinking about those red states where they're now eliminating the last remaining black districts. In so many red states the real election is the Republican primary, since whoever wins that will win the general no matter how abhorrent they are. So why don't all the now effectively-disenfranchised voters start voting in the Republican primary for the least-awful Republican? I can't imagine the reaction of Louisiana Republicans if busloads of elderly black people started showing up to "their" primary after church on Sunday.
That might actually make a difference between a true MAGA loyalist who will vote as Dear Leader directs him to do at all times, and, someone who in fact will not manifest 11,780 votes for Trump if they aren't actually there to be found.
Even the current congressional Republicans have their factions who take offense to Trump portraying himself as Jesus, or conjuring a slush fund of $1.776 billion, or giving himself, his family and his businesses permanent amnesty from tax audits.
The folks here should go tell these people that elections accomplish nothing.
Ignore the ivory towers atop which the officials sit. Cleanly above your protests, so that they might see the horizon beyond your squabbling. Had the people consumed the choices, and rebuked the officials, maybe they would not have to choose between marauders and raiders.
We do not yet know what it takes to organize the people to seize power from the ownership class. It's a race we're falling behind with every hour as the far-right propaganda engine that dominates social media and televised news is able to better draw people in and tell them what to think.
Eventually, there will enough of us dead, and enough of us discontent and set on revenge that we're willing to fight just because we have nothing left to lose. But American history has shown that we can also have incremental revolutions, usually steps of reform in response to hardship driven by inequity.
It never happens this way.
Once group A "seizes the power from the ownership class" THEY BECOME THE OWNERSHIP CLASS.
This is history, this is how it works. It's very foolish to believe what you see on TV or what you're told when reality has never gone that way ever not once.
Voting has positively impacted the world, democracy has moved mountains.
Remember when people tried to say Hillary was just as corrupt? Now it's Kamala sat atop her ivory tower and is a marauder and/or a raider. They're just as bad as Trump. It's equal.
Don't vote, destroy your system from the outside. Let Trump win, let it burn.
That is this guys message. And as cute this idea is when you're 16 or whatever, once reality hits it's not what you're describing.
Destroying, decaying and damaging a system hurts the lowest rung first and the highest rung, never.
Voting does make change. It doesn't when every election bozos like you try to dissuade more people from voting.
You enjoy your preaching? My message is the same as everyone else's here. Voting isn't enough. A choice between two corporate representatives, one rabid and the other cleanly presented, is not a fucken choice. You don't have to like it but every system gets gamed and eventually the people oppressed by that system must destroy it in order to gain a better quality of life. The writing is on the wall, everything is going down but the stock market. Wake up.
Lol, accusing someone of preaching after you yourself basically posted a mini sermon as a comment
You're literally preaching you bonehead.
Your message is not the same as everyone here.
Voting works. The problem is people like you.
If not voting was a candidate it'd win every election in a landslide. Dopes like you create an ouroboros of self confirmation, a self fulfilling prophecy. Voting doesn't work, so why vote and now that people don't vote, voting doesn't work. So why vote?
It's a crap message stemming from a misunderstanding of the problem of our system. People have to buy into it. It's "cool" not to buy into it.
"If NoT VoTiNg WaS.." Bitch I voted. Every fucken time, and these monsters continued to tear the world apart, destroy anything I ever built, and say fuck you I got mine. I HAVE BEEN VOTING THIS ENTIRE TIME AND SHIT IS STILL BEINF CONSOLIDATED AT LIGHT SPEED. TRUMP STILL HAPPENED. THE NEXT TIME SOMEONE SAYS JUST VOTE HARDER IM GONNA THROW UP. Voting is the peaceful alternative, but ask the fucking miners at Blair Mountain how well voting worked for them compares to praxis. You sound ignorant as fuck. Every right we ever had came from the people getting fed up their blood was being spilled, their dead filling the cemeteries for the pockets of oligarchs. Fuck off with this "people like you" bullshit. I've been here and its not FUCKING working.
Your first message was accusing me of preaching and now you type like you're raging and being a little asshole.
You're stupid, your opinion is dumb and ill informed. Bye
Go read your first message to me, sweetheart. You grandstanded saying I wanted Trump to win. Dont act like I responded to your posted comment. It was the other way around.
Because in reality that is what people like you are pushing even if you don't realize it.
Who else is in the ivory tower besides Trump? Biden? Obama? Clinton? Kamala? Bernie? Who the fuck are you talking about? It's nonsense, when reality collides with your ideals you realize how fuckin stupid it is. You literally accused all of those people of being in an ivory tower and acting as raiders. Those are your words.
Not true. We always try to get you to vote for someone who isn't trash in the Democratic primaries.
But then you go and vote for trash in the Democratic primaries.
Do you plan on voting for trash in future Democratic primaries?
Completely ignorant.
If not voting was a candidate it'd win every election. That's the problem. That's why they hand the candidacy to Clinton, that's why they can assert Kamala and not worry
Not like people are gonna vote anyway, they're penny pinching for votes. The decent politicians cannot afford to campaign on the same scale and the fact nobody comes out to vote means pound for pound, spending money on elections isn't entirely worth it
Go vote. That's the solution. Tell other people to vote. Believing a system that people aren't buying into doesn't work is a misunderstanding of the system.
I do tell people to vote. In the primaries.
But when the Democratic primaries produce a trash candidate I don't bother to tell people to vote in the general election.
Nice try, Kamala
Yeah, imagine if we had gotten Harris as President...
How... much... "worse"... things would be.
The White House would be intact.
So would every for-profit prison
fElon wouldn't be approaching trillionaire status and gas would be about half the price
Or imagine smores. Hot, melted chocolate and marshmallow between two graham crackers.
When was the last time you had smores?
I eat smores pretty often really. Its not quite the same but I had some smores cereal like a week or so ago.
Imagine if we had actual primaries.
There might have been a non-genocidal candidate we could have voted for. People might have been excited to vote.
Of course, centrists would have stayed home or voted for trump so they could still get the only thing they live for.
Democracy is an adversarial system. Politicians are never your friends. Voting is the act of choosing your adversary. Your representatives work for you and must be pushed while in office.
This kind of post isn't helpful. It's useless finger wagging at this point that isn't actually going to substantively change things and it does nothing to challenge Democratic ineffectiveness.
Is the Democratic party better than the Republicans? Sure. But during the whole time Biden was in office that didn't stop my rights from eroding in the state I live in and the current Democratic status quo is to claim that standing for some civil rights is a problem. I won't say some things didn't get better but an improving economy didn't help with the cost of living for those of us who actually have to live in THIS economy.
The general argument though, is that if you vote for the lesser of two evils, therefore you're picking the opponent that you feel you are most likely going to nudge on the issues. The DNC ran a postmortem, claimed that they were going to be open and honest about the results, then hid the results when it contradicted their pro-Israel stance.
Nevermind that our leaders are fighting corruption and fascism with strongly worded letters, while the establishment is engaged in actively trying to destroy any momentum from their left while they seek out this mythical centrist Republican that'll vote for them. Am I supposed to feel okay with a party who's establishment thinks my rights are optional? Are brown people supposed to feel safe when out government is engaged in active ethnic cleansing and the opposition is dog whistling about how much they love strong borders? Are people of middle eastern descent supposed to feel okay when the opposition party supports a genocide?
Are we supposed to be convinced that a political party is willing to pay attention to protests and act on them, when they can't even be bothered to be transparent about and learn from a postmortem that told them actual fucking genocide is a line in the sand that enough people are unwilling to cross that it'd cost them one of the most consequential fucking elections of century?!
Voting blue is a tool, but how is doing it no matter who going to be meaningful when the Democrats won't learn from their mistakes, will double down on their harms, will throw their own candidates under the bus for being too far left, and will continuously shift rightward?
I'm all for not letting the perfect get in the way of the good, and I have absolutely followed through on the "picking your opponent" mindset, but you actually have to have good on the board.
VOTE
Too bad the people who need to hear this aren't listening. I tried to make the same argument in 24 and constantly got responses that didn't amount to anything more than
I would have done this if I was not an immigrant, and physically allowed to vote.
Tho I do still understand the 46 year olds getting tired from chosing better of two evils for the 7th time.
Especially while watching other countries chose best of 6 evils and 3 goods.
What if both the candidates wish to torture you where one will kill you while other will keep you barely alive while torturing you.
Then, yeah, you're stuck between a proverbial rock and a hard place. But when we're talking about general Republicans vs. general Democrats, there's a significant difference between what we can expect of them. Jamelle Bouie makes a case for that difference (on Youtube)
What's their opinions on genocide? It's literally the worst possible thing you can do. Is there a significant difference between them or do they both support genocide?
In a lot of cases, both of them take contributions from and are supported by AIPAC, but that's why it's a matter of voting against the one that wants to dismantle USAID, by doing so killing a fuckton of children.
People not voting based on principle factors significantly into how we're now watching Trump implement Project 2025.
It's a system that is willfully rigged to force you to choose between bad choices hence establish contrived consent. But we're going to be subject to the consequences of the election whether or not we vote ethically or pragmatically.
I'm not voting for genocide supporters.
One of them is going to get the job whether you vote or not.
Congratulations on your victory.
Doesn't genocide kill a fuckton of children? If the system only gives you options where a fuckton of children get killed then the system needs to change and you aren't doing that by voting for the lesser evil that's still evil.
Which is why voting is not the only thing we need to be doing.
Americans failing to vote is how we lost USAID, an action which also caused the death of a fuckton of children. If the US wasn't afraid of black women in office, a lot of dead people would, in fact, be very much alive, and more reasonable minds would be trying to solve the crisis in Gaza.
Well, only one of them was reposting AI slop videos of casinos built on the corpses...
So they both support genocide, but republicans revel in it publicly instead of in private.
Best i can do is hand the election to the worst option by abstaining to vote because there is no perfect option.
Do you mean no good option?
For the purpose of my comment the distinction is irrelevant.
I spose.
You got what you wanted as soon as there was no anti-genocide candidate.
blocked lol
Centrists can't stand to hear people who don't love genocide and nothing else.
if you think you wont have to fight trump for the presidency, regardless of your vote, your delusional.
I refuse to continue the "lesser evil" BS that got us here. Either the Dems put up actual progressives (and not the crap like Biden that people like to praise as "the most progressive president") or don't whine when people like me look elsewhere at the ballot box. Third party candidates actually do the legwork in red states to get votes unlike Dem presidential candidates.
Congratulations on sticking to your purity test and voting third party. Look at all the third party members in Congress and the white house.... Oh wait.
Keep blaming voters for the system's problems. That always works.
Considering, again, I live in a deep red state my vote for anyone outside conservatives matters about the same. So I might as well stick with who I actually want representing me and not just representing who I slightly less prefer murdering.
You know, in 2024 there was some talk about whether to dispute the results of the election. But people saw that you'd chosen to let Trump win the popular vote, so they figured you wanted Trump to win, and they didn't bother to demand a recount.
Even if everyone who voted third party voted for Harris, she still wouldn't have won the popular vote, and that's assuming all of them would have voted Harris and not Trump if forced like beyond at gunpoint (somehow like they can't even pick to just be shot) which is extremely unlikely.
If everyone who voted for Biden had voted for Harris, she would have won the popular vote. In 2024, there were more abstainers like you.
Who said I abstained? I literally said I voted third party and was discussing third party voters. Why are you now needing to include people who don't vote at all? I voted third party in 2020 also so it's not like the Dems lost my vote between those years.
In FPTP, voting for a third party -- even when it's some major figure like Ross Perot or Bull Moose Teddy Roosevelt -- is doing the same as abstaining.
By voting defensively we can control the damage. But we're obligated to do more than just vote.
And if Biden had kept his campaign promises instead of just supporting genocide like you and every other centrist wanted, his VP might have had a record worth running on.
Congratulations on being represented perfectly by every genocidal politician.
Congratulations on continuing to vote for trash in the Democratic primaries.
Who are you even talking to?
I vote for progressive candidates in the primary. For example, I voted for Bernie in the primary both times.
Morons like you however appear to not vote in primaries. Most of you idiot "both sides" fucks don't even know what they are. Very surprising to hear that from you. Then again, if you knew what they were then you wouldn't have accused me of voting for the centrist, which I assume you did since that's all you idiots parrot.
Yes! It's like voting to choose which boss battle you are going to have.
I today's world, I will judge the capacity of anyone who think "both candidates are the same" in any elections. We have seen in real time how rights conquered through decades can be destroyed in a matter of months
And I judge people for failing to acknowledge a vote for Joe Biden in the 2020 primaries was a vote for fascism.
Ok, what was a vote for Trump in the 2020 election..?
Also a vote for fascism.
I can't imagine a better method to sow voter apathy than making sure a strike blocking, genocide supporting senile geriatric white man won the 2020 Democratic primaries.
You're saying that after a strike blocking, genocide supporting senile geriatric white man won the 2020 Democratic primaries "they" decided instead of running a legitimate 2024 primary the best way to combat voter apathy would be to appoint a strike blocking, genocide supporting young black woman?
Joe Biden went around congress twice to ship bombs to be used in a genocide. He's far more culpable in the genocide than I ever could be. So let me see you say:
"Fuck you Joe Biden. Fuck you 1000 times over."
Because if you're not willing to hold Joe Biden and I to the same standard you're not a voice worth listening to.
Its only democracy if you're choosing your sbyser.
Refusing to endorse abuse is childish.
If they're both going to literally kill you, choose the one who will kill you less.
Vote in the primaries, and it's better to vote third party and lose than reward and maintain the current ratchet system.
I just read a story about an American toddler who was left with a violent uncle when his mother was deported. She didn't have the option to take him with her, and the uncle murdered him a few months later.
But sure, it's better that you vote for a third party rather than the only party that could have stopped these atrocities from happening.
Reminder that Obama began mass deportations, Trump began family separation, Biden maintained them and rised ICE's budget.
If you blame only one party for the state of this nation, you are part of the problem.
I will acknowledge that one party is significantly worse. Absolutely no doubt about it. Democrats are there to protect the status quo republicans create. Voting for BS neoliberal democratic candidates only makes things worse.
Also, elections are usually decided by razor thin margins. If the polls show that a third party is going to eat 2% of the democratic vote, they will be forced to push their candidates to pander to progressives and adopt their policies. But it would be much much better if you participate in the primaries to ensure progressives win the primaries in all levels of government.
I stopped reading as soon as I spotted a lie. So, first sentence.
Obama didn't
supportdeport mothers without their children. And Biden reversed Trump's policies.Both sides are not the same. One side is significantly worse.
I assume you mean "deport" rather than "support".
Obama began mass deportations, got the nickname deporter-in-chief. I stated that Trump began family separation. While it is true that Biden reversed some policies, he didn't reverse the majority and most influential Trump policies, including family separation .
I said no lies. One side inches towards fascism, the other one runs towards fascism. they are a ratchet system .
Both are objectively bad, just one is worse.
voting lesser evil is what brought us here.
It's so insanely disingenuous, and wildly historically inaccurate, to pretend that immigration enforcement now isn't far more cruel (purposely) than under Obama or Biden.
And listen, Obama's deportation numbers are a huge fucking problem that I have with him. But the reality is that he did it while giving people due process.
Anyone who was alive and sentient during that time knows that what's happening now is 1000x more racist, evil, violent, cruel, and fundamentally unfair.
The disingenuous part is that you are arguing with absolutely no one. I have acknowledged that in every comment made. I keep saying conservatives are worse. it's clear and obvious and if you keep arguing about that point then you're an idiot.
What is also disingenuous is that by focusing about how bad the worst party is. you sort of excuse the less evil but still evil democrats. Who usually do the same things as conservatives just in a more subdued and polite way and with less slurs.
if we had Hillary then Biden then Kamala instead of Trump-Biden-Trump things would be better now, but we would still be fucked, just less aggressively. Technically better, but still a bad outcome.
you think you're playing the trolley problem:
and you think you are the good guy by fucking over minorities and working class people. Instead of doing anything to stop the trolley.
Have you registered to vote in the primaries?
If not then you're just a small internet troll. Just yelling online because you think politics are a sport and your just want your team to win. even of they are also horrible.
Except that's the same thing as abstaining. At least in state and federal elections, even popular third party options like Ross Perot or Bull-Moose Teddy Roosevelt don't get elected.
that's the opposite of abstaining.
it will show very clearly, what policies and type of candidate get how many votes and what policies they need to adopt if they want your vote back. and seeing how elections are won on razor thin margins, they will adopt those policies.
Abstaining is great for the establishment, less people to pander. they want people to give up, they want the public to not vote.
Are you familiar with Brexit? a fringe idea that ended becoming reality because UKIP was taking a few percentage votes from the Tories. so Tories promised a Brexit referendum. by doing so Brexit went from a fringe idea to part of the Overton window.
Voting third party is a seriously strong move. Voting lesser evil leads to Trump.
https://medium.com/tikun-olam/the-hidden-power-of-third-parties-6e42cc93dfc2
By my understanding, the Brexit vote didn't work out for the UK public, and retrospectively they didn't fully understand the consequences of what they voted for.
Very much the way that Trump voters didn't understand what they were getting, even though he told everyone who he was.
Historically, at least in the US, voting third party has not been the flex you appear to believe it is.
my point is that voting third party is a really good way to get what you want. and it's more powerful than voting one of the two main parties. not how good Brexit was.
Then you made your point poorly, and I'm not sure if you're confused or are wittingly trying to confuse and deceive me.
Voting a third party in the US doesn't get third party candidates elected. In fact, AIPAC is sponsoring opponents of candidates who have pledged not to take AIPAC contributions in order to dilute the vote. Election strategists are putting money behind the notion that third-party candidates serve as spoilers to principal candidates with whom they share platforms.
I am fully aware that there is no hope for a third party to ever win. but my point is that voting third party is still a very powerful tool. Even with first past the post.
I have provided an historical case study (don't agree with the outcome, but the strength of third party vote is undeniable).
And I would appreciate it if we can at least agree that the US 2 party system works as a ratchet to fuck everyone over (except the rich). Regardless of one party being objectively worse.
Oh, I agree that the two party system does serve as a ratchet, and has since the 19th century with a few exceptions. I do believe it needs to be changed in order for the US to become a public-serving state. Since the 21st century, though, the Republican party has become an existential threat to even the meager democratic features of the US.
And given that third parties will typically be closer to the Democrats than Republicans in their platforms, third-party votes will displace Democratic votes more often than Republican votes. And in the current political clime, that is a problem.
Stop gloating that we didn't get a primary.
So this is why so many people voted for Trump?
I didn't understand everyone refusing to vot for Harris over Israel and Palestine.
What's happening there is abhorrent, but it wasn't on the ballot. If it's not on the ballot, it doesn't matter in that election.
you know, people can just... leave america, for somewhere else.
its a sinking ship anyways and you see the little libs sticking to they're party thinking that voting is important by default and willfully ignoring there issue inherent to your country. its not a political group worth defending and the republicans are mental, our nations really haven't given a shit about many of us so id say leaving is fairly justified. hope you can bail.
Hehe yeah vote for bluemaga, now with 0.001% less genocide! See way better!!
Lemmites:"but I might accidentally vote for a woman"
Having grown up in the 1970s and 1980s, when racial tolerance and women's lib was hammered into me even via Sesame Street (it was just after the Civil Rights movement and all fresh on everyone's minds) I am terrified of the possibility that our voting population is so obtuse that they'd be afraid of officials that are not all white Christian men.
Though part of Trump's popularity in his 2015-2016 campaign was due to reactionary offense to Obama. So we Americans may just be that lowbrow.
Every vote is a concession.
Your ancestors fought through bloodshed, bones, and teeth to allow you the priviledge to post liberal concessions in the centralized internet.
Concessions is what tyrants abuse.
Be like water, unstoppable, and unyielding. Never allow yourself to become a swamp.
Love all these calls for a revolution that none of those rallying for will ever participate in. Radical idea begin with small steps. It’s not that hard. Vote in primaries, vote against insane people in general elections. Eventually the flow of water reverses.
No one on this thread is ever gonna start a fucking revolution. Stop pretending like you are above everyone because your plan is some radical overtaking of the government. It’s a fantasy.
Well... I'm working on the whole revolution thing by advocating a new political theory of anarchism, that I hope will lead to a new sort of revolution. It's called anarcho-antirealism. We advocate for a revolution in which the workers take back control of the means of perception from the capitalist media, alongside a material revolution for the means of production. But it'll be decades before we can do much rebelling, so right now I'm focused on protecting our community and growing our movement through direct aid and local electoral change.
Protecting the community, local elections, volunteering, and organizing/participating in protests is a great example of how to change institutions. You can make your neighborhood better, change the lives in big ways of those you can reach, and hopefully that impact spreads further than your local circle.
People should be less focused on unrealistic and radical world shaping events (unless somehow the opportunity arises) and more on the small changes a single, ordinary human without connections or influence can make.
By growing a cause in number, “revolution” sparks. Not through talking shit on Lemmy.
I am glad you choose to waste your time commenting on your choice to defeat your political inactions on a leftist network the Zionists have infiltrated.
Since you have acquiesced to your Führer‘s tyranny, can you simply return to licking your Nazis’ boots and leave us intersectionists alone?
Our “small steps” were crushed by electoralists. So my comment is for the ignorant, the uneducated, the unlearned.
Does "be like water" mean "miss the filing deadline for an election, then blame literally everyone else"?
I literally defined what I metaphored. Why do you refuse to help voters after elections?