Posts about blaming a minuscule minority of voters are specifically designed to encourage people to not look for the causes of rising fascism.
Keeping people distracted and attacking their socialists allies is the only way Democrats can continue to move further to the right and join Trump's new "War on the Extreme Left".
If you don't see the connection, you have a problem.
Both sides are bad" is true, though. The Democrats and Republicans are infiltrated by Zionists. The reality that both sides are bad could also motivate people to vote for a third party.
I have been making sure my newly or soon to be 18 year old stepchildren and nieces and nephews all understand that voting is not just who is in Washington, but also who is deciding what happens right around us. Local elections are so much more important than I ever really understood at their age.
There's a certain amount of self reflection and questioning that's worthwhile and sometimes it definitely is the lesser of two evils when voting. I wouldn't say any political party or system is perfect, therefore there's still valid and worthwhile criticisms to be made. It would be nice to see choice ranked voting and to officially end gerrymandering.
The fact that this is still a thing is baffling to me. I am, by no means, a fan of Establishment Democrats. But this is why we have primaries. We can walk and chew gum at the same time; vote for progressives in the primaries, vote agaist the fascists at the same time.
And while we're at it, between primaries, we criticize the people we elect because we demand better of them. And we warn them that they will lose to a progressive next primary if they don't find the plot again.
This is not very hard. We can't just note vote if we want to escapw the jaws of fascism without a civil war. We don't have to like establishment democrats, but right now electing a do-nothing is objective improvement. It's voting to get more time. And if the narrative for the democratic party is a progressive narrative, then progressive candidates can drag them kicking and screaming further to the left where they either find some values, or we send them to an early retirement next primary. We call this process "democracy."
And I don't wanna hear shit about it being "rigged." If Viktor Orbon couldn't hold on to an openly rigged system, the DNC doesn't have that much more control either! Half the fucking country doesn't vote. If everyone did, they couldn't ignore the mandate. And so we circle back to the meme above: if you're discouraging people from voting, you are part of the problem. Get them informed, get them motivated, get them registered, make a plan, and go with them if you have to! This is the easiest call to action we will get. If we fail to meet it, the next one will be a lot more painful for the whole world.
This is a misunderstand. It's not about voting. It never was. It's about organizing.
Sure vote for harm reduction. Yes, it can slow things down a bit temporarily, but don't think it'll save your life. Both parties are genocidal fascists who will continue to escalate war and state violence. From a capitalist standpoint, fascism is correct and necessary. Profits have fallen too low, democracy is no longer profitable, no matter which party is in charge. The billionaires need living standards to drop much lower. But in a democracy, people would
not be willing to accept that, so they need to be disciplined violently.
Democrats, just like Republicans will come for your loved ones, arrest communists, continue imperialist wars and genocide, shut down strikes and unions, militarize the police. Simply because Democrats are capitalist and within capitalism, fascism is the next logical step. Not for ideological reasons, but because of real material economic facts. The facts demand fascism. Democrats will adapt or cease to be Democrats.
When Nazi fascism was defeated in Europe, it wasn't by voting for the lesser fascists. The only way to save democracy is to organize real resistance, that's able to enforce demands.
If you have limited capacity to contribute and organize, don't waste your time campaigning for the Democrats. Vote for them, if it makes sense in your state, but that's just one day. If you have any energy to spare the rest of the year: talk to your neighbors and coworkers about real solutions.
For example general strikes and anti-fascist community self defense. Learn communist theory, start a reading group. Join a Marxist org.
Orban lost because everyone went out and voted for the other party. If you watch interviews of voters, a lot of them said they don't agree on everything with who they are voting for, but it must be done to progress away from the Orban era.
Democracy is a slow process, and sometimes, voting for the lesser of two evils is the only choice you have. It opens the door for better candidates in the next elections to come.
Or, you know.. you can do an armed revolution. But lately, they don't bring the change everyone hopes for.
Nevermind that we hold parties accountable and make them actually represent the people. If centrist/corporatist Democrats wanted to win, they should be listening to the people, and they refuse to do that. They are absolutely complicit in what's been happening over this past decade, even long before that.
How delightfully reductionist. Though essentially, yes. Our system of elections is antiquated and should be changed, but until it is, voting how you WISH the system functions instead of how it actually functions is working against your own interests.
To side-step the electorialism conversation a bit: Americans need to take a page out of the French handbook. Civil engagement should not begin and end at voting.
We should be joining leftists organizations, anti-capitalist reading groups, mutual aid groups, workers unions, tenants unions, self-defense groups, community gardens, and real grassroots communities built on trust. These will form the foundation for future protests, boycotts, workers strikes, renters strikes, and, if necessary, civil disobedience. The workers of America have become so anemic that our politicians no longer fear us.
We were trained how to protest, and the history of protest, wrong on purpose. Our cities were atomized which happens to make quelling, compartmentalizing, and hiding unrest much easier. We would be doing great if we were simply anemic. If I had to put numbers to the current landscape: 1/3 anemic, 1/3 actively supporting their own oppression, 9/30 concerned but confidently doing the wrong things to solve their problems, 1/30 pretty much fucked.
We need to show the Democrats that being conservative light is not good enough by making it have consequences in primaries.
The lesser of two evils trap demoralizes people and makes them think that this is the best we can hope for from a politician but it’s not, We’ve seen a rise of left-wing politicians lately and we can do better.
We must participate whenever possible and the choices aren’t always great but they do still matter.
So yes, Democrats actively doing less damage than the Republican counterpart, and no it isn’t good enough.
People deserve a world where hope can be a part of it.
When did the Democrats support leftism? FDR literally created racialized redlining and put anyone who looked vaguely Japanese into concentration camps and stole their property. Obama deported 3M people. You mean the minor political offices of a few mayors around the country that were Sewer Socialists? The party has never been leftist
Yes, participate in primaries, but if the corpo dem wins a primary still vote for their disgusting self over a Republican (unless there is a VIABLE third party candidate)
Yes, participate in primaries, but if the corpo dem wins a primary still vote for their disgusting self over a Republican (unless there is a VIABLE third party candidate)
This assumes that the problem is that Republicans are in office. That's not actually the problem. The problem is that the corpo bloc has candidates in both the Ds and the Rs. and replacing Rs with corpo Ds is not actually making any progress.
There's multiple problems. Society isn't so simple as to assume there's one problem. Corpo dems and Republicans are both problems, both worsening society, but one is an accelerant.
Given that the country was founded on the same principles of EuroFascism, by ultraminority white supremacist christian patriarchs who wanted to create lebensraum on the continent by genociding and enslaving anyone and anything in their way and enlisting every citizen in the project through vast systems of social influence and control... I would say the Republicans are the status quo, not an accelerant.
Perhaps you don't understand what I'm trying to say. I'm not trying to insult the past. I'm saying that the Republicans cannot be an accelerant towards our starting point. The USA has always been an ultraviolent blood-soaked fascist Christian-White-Supremacist mass murdering rapacious child-kidnapping torture paradise for the rich and depraved. It's never not been that. The Republicans aren't accelerating anything except the inevitable end of your fantasy that middle class white Americans and those who assimilate to be like them would have comfortable lives that were distant from the material and moral consequences of the empire.
I understand what you're trying to say. I have the presence of mind to realize the progress that was made since the 60s. I have the presence of mind to also realize it wasn't founded as a christ state as you so pretend too, even if the rest is certainly true. It has been things other than that, and we worked very hard to make it that way, trump is trying to tear it back down again.
I'm by no means saying the USA is good. But in all politeness, if you're saying that about the usa I hope you have the presence of mind to realize that china and Europe were founded on the same, and Europe has demonstrably changed for the better. Being bad is a spectrum.
I'm saying that the Republicans cannot be an accelerant towards our starting point.
I can tell you failed math class by this alone. Just as an aside.
The Democrats are CONSTANTLY participating in the bipartisan consensus. Biden has been supporting Israeli ultraviolence for 5 decades at this point. Bill and Hillary had house slaves in the AR governor's mansion. Obama and Biden brought in Tom Homan and made it possible for ICE to deployed into cities and deported more than twice the number of people Trump has. Obama and Hillary fanned the flames of Libyan civil war and then gloated when the 70-year-old leader of the country was sodomized with a bayonet in a public lynching by the mercenaries they funded and armed. Everyone knew that the telecoms broke the law when they were caught recording all internet traffic for the NSA and everyone voted to grant them retroactive immunity. Obama declared Venezuela a national security threat in order to ramp up the torture on its citizens.
Racialized mass incarceration is a bi-partisan consensus.
Racialized means testing for public services is a bi-partisan consensus.
Racialized ecocide is a bi-partisan consensus.
Militarization of the police is a bi-partisan consensus.
Putting immigrants and asylum seekers into solitary confinement is a bi-partisan consensus.
Killing 800k people globally from sanctions alone, predominantly children and elderly, is a bi-partisan consensus.
You're not looking at the political landscape. You're looking at the PR. You know what the Rs and the Ds are doing together? Golfing. Vacationing. Eating lunch and dinner. Meeting up at alumni events. Networking at private school events for their kids. They're fucking dancing together, on video, with no fucking sense of shame. They are literally working for the same people every single day of their lives, and those people are the same ultraminority that founded the country and designed it to work this way.
The part where it would work? The Democrats have already shown that they will do everything to stop it, from ratfucking to procedural malfeasance to standing up sheepdogs to siphon off the vote.
And even if you get a handful of progressives primaried in, you're still looking at a Senate structurally incapable of representing the voters. 70% of the Senate seats are decided by 30% of the US population. That's by design and original intent. It's been that way this whole time. You think voting in a couple more reps with progressive politics is going to make a damn bit of difference?
Voter: That guy's got a knife and he's coming for me! What do I do?
D: Vote for me and I'll keep you safe!
Voter: OK! Here I go... let's.... voooooooote!
D: I win the election, thanks to everyone who donated to my campaign. This is a win for all of us, not just me.
Voter: Ok, now take that guy's knife away.
D: How dare you criticize me after my very tenuous and delicate victory!
Voter: But he still has the knife and he's still coming for me.
D: Donate $25 to my campaign for re-election and we'll stop the knife wielding maniacs!
Voter: But you won already. Are you going to stop the knife wielding maniacs?
D: We can't unless you vote D in the next election.
Voter: But I voted D in this one, and you won, and he still has a knife
R: Haha! I have won the next election. Here I come with my knife that no one took from me!
D: How would we have lost?! It must be the voters' fault! Donate $25 to my campaign and we'll send out weird postcards saying that we'll know if you voted or not
Voter: Well, getting slapped is not as bad as getting stabbed!
LOL. And the good cop giving you a coffee with a gentle tone of voice is better than the bad cop screaming at you. The D is literally watching the guy with the knife and going "whatever" and you think they're on your side?
Sorry, the best we can do is vote for people who will stab you or people who won't stop the people who will stab you. As it turns out, voting isn't how we avoid getting stabbed. Who knew!?
that's unfortunate, but in this case, if it were up to me (I know it isn't), I'd pick the ones who won't stop the stabbing over the ones who will do the stabbing.
I don't wanna be selfish though. It's your choice, not mine. It only impacts me.
R can only stab when if elected. While D holds office, R may get to keep his knife but actually stabbing is a felony. Once R is in office, it is perfectly legal for him to stab and he can thus do much more stubbing. He also gets to direct federal funding toward stabbing.
Voting is what keeps R away out of office. Voting prevents stabbing.
These are some very complicated concepts, so let me draw you a diagram:
Have you ever seen an R go to jail while Ds are in office? Again. The Ds share in the bipartisan consensus to give military surplus to the police, they are fine with cop cities, they are fine with bombing brown people into oblivion, they are fine with couping other governments. They are always an accomplice to the stabbings. Keeping Rs out of office, which you mathematicallly cannot reasonably rely on, will do nothing to stop the stabbings.
The research across decades has shown no reduction of police violence under Democrats and no increase under Republicans. The research has shown corporate profits are higher under Ds than under Rs. Stop believing your bullshit flowchart. It doesn't match reality.
I assumed part of the reason Hillary lost (I said "part") was because all the media was talking non-stop about how she was going to demolish Trump with ease and it was all a hilarious joke that Trump even thought he had a chance.
That much media coverage basically told so the Democrat voters to not bother going to vote because Hillary had it in the bag.
Even if he leaves in 2029, the US doesn't have that much time to sit on it's ass and let all social progress, climate action, relationships with allies, economy etc get demolished.
We have Germany, Russia, China and Japan hiking military spending and remilitarizing, preparing for a confrontation.
Climate crisis is not getting any better either and we have just crossed the point of no return where we could have still saved coral riffs.
This is the worst possible time to allow Trump admin free reign
on paper, yes. voting rights were on paper too. abortion was guaranteed on paper, even. they didnt even try to justify gutting them. can almost bet they'll try it on that as well
40 plus years of neo liberal policy, that yes have been embraced by 'both sides', has been destroying the nation and for some reason people don't want to admit it.
The "some reason" is because most educational text and all entertainment media are published by the same six corporations, all of whom are owned by billionaire parasites who profit greatly from that Neoliberal policy.
First of all, half the non voters would vote republican (unless you actually believe democrats are just actually lazier people than republicans?!).
Second of all, 99% of the shit trump does wrong is just plainly wrong under both parties "values." It doesn't matter what party this is way bigger than party this is about an enemy of the state controlling the white house.
Also the democrats keep voting to fund his government, instead of shutting the whole damn country down, which is in fact necessary because an active unrepentant child rapist is controlling the white house and he's starting illegal wars and stealing billions of dollars. So, to vote in the house or the senate for even one dollar of taxpayer money to be entrusted to donald trump as the chomo-in-chief of the executive branch is in and of itself treason worthy of capital punishment.
So yes, fuck the democrats who have voted to pass budgets that hand trump trillions of dollars that he treats as a blank check. Domt tell me dems are the best way to get him out of power, tell me who to vote for to express my desire that the federal government ceases functioning immediately until he gets out. Because this whole lets vote him out ive been hearing it for ten fucking years now and yet here we are. Stop telling me to wait for November, shut the whole fucking thing down today. This guy rapes children and we're letting him do anything??? Why?? Shut down the government light the constitution on fire because literally zero authority for anything good in the world can exist while the "leader of the free world" is a rapist murderer who is grifting billions of dollars. Like it just has to stop, fuck the vote, just stop this fucking maniac who slathers his face in orange paint and rambles about how the epstein files exonerated him!!
Because this whole lets vote him out ive been hearing it for ten fucking years now and yet here we are.
This is exactly the issue for me. It's been a literally a decade of them doing NOTHING but then screaming its the end of the world if we don't vote for them.
Yes. Also, there is zero, ZERO path to anything better through the Republocan party.
There are plenty of ways to eventually get somewhere through the Dems. It may mean "suffing" alot of do nothing bull shit, but there are paths and ways.
As long as people are not apathetic what most likely will happen is that Republican will disappear and Democrats will split into two parties. It happened in the past.
The fun part is, that the Republicans didn't even start out as a Maga cult party. They got infiltrated. Not just by rich people, but by people from all sorts of backgrounds, joining or voting for support. Nothing is stopping the left from doing the same with the Democrats. But for that to happen, they'd need to stop with the constant purity tests...
Intellectual honesty. The left will say what they actually want, the alt-right will lie their way in. "I'm literally an anarchist" versus "oh I'm just a fiscal conservative".
Fanatic idiots who cling to religious fantacy like its fact because they are too stupid to comprehend the world, this stupidity also fuels a shitload of racism and bigotry, for the same reason.
And richblibertarian assholes who want to tear the world of regulation down to better allow them to rape the population and planet for maximum profits.
The rich assholes figured out how to weaponize the idiots using fear to grest advantage. I used to feel a bit sorry for the idiot cult for being manipulated but they basically refused to ever change so fuck those people.
Actual mainstream Democrats are not doing "purity tests", a lout, super left wing branch is. I am not saying they have bad wants and desires, and ultimately they are right on a lot of issues, and personally, I agree with them on a lot of issues, but they are loud, and a bit of a fringe part, and for the greater good, for now, can be mostly ignored.
Mostly.
They should NOT be ignored in favor of just, sliding more tonthe right. Like, just picking an issue, maybe there is a compromise on trans athletes, because it probably is tricky, but that doea not mean compromising on trans people ompletely, andletting it start to slide to other queer groups, which is starting to happen.
The big lynchpin that feels like its brought up a lot is the Israel/Palestine war. Which is probably the stupidest one. Yes Israel sucks, and what they are doing to Palestime is very terrible, but hesus fuck you don't sacrifice the country and ultimately everyone else in the world to the fucking Fascists over it. Both sides are shit, and who fucking cares in the end.
Actual mainstream Democrats are not doing “purity tests”, a lout, super left wing branch is.
Yeah, i'm not talking about democrats as a whole, they're not "left" from a European perspective, i was talking about those who are quite a bit further left of centre. The people who "taught the Dems a lesson" by *checks notes* hiding at home, writing performative bullshit on social media and are dogpiling on anyone who dares to cast a shadow of a doubt at their imaginary moral high ground. As i had the pleasure of experiencing first hand, when i dared to question the decision of some random US non-voter commenting on Bluesky...
The point is, that pretty much every party can be changed from the inside, if people are persistent enough. Change never happens on its own. At least not for the better. And if you want to help people in other countries, you first need to make sure your own country stays safe. Sadly, the US is a two-party failed state, and in my opinion, the only realistic peaceful way to change that, is to join the lesser evil of the two parties and force the change from within. The other option is to just burn everything to the ground and start from the beginning.
Both sides are bad, but both sides are not the same. One shows time and time again they are scared of their voters and will change course with enough pressure. The other one only puts pressure on us under the heel of a boot.
Yes, both suck, but we are not getting anywhere with this stupid flip flop between two awful options. You take the less bad one, then work really fucking hard to get better people to replace them. Don’t keep falling for this one weird trick bullshit, where one cultish figure that claims to solve it all will get the nod in an effort to “try something different”.
Third parties are useless, unless we can get ranked choice. Until then, we play the fucking game, not keep flipping the board every few years.
Then i don't wanna be a part of the farce. Which is my plan, lived here my whole life and working on emigrating, this shit is fucked. Go vote for the dems so trump can go back to raping children in maralago instead of the white house. So the dem appointed president sends a little bit of food aid to palestine along with the weapons they give to the IDF to blow up the food aid palestine gets. (Not just the weapons like the republican appointee does.)
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love 3rd party representation, but the way it works right now in this country, they don’t stand a chance. They exist today as spoilers, I mean, how effective is Jill stein for anything outside of an election?
What I’d like to do, is get dems in place, then pressure the shit out of theme through the primary process, through town halls, through letter writing, and all the ways we can manifest our power. Pressure them to get ranked choice voting, then we can start focusing on third parties. There is NO republican support for this, there are several Democrats who do (Mpls uses it now).
There's a big fat online conspiracy to deter people from voting in the US even though voting in the US is the thing that truly determines how the country is ruled and other things such as Money, have no or minimal influence in how the US is managed.
First Past The Post undemocratic voting systems like the one in America create political duopolies, which are populated by people in well entrenched power positions who when not in front of the cameras are basically work mates and protect each other. Further, the extreme political stability of such system attracts people who become lifers in that system, selling their political influence to the highest bidder in order to enrich themselves, and the politicians of both facets of the duopoly have a shared interest that such selling out is either not illegal at all or, when illegal, de facto not prosecuted, so together they'll change laws and nominate the "appropriate" people to the Judicial system to make sure it is so.
George Carlin put this idea to rest a very long time ago. If you truly believe that Democrats are somehow fundamentally different from Republicans you have lost the plot.
Dems have utterly failed in doing anything other than fighting progressives the Dem party is truly insane in that they are obstructing the very thing that would save us all which is more Dems everywhere. Time for the old guard to step down or turn their attention to combating the GOP. Like it’s utterly fucking stupid. And fuck the fuck out of Israel get the fuck out of the Dem party and American politics.
The two party system is a lie. Actually there are factions within and without each party. If your analysis stops at D and R, you cannot possibly describe American politics accurately.
In other words, your oversimplification is not useful for comprehension of the situations at hand. But it is also true that corporate lackeys exist everywhere.
It's not an oversimplification to say both sides are bought and paid for by billionaires and constantly support the wealthy. The working class have been getting fucked by both parties ever since Ronald Reagan left us with "trickle-down" economics.
I'm debating whether I want to engage with you on this. I can't tell if this is ragebait or if you genuinely arrived at this conclusion.
Your comment appears to conflate two separate ideas, and I think there's a contradiction in your reasoning. That makes me question whether you actually understood the point being made.
Especially if this is the conclusion you drew from the clip in my previous comment, which, to be fair, I don't even know if you watched.
Did you actually watch the clip, or are you responding only to my summary?
Ashley B noted in one of her YouTube videos (Here we go) that in 2016, the largest focus of social media campaigns by Cambridge Analytica and by Russian assets, targeted black voters in battleground states to encourage them not to vote.
And yeah, the gerrymandering war, voter suppression campaigns, voter caging, election tampering, false rumors of massive election fraud, all these are Republican efforts. When states have free and fair elections to which everyone has access and is allowed to vote, then Democrats win over Republicans.
Voting is an illusion of choice. At best, you’re voting for a personality. Who voted for these flock cameras? Who voted for this war with Iran? Who voted for citizens united? I can go on and on.
No, you're simply wrong. Voting changes many things. But it doesn't fix everything. I mean, just look at Iran. Did Biden start that? No. But if Trump had won in 2020, you can bet he would have done the same thing four years earlier.
Voting is about policy, unless you're foolish and decide it's about personality.Then really bad shit happens. And politicians have been corrupt for millennia. So what? You want a king instead? Lol. Go look at history and tell me how that worked out.
Voting alone is insufficient. Do other things, too. Or don't! It's your life.
It's real dumb to blame the long history of imperialism on one guy, but he didn't do jack shit to stop it. He supported genocide and the MIC like every other politician.
The problem with this isn't voting, it's who you are allowed to vote for and which policies those people represent. Most US elections boil down to "90% hitler and covert fascism vs 100% hitler and overt fascism". Sure, if I were forced to vote in such a situation I probably would vote for the 90% hitler just out of harm reduction, but also it's important to acknowledge that the entire system which forces you to vote for 90% hitler must be destroyed.
But if Trump had won in 2020, you can bet he would have done the same thing four years earlier.
The question is rather, would Harris have started some kind of war in West Asia if she had won in 2024? I think the answer is yes, because both Trump and Harris answer to highly overlapping sets of capitalists and imperialists and war is highly profitable. The war would probably be carried out more professionally and effectively, but would that actually be a good thing?
Nope, you are very wrong. Biden did a lot of drone attack as well. Voting keeps your attention away from actual problems. They are intentionally making voting results 50/50, so thay you think it may solve problems.
There are differences, but your questions are valid nonetheless. The two parties are a Venn Diagram:
We can vote on LGBTQ protections, DEI initiatives, abortion, separation of church & state, etc. because the two parties genuinely disagree on these issues.
We can never vote on wars in the middle east, the ever-increasing Pentagon budget, the ever-increasing ICE budget, growing presidential powers, Congressional insider trading, protections for whistle blowers, lifting sanctions on Cuba, closing Guantanamo Bay, the surveillance state, drone strikes, corporate bail outs, the growing wealth gap, etc. Where both parties agree there is no democracy.
i take every opportunity to shit on, mock, ridicule, insult, verbally abuse bothsidesbad dipshits everywhere they show their stupid fucking faces
whatever happened to all the "vOtE 3rD pArTy BeCuZ gEnOcIdE" fucking morons? actually j/k i don't miss them at all. how's that iran war going? we sure helped palestine by throwing away our vote, huh? fucking idiot clowns
Why do people keep purposely misrepresenting the criticism people had for Harris? Like, I know, it was hard at the time to listen to people warning about her potential to lose. But, we have the advantage of hindsight now. Do we have to pretend the main criticism of Harris was that Trump would be better? No one that wasn't a grifter was saying that.
The vast vast majority of people criticizing Harris were doing so because they correctly warned people that if she did not separate herself from Biden and run FOR something turnout would be low and she would lose.
The people critizing her for trying to run "strong border" ads were correct.
The people that criticized her for saying "nothing comes to mind" when asked if she would have done anything differently than Biden were correct.
The people that criticized the campaign for stopping the very well received "weird" messaging Walz brought. They were correct. Walz brought momentum and they shut it up. It's like they were allergic to things that were working and getting people interested in her campaign.
The people that critized her when she suddenly stopped talking about her ONE concrete policy idea on grocery store price controls. They were correct. She stopped talking about a vastly popular position because Trump called her "communist". And then they kept calling her a "communist" anyway.
The people that criticized her for supporting Bidens Israel policy; THEY WERE CORRECT. We are living in a world were 75% of lifelong Democrats are against any support for Israel. This didn't happen overnight. This has been happening since Bidens genocide began. And her absolute failure to LEAD and understand were the country was heading was a complete failure. We told you in 2024. The country was begging for a real leader and this issue would shown that she had that ability to lead. That she could call a spade a spade and not be another bull shit politician afraid to upset AIPAC. She failed.
Do you know what a leader does? They LEAD and guide others in the correct direction. We are there NOW. The people that vote for the Democratic party are ALWAYS significantly ahead of there leaders on the actual issues. They were begging for a leader that would actually step forward and be unafraid and unapologetic in leading on issues and policy.
We don't have to wonder. We are literally seeing it growing RIGHT NOW. From Mamdani to Abdul (soon) we are seeing anti Israel and leftwing populism wipe the floor with Harris style Democrats.
A 15 term incumbent losing DEMOCRATIC primaries to a 29 year old that was saying "fuck Kamala Harris" for not taking a stand against Israel. The people you are crying about that "lost Kamala the election". They are the people literally going out and organizing right now because they are sick and tired of having to explain why the Democratic party keeps losing to Trump and being told "you're the reason Harris lost."
We're done with just explaining it. We're done being used as a scapegoat for the failures of the Democratic party when we offer constructive criticism. We're forcing these politicians out of office that refuse to actually lead.
I don't know a single person I organize with in DSA that didn't go vote for Harris. We aren't the ones that didn't show up. The ones that didn't show up were the people that didn't even know who the presidential candidates were a week before the election. And a lot of them didn't have reason enough to take off work, not be able to pick their kid up from daycare on time, or didn't want to get stuck in traffic, so they decided to not vote that day.
So, please, stop pretending the people actually organizing for good candidates like Mamdani were the people that didn't show up. And, please, come join us at DSA and help us elect people that actually have the motivation and knowledge to be leaders.
Edit: And for the love of God, please stop confusing the majority of the socialist movement with Anarkiddies and the socialist that like to LARP as Maoist third worldist online. We don't like them much either. They are kinda stinky and need to shower. But, they aren't worth even caring about. They don't have any negative effects outside your twitter feed.
If you're active in organizing with DSA, you're literally not the problem. The people we're criticizing would call the DSA "fascist-lite" for not being far enough left. You hinted at acknowledging those people exist in your edit, but I don't think you realize how prevalent they are.
Don't take it personally when people criticize them, because they're not talking about the DSA. Literally no one would call the DSA tankies. Tankies hate the DSA because it proves to people that you can have socialism without authoritarianism. Tankies gatekeep and purity test leftist specifically to keep democratic socialists out of leftist spaces, because they don't want people realizing that the two can go together.
Your critiques of Kamala Harris's campaign aren't without merit, but they're a bit misplaced in this discussion. No one here is saying she was an ideal candidate. But we had two choices: trump or harris. No matter how the election turned out, we were going to get one or the other. Many of us took the harm reduction approach, knowing that opposing trump was worth voting for someone who wasn't great but was not as bad.
We can relitigate this till we're all blue in the face, but I don't think it would be productive. What's done is done, and the current political climate is different from the one in 2024. We have an incumbent Republican trifecta with which many people are displeased, and the pendulum is swinging back into the Democrats' favor right when the internal tides of the Democratic party are shifting towards the DSA and progressive caucus.
There's a lot of momentum right now building for progressive candidates and democratic socialists, so let's not waste that by fighting with each other. Centrist Dems want that. Republicans want that. Let's not give it to them
I think it's reasonable to warn people to look out for bad actors stoking division by using trite catchphrases like "both sides," "blue fash," "fascist lite," etc. Let's focus on the positive momentum. Let's not squander it on purity tests and infighting
I know. It's exhausting. Especially when you yourself want that team to win rather than the other team win.
People seem to treat the voters like "the players". The voters are the fans in this analogy. If the stadium is empty it's not helpful to keep screaming about the team losing because they aren't being cheered for enough. "The players" are the people that actually have power to make political change. We aren't a direct democracy. If the players aren't "scoring" and don't even try to "swing" the fans stop showing up.
Hell, the Democrats are essentially playing like the 1919 white sox. That's an old analogy. But it's fitting.
I don't know a single person I organize with in DSA that didn't go vote for Harris. We aren't the ones that didn't show up.
Why are you writing novels to defend yourself against something that wasn't even directed at you?
OP clearly referenced people who protest-voted against Harris and subsequently made everything measurably worse for the Palestinians and Earth at large (which was obviously going to happen if Trump won).
My very first sentence categorized their comment as a misrepresentation of what caused the Harris loss. I had a paragraph in my "novel" originally that said that even if all protest votes went to Harris she still would have lost. But I guess my editor removed it in the final draft /s.
So, since I categorized the comment as a misrepresentation of what happened (protest votes having impact), provided evidence for why people stayed home, and provided an explanation of the campaigns failures; the quote you took was a defense of this conclusion in my "novel" and the actual actions of the people that spoke out against Harris for not standing against a genocide.
You can joke about the length of my comment. I am myself. But, don't quote a single sentence out of the context of "the novel" and pretend it was irrelevant to what I was explaining. Do you disagree with the protest vote being irrelevant? It doesn't sound like you do.
I've had this conversation for years now. The next step after I point to the protest vote as mathematically irrelevant is for Harris defenders to blame the "stay at home". It's why I addressed the reasons people stayed home and the failure of the campaign to win against "the couch". The problem was people staying home. But people stay home because they are apathetic, uninformed, misinformed, or aren't excited for either candidate.
We can be frustrated about why that is. But, if a presidential campaign doesn't run their campaign on how things actually are; and instead try to motivate this large voter base through morality or fear. They're going to fail like they did to have people "pokemen go to the polls".
Why didn't all those non-voters bother to vote for Harris? You say it was because she didn't run a good campaign, that she had a bad platform. You criticized her 'bad' mistakes and spread the word on how bad she was. Don't you think that might have been a contributing factor as to why too many people thought she wasn't worth getting off their asses to vote?
Let's assume for a moment that what you're saying is true. I'll "steelman" you're argument. Let's assume that the criticism of Harris "from the left" played a large enough role for enough people to stay home.
What you are advocating for is that if a political campaign is bad, but "less bad" than the alternative, we should not criticize it. We should not demand the candidate for our party run on policy positions that we want.
You realize you are advocating for an increasingly worse and worse political choice over time. If no concessions are ever offered by politicians to their voters, and those voters still show up religiously, that is not democracy. That is a cult.
Not only that. But what you're advocating for is impossible. You will never live in a world in which people don't criticize a candidate that is "less bad" than the other candidate. You can, however, live in a world where the politicians that lose elections to historically unpopular candidates like Trump, are replaced by candidates that actually offer policies the voters of their party WANT. We are seeing this grow with DSA right now.
So, even if what you are saying was true, the solution would not be to shame voters. That literally will cause MORE of them to sit on the couch on election day. That's just people. You can't sustain a political party by being "less bad" than the alternative. People will stop showing up. People sitting on the couch when their politicians ignore their material needs is literally how democracy should work.
You're saying the same thing I am saying. But you're for some reason placing blame on potential voters doing exactly what they SHOULD do in a healthy democracy. You seem to want a party that has cult like loyalty as long as "the other guy is worse". Well, that's exactly how you get worse and worse political policy, constantly shifting rightward, for decades.
Probably because people still don't seem to understand the electoral college. Which is very bad for demonstrating being a knowledgeable member of the American electorate.
Votes for president have negligible to no meaning due to the electoral college system. We now know that the protest votes counted in the hundreds whereas millions failed to vote at all. No outcomes in any race were decided by protest votes. More right wing libertarians protested the GOP.
The protest voters demonstrably did not make everything measureably worse. They are quite frankly the reason we have seen the dial shift towards elections of people like Mamdani. They're still throwing McMurrows out at every turn.
I wish. Every single word was typed by my adhd/autistic brain. If you read it it's painfully obvious from my writing style. I am not nearly digestible in my writing as an AI is. It usually leads me to misunderstandings with people that reply to me.
If you find a gpt that can shorten my comments, make it more digestible to liberals, but also still provide the same information I'd love to hear about it.
Unfortunately, almost embarrassingly so, my comment history is all my own original thought.
Oh, also be sure to have several dyslexia related typos. It's my signature writing style. I need the gpt to mimic that. /s
Edit: it's weird how long comment with a minor amount of structure and hyperlinks means it's AI now. It's pretty unfair to those of us that have been doing it for decades on the internet. How do you think these AIs were trained in the first place?
Edit2: damn, they just downvoted me and didn't respond. My brain will not wonder if I sound like an AI bot for the rest of the day.
Yes. My comment is entirely about the failures of the democratic party and how they lost to a racist narcissistic old white man twice.
People critical of voters are for some reason trying to place blame on them instead of the political campaigns with near limitless funds that lost to him TWICE. And still keep arguing for the same tactics.
They don't realize how embarrassing it is to admit their defeat and not reflect on the political party itself as the thing that needs to change. Arguing for voters to change without the party changing is arguing for no change at all. Voters change VIA the messaging and actions OF THE PARTY.
Blaming voters is an admission that the party is unchangeable and that democratic process is dead. Because, like it or not, the party and it's representatives hold the power through elections. If the party refuses to change policy based on voters then we are just bouncing between two parties that do not represent the majority of the population. Which we are.
It sounds like you supported Hillary and still don't understand why she lost, so you keep the same approach... In reality, tens of millions of voters actually care who the Dem candidate is. If you feed them a pro-corporate anti-worker center-right tool, they might stay home. That is reality, my friend. Blame them all you want. I would blame the DNC, but you do you.
There was a primary, she won the primary. Sure the DNC tried to sway public opinion, but ultimately the voters gave us Hillary. That is reality my friend.
There's a difference between supporting the ideology of a candidate, and supporting effective voting. You can blame the DNC for pushing a bad candidate, but the people who'd rather stay home than choose lesser evil deserve the greater evil when they get it.
You play the hand you're dealt, not the one you wish you had.
She won the primary because the DNC did everything they could to undermine Bernie. Dabbie Wasserman Schultz had already anointed Hillary the chosen one and didn't want anyone screwing with her plan, democracy be damned.
It was my first primary paying attention as an adult. I turned 18 when Obama had already won in late 2008. The primary process of the Democratic party was shocking to me. The super delegates were just insane to me. I phone banked for Bernie. The entire process is like millions of people pretending that the primary process is not a rigged system. News networks showing massive vote leads for states that hadn't cast a single vote because of "super delegates". Over and over just pretending that a candidate had already been chosen. When, well, they had been. We just all were pretending it didn't.
Then you learn of history of the party. Like what was done to drop Wallace from FDR. You realize that this just how it's always worked. There is a massive amount of tools used by the political party to pick their preferred candidate in a smoke filled room. They just don't do that directly. They create all these anti democratic rules and all collectively pretend they are "protecting the party".
They are protecting the party from winning popular support and being able to win against Trump. That's all that's happening. It's on purpose. They are captured by the same capital interest as the Republicans.
Are you just here to troll? Bernie* had the largest grass roots movement in a generations. Over 100,000 unique people phone banked for him volunteering. Are you European? You sound like you know nothing about how the political process works in the US beyond TV. If you're from the US you definitely have never actually involved yourself in the political process beyond just voting. So many ignorant comments you keep leaving here.
He overwhelmingly lost in the primary because not enough progressives voted for him in the primary like I did. What part about that don't you understand?
Again, you're looking at American elections and pointing to the outcome as your only analysis. I know how voting works mate. But for some reason you are just interjecting useless comments when someone decides to analyze the factors that lead to that outcome?
You have no thoughts beyond "not enough people voted for him"? Is your analysis really that one dimensional? What are you even trying to say? It's like looking at a basketball game and saying "the team lost because they had less points". Wow! Very insightful! What other amazing things do you have to tell us?
In the Coke vs Pepsi system of the US, its hard to see how voting for one over the other would be any better. Sometimes 3rd and 4th parties actually have a little bit of power in Canada's Westminster system if there's a minority government. It just goes to hell when the Liberals stop pretending to not be conservatives.
From an outside perspective, the "both sides" arguments in the US sounds so fucking stupid and fucking lazy.
It's like some worthless pricks watched some South Park episode about a turd and a douche and took it seriously for some fucking reason and used it for their entire political identity. For fucks sake, it's even worse hearing, "yeah Biden did a lot of good, but he didn't advertise it enough". Fuck that shit. That's on you being a fucking stupid uninformed (non?)-voter.
Ok, I'm an outsider looking in. Up here, I've been an NDP member for years, I know that we are not making government any time soon, but we have pushed the Liberal government to implementing universal healthcare, and made steps toward universal dental care and pharmacare. A vote for the 3rd party can be effective.
Looking south, it's hard to see how voting for someone will incrementally make your life worse is that much better than the one who will make your live worse today.
Up here, we voted in Carney to keep Poliver out (I don't respect him enough to spell his name correctly), but really their policies are so similar that a ton of conservatives joined the Liberal party to give him a majority.
Were I in your system, I don't know if I would vote. I wouldn't have voted for Hillery, Biden, or Harris, I sure as hell would never have voted for Trump. But I'm not in your system, so I can't say for sure.
all you're going to come back with is "uR dUm" or something equally stupid.
the fact is 3rd party/ abstaining is objectively the dumbest fucking position anyone could ever take, and now we have a fascist rapist racist pedophile president who sucks israel's cock. honestly gtfo with your vote 3rd party bullshit. fucking clowns
now we have a fascist rapist racist pedophile president who sucks israel's cock.
Who only became a viable candidate because of thirty years of lesser-evil voters covering for the Democratic Party to shift from slightly right of center to right of Reagan, but just slightly left of the "fascist rapist racist pedophile".
Nakedly fascist and white supremacist candidates have been in the Republic Primary forever. They never got the time of day from Republican voters until the bipartisan Neoliberal austerity had squeezed the working class so hard that a fascist strongman selling easy answers seemed attractive. And after the guy who ran on Hope and Change delivered Narratives and Crumbs instead, yeah a lot of disillusioned people who'd been first time voters during the Obama years went back to staying home. That's not because of "both sides" messaging depressing turnout, that's because of "both sides" reality showing them it didn't matter. They voted for a Public Option and got United Healthcare denying their claims. They voted to codify Roe and end the Bush Tax Cuts and got open air slave markets in North Africa and the Space Program handed over to Billionaires to cannibalize.
Then after Trump's first term, they watched the party push Biden from sixth to first without even trying to be subtle about it. And it was obvious even on Super Tuesday that Biden wasn't being annointed because he could stop Trump, but because he could stop Bernie Sanders. So why on Earth would anyone who finds the status quo untenable continue to support a party so obviously and totally devoted to defending the status quo against any attempts to improve it? Voting for the ratchet because you fear the wheel isn't going to motivate anyone. The only people still on your side are the ones too blind to see that ratchet effect policy and identity politics is the only thing the DNC has to offer.
US Americans with their backs to the wall, with wages stagnant and costs of everything constantly going up? US Americans whose education has been gutted so that they have barely a high school civics understanding of how their government works? Yeah. Trump is an accurate representation of America's id, and the uniparty has gleefully created the exact conditions to bring out the worst in the greatest number of people.
Antagonize whom? Lemmy was FILLED with leftist preachers telling everyone that Harris needed to earn their vote. They loudly proclaimed that everyone needed to vote 3rd party to send a message.
It was no different than politely debating a Trump supporter. Anyone debating them was an attack. When they talked they believed it wasn't antagonizing, only responses were "antagonizing".
At this point those true leftist need to be publicly shamed for their mistake so it doesn't get repeated. Pretending it didn't happen will allow history to repeat.
Lemmy is a niche platform with, I believe, about 45,000 monthly active users. Let's say for the sake of argument that all of us were influenced into not voting. (Ridiculous, I know, but for the sake of argument.) That's less than a rounding error on the millions who didn't come out to vote in 2024. That is to say, all of the raging Lemmy Leftists affected basically nothing.
On top of that, surveys and interviews in the media after the election found that politically-engaged people, even leftists by and large, did vote for Harris. It's the politically disengaged, and disillusioned voters who didn't understand the stakes, or see any advantage in putting in the effort to vote. (What, did you seriously think that all Americans have perfect information, and make only deeply-considered, rational choices?)
On top of that, Republicans in control of state governments have been doing everything that they can to make voting harder, and less convenient, to suppress the turnout.
On top of that, the GQP ran Spanish-language ads in many markets peddling bald-faced lies. These ads were largely not countered by any Democratic messaging, and what there was was largely in English. The impression that I got was that Democrats felt that they had brown people's votes on lock. Never mind that brown people is a granfalloon, and they're just as ideologically diverse as any group of people, and many of them were not naturally inclined to vote Democratic. (That was certainly the case in Michigan.)
So, factually, we have a poorly-informed or not politically-engaged population that's not inspired to overcome the inertia and obstacles to go vote, and an uninspiring candidate who didn't speak to their daily lives and worries, and, no, forget all that, let's expend effort blaming the Lemmy Leftists.
THIS is why Democrats lose. It's so much easier to focus on a strawman and browbeating a handful of irrelevant loudmouths than it is to address these real issues, and actually inspire people to come out and vote with a message that reaonates with them.
I don’t think “both sides are bad” is designed to keep people from voting. It’s meant to give the people that follow the definitively worse of the 2 sides a justification to keep voting the same way.
Fascism in the US is a bi-partisan consensus. Obama and Biden restructured DHS and ICE policies that allowed them be deployed in cities for mass enforcement. Trump used it. Biden took office and instead of undoing the polices, simply chose not to use it. Which then predictably resulted in the next Republican to take office using it.
FDR put Japanese people in concentration camps and stole all their property. Kennedy did Vietnam. LBJ did Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, DR, Bolivia, DRCongo. Bill Clinton did Somalia, Haiti, Sudan. Obama did Libya, Yemen, Niger, Cameroon. Bill and Hillary had black house slaves when they lived in the Arkansas governor's mansion.
Mass racialized incarceration is bipartisan. Prison slavery is bipartisan. Killing 800k people every year with sanctions is bipartisan. Militarizing the cops with military surplus is bipartisan.
Corporate profits are HIGHER under Democrats.
The Democrats are the right. The right wins every election, regardless of which party wins. Regardless of which party is in power the fascism continues unabated, the rich continue to get richer.
Sir, this is a Lemmy. The issues are black and white. Pragmatism means you're a Nazi. Everything you're doing to try and make a difference is worse than genocide AT BEST. I checked your post history and there's not a single comment about how many Republicans you have personally punched simply for being a Republican and having a different opinion than you, so you might as well be a Republican yourself, which makes you a double Nazi.
Seriously though, I think it's important to confront and admit that voting for the lesser evil does legitimize the evil they do, even if the greater evil does it worse. Because critically digesting both that fact alongside the fact that voting for the lesser evil really does result in better outcomes for society is what will actually get the hesitant on board with going and doing it. If you try to dismiss or handwave that fact, you are dismissing and handwaving the very real concerns of the disillusioned non-participants. Acknowledging the dissonance is far better.
I think it's also important to point out that while direct action and social organizing are the most effective things things you can do to change society, they are incredibly time consuming while voting usually takes 5 - 30 minutes. And if you're actually interested in the former, there's little to no excuse to avoid the latter.
Just whatever you do, don't shame people for being disillusioned. That makes people really dig in their heels.
voting for the lesser evil really does result in better outcomes for society
Not when the Lesser Evil gets progressively more evil over time to try and pull votes from the Greater Evil camp. They have no incentive to implement any policies you're in favor of as long as they have your guaranteed support. If the next Democrat promises to be as worthless as the last one, don't vote for them.
It actually does, even considering that. That's just how bad the greater evil party is. There's a lot of space for the lesser evil party in their wake. But yes it does get worse overall either way. That's why while voting is important, you really should be doing something beyond that as well, if you really care. And if you really care enough to do something beyond that, then merely voting should be trivial for you to manage.
Not in the long run. "Vote blue no matter who" is how we end up in 2036, with the republican on the ballot promising to execute all trans people, and the democrat promising to merely jail them.
Agreed, not in the long run. Voting is like stop the bleed on a traumatic injury. It'll keep you alive in the short term so you can get more comprehensive care.
When the organizing and fighting that that you do beyond voting finally pays off. Like back to the analogy, if a wound is all dressed and banaged and healing, you no longer have to worry about stop the bleed.
Realisticay though, for the rest of your life. Because these are very large social moves that typically happen over generations. Unless you're the next Che Guavara or something. In which case hell yeah go you.
Nobody is in favor of it because it causes the republicans to win. But it exists whether you acknowledge it or not, third party votes in generals are votes for republicans in most cases.
given the choice between the benign tumor and the malignant tumor, one is better off with the benign one. refusing to choose just hands it to the malignant tumor by default. furthermore, it's not about supporting the lesser of two evils but identifying which evil is the worst overall and focusing everything you have on punishing it. refraining from punishing evil is, surprise surprise, AN EVIL ACT
The largest non-voting registered group in the 2024 election were those associated with neither party: independents and unaffiliated voters.
About a quarter of eligible voters aren't even registered on top of that.
"Both sides are bad" statements aren't necessarily driving partisans to not vote. They are, or can be however, an important message for those two big parties running the elections to hear from the people.
It's also, possibly one of the few talking points that forces acknowledgement that those independent, unaffiliated, and unregistered voters exist and whose interests might matter towards the outcome of policy and/or elections.
But yes, the interests that align with at least the GOP are furthered when votes are suppressed, that has been demonstrably true for decades.
Then the posts aren't encouraging them to change any behavior. This premise only works if you have partisan voters deciding not to vote because of the Both-Sidesism.
If it is the default case that a party already does not have the any votes of the largest mass of voters, then the parties should focus on gaining their support.
But also: more libertarians protested the GOP over Both-Sidesism than leftists, so technically it still had a net benefit effect for Harris. Which further demonstrates how flawed the whole premise is.
Wait are you legitimately claiming that both sides rhetoric doesn't discourage voter turn out? Do you have literally any evidence to support that claim?
I don't know about 'discourage' since I was referring to protest 3rd party votes. But too many people didn't even know Biden dropped out to suggest the rhetoric was causing meaningful influence.
Now, I do know that RFK and Chase Oliver together took more votes (~0.9%) than the Greens and PSL combined (~0.7%). So as far as protest votes over Both-Sideism likely went it probably didn't hurt Harris, and may have actually been a net gain for Harris.
The entire combined third party vote would have had to pretty much 100% gone for Harris for the Democratic Party to have won the popular vote (which is still irrelevant because of the electoral college.)
We're not talking about well informed Lemmy users weighing the policies of candidates and deciding to abstain from voting because Gaza.
We're talking about apathetic low information voters looking for an excuse not to get off the couch on polling day.
I guess, though a meme on Lemmy talking about social media posts would have me leaning to the former than the latter. I would wager, in fact, this meme is very strongly directed at Lemmy users who weigh policy.
It's also, possibly one of the few talking points that forces acknowledgement that those independent, unaffiliated, and unregistered voters exist and whose interests might matter towards the outcome of policy and/or elections.
On its own, it doesn't quite force the second half of that acknowledgement: The missing part is the "or else".
So far, the most charitable interpretation, if we disregard corruption for a moment, is that the party elite doesn't really see those interests because they have been too far removed from these voters for too long, if they've ever known it at all. Humble beginnings don't mean shit if you haven't lived humbly for the last few decades any more. So even in the best case, these people will struggle to actually comprehend. They also know that voters are faced with the choice between them and Republicans and can count on a chunk of people to vote just to avert the worst result. And they themselves aren't affected that badly by a potential defeat.
This disconnect is clearly visible in the shocked reactions to the "insurgency" of progressive politicians winning primaries: They don't know or don't want to admit what appeal those upstarts have that they don't, but at least they now realise that these other groups exist and matter.
Hence, "both sides bad" on its own is a criticism without a solution. It incites fatalism without rallying support for an alternative. Voting in primaries can have an effect, and if people genuinely don't want to vote D just to stop R in the general election, they should vote for some third party. Agreeing on a progressive candidate would help, but even without agreement, it would signal support for breaking out from that game of two.
(This also matters beyond the pure democratic mechanism: signalling that support can help other unhappy people to see that they're not alone and encourage them to join whatever form of resistance may emerge in their area. Even if votes might not change anything directly, they're a communication tool.)
A Roman satirist once remarked on the fact that the people were all too excited to celebrate a failed coup, but would have been just as excited to hail the new emperor. To paraphrase, they have given up oversight, and those whose votes once decided over offices and command of armies now only hope for "bread and circuses" (stable grain supply and public entertainment, basically). The full meaning is more complex, but the part that's relevant to me here is his contempt for the non-voters whose complacency led to a situation where they can no longer hope for more than bare necessities and a bit of distraction.
In that sense: Vote. Don't cede ground to those who want you to not vote. A voice that doesn't speak isn't heard. Even a "wasted" vote is better than silence.
Hard truth. Nobody gives a fuck about those voters. If they are mad and decide not to vote for whatever reason a decision will still be made without their input.
Witholding your vote will not stop the process and will actively Help the worst elements of each party.
it works, propaganda, flood the news with the trump bs has made people i know just turned off to politics altogether.
Also plus GOP can only use gerrymandering, propaganda so much before they have to use voter suppression methods. DNC will never try to combat this, because they lose their political capital.
The real problem is that both parties have convinced most people that striving to change the voting system that produces the two-party system is pointless.
As long as that system exists, this useless and polarizing debate won’t stop and evil and corruption will continue to flourish.
The land of freedom, choice and competition doesn’t want freedom, choice and competition in its elections. Think about why that is.
We need to eliminate district-based Congressional representation.
To my way of thinking, if you have 20 congressional seats to fill, and the statewide voter split is 40% Dem, 40% GOP, 5% Pirate, and 5% Ninja, we should be sending 1 Ninja, 1 Pirate, 9 Dems, and 9 GOPs to the senate. When Ninja and Pirate voters are spread throughout the state, any geographic map you draw is Gerrymandered with respect to those two smaller parties: They can never win a single seat, despite voter numbers indicating they should split two seats.
Gerrymandering is inevitable so long as races are conducted within geographically-defined districts. No "independent" "non-partisan" commission can prevent gerrymandering. The best they can do is restrict specific forms favorable to the two major parties, while disenfranchising third parties and minority interests.
Every congressional seat needs to be filled in a statewide election. That might mean that in the primary, we vote for how many seats that each party gets to fill, and in the general, voters in each party decide how to fill their own seats.
Complaining is fine, butinaction or negative action, is not at all productive to fixing those complaints, ever. Life is very often about compromise.
And at the scales we are talking about, it barely qualifies as "the lesser of two evils," because one of the two meaningful choices is so much MORE evil it makes the other evil pretty much saintlike.
Liberals are the ones inactive and taking negative action.
They did nothing about trump, they did nothing about healthcare, they did nothing about climate, they did nothing about wages.
They supported Trump's immigration policies, they funded ICE to extreme levels, they voted to fund surveillance programs, they continue to support the genocide.
It's not the lesser of two evils it's the same evil: capitalism and imperialism.
Almost, and intelligent leftists too. Complain all you want for now, until primaries are over. This is the best time to do so actually.
Once the primary results are in, then yes complaining needs to stop until after the midterms. After the midterm results are in, you can go back to complaining.
"Suck it up and fall in line" seems like sound advice in the spaces that closely follow US politics. Except most americans don't, even now. Most americans want to feel like they're voting for something, not against this or that figure. Kinda the big lesson of the last decades of politics. Keep up this rhetoric, and it's gonna depress turnout more than it helps.
Tone and perspective can make two statements that look different but essentially say the same thing. "Fall in line" or "stop complaining until after midterms".
Here's a third: "Only voice criticisms when its most convenient for the institution you're criticizing."
Here's one which actually says what I did: "Don't voice criticisms when it's counter-productive to achieving the goals you want to accomplish".
Voicing criticisms in the primary season? Excellent choice, helps to push people towards the primary candidates which best align with your goals.
Voicing criticisms after the general election? Not as productive, but still fine; helps inform people what the issues are.
Voicing criticisms after the candidates have been chosen, but before the general election? Absolutely moronic, the last thing you want to do. It accomplishes nothing except increasing the the possibility that the worst candidate wins. Totally garbage, toddler-brain decision.
After the primary, your best outcome is defeating whichever popular candidate most opposes your views. Drawing support away from the biggest threat to the worst outcome is counter-productive.
Voicing criticisms after the candidates have been chosen, but before the general election? Absolutely moronic, the last thing you want to do. It accomplishes nothing except increase the possibility that the worst candidate wins. Totally garbage, toddler-brain decision.
What if the criticism is "you're running a bad campaign and going to lose the election because of it"? I really don't think going easy on our representatives is helping them. A healthy party should be capable of digesting criticism at any point in time, not just in pristine conditions.
If that's your criticism, give their office a call or send them an email. This is not productive criticism to present to voters, it's literally the exact opposite.
Third party voters did not decide either of the elections that Trump won. That's a lie the establishment Dems cooked up to obfuscate their responsibility for Trump, and there data absolutely does not support it.
But decades of bioartisan Neoliberal austerity policy did suppress turnout. Probably enough to affect the outcome, but that's not something anybody measures since nobody with the money to find the study actually wants to know.
Sure, let's play the puppet game. Shit if you can't realize atleast some of the responsibility lays on dems side. Just look at it like this, they didn't engage with red states, they didn't engage with red areas, they didn't push strong candidates, they allow corruption on their side aswell, they half ass so many policies, and dropped the ball in alot of aspects like no child left behind (not saying to abandon kids, just freaking want a program that doesn't screw the majority of kids learning).
With all that, don't get me wrong I despise trump and republicans. However the reality is this happened due to one side actually being proactive in their strategy. The democratic party isn't proactive. Kamala was a bad pick purely due to lack of popularity, which could've been addressed by decisive engagement. But NO they're thinking about their retirement and stock portfolios. Or they're just straight up to old to do that much.
No one is obligated to vote for Democrats based on lesser evilism. We're circling the drain with a neoliberal/reactionary crisis cycle in perpetual imperial war while wealth keeps consolidating upward and working people get crushed. The billionaire donor base they solicit money from is the same, their economic and foreign policies are quite similar. Even when Democrats have achieved majorities at the state level they serve their masters, not the economic interests of the people.
This comment further proves it. You’re stuck in a Manichean battle between two cults. You can’t think outside of it. And anyone who tries to de-program you poor things gets accused of being a devilish secret agent from the opposing cult of pure evil.
I relate to the SPIRIT of the meme, but quite honestly, here in 2026, I don't know if the conclusion holds any water anymore. It turns out WAY more people are WAY more shit than I ever expected and I'm no longer convinced high turnout means victory for anything good.
I have remained a voting Democrat since I started voting during Bush. I do not find "both sides" a way to prevent people from voting. I find that Dems have taken to also nominating insufferable assholes, following the lead of the Republicans. But people like paying more attention to crappy leaders than learning how to elect good ones.
Also - Trump hasn't been as bad as claimed. He has mostly been what I expected for 12 years. Mostly ineffectual and inconsequential. Undeserving of the attention he is given.
No shit. Because they dont like the gun, they let a rapist sleep with their kids, then blame the lazy cops for not doing shit to repair a situation they could have prevented.
Bro I live in Missouri. No Dem is gonna win or give a shit here and hasn't since before I was born. Even at local levels. I go vote cause I'm bored sitting at home and it gets me out of the house, but I never vote for either of these bastards.
What a clown you are, or a complete idiot. You are either a MAGA child, a disinformation agent, or a bag of rocks if you think a MAGA Republican > Establishment Democrat.
This is not true, voting is the problem. You think it will solve problems, but it won't!! Both sides work for the same team. Find a way out with unions
That's not true anymore in my experience. As a mostly non-voting European, I think my cynical, nihilistic ideas of direct action have made more right leaning people not vote for right wing parties than left leaning people not vote for left-wing ones. The political 'left' has long lost a big chunk of the working class. Hand labourers, once the base of the left movement, have been victimised, disenfranchised, and then antagonised by it. So these ideas of 'if more people were voting the right would never win' are obsolete.
Nah, this is impotent idealism. Deciding not to participate in the system of oppression does literally nothing to diminish the power of the system which oppresses you. "Legitimacy" isn't a real thing with material consequences.
It's certainly true that you shouldn't just vote, but it's absolutely false that not voting is somehow helpful. In every primary, promote and vote for the furthest left candidates for every office. In the general election, promote and vote for the candidate which has the best chance of beating the worst candidate. Constantly build your community, engage in mutual aid, and develop dual power.
It's not a multiple choice quiz. Use every tool available at every stage. One of those tools is influencing which variety of oppression you're going to fight. Refusing to participate does nothing but make using your other tools more difficult.
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Posts about blaming a minuscule minority of voters are specifically designed to encourage people to not look for the causes of rising fascism.
Keeping people distracted and attacking their socialists allies is the only way Democrats can continue to move further to the right and join Trump's new "War on the Extreme Left".
If you don't see the connection, you have a problem.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Fyi... vote in fing primaries, that is the only way to fix the kinda bad side.
Both sides are bad" is true, though. The Democrats and Republicans are infiltrated by Zionists. The reality that both sides are bad could also motivate people to vote for a third party.
Which side thinks that food, medicine, and shelter are a human right and not just access to them is a right? I'll always vote for that side.
I have been making sure my newly or soon to be 18 year old stepchildren and nieces and nephews all understand that voting is not just who is in Washington, but also who is deciding what happens right around us. Local elections are so much more important than I ever really understood at their age.
Broke: Both sides are bad.
Woke: Governments are bad.
Bespoke: Nations are bad.
Literally why Israel got trump in office
Its amazing to me that there are still people who believe their are "two sides " and that voting works.
Just gotta vote harder guys and next time we won't get an Israeli puppet!
There's a certain amount of self reflection and questioning that's worthwhile and sometimes it definitely is the lesser of two evils when voting. I wouldn't say any political party or system is perfect, therefore there's still valid and worthwhile criticisms to be made. It would be nice to see choice ranked voting and to officially end gerrymandering.
The fact that this is still a thing is baffling to me. I am, by no means, a fan of Establishment Democrats. But this is why we have primaries. We can walk and chew gum at the same time; vote for progressives in the primaries, vote agaist the fascists at the same time.
And while we're at it, between primaries, we criticize the people we elect because we demand better of them. And we warn them that they will lose to a progressive next primary if they don't find the plot again.
This is not very hard. We can't just note vote if we want to escapw the jaws of fascism without a civil war. We don't have to like establishment democrats, but right now electing a do-nothing is objective improvement. It's voting to get more time. And if the narrative for the democratic party is a progressive narrative, then progressive candidates can drag them kicking and screaming further to the left where they either find some values, or we send them to an early retirement next primary. We call this process "democracy."
And I don't wanna hear shit about it being "rigged." If Viktor Orbon couldn't hold on to an openly rigged system, the DNC doesn't have that much more control either! Half the fucking country doesn't vote. If everyone did, they couldn't ignore the mandate. And so we circle back to the meme above: if you're discouraging people from voting, you are part of the problem. Get them informed, get them motivated, get them registered, make a plan, and go with them if you have to! This is the easiest call to action we will get. If we fail to meet it, the next one will be a lot more painful for the whole world.
This is a misunderstand. It's not about voting. It never was. It's about organizing.
Sure vote for harm reduction. Yes, it can slow things down a bit temporarily, but don't think it'll save your life. Both parties are genocidal fascists who will continue to escalate war and state violence. From a capitalist standpoint, fascism is correct and necessary. Profits have fallen too low, democracy is no longer profitable, no matter which party is in charge. The billionaires need living standards to drop much lower. But in a democracy, people would not be willing to accept that, so they need to be disciplined violently.
Democrats, just like Republicans will come for your loved ones, arrest communists, continue imperialist wars and genocide, shut down strikes and unions, militarize the police. Simply because Democrats are capitalist and within capitalism, fascism is the next logical step. Not for ideological reasons, but because of real material economic facts. The facts demand fascism. Democrats will adapt or cease to be Democrats.
When Nazi fascism was defeated in Europe, it wasn't by voting for the lesser fascists. The only way to save democracy is to organize real resistance, that's able to enforce demands.
If you have limited capacity to contribute and organize, don't waste your time campaigning for the Democrats. Vote for them, if it makes sense in your state, but that's just one day. If you have any energy to spare the rest of the year: talk to your neighbors and coworkers about real solutions. For example general strikes and anti-fascist community self defense. Learn communist theory, start a reading group. Join a Marxist org.
Orban lost because everyone went out and voted for the other party. If you watch interviews of voters, a lot of them said they don't agree on everything with who they are voting for, but it must be done to progress away from the Orban era.
Democracy is a slow process, and sometimes, voting for the lesser of two evils is the only choice you have. It opens the door for better candidates in the next elections to come.
Or, you know.. you can do an armed revolution. But lately, they don't bring the change everyone hopes for.
It's far from the only way. They have the means to rig elections or cancel them altogether.
If you think voting is getting you out of this mess, you're in for a reality check.
Usually this is where I would post videos on the shortcomings of First-past-the-post voting, but that time has past us by.
Good luck everyone.
Nevermind that we hold parties accountable and make them actually represent the people. If centrist/corporatist Democrats wanted to win, they should be listening to the people, and they refuse to do that. They are absolutely complicit in what's been happening over this past decade, even long before that.
Both sides are bad, but one side is considerably less bad and is not openly racist and fascist.
The only side that's bad is the one that forgets to pluralise "sides".
Just like when Hitler won, democratically
Shouldn't you be more concerned with the parties caucuses? Since you have a two-party autocrcacy anyways
Don't tell me El-Sayed, no.1 candidate for the Michigan mayor, won't be chosen despite the public reception over him..........
F*ck this country.
Multiple things can be true. Both sides are bad, but that's why the concept of voting for the lesser evil is a thing.
Everybody sucks. But you should still vote.
Doesn't matter when winning is losing
Same with third party voters.
Jill Stein is a talentless goon and a complete commie tyrant.
Well that's just nonsense. Any criticism of the democratic party, a famously spineless and dismissive organization, is a psyop?
A party that has collaborated with the Republicans the whole way? Going so far as to make ICE one of the best funded militaries in the world?
Okay, but there's a difference between "both sides are bad" and valid criticism of the democratic party.
Exactly. Only fight the Democrats 364 days a year.
So vote blue no matter who?
How delightfully reductionist. Though essentially, yes. Our system of elections is antiquated and should be changed, but until it is, voting how you WISH the system functions instead of how it actually functions is working against your own interests.
To side-step the electorialism conversation a bit: Americans need to take a page out of the French handbook. Civil engagement should not begin and end at voting.
We should be joining leftists organizations, anti-capitalist reading groups, mutual aid groups, workers unions, tenants unions, self-defense groups, community gardens, and real grassroots communities built on trust. These will form the foundation for future protests, boycotts, workers strikes, renters strikes, and, if necessary, civil disobedience. The workers of America have become so anemic that our politicians no longer fear us.
We were trained how to protest, and the history of protest, wrong on purpose. Our cities were atomized which happens to make quelling, compartmentalizing, and hiding unrest much easier. We would be doing great if we were simply anemic. If I had to put numbers to the current landscape: 1/3 anemic, 1/3 actively supporting their own oppression, 9/30 concerned but confidently doing the wrong things to solve their problems, 1/30 pretty much fucked.
If you push them 364 days a year you actually might want to vote for them
We need to show the Democrats that being conservative light is not good enough by making it have consequences in primaries.
The lesser of two evils trap demoralizes people and makes them think that this is the best we can hope for from a politician but it’s not, We’ve seen a rise of left-wing politicians lately and we can do better.
We must participate whenever possible and the choices aren’t always great but they do still matter.
So yes, Democrats actively doing less damage than the Republican counterpart, and no it isn’t good enough.
People deserve a world where hope can be a part of it.
Yeah, well said. We need to start forcing them into left and make the Democrats support leftism again
When did the Democrats support leftism? FDR literally created racialized redlining and put anyone who looked vaguely Japanese into concentration camps and stole their property. Obama deported 3M people. You mean the minor political offices of a few mayors around the country that were Sewer Socialists? The party has never been leftist
If you're going to vote for them regardless of the candidate, there are no consequences for the party in the primaries.
I can see the point when more than 1% of the population votes in primaries
Yes, participate in primaries, but if the corpo dem wins a primary still vote for their disgusting self over a Republican (unless there is a VIABLE third party candidate)
Which there absolutely isn't.
I mean I gotta put it in to stave off the "but what about bernie" s
This assumes that the problem is that Republicans are in office. That's not actually the problem. The problem is that the corpo bloc has candidates in both the Ds and the Rs. and replacing Rs with corpo Ds is not actually making any progress.
There's multiple problems. Society isn't so simple as to assume there's one problem. Corpo dems and Republicans are both problems, both worsening society, but one is an accelerant.
Given that the country was founded on the same principles of EuroFascism, by ultraminority white supremacist christian patriarchs who wanted to create lebensraum on the continent by genociding and enslaving anyone and anything in their way and enlisting every citizen in the project through vast systems of social influence and control... I would say the Republicans are the status quo, not an accelerant.
Any argument that is based on "it was founded on" where the founding situation is 100+ years ago is ridiculous. Times change. Times have changed.
Insult the present not the past and realize that Republicans are an accelerant.
Perhaps you don't understand what I'm trying to say. I'm not trying to insult the past. I'm saying that the Republicans cannot be an accelerant towards our starting point. The USA has always been an ultraviolent blood-soaked fascist Christian-White-Supremacist mass murdering rapacious child-kidnapping torture paradise for the rich and depraved. It's never not been that. The Republicans aren't accelerating anything except the inevitable end of your fantasy that middle class white Americans and those who assimilate to be like them would have comfortable lives that were distant from the material and moral consequences of the empire.
I understand what you're trying to say. I have the presence of mind to realize the progress that was made since the 60s. I have the presence of mind to also realize it wasn't founded as a christ state as you so pretend too, even if the rest is certainly true. It has been things other than that, and we worked very hard to make it that way, trump is trying to tear it back down again.
I'm by no means saying the USA is good. But in all politeness, if you're saying that about the usa I hope you have the presence of mind to realize that china and Europe were founded on the same, and Europe has demonstrably changed for the better. Being bad is a spectrum.
I can tell you failed math class by this alone. Just as an aside.
Yeah because when I look at this political landscape it's all of them voting together. Pretty easy to see /s
Jfc the stupidity I see here. Fuck
The Democrats are CONSTANTLY participating in the bipartisan consensus. Biden has been supporting Israeli ultraviolence for 5 decades at this point. Bill and Hillary had house slaves in the AR governor's mansion. Obama and Biden brought in Tom Homan and made it possible for ICE to deployed into cities and deported more than twice the number of people Trump has. Obama and Hillary fanned the flames of Libyan civil war and then gloated when the 70-year-old leader of the country was sodomized with a bayonet in a public lynching by the mercenaries they funded and armed. Everyone knew that the telecoms broke the law when they were caught recording all internet traffic for the NSA and everyone voted to grant them retroactive immunity. Obama declared Venezuela a national security threat in order to ramp up the torture on its citizens.
Racialized mass incarceration is a bi-partisan consensus.
Racialized means testing for public services is a bi-partisan consensus.
Racialized ecocide is a bi-partisan consensus.
Militarization of the police is a bi-partisan consensus.
Putting immigrants and asylum seekers into solitary confinement is a bi-partisan consensus.
Killing 800k people globally from sanctions alone, predominantly children and elderly, is a bi-partisan consensus.
You're not looking at the political landscape. You're looking at the PR. You know what the Rs and the Ds are doing together? Golfing. Vacationing. Eating lunch and dinner. Meeting up at alumni events. Networking at private school events for their kids. They're fucking dancing together, on video, with no fucking sense of shame. They are literally working for the same people every single day of their lives, and those people are the same ultraminority that founded the country and designed it to work this way.
What part of vote for progressives in the goddamn primaries do you fuckin morons fail to grasp?
The part where it would work? The Democrats have already shown that they will do everything to stop it, from ratfucking to procedural malfeasance to standing up sheepdogs to siphon off the vote.
And even if you get a handful of progressives primaried in, you're still looking at a Senate structurally incapable of representing the voters. 70% of the Senate seats are decided by 30% of the US population. That's by design and original intent. It's been that way this whole time. You think voting in a couple more reps with progressive politics is going to make a damn bit of difference?
You're right progressives totally didn't just sweep the primaries all over the country... Fuckin people get what we deserve.
Huh let me see, choosing between genocide or genocide. Tough choice. Boy howdy.
Getting slapped and getting stabbed are both bad. But not equally bad.
Voter: That guy's got a knife and he's coming for me! What do I do?
D: Vote for me and I'll keep you safe!
Voter: OK! Here I go... let's.... voooooooote!
D: I win the election, thanks to everyone who donated to my campaign. This is a win for all of us, not just me.
Voter: Ok, now take that guy's knife away.
D: How dare you criticize me after my very tenuous and delicate victory!
Voter: But he still has the knife and he's still coming for me.
D: Donate $25 to my campaign for re-election and we'll stop the knife wielding maniacs!
Voter: But you won already. Are you going to stop the knife wielding maniacs?
D: We can't unless you vote D in the next election.
Voter: But I voted D in this one, and you won, and he still has a knife
R: Haha! I have won the next election. Here I come with my knife that no one took from me!
D: How would we have lost?! It must be the voters' fault! Donate $25 to my campaign and we'll send out weird postcards saying that we'll know if you voted or not
Voter: Well, getting slapped is not as bad as getting stabbed!
To give some more specific examples:
Liberal voters: We pay more for healthcare than anyone else! Can you use our money for Medicare for All?
Politicians:
Voters: Why have we been blockading Cuba since fucking 1962? Make it stop!!
Politicians:
Voters: Scientist are warning about climate change!! We need to take drastic measures!
Politicians:
Voters: ICE is killing people and racially profiling! It's a danger to us all and must be abolished!!
Politicians:
Voters: Stop killing brown people with our tax dollars! Pull support away from Israel!!
Politicians:
Leftists: I can no longer support the Democratic Party
Liberal voters:
Fucking banger!
My point stands. D taking your vote and your donation while not doing anything is still less bad than R actively stubbing you with his knife.
LOL. And the good cop giving you a coffee with a gentle tone of voice is better than the bad cop screaming at you. The D is literally watching the guy with the knife and going "whatever" and you think they're on your side?
as an immigrant, can you guys please not vote for me to get stabbed?
Sorry, the best we can do is vote for people who will stab you or people who won't stop the people who will stab you. As it turns out, voting isn't how we avoid getting stabbed. Who knew!?
that's unfortunate, but in this case, if it were up to me (I know it isn't), I'd pick the ones who won't stop the stabbing over the ones who will do the stabbing.
I don't wanna be selfish though. It's your choice, not mine. It only impacts me.
R can only stab when if elected. While D holds office, R may get to keep his knife but actually stabbing is a felony. Once R is in office, it is perfectly legal for him to stab and he can thus do much more stubbing. He also gets to direct federal funding toward stabbing.
Voting is what keeps R away out of office. Voting prevents stabbing.
These are some very complicated concepts, so let me draw you a diagram:
Have you ever seen an R go to jail while Ds are in office? Again. The Ds share in the bipartisan consensus to give military surplus to the police, they are fine with cop cities, they are fine with bombing brown people into oblivion, they are fine with couping other governments. They are always an accomplice to the stabbings. Keeping Rs out of office, which you mathematicallly cannot reasonably rely on, will do nothing to stop the stabbings.
The research across decades has shown no reduction of police violence under Democrats and no increase under Republicans. The research has shown corporate profits are higher under Ds than under Rs. Stop believing your bullshit flowchart. It doesn't match reality.
I assumed part of the reason Hillary lost (I said "part") was because all the media was talking non-stop about how she was going to demolish Trump with ease and it was all a hilarious joke that Trump even thought he had a chance. That much media coverage basically told so the Democrat voters to not bother going to vote because Hillary had it in the bag.
gotta ask yourself if you want a chance to fix things or no chance at all. with trump, its no chance at all
With Trump, there's not only no chance of things getting better, but a good chance of things getting worse.
yes indeedy
Trump is term limited.
Even if he leaves in 2029, the US doesn't have that much time to sit on it's ass and let all social progress, climate action, relationships with allies, economy etc get demolished.
We have Germany, Russia, China and Japan hiking military spending and remilitarizing, preparing for a confrontation.
Climate crisis is not getting any better either and we have just crossed the point of no return where we could have still saved coral riffs.
This is the worst possible time to allow Trump admin free reign
My money is on him having a coronation. I can't see him leaving willingly. Assuming the elections won't be totally rigged to give him 99% of the vote.
on paper, yes. voting rights were on paper too. abortion was guaranteed on paper, even. they didnt even try to justify gutting them. can almost bet they'll try it on that as well
https://thirdtermproject.com/
Bruh, I hope this would fail
40 plus years of neo liberal policy, that yes have been embraced by 'both sides', has been destroying the nation and for some reason people don't want to admit it.
The "some reason" is because most educational text and all entertainment media are published by the same six corporations, all of whom are owned by billionaire parasites who profit greatly from that Neoliberal policy.
And for whom both parties work
First of all, half the non voters would vote republican (unless you actually believe democrats are just actually lazier people than republicans?!).
Second of all, 99% of the shit trump does wrong is just plainly wrong under both parties "values." It doesn't matter what party this is way bigger than party this is about an enemy of the state controlling the white house.
Also the democrats keep voting to fund his government, instead of shutting the whole damn country down, which is in fact necessary because an active unrepentant child rapist is controlling the white house and he's starting illegal wars and stealing billions of dollars. So, to vote in the house or the senate for even one dollar of taxpayer money to be entrusted to donald trump as the chomo-in-chief of the executive branch is in and of itself treason worthy of capital punishment.
So yes, fuck the democrats who have voted to pass budgets that hand trump trillions of dollars that he treats as a blank check. Domt tell me dems are the best way to get him out of power, tell me who to vote for to express my desire that the federal government ceases functioning immediately until he gets out. Because this whole lets vote him out ive been hearing it for ten fucking years now and yet here we are. Stop telling me to wait for November, shut the whole fucking thing down today. This guy rapes children and we're letting him do anything??? Why?? Shut down the government light the constitution on fire because literally zero authority for anything good in the world can exist while the "leader of the free world" is a rapist murderer who is grifting billions of dollars. Like it just has to stop, fuck the vote, just stop this fucking maniac who slathers his face in orange paint and rambles about how the epstein files exonerated him!!
This is exactly the issue for me. It's been a literally a decade of them doing NOTHING but then screaming its the end of the world if we don't vote for them.
Literally nothing you just said invalidates the point the post is trying to make or that we'd be WAY better off with Dems in control.
Correct.
Being better of under dems doesn't invalidate the point that both sides are bad.
Lol I made fun of both siders for years, they don't both sides now that Trump's president again. Now they're just quiet.
Both sides are bad. One is markedly worse though.
Yes. Also, there is zero, ZERO path to anything better through the Republocan party.
There are plenty of ways to eventually get somewhere through the Dems. It may mean "suffing" alot of do nothing bull shit, but there are paths and ways.
As long as people are not apathetic what most likely will happen is that Republican will disappear and Democrats will split into two parties. It happened in the past.
It's called reforming a party. And yes, the Dems are much more likely to be reformed and it is the true path forward.
The fun part is, that the Republicans didn't even start out as a Maga cult party. They got infiltrated. Not just by rich people, but by people from all sorts of backgrounds, joining or voting for support. Nothing is stopping the left from doing the same with the Democrats. But for that to happen, they'd need to stop with the constant purity tests...
Intellectual honesty. The left will say what they actually want, the alt-right will lie their way in. "I'm literally an anarchist" versus "oh I'm just a fiscal conservative".
The tea party was supposed to be normal “folks” but was really funded by the Koch’s Americans for Prosperity (a proto-superpac).
Progressives would have to vote in primaries first.
We pragmatic progressives are doing that right now
We unfortunately do not seem to be the majority of the progressives, at least as represented here. Way too many here advocate not voting.
Bruh, I’m trying to be pragmatic and that includes voting, so many tankies and doomer selfish leftists here
And these days, the left is doing that as we speak.
The MAGA cult is basically onky two groups.
Fanatic idiots who cling to religious fantacy like its fact because they are too stupid to comprehend the world, this stupidity also fuels a shitload of racism and bigotry, for the same reason.
And richblibertarian assholes who want to tear the world of regulation down to better allow them to rape the population and planet for maximum profits.
The rich assholes figured out how to weaponize the idiots using fear to grest advantage. I used to feel a bit sorry for the idiot cult for being manipulated but they basically refused to ever change so fuck those people.
Actual mainstream Democrats are not doing "purity tests", a lout, super left wing branch is. I am not saying they have bad wants and desires, and ultimately they are right on a lot of issues, and personally, I agree with them on a lot of issues, but they are loud, and a bit of a fringe part, and for the greater good, for now, can be mostly ignored.
Mostly.
They should NOT be ignored in favor of just, sliding more tonthe right. Like, just picking an issue, maybe there is a compromise on trans athletes, because it probably is tricky, but that doea not mean compromising on trans people ompletely, andletting it start to slide to other queer groups, which is starting to happen.
The big lynchpin that feels like its brought up a lot is the Israel/Palestine war. Which is probably the stupidest one. Yes Israel sucks, and what they are doing to Palestime is very terrible, but hesus fuck you don't sacrifice the country and ultimately everyone else in the world to the fucking Fascists over it. Both sides are shit, and who fucking cares in the end.
Yeah, i'm not talking about democrats as a whole, they're not "left" from a European perspective, i was talking about those who are quite a bit further left of centre. The people who "taught the Dems a lesson" by *checks notes* hiding at home, writing performative bullshit on social media and are dogpiling on anyone who dares to cast a shadow of a doubt at their imaginary moral high ground. As i had the pleasure of experiencing first hand, when i dared to question the decision of some random US non-voter commenting on Bluesky...
The point is, that pretty much every party can be changed from the inside, if people are persistent enough. Change never happens on its own. At least not for the better. And if you want to help people in other countries, you first need to make sure your own country stays safe. Sadly, the US is a two-party failed state, and in my opinion, the only realistic peaceful way to change that, is to join the lesser evil of the two parties and force the change from within. The other option is to just burn everything to the ground and start from the beginning.
Both sides are bad, but both sides are not the same. One shows time and time again they are scared of their voters and will change course with enough pressure. The other one only puts pressure on us under the heel of a boot.
Yes, both suck, but we are not getting anywhere with this stupid flip flop between two awful options. You take the less bad one, then work really fucking hard to get better people to replace them. Don’t keep falling for this one weird trick bullshit, where one cultish figure that claims to solve it all will get the nod in an effort to “try something different”.
Third parties are useless, unless we can get ranked choice. Until then, we play the fucking game, not keep flipping the board every few years.
Then i don't wanna be a part of the farce. Which is my plan, lived here my whole life and working on emigrating, this shit is fucked. Go vote for the dems so trump can go back to raping children in maralago instead of the white house. So the dem appointed president sends a little bit of food aid to palestine along with the weapons they give to the IDF to blow up the food aid palestine gets. (Not just the weapons like the republican appointee does.)
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love 3rd party representation, but the way it works right now in this country, they don’t stand a chance. They exist today as spoilers, I mean, how effective is Jill stein for anything outside of an election?
What I’d like to do, is get dems in place, then pressure the shit out of theme through the primary process, through town halls, through letter writing, and all the ways we can manifest our power. Pressure them to get ranked choice voting, then we can start focusing on third parties. There is NO republican support for this, there are several Democrats who do (Mpls uses it now).
It's either:
https://youtu.be/9X4Z1lLUMfw
George Carlin put this idea to rest a very long time ago. If you truly believe that Democrats are somehow fundamentally different from Republicans you have lost the plot.
This is something I disagree with Carlin on.
Dems have utterly failed in doing anything other than fighting progressives the Dem party is truly insane in that they are obstructing the very thing that would save us all which is more Dems everywhere. Time for the old guard to step down or turn their attention to combating the GOP. Like it’s utterly fucking stupid. And fuck the fuck out of Israel get the fuck out of the Dem party and American politics.
And yet time and time again, things have gotten demonstrably worse while Republicans have control far more often and severely than when Democrats do.
This is a true statement.
You can disagree if you want but he is right.
Carlin would have legit killed himself if he was still alive for this. He'd have voted for Kamala too, because he wasn't a fuckin idiot.
The two party system is a lie. Actually there are factions within and without each party. If your analysis stops at D and R, you cannot possibly describe American politics accurately.
In other words, your oversimplification is not useful for comprehension of the situations at hand. But it is also true that corporate lackeys exist everywhere.
It's not an oversimplification to say both sides are bought and paid for by billionaires and constantly support the wealthy. The working class have been getting fucked by both parties ever since Ronald Reagan left us with "trickle-down" economics.
I'm debating whether I want to engage with you on this. I can't tell if this is ragebait or if you genuinely arrived at this conclusion.
Your comment appears to conflate two separate ideas, and I think there's a contradiction in your reasoning. That makes me question whether you actually understood the point being made.
Especially if this is the conclusion you drew from the clip in my previous comment, which, to be fair, I don't even know if you watched.
Did you actually watch the clip, or are you responding only to my summary?
There's only two parties on the same side, there's no other side in the USA. Stop trying to say the Democrats represent leftist values.
That's like saying the US is good for materially enabling Israels genocide in Palestine because the US is killing people more indirectly than Israel.
Critique has nothing to do with voting.
This is the worst "both sides" straw man argument I've seen in a while.
It's not a straw man. It's pointing out the false premise of the meme.
You can vote for a bad thing because it's better than a worse thing. Indeed I've done it my whole life. 🤷
Ashley B noted in one of her YouTube videos (Here we go) that in 2016, the largest focus of social media campaigns by Cambridge Analytica and by Russian assets, targeted black voters in battleground states to encourage them not to vote.
And yeah, the gerrymandering war, voter suppression campaigns, voter caging, election tampering, false rumors of massive election fraud, all these are Republican efforts. When states have free and fair elections to which everyone has access and is allowed to vote, then Democrats win over Republicans.
Voting is an illusion of choice. At best, you’re voting for a personality. Who voted for these flock cameras? Who voted for this war with Iran? Who voted for citizens united? I can go on and on.
No, you're simply wrong. Voting changes many things. But it doesn't fix everything. I mean, just look at Iran. Did Biden start that? No. But if Trump had won in 2020, you can bet he would have done the same thing four years earlier.
Voting is about policy, unless you're foolish and decide it's about personality.Then really bad shit happens. And politicians have been corrupt for millennia. So what? You want a king instead? Lol. Go look at history and tell me how that worked out.
Voting alone is insufficient. Do other things, too. Or don't! It's your life.
It's real dumb to blame the long history of imperialism on one guy, but he didn't do jack shit to stop it. He supported genocide and the MIC like every other politician.
The problem with this isn't voting, it's who you are allowed to vote for and which policies those people represent. Most US elections boil down to "90% hitler and covert fascism vs 100% hitler and overt fascism". Sure, if I were forced to vote in such a situation I probably would vote for the 90% hitler just out of harm reduction, but also it's important to acknowledge that the entire system which forces you to vote for 90% hitler must be destroyed.
The question is rather, would Harris have started some kind of war in West Asia if she had won in 2024? I think the answer is yes, because both Trump and Harris answer to highly overlapping sets of capitalists and imperialists and war is highly profitable. The war would probably be carried out more professionally and effectively, but would that actually be a good thing?
Nope, you are very wrong. Biden did a lot of drone attack as well. Voting keeps your attention away from actual problems. They are intentionally making voting results 50/50, so thay you think it may solve problems.
No, u
There are differences, but your questions are valid nonetheless. The two parties are a Venn Diagram:
We can vote on LGBTQ protections, DEI initiatives, abortion, separation of church & state, etc. because the two parties genuinely disagree on these issues.
We can never vote on wars in the middle east, the ever-increasing Pentagon budget, the ever-increasing ICE budget, growing presidential powers, Congressional insider trading, protections for whistle blowers, lifting sanctions on Cuba, closing Guantanamo Bay, the surveillance state, drone strikes, corporate bail outs, the growing wealth gap, etc. Where both parties agree there is no democracy.
i take every opportunity to shit on, mock, ridicule, insult, verbally abuse bothsidesbad dipshits everywhere they show their stupid fucking faces
whatever happened to all the "vOtE 3rD pArTy BeCuZ gEnOcIdE" fucking morons? actually j/k i don't miss them at all. how's that iran war going? we sure helped palestine by throwing away our vote, huh? fucking idiot clowns
Why do people keep purposely misrepresenting the criticism people had for Harris? Like, I know, it was hard at the time to listen to people warning about her potential to lose. But, we have the advantage of hindsight now. Do we have to pretend the main criticism of Harris was that Trump would be better? No one that wasn't a grifter was saying that.
The vast vast majority of people criticizing Harris were doing so because they correctly warned people that if she did not separate herself from Biden and run FOR something turnout would be low and she would lose.
Do you know what a leader does? They LEAD and guide others in the correct direction. We are there NOW. The people that vote for the Democratic party are ALWAYS significantly ahead of there leaders on the actual issues. They were begging for a leader that would actually step forward and be unafraid and unapologetic in leading on issues and policy.
We don't have to wonder. We are literally seeing it growing RIGHT NOW. From Mamdani to Abdul (soon) we are seeing anti Israel and leftwing populism wipe the floor with Harris style Democrats.
A 15 term incumbent losing DEMOCRATIC primaries to a 29 year old that was saying "fuck Kamala Harris" for not taking a stand against Israel. The people you are crying about that "lost Kamala the election". They are the people literally going out and organizing right now because they are sick and tired of having to explain why the Democratic party keeps losing to Trump and being told "you're the reason Harris lost."
We're done with just explaining it. We're done being used as a scapegoat for the failures of the Democratic party when we offer constructive criticism. We're forcing these politicians out of office that refuse to actually lead.
I don't know a single person I organize with in DSA that didn't go vote for Harris. We aren't the ones that didn't show up. The ones that didn't show up were the people that didn't even know who the presidential candidates were a week before the election. And a lot of them didn't have reason enough to take off work, not be able to pick their kid up from daycare on time, or didn't want to get stuck in traffic, so they decided to not vote that day.
So, please, stop pretending the people actually organizing for good candidates like Mamdani were the people that didn't show up. And, please, come join us at DSA and help us elect people that actually have the motivation and knowledge to be leaders.
Edit: And for the love of God, please stop confusing the majority of the socialist movement with Anarkiddies and the socialist that like to LARP as Maoist third worldist online. We don't like them much either. They are kinda stinky and need to shower. But, they aren't worth even caring about. They don't have any negative effects outside your twitter feed.
If you're active in organizing with DSA, you're literally not the problem. The people we're criticizing would call the DSA "fascist-lite" for not being far enough left. You hinted at acknowledging those people exist in your edit, but I don't think you realize how prevalent they are.
Don't take it personally when people criticize them, because they're not talking about the DSA. Literally no one would call the DSA tankies. Tankies hate the DSA because it proves to people that you can have socialism without authoritarianism. Tankies gatekeep and purity test leftist specifically to keep democratic socialists out of leftist spaces, because they don't want people realizing that the two can go together.
Your critiques of Kamala Harris's campaign aren't without merit, but they're a bit misplaced in this discussion. No one here is saying she was an ideal candidate. But we had two choices: trump or harris. No matter how the election turned out, we were going to get one or the other. Many of us took the harm reduction approach, knowing that opposing trump was worth voting for someone who wasn't great but was not as bad.
We can relitigate this till we're all blue in the face, but I don't think it would be productive. What's done is done, and the current political climate is different from the one in 2024. We have an incumbent Republican trifecta with which many people are displeased, and the pendulum is swinging back into the Democrats' favor right when the internal tides of the Democratic party are shifting towards the DSA and progressive caucus.
There's a lot of momentum right now building for progressive candidates and democratic socialists, so let's not waste that by fighting with each other. Centrist Dems want that. Republicans want that. Let's not give it to them
I think it's reasonable to warn people to look out for bad actors stoking division by using trite catchphrases like "both sides," "blue fash," "fascist lite," etc. Let's focus on the positive momentum. Let's not squander it on purity tests and infighting
It's weird how much effort you have to put into convincing people that the team who lost had a bad strategy...
I know. It's exhausting. Especially when you yourself want that team to win rather than the other team win.
People seem to treat the voters like "the players". The voters are the fans in this analogy. If the stadium is empty it's not helpful to keep screaming about the team losing because they aren't being cheered for enough. "The players" are the people that actually have power to make political change. We aren't a direct democracy. If the players aren't "scoring" and don't even try to "swing" the fans stop showing up.
Hell, the Democrats are essentially playing like the 1919 white sox. That's an old analogy. But it's fitting.
Why are you writing novels to defend yourself against something that wasn't even directed at you?
OP clearly referenced people who protest-voted against Harris and subsequently made everything measurably worse for the Palestinians and Earth at large (which was obviously going to happen if Trump won).
My very first sentence categorized their comment as a misrepresentation of what caused the Harris loss. I had a paragraph in my "novel" originally that said that even if all protest votes went to Harris she still would have lost. But I guess my editor removed it in the final draft /s.
So, since I categorized the comment as a misrepresentation of what happened (protest votes having impact), provided evidence for why people stayed home, and provided an explanation of the campaigns failures; the quote you took was a defense of this conclusion in my "novel" and the actual actions of the people that spoke out against Harris for not standing against a genocide.
You can joke about the length of my comment. I am myself. But, don't quote a single sentence out of the context of "the novel" and pretend it was irrelevant to what I was explaining. Do you disagree with the protest vote being irrelevant? It doesn't sound like you do.
I've had this conversation for years now. The next step after I point to the protest vote as mathematically irrelevant is for Harris defenders to blame the "stay at home". It's why I addressed the reasons people stayed home and the failure of the campaign to win against "the couch". The problem was people staying home. But people stay home because they are apathetic, uninformed, misinformed, or aren't excited for either candidate.
We can be frustrated about why that is. But, if a presidential campaign doesn't run their campaign on how things actually are; and instead try to motivate this large voter base through morality or fear. They're going to fail like they did to have people "pokemen go to the polls".
Why didn't all those non-voters bother to vote for Harris? You say it was because she didn't run a good campaign, that she had a bad platform. You criticized her 'bad' mistakes and spread the word on how bad she was. Don't you think that might have been a contributing factor as to why too many people thought she wasn't worth getting off their asses to vote?
Let's assume for a moment that what you're saying is true. I'll "steelman" you're argument. Let's assume that the criticism of Harris "from the left" played a large enough role for enough people to stay home.
What you are advocating for is that if a political campaign is bad, but "less bad" than the alternative, we should not criticize it. We should not demand the candidate for our party run on policy positions that we want.
You realize you are advocating for an increasingly worse and worse political choice over time. If no concessions are ever offered by politicians to their voters, and those voters still show up religiously, that is not democracy. That is a cult.
Not only that. But what you're advocating for is impossible. You will never live in a world in which people don't criticize a candidate that is "less bad" than the other candidate. You can, however, live in a world where the politicians that lose elections to historically unpopular candidates like Trump, are replaced by candidates that actually offer policies the voters of their party WANT. We are seeing this grow with DSA right now.
So, even if what you are saying was true, the solution would not be to shame voters. That literally will cause MORE of them to sit on the couch on election day. That's just people. You can't sustain a political party by being "less bad" than the alternative. People will stop showing up. People sitting on the couch when their politicians ignore their material needs is literally how democracy should work.
You're saying the same thing I am saying. But you're for some reason placing blame on potential voters doing exactly what they SHOULD do in a healthy democracy. You seem to want a party that has cult like loyalty as long as "the other guy is worse". Well, that's exactly how you get worse and worse political policy, constantly shifting rightward, for decades.
Probably because people still don't seem to understand the electoral college. Which is very bad for demonstrating being a knowledgeable member of the American electorate.
Votes for president have negligible to no meaning due to the electoral college system. We now know that the protest votes counted in the hundreds whereas millions failed to vote at all. No outcomes in any race were decided by protest votes. More right wing libertarians protested the GOP.
The protest voters demonstrably did not make everything measureably worse. They are quite frankly the reason we have seen the dial shift towards elections of people like Mamdani. They're still throwing McMurrows out at every turn.
Fuck off with your gpt slop.
I wish. Every single word was typed by my adhd/autistic brain. If you read it it's painfully obvious from my writing style. I am not nearly digestible in my writing as an AI is. It usually leads me to misunderstandings with people that reply to me.
If you find a gpt that can shorten my comments, make it more digestible to liberals, but also still provide the same information I'd love to hear about it.
Unfortunately, almost embarrassingly so, my comment history is all my own original thought.
Oh, also be sure to have several dyslexia related typos. It's my signature writing style. I need the gpt to mimic that. /s
Edit: it's weird how long comment with a minor amount of structure and hyperlinks means it's AI now. It's pretty unfair to those of us that have been doing it for decades on the internet. How do you think these AIs were trained in the first place?
Edit2: damn, they just downvoted me and didn't respond. My brain will not wonder if I sound like an AI bot for the rest of the day.
LOL trump is potus
Yes. My comment is entirely about the failures of the democratic party and how they lost to a racist narcissistic old white man twice.
People critical of voters are for some reason trying to place blame on them instead of the political campaigns with near limitless funds that lost to him TWICE. And still keep arguing for the same tactics.
They don't realize how embarrassing it is to admit their defeat and not reflect on the political party itself as the thing that needs to change. Arguing for voters to change without the party changing is arguing for no change at all. Voters change VIA the messaging and actions OF THE PARTY.
Blaming voters is an admission that the party is unchangeable and that democratic process is dead. Because, like it or not, the party and it's representatives hold the power through elections. If the party refuses to change policy based on voters then we are just bouncing between two parties that do not represent the majority of the population. Which we are.
It sounds like you supported Hillary and still don't understand why she lost, so you keep the same approach... In reality, tens of millions of voters actually care who the Dem candidate is. If you feed them a pro-corporate anti-worker center-right tool, they might stay home. That is reality, my friend. Blame them all you want. I would blame the DNC, but you do you.
you're talking about idiots as if they're something other than fucking idiots. tens of millions? because more idiots make the idiocy more valid? GTFO
i couldn't care less who you think i should blame. we are fascism now.
There was a primary, she won the primary. Sure the DNC tried to sway public opinion, but ultimately the voters gave us Hillary. That is reality my friend.
There's a difference between supporting the ideology of a candidate, and supporting effective voting. You can blame the DNC for pushing a bad candidate, but the people who'd rather stay home than choose lesser evil deserve the greater evil when they get it.
You play the hand you're dealt, not the one you wish you had.
She won the primary because the DNC did everything they could to undermine Bernie. Dabbie Wasserman Schultz had already anointed Hillary the chosen one and didn't want anyone screwing with her plan, democracy be damned.
It was my first primary paying attention as an adult. I turned 18 when Obama had already won in late 2008. The primary process of the Democratic party was shocking to me. The super delegates were just insane to me. I phone banked for Bernie. The entire process is like millions of people pretending that the primary process is not a rigged system. News networks showing massive vote leads for states that hadn't cast a single vote because of "super delegates". Over and over just pretending that a candidate had already been chosen. When, well, they had been. We just all were pretending it didn't.
Then you learn of history of the party. Like what was done to drop Wallace from FDR. You realize that this just how it's always worked. There is a massive amount of tools used by the political party to pick their preferred candidate in a smoke filled room. They just don't do that directly. They create all these anti democratic rules and all collectively pretend they are "protecting the party".
They are protecting the party from winning popular support and being able to win against Trump. That's all that's happening. It's on purpose. They are captured by the same capital interest as the Republicans.
Dude nobody voted for Bernie in the primary. He never came close. If his supporters showed up that would be one thing but y'all didn't.
Are you just here to troll? Bernie* had the largest grass roots movement in a generations. Over 100,000 unique people phone banked for him volunteering. Are you European? You sound like you know nothing about how the political process works in the US beyond TV. If you're from the US you definitely have never actually involved yourself in the political process beyond just voting. So many ignorant comments you keep leaving here.
He overwhelmingly lost in the primary because not enough progressives voted for him in the primary like I did. What part about that don't you understand?
Again, you're looking at American elections and pointing to the outcome as your only analysis. I know how voting works mate. But for some reason you are just interjecting useless comments when someone decides to analyze the factors that lead to that outcome?
You have no thoughts beyond "not enough people voted for him"? Is your analysis really that one dimensional? What are you even trying to say? It's like looking at a basketball game and saying "the team lost because they had less points". Wow! Very insightful! What other amazing things do you have to tell us?
Yeah that's what happens when both "parties" support genocide. More genocide.
How's voting for genocide and then blaming non-voters going? It seems pretty smug.
yea, harris and the entire dem party is weak on israel.
but we wouldn't be in a stupid pointless bullshit war with iran if literally anyone but trump were potus
we wouldn't be a literal fascist state
all the agencies, research grants, consumer protections-- everything that is now gutted, wouldn't have been gutted
yes i concede "both sides are bad," but as it's been mentioned by other commenters, one side is orders of magnitude worse than the other
if you voted for Kamala, you got the same result as everyone else.
how's that iran war going? we sure helped palestine by throwing away our vote, huh? fucking idiot clowns
They were bots. All of them. And the public is too dumb to tell.
In the Coke vs Pepsi system of the US, its hard to see how voting for one over the other would be any better. Sometimes 3rd and 4th parties actually have a little bit of power in Canada's Westminster system if there's a minority government. It just goes to hell when the Liberals stop pretending to not be conservatives.
living in america, i just can't comprehend how anyone could think that literally anyone/anything is every bit as terrible as trump.
are you really sitting there trying to tell me that harris wouldn't be any better than trump?
jesus fucking christ
From an outside perspective, the "both sides" arguments in the US sounds so fucking stupid and fucking lazy.
It's like some worthless pricks watched some South Park episode about a turd and a douche and took it seriously for some fucking reason and used it for their entire political identity. For fucks sake, it's even worse hearing, "yeah Biden did a lot of good, but he didn't advertise it enough". Fuck that shit. That's on you being a fucking stupid uninformed (non?)-voter.
Ok, I'm an outsider looking in. Up here, I've been an NDP member for years, I know that we are not making government any time soon, but we have pushed the Liberal government to implementing universal healthcare, and made steps toward universal dental care and pharmacare. A vote for the 3rd party can be effective.
Looking south, it's hard to see how voting for someone will incrementally make your life worse is that much better than the one who will make your live worse today.
Up here, we voted in Carney to keep Poliver out (I don't respect him enough to spell his name correctly), but really their policies are so similar that a ton of conservatives joined the Liberal party to give him a majority.
Were I in your system, I don't know if I would vote. I wouldn't have voted for Hillery, Biden, or Harris, I sure as hell would never have voted for Trump. But I'm not in your system, so I can't say for sure.
Great job punchin' left and missin' the whole point. 👍
LOL yup there it is
and no. i didn't miss shit. try again
all you're going to come back with is "uR dUm" or something equally stupid.
the fact is 3rd party/ abstaining is objectively the dumbest fucking position anyone could ever take, and now we have a fascist rapist racist pedophile president who sucks israel's cock. honestly gtfo with your vote 3rd party bullshit. fucking clowns
Who only became a viable candidate because of thirty years of lesser-evil voters covering for the Democratic Party to shift from slightly right of center to right of Reagan, but just slightly left of the "fascist rapist racist pedophile".
Nakedly fascist and white supremacist candidates have been in the Republic Primary forever. They never got the time of day from Republican voters until the bipartisan Neoliberal austerity had squeezed the working class so hard that a fascist strongman selling easy answers seemed attractive. And after the guy who ran on Hope and Change delivered Narratives and Crumbs instead, yeah a lot of disillusioned people who'd been first time voters during the Obama years went back to staying home. That's not because of "both sides" messaging depressing turnout, that's because of "both sides" reality showing them it didn't matter. They voted for a Public Option and got United Healthcare denying their claims. They voted to codify Roe and end the Bush Tax Cuts and got open air slave markets in North Africa and the Space Program handed over to Billionaires to cannibalize.
Then after Trump's first term, they watched the party push Biden from sixth to first without even trying to be subtle about it. And it was obvious even on Super Tuesday that Biden wasn't being annointed because he could stop Trump, but because he could stop Bernie Sanders. So why on Earth would anyone who finds the status quo untenable continue to support a party so obviously and totally devoted to defending the status quo against any attempts to improve it? Voting for the ratchet because you fear the wheel isn't going to motivate anyone. The only people still on your side are the ones too blind to see that ratchet effect policy and identity politics is the only thing the DNC has to offer.
So you're saying Trump accurately represents US Americans.
US Americans with their backs to the wall, with wages stagnant and costs of everything constantly going up? US Americans whose education has been gutted so that they have barely a high school civics understanding of how their government works? Yeah. Trump is an accurate representation of America's id, and the uniparty has gleefully created the exact conditions to bring out the worst in the greatest number of people.
Continuing to antagonize the people you want to help you is pretty close to just as stupid.
yea. "catch more flies with honey" right?
reasonable non-stupid people have been trying that for YEARS
DECADES
and here we are. yes, it's possible harris would have been worse for palestine than trump has been.
LOL j/k no fucking way.
but yea. i will continue to antagonize. these people aren't helping anyone, they're harming. fuck them
Agent of the enemy, right here. Zero self awareness.
You are the problem
☝️
You idiots have been antagonizing people for decades. I say idiots because you think this insulting drivel is honey?
This is why Democrats lose.
Antagonize whom? Lemmy was FILLED with leftist preachers telling everyone that Harris needed to earn their vote. They loudly proclaimed that everyone needed to vote 3rd party to send a message.
It was no different than politely debating a Trump supporter. Anyone debating them was an attack. When they talked they believed it wasn't antagonizing, only responses were "antagonizing".
At this point those true leftist need to be publicly shamed for their mistake so it doesn't get repeated. Pretending it didn't happen will allow history to repeat.
Lemmy is a niche platform with, I believe, about 45,000 monthly active users. Let's say for the sake of argument that all of us were influenced into not voting. (Ridiculous, I know, but for the sake of argument.) That's less than a rounding error on the millions who didn't come out to vote in 2024. That is to say, all of the raging Lemmy Leftists affected basically nothing.
On top of that, surveys and interviews in the media after the election found that politically-engaged people, even leftists by and large, did vote for Harris. It's the politically disengaged, and disillusioned voters who didn't understand the stakes, or see any advantage in putting in the effort to vote. (What, did you seriously think that all Americans have perfect information, and make only deeply-considered, rational choices?)
On top of that, Republicans in control of state governments have been doing everything that they can to make voting harder, and less convenient, to suppress the turnout.
On top of that, the GQP ran Spanish-language ads in many markets peddling bald-faced lies. These ads were largely not countered by any Democratic messaging, and what there was was largely in English. The impression that I got was that Democrats felt that they had brown people's votes on lock. Never mind that brown people is a granfalloon, and they're just as ideologically diverse as any group of people, and many of them were not naturally inclined to vote Democratic. (That was certainly the case in Michigan.)
So, factually, we have a poorly-informed or not politically-engaged population that's not inspired to overcome the inertia and obstacles to go vote, and an uninspiring candidate who didn't speak to their daily lives and worries, and, no, forget all that, let's expend effort blaming the Lemmy Leftists.
THIS is why Democrats lose. It's so much easier to focus on a strawman and browbeating a handful of irrelevant loudmouths than it is to address these real issues, and actually inspire people to come out and vote with a message that reaonates with them.
You are why Americans deserve trump.
Care to elaborate?
One of the other positions is pro rape, pro concentration camps and pro explosive diarrhea.
That’s all the same thing, not 2 sides. If you’re abstaining, you’re supporting the pro rape, pro concentration camps, and pro explosive diarrhoea.
Vote in the primaries. Vote in the general. Know who you’re voting for or against, make sure you haven’t been purged.
no. words mean things.
Then you should be voting against it.
I voted for Kamala 🤷♂️
You're the one now alienating people we need.
Your reading comprehension sucks. If ypu voted for harris the above post is NOT about you
Yeah, no shit it's not about me.
One of us definitely need work on comprehension.
I don’t think “both sides are bad” is designed to keep people from voting. It’s meant to give the people that follow the definitively worse of the 2 sides a justification to keep voting the same way.
I think it does both. Some people don’t vote because it doesn’t matter. Some people vote for the right because they can say it doesn’t matter…
Then the right win, we go all fascist and richer people get richer.
Fascism in the US is a bi-partisan consensus. Obama and Biden restructured DHS and ICE policies that allowed them be deployed in cities for mass enforcement. Trump used it. Biden took office and instead of undoing the polices, simply chose not to use it. Which then predictably resulted in the next Republican to take office using it.
FDR put Japanese people in concentration camps and stole all their property. Kennedy did Vietnam. LBJ did Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, DR, Bolivia, DRCongo. Bill Clinton did Somalia, Haiti, Sudan. Obama did Libya, Yemen, Niger, Cameroon. Bill and Hillary had black house slaves when they lived in the Arkansas governor's mansion.
Mass racialized incarceration is bipartisan. Prison slavery is bipartisan. Killing 800k people every year with sanctions is bipartisan. Militarizing the cops with military surplus is bipartisan.
Corporate profits are HIGHER under Democrats.
The Democrats are the right. The right wins every election, regardless of which party wins. Regardless of which party is in power the fascism continues unabated, the rich continue to get richer.
It can be two things.
“Specifically designed”
Sir, this is a Lemmy. The issues are black and white. Pragmatism means you're a Nazi. Everything you're doing to try and make a difference is worse than genocide AT BEST. I checked your post history and there's not a single comment about how many Republicans you have personally punched simply for being a Republican and having a different opinion than you, so you might as well be a Republican yourself, which makes you a double Nazi.
+50 .ml credit
Good job, comrade. Nutomic is proud.
It was clearly sarcasm.
I was clearly extending it
Me too.
Meanwhile PieFed actually has a credit system that limits who can post, comment, and vote. Lemmy has none of those, even on .ml
But don't let facts get in the way of your feelings
Alright bro that's it
-70 PieFed Credit
no more profile picture rights
(/srs I already knew about that, I don't think it ruins the humor much)
I vote so I can cancel out a maga vote
Not the only way. There are many other, also-successful ways.
Discussion should be about disenfranchisement vs lost faith in a system and willingness to let it fail.
votes third party
No not like that
Seriously though, I think it's important to confront and admit that voting for the lesser evil does legitimize the evil they do, even if the greater evil does it worse. Because critically digesting both that fact alongside the fact that voting for the lesser evil really does result in better outcomes for society is what will actually get the hesitant on board with going and doing it. If you try to dismiss or handwave that fact, you are dismissing and handwaving the very real concerns of the disillusioned non-participants. Acknowledging the dissonance is far better.
I think it's also important to point out that while direct action and social organizing are the most effective things things you can do to change society, they are incredibly time consuming while voting usually takes 5 - 30 minutes. And if you're actually interested in the former, there's little to no excuse to avoid the latter.
Just whatever you do, don't shame people for being disillusioned. That makes people really dig in their heels.
Not when the Lesser Evil gets progressively more evil over time to try and pull votes from the Greater Evil camp. They have no incentive to implement any policies you're in favor of as long as they have your guaranteed support. If the next Democrat promises to be as worthless as the last one, don't vote for them.
It actually does, even considering that. That's just how bad the greater evil party is. There's a lot of space for the lesser evil party in their wake. But yes it does get worse overall either way. That's why while voting is important, you really should be doing something beyond that as well, if you really care. And if you really care enough to do something beyond that, then merely voting should be trivial for you to manage.
Not in the long run. "Vote blue no matter who" is how we end up in 2036, with the republican on the ballot promising to execute all trans people, and the democrat promising to merely jail them.
Agreed, not in the long run. Voting is like stop the bleed on a traumatic injury. It'll keep you alive in the short term so you can get more comprehensive care.
So if you know that it's harmful in the long term, then when will you stop voting for the lesser evil?
When the organizing and fighting that that you do beyond voting finally pays off. Like back to the analogy, if a wound is all dressed and banaged and healing, you no longer have to worry about stop the bleed.
Realisticay though, for the rest of your life. Because these are very large social moves that typically happen over generations. Unless you're the next Che Guavara or something. In which case hell yeah go you.
Honestly ranked choice voting can help somewhat
Ranked choice voting is way overdue
Is this outcome today from everyone supporting third parties over and over, or from everyone voting lesser evil over and over?
Its from more people voting on the right than people voting on the left.
And how does voting green alter that dicotomy for the better.
It wastes your vote.
Begging the question
What is the spoiler effect?
The only people in favor of the spoiler effect want Republicans to win.
Nobody is in favor of it because it causes the republicans to win. But it exists whether you acknowledge it or not, third party votes in generals are votes for republicans in most cases.
If we restrict the answer to just electoralism, I'd say it's because more people are voting greater evil than lesser evil and OP's image explains why.
given the choice between the benign tumor and the malignant tumor, one is better off with the benign one. refusing to choose just hands it to the malignant tumor by default. furthermore, it's not about supporting the lesser of two evils but identifying which evil is the worst overall and focusing everything you have on punishing it. refraining from punishing evil is, surprise surprise, AN EVIL ACT
I know I’m not cool… But I’m ready to killish
People actually still believe there's going to be free elections in November... ROFL
Trump is fully intending to pull a Netenyua and call a national emergency to stay in power.
The largest non-voting registered group in the 2024 election were those associated with neither party: independents and unaffiliated voters.
About a quarter of eligible voters aren't even registered on top of that.
"Both sides are bad" statements aren't necessarily driving partisans to not vote. They are, or can be however, an important message for those two big parties running the elections to hear from the people.
It's also, possibly one of the few talking points that forces acknowledgement that those independent, unaffiliated, and unregistered voters exist and whose interests might matter towards the outcome of policy and/or elections.
But yes, the interests that align with at least the GOP are furthered when votes are suppressed, that has been demonstrably true for decades.
What if people are unaffiliated or unregistered because they believe both sides are bad?
Then the posts aren't encouraging them to change any behavior. This premise only works if you have partisan voters deciding not to vote because of the Both-Sidesism.
If it is the default case that a party already does not have the
anyvotes of the largest mass of voters, then the parties should focus on gaining their support.But also: more libertarians protested the GOP over Both-Sidesism than leftists, so technically it still had a net benefit effect for Harris. Which further demonstrates how flawed the whole premise is.
Wait are you legitimately claiming that both sides rhetoric doesn't discourage voter turn out? Do you have literally any evidence to support that claim?
I don't know about 'discourage' since I was referring to protest 3rd party votes. But too many people didn't even know Biden dropped out to suggest the rhetoric was causing meaningful influence.
Now, I do know that RFK and Chase Oliver together took more votes (~0.9%) than the Greens and PSL combined (~0.7%). So as far as protest votes over Both-Sideism likely went it probably didn't hurt Harris, and may have actually been a net gain for Harris.
The entire combined third party vote would have had to pretty much 100% gone for Harris for the Democratic Party to have won the popular vote (which is still irrelevant because of the electoral college.)
I don't really follow.
We're not talking about well informed Lemmy users weighing the policies of candidates and deciding to abstain from voting because Gaza.
We're talking about apathetic low information voters looking for an excuse not to get off the couch on polling day.
"Both sides" is the classic strategy to keep these voters on the couch.
I guess, though a meme on Lemmy talking about social media posts would have me leaning to the former than the latter. I would wager, in fact, this meme is very strongly directed at Lemmy users who weigh policy.
On its own, it doesn't quite force the second half of that acknowledgement: The missing part is the "or else".
So far, the most charitable interpretation, if we disregard corruption for a moment, is that the party elite doesn't really see those interests because they have been too far removed from these voters for too long, if they've ever known it at all. Humble beginnings don't mean shit if you haven't lived humbly for the last few decades any more. So even in the best case, these people will struggle to actually comprehend. They also know that voters are faced with the choice between them and Republicans and can count on a chunk of people to vote just to avert the worst result. And they themselves aren't affected that badly by a potential defeat.
This disconnect is clearly visible in the shocked reactions to the "insurgency" of progressive politicians winning primaries: They don't know or don't want to admit what appeal those upstarts have that they don't, but at least they now realise that these other groups exist and matter.
Hence, "both sides bad" on its own is a criticism without a solution. It incites fatalism without rallying support for an alternative. Voting in primaries can have an effect, and if people genuinely don't want to vote D just to stop R in the general election, they should vote for some third party. Agreeing on a progressive candidate would help, but even without agreement, it would signal support for breaking out from that game of two.
(This also matters beyond the pure democratic mechanism: signalling that support can help other unhappy people to see that they're not alone and encourage them to join whatever form of resistance may emerge in their area. Even if votes might not change anything directly, they're a communication tool.)
A Roman satirist once remarked on the fact that the people were all too excited to celebrate a failed coup, but would have been just as excited to hail the new emperor. To paraphrase, they have given up oversight, and those whose votes once decided over offices and command of armies now only hope for "bread and circuses" (stable grain supply and public entertainment, basically). The full meaning is more complex, but the part that's relevant to me here is his contempt for the non-voters whose complacency led to a situation where they can no longer hope for more than bare necessities and a bit of distraction.
In that sense: Vote. Don't cede ground to those who want you to not vote. A voice that doesn't speak isn't heard. Even a "wasted" vote is better than silence.
Hard truth. Nobody gives a fuck about those voters. If they are mad and decide not to vote for whatever reason a decision will still be made without their input.
Witholding your vote will not stop the process and will actively Help the worst elements of each party.
it works, propaganda, flood the news with the trump bs has made people i know just turned off to politics altogether.
Also plus GOP can only use gerrymandering, propaganda so much before they have to use voter suppression methods. DNC will never try to combat this, because they lose their political capital.
The real problem is that both parties have convinced most people that striving to change the voting system that produces the two-party system is pointless.
As long as that system exists, this useless and polarizing debate won’t stop and evil and corruption will continue to flourish.
The land of freedom, choice and competition doesn’t want freedom, choice and competition in its elections. Think about why that is.
We need to eliminate district-based Congressional representation.
To my way of thinking, if you have 20 congressional seats to fill, and the statewide voter split is 40% Dem, 40% GOP, 5% Pirate, and 5% Ninja, we should be sending 1 Ninja, 1 Pirate, 9 Dems, and 9 GOPs to the senate. When Ninja and Pirate voters are spread throughout the state, any geographic map you draw is Gerrymandered with respect to those two smaller parties: They can never win a single seat, despite voter numbers indicating they should split two seats.
Gerrymandering is inevitable so long as races are conducted within geographically-defined districts. No "independent" "non-partisan" commission can prevent gerrymandering. The best they can do is restrict specific forms favorable to the two major parties, while disenfranchising third parties and minority interests.
Every congressional seat needs to be filled in a statewide election. That might mean that in the primary, we vote for how many seats that each party gets to fill, and in the general, voters in each party decide how to fill their own seats.
Yep, gotta remember this miserable corrupt system was intentionally concocted by enslavers in order to violently attack women, africans, natives, etc.
It's not a bug, it's a feature.
FPTP: obvious to us, incomprehensible to candidates
Oh is it the time of year for liberals to start telling us we can no longer complain?
Complaining is fine, butinaction or negative action, is not at all productive to fixing those complaints, ever. Life is very often about compromise.
And at the scales we are talking about, it barely qualifies as "the lesser of two evils," because one of the two meaningful choices is so much MORE evil it makes the other evil pretty much saintlike.
Liberals are the ones inactive and taking negative action.
They did nothing about trump, they did nothing about healthcare, they did nothing about climate, they did nothing about wages.
They supported Trump's immigration policies, they funded ICE to extreme levels, they voted to fund surveillance programs, they continue to support the genocide.
It's not the lesser of two evils it's the same evil: capitalism and imperialism.
Almost, and intelligent leftists too. Complain all you want for now, until primaries are over. This is the best time to do so actually.
Once the primary results are in, then yes complaining needs to stop until after the midterms. After the midterm results are in, you can go back to complaining.
The OP clearly doesn't like people complaining now, but also: "Dissent is evil 33% of the time" sounds very undemocratic.
The couple of months between the primary and general elections is far less than "33% of the time".
Do you think temporary water restrictions during a severe drought is tyranny?
"Suck it up and fall in line" seems like sound advice in the spaces that closely follow US politics. Except most americans don't, even now. Most americans want to feel like they're voting for something, not against this or that figure. Kinda the big lesson of the last decades of politics. Keep up this rhetoric, and it's gonna depress turnout more than it helps.
Given negative ads work extremely well, not sure that's true.
And honestly, voting is a civic duty and SOMEONE will win. If you don't vote you fucking suck, period.
You deserve Trump.
Buddy, we're the inheritors of the British Empire. We all deserve Trump.
Good thing that's not what I said.
Tone and perspective can make two statements that look different but essentially say the same thing. "Fall in line" or "stop complaining until after midterms".
Here's a third: "Only voice criticisms when its most convenient for the institution you're criticizing."
Here's one which actually says what I did: "Don't voice criticisms when it's counter-productive to achieving the goals you want to accomplish".
Voicing criticisms in the primary season? Excellent choice, helps to push people towards the primary candidates which best align with your goals.
Voicing criticisms after the general election? Not as productive, but still fine; helps inform people what the issues are.
Voicing criticisms after the candidates have been chosen, but before the general election? Absolutely moronic, the last thing you want to do. It accomplishes nothing except increasing the the possibility that the worst candidate wins. Totally garbage, toddler-brain decision.
After the primary, your best outcome is defeating whichever popular candidate most opposes your views. Drawing support away from the biggest threat to the worst outcome is counter-productive.
What if the criticism is "you're running a bad campaign and going to lose the election because of it"? I really don't think going easy on our representatives is helping them. A healthy party should be capable of digesting criticism at any point in time, not just in pristine conditions.
If that's your criticism, give their office a call or send them an email. This is not productive criticism to present to voters, it's literally the exact opposite.
So if I were in the US, I'd have how many choices? Two (2)?
I would love some count Binface vs Vermin Love Supreme.
Honestly, there should be 9 choices
or vote green
I mean, at least you voted
I think voting is the bare minimum duty for living in a democracy, even if the vote is "wasted" it can send a message.
Sure, split the vote so the other side is assured a win, brilliant If those Jill Stein dummies weren’t a thing, Dump would have one less term.
I will only choose another color, if we get ranked-choice voting.
Hey it's been a day, still looking for that evidence?
Third party voters did not decide either of the elections that Trump won. That's a lie the establishment Dems cooked up to obfuscate their responsibility for Trump, and there data absolutely does not support it.
But decades of bioartisan Neoliberal austerity policy did suppress turnout. Probably enough to affect the outcome, but that's not something anybody measures since nobody with the money to find the study actually wants to know.
Please name a single state that would have flipped if all Green or Libertarian, the actual big 3rd party votes for Democrats.
Here, I'll even give you 2016, 2020, and 2024 to pick from. That's a lot of data, surely you'll find one state.
Sure, let's play the puppet game. Shit if you can't realize atleast some of the responsibility lays on dems side. Just look at it like this, they didn't engage with red states, they didn't engage with red areas, they didn't push strong candidates, they allow corruption on their side aswell, they half ass so many policies, and dropped the ball in alot of aspects like no child left behind (not saying to abandon kids, just freaking want a program that doesn't screw the majority of kids learning).
With all that, don't get me wrong I despise trump and republicans. However the reality is this happened due to one side actually being proactive in their strategy. The democratic party isn't proactive. Kamala was a bad pick purely due to lack of popularity, which could've been addressed by decisive engagement. But NO they're thinking about their retirement and stock portfolios. Or they're just straight up to old to do that much.
No, not voting for either genocide party.
No one is obligated to vote for Democrats based on lesser evilism. We're circling the drain with a neoliberal/reactionary crisis cycle in perpetual imperial war while wealth keeps consolidating upward and working people get crushed. The billionaire donor base they solicit money from is the same, their economic and foreign policies are quite similar. Even when Democrats have achieved majorities at the state level they serve their masters, not the economic interests of the people.
Workers party now.
Seriously. All they have to do is say “genocide is bad.” It’s really not hard. I just did it.
the great thing about ai and the forthcoming robot army is that labor will no longer have any power to leverage. then what are we going to do?
Responsible adults are.
Won't happen before the midterms or 2028. You're welcome to come back to reality. We miss you.
Both the Republican and Democratic parties are cults at this point. This post proves it.
Yes because the side that holds their reps accountable is a cult just like the side that doesn't.
This comment further proves it. You’re stuck in a Manichean battle between two cults. You can’t think outside of it. And anyone who tries to de-program you poor things gets accused of being a devilish secret agent from the opposing cult of pure evil.
I relate to the SPIRIT of the meme, but quite honestly, here in 2026, I don't know if the conclusion holds any water anymore. It turns out WAY more people are WAY more shit than I ever expected and I'm no longer convinced high turnout means victory for anything good.
Maybe they WERE the silent majority all along...
If the States didn't have a system that makes voting third-party an effectively wasted vote, this strategy wouldn't be as overwhelming.
So any criticism of Democrats is a psyop?
Isn't that what the Republicans have been saying since 2016? Fake news?
Wow, America is fucked. Both parties think using your head is proof you're not real.
Thank you for posting this, OP.
I have remained a voting Democrat since I started voting during Bush. I do not find "both sides" a way to prevent people from voting. I find that Dems have taken to also nominating insufferable assholes, following the lead of the Republicans. But people like paying more attention to crappy leaders than learning how to elect good ones.
Also - Trump hasn't been as bad as claimed. He has mostly been what I expected for 12 years. Mostly ineffectual and inconsequential. Undeserving of the attention he is given.
Still peddeling this bullshit.
That's why you Vote for Pedro... duh!
Pedro - Jill Stein
Tomato - Tomato
Same effect…
No shit. Because they dont like the gun, they let a rapist sleep with their kids, then blame the lazy cops for not doing shit to repair a situation they could have prevented.
Anything but admit they failed.
Both sides proponents should be mocked, ridiculed, and banned out of the Lemmy community.
Why ban?
Because the establishment supporters have nothing to counter the reality that their politicians are disgusting fascists.
I hopped on here expecting a bunch of pro dem discourse and I'm so glad to see these comments.
Both sides: Fund genocide Don't hold epsteinites accountable Increase centralized power Are corrupt as fuck
Any discourse pretending that a vote for either party will make any difference in the grand scheme of things is holding back actual change.
Keep putting down both parties. Fuck these politicians. They're finally getting scared that people are wising up to their pretend rivalry.
Bro I live in Missouri. No Dem is gonna win or give a shit here and hasn't since before I was born. Even at local levels. I go vote cause I'm bored sitting at home and it gets me out of the house, but I never vote for either of these bastards.
At the presidential level, it feels like our electoral system favors a handful of swing states. This shit is barely a democracy.
America has never been a democracy. Ever in your history.
This is binary thinking and it is a way to prevent any realistic change for the good. Here are my priorities for voting.
I see myself cross-voting in November.
Ah. So you're a fascist. As with anyone else who is willing to vote Republican.
What a clown you are, or a complete idiot. You are either a MAGA child, a disinformation agent, or a bag of rocks if you think a MAGA Republican > Establishment Democrat.
You need to drop all of that and make your ONLY priority remembering to breathe.
I like how you're willing to admit your second and third options after socialism are fascism.
Smooth brain take, buddy.
That’s why we vote during primaries
And why ranked choice voting is necessary
Ranked choice voting is way overdue
This is not true, voting is the problem. You think it will solve problems, but it won't!! Both sides work for the same team. Find a way out with unions
Wow that post triggered a lot of people good job OP. Luckily m country is not yet two party
Almost a good meme. Should have ended you are the problem.
That's not true anymore in my experience. As a mostly non-voting European, I think my cynical, nihilistic ideas of direct action have made more right leaning people not vote for right wing parties than left leaning people not vote for left-wing ones. The political 'left' has long lost a big chunk of the working class. Hand labourers, once the base of the left movement, have been victimised, disenfranchised, and then antagonised by it. So these ideas of 'if more people were voting the right would never win' are obsolete.
This post just got you on the list buddy
Jokes on you lol, I’m not a big fan of the tessersact
OP is on the nice list for Tesseract.
Still not voting in your colonialist elections
Tankie chud sighted
Actually I'm an anarchist because tankies aren't communist enough
Egotistical immature anarkiddy sighted then
Epithet for "based", I'll take it
Nah, this is impotent idealism. Deciding not to participate in the system of oppression does literally nothing to diminish the power of the system which oppresses you. "Legitimacy" isn't a real thing with material consequences.
It's certainly true that you shouldn't just vote, but it's absolutely false that not voting is somehow helpful. In every primary, promote and vote for the furthest left candidates for every office. In the general election, promote and vote for the candidate which has the best chance of beating the worst candidate. Constantly build your community, engage in mutual aid, and develop dual power.
It's not a multiple choice quiz. Use every tool available at every stage. One of those tools is influencing which variety of oppression you're going to fight. Refusing to participate does nothing but make using your other tools more difficult.
Gee, thanks for your smoothbrain preteen take on the matter. You really gave me something to digest...then shit out.
Somehow I don't think you even attempted to digest the article but whatever
pLeAsE vOtE fOr HiTlEr-LiTe
Ah, yes, everyone I don't like is conspiring against me.
— nobody