You can understand that Harris would have been undeniably less awful than trump but also still terrible and basically offered trump-lite policies. This means that people who actually want fascism are just going to vote for trump and many of the people who want progressive policies are going to be apathetic and stay home. This isn’t about all the tankies protest voting, it’s about all the normies who already don’t vote not caring because she ran a dogshit campaign.
but also still terrible and basically offered trump-lite policies.
Harris didn’t say she was going to deport millions of working Americans for being the wrong colored skin.
Harris didn’t say she was going to weaponize the entire political machine against people who passed some off-hand sleight that offended her.
Harris didn’t say she was going to actively dehumanize and torture the entire LGBT community for existing.
Harris didn’t say she was going to actively remove every protection from working class people.
She said none of this. The other guy said it multiple times, and now he’s following through on it! Big fucking shocker!
Seriously. The “both sides” arugment has been so tired out for so long that you cannot legitimately believe that it means anything. Believing the silence said by one side and giving that more weight than what is being actively repeated by the other side is short sighted at best, and intentionally malicious at worst. We’re on the worst side now, and I will treat people who repeat it as the worst side.
You do understand that by saying she would be less awful than trump and trump-lite that I am not saying she would be the same as him? That implies that Trump is worse?
Admit you were wrong and learn from it.
No? I voted for Kamala but I still think she’s a piece of shit, just a smaller piece of shit than Trump and I’m not surprised she lost
Protest voters bLuEmAgA screeching didn’t happen in a vacuum
And those uncommitted/undecided voters change their minds easily. What if for every protest voter screecher posting their “bOtH SiDeS” BS there were 5 uncommitted voter lurkers saw it and just went “Eh fuck it, I’m busy with work anyways” they’re not protest voting, those are just uncommitteds doing what uncommitteds do.
Scale that up to nationwide and on major social media platforms that totally would have promoted it thanks to those wonderful algorithms and you can see what it’s a problem
Had a friend who was not particularly radical or politically involved who was almost discouraged enough to cast a third-party vote for all the “BOTH SIDES BOTH SIDES” rhetoric.
Words have power.
Sure but if I’m going to put the blame on someone it’s going to be the politicians who refuse to do anything but ratchet right and not the people who are mad about it.
Man, do you not remember what it was like 20 years ago? Even 10 years ago? “We’ve ratcheted right” is empty fucking rhetoric. The Dems have been moving leftwards ever since the nadir of labor support in the 90s. Is it enough? Fuck no. Are we rightward of that? Have we moved right since? Also fuck no.
The people who are ‘mad’ about that have just chosen to kill as many Palestinians as US support can, in addition to genocide against LGBT folk and immigrants, immense damage to the working class, and God knows what fucking else will emerge in this shitshow of a fascist regime.
I’m not going to sit here waiting for Medicaid to be repealed so I can enjoy exsanguinating by internal bleeding because I can’t afford my meds in our fuckhole of a country and say, “Oh, shucks, well, those folk, they were just SO mad that they let the Nazis win, I guess they’re still okay in my book :)” I’m pissed. And I’m pissed for everyone who’s going to get fucked worse than me, which is, unfortunately, a great many people.
Kamala had every opportunity to campaign on medicare and labor but instead she decided that a lethal military, trump-lite immigration policy and agreeing with biden on everything. Sure there were people pretending third parties mattered but apathetic voters are a response to her dogshit campaign at the end of the day. You need to get people excited to vote for you if you want to actually win an election in this country, trump did that for his nazis, kamala did not for the left.
Sure there were people pretending third parties mattered but apathetic voters are a response to her dogshit campaign at the end of the day.
Apathetic voters are a loud and clear declaration of “I don’t care if the literal fascist wins” in this election, man.
Harris having a dogshit campaign doesn’t change that. Harris’s dogshit campaign condemns Harris, and her allies; but the victory of Trump condemns everyone who stood by and refused to do the least thing, a cast vote, to stop him.
Apathy is not an excuse. Apathy is exactly why they deserve condemnation. Anyone who is apathetic about fascism is not someone who deserves a milder rebuke than would otherwise be given. Apathy about fascism is a serious moral failing.
How can you run on a platform of democracy, when democracy has gotten the average American citizen jack shit?
“Vote for a Democrat. If Democrats win, nothing will fundamentally change. If they lose, then you will lose your right to vote for a Democrat again!”
That’s a shit platform that is doomed to fail. Democrats have been running on the platform of “we’re the last hope for democracy” for a generation as this point. And at some point people simply give up and decide, “well, democracy clearly ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, as neither side actually wants to help regular people.”
Sure but getting mad at your average apathetic willfully ignorant American is just a waste of energy, and if anything is just going to make them ignore politics even more.
Words have power.
Yup, I was saying the same thing pre election in a couple of my wonderful discussions with those
bots“people” such as anticolonialist (whos been silent for months now a day after the election LMAO)I see it all the time on platforms that provide statistics, a comment or post can easily have thousands upon thousands of views but like 2 likes and maybe a reply. It’s those thousands that are really easily influenced and they don’t even bother to like/dislike something let alone answer surveys and polls and are incredibly likely to just leave that mail in ballot on the kitchen counter so it’s impossible to know how many there were that could have been potentially influenced
such as anticolonialist (whos been silent for months now a day after the election LMAO)
The pro-Palestine folks haven’t been quiet. They just get downvoted below visibility by Blue MAGA folks who like to pretend that all the pro-Palestine folk were Russian bots.
Nah, plenty of us were pro-palestine enough to vote for the one of two candidates who didn’t want to entirely destroy Gaza. Good thing single issue voters got what they wanted though, right? Right??
I would love it if the bLuEmAgA crowd would sit down for an hour and actually understand electoral politics and how abstaining/voting 3rd party is objectively worse than voting strategically. But some people’s morals in the immediate choice are more important than their long term morals, so here we are.
If you spent half as much time working to end genocide as you do fully deep throating those committing genocide, we might not have a genocidal fascist government anymore.
An average persons, such as all of us here, only ability to do anything about it was back in November, but y’all wanted to “teach the DNC a lesson at the polls” at the absolute worst fucking time
No, we wanted to end the genocide. The Dems unilaterally decided that losing the election was less harmful than continuing to commit genocide and propose laws for domestic genocide (Harris’ border policy that Trump is now carrying out).
I’m sorry you like genocide, and it sucks you got what you wanted and are now upset about it. Either be helpful and admit you were wrong while working to eliminate both genocidal parties in the US, or be quiet and hope future history is interesting enough to forget people like you existed.
No, we wanted to end the genocide.
And how did that work out for y’all?
The exact same as if Harris won. Literally line for line. Our fight hasn’t changed. Your fight has, and it will fail if you people don’t give up wanting to commit genocide and overall being Nazis with liberal aesthetics.
Now you get genocide here and in Palestine. Congrats!
Everyone knows opening up a second front is ALWAYS a good idea LMAO
ROFL! You have no fight.
The Dems unilaterally decided that losing the election was less harmful than continuing to commit genocide
So it’s your opinion that the protest vote against Palestinian genocide did make the difference between victory and defeat for the Trump regime?
Yes, Dems choosing to be more right wing than the trump 2016 campaign did have an effect. It did cause them to lose core support from minority groups that realized they weren’t going to be supported anymore by the dem party.
Yes,
Then you admit you refused to show solidarity with LGBT folk in the US, because the candidate for protecting LGBT folk in the US showed insufficient solidarity with Palestinians?
…Jill stein did show support for Palestinians, what the fuck are you on about? So did de la Cruz. Hell even Dr West did.
Those were the only candidates showing support for trans people in the 2024 election, so no idea how you got confused.
Edit: ooh you’re one of the lgb not t guys, aren’t you?
…Jill stein did show support for Palestinians, what the fuck are you on about? So did de la Cruz. Hell even Dr West did.
Okay? None of those candidates had any chance of defending LGBT folk in the US, and LGBT folk in the US overwhelmingly voted for Harris, above and beyond what support they gave the Dems in 2016 and 2020, because they saw the writing on the wall regarding Trump.
Edit: ooh you’re one of the lgb not t guys, aren’t you?
Get better material. Trans rights are human rights.
And neither of those idiots have a track record of ever having done shit to support their bullshit.
You’re just believing shit because it sounds good. They’re both untested, unproven blowhards that don’t have the political clout, or legal knowledge to back up a god damned thing they “promised.”
Jill Stein is loyal to Putin/Russia and the money she fundraises from her spoiler campaigns.
Where is she now?
I’m a trans person myself and voted for Harris. Do not use my people as a rhetorical cudgel against those that voted for accountability. We’ve seen after the election that Democrats have little spine is protecting trans rights. Democrats already voted to support the first anti-LGBT law in 30 years. There is anti-trans legislation in the works that will likely have substantial Democratic support behind it.
You only use minorities as a tool to wield. When those minority groups stand up and object to being thrown under the bus in the name of political expediency, you just hold up another minority group as another rhetorical shield.
Do not use my people as a rhetorical cudgel against those that voted for accountability.
I didn’t realize “accountability” was “putting a fascist in power to throw us in camps”. Rather seems like the opposite of accountability to me, but what do I know? I’m just one of those filthy mixed-race mentally ill useless eaters who’ll get thrown into the meat grinder. The REAL victims here are the people who sat on their asses while fascism came to America, and couldn’t be arsed enough to do so much as take one day out of their busy fucking lives and cast a vote for someone they didn’t like. Protecting minorities just wasn’t important enough. Feeling pure was more important.
The “protest vote” wasn’t very organized. There are many communities of Arab and Muslim people in the States that weren’t influenced by the small number of leftists advocating for votes against Harris. For many people, genocide is a deal breaker without outside influence of any sort.
Why are you able to excuse genocide overseas? Because at least it’s not genocide at home? Why are you allowing the party that supposes to represent your beliefs to enable any genocide?
For many people, genocide is a deal breaker without outside influence of any sort.
Oh cool, so they voted to prevent genocide in the US?
… no?
They didn’t?
I guess genocide wasn’t such a deal breaker.
Stop using the threat of future genocide to ignore current genocide
I never ignored the ongoing genocide in Palestine. But quite clearly, if one believes that “Genocide for Palestine and genocide for LGBT folk” is an acceptable alternative, genocide is not the ‘deal-breaker’.
Stop enabling genocide then.
Please. Just stop. You’re hurting everyone.
You’re hurting everyone.
I’m fairly certain that’s exactly what these bLuEmAgA folks wanted
A fair portion appear to be adherents to accelerationism, the homeopathy of political philosophy, so, yes.
Since this account is getting banned since I dared to disagree with a .world mod with access to the admin bot, no, lib, you’re hurting everyone.
You people need to die for progress to happen.
no, lib,
There it is, go back to your .ml tankie main account
You people need to die for progress to happen.
…
Full, mask off, core belief achievement on that one.
Accelerationism is survivor fantasy. Who says you won’t be in the ditch too?
People can suffer oppression nearly infinitely (see: North Korea). What gives people the strength to rebel is being put in a position where victory seems possible. Accelerationism is even less than a survivor fantasy - it’s a delusion that feeds the powers that be. Entrenched powers are almost never overthrown by the people at their most oppressive, because systems are often at their most oppressive when they feel most powerful. Entrenched powers are almost always overthrown by the people when the system weakens and offers compromise, because that’s when people believe they can make demands of the bastards and best them if they refuse.
Add in that literally no historical evidence always to exist to suggest that accelerationism has ever had efficacy.
Its adherents are just doing their best to make other people suffer with a pie-in-the-sky hope that being class-traitors and offering up vulnerable groups as blood sacrifice will result, not just in a workers’ revolution but one that achieves their personal utopia, instead of getting coopted by theocracy or totalitarian dictatorships, as has frequently happened in history.
Yep. It’s totally the fault of those willing to show solidarity. Willingness to work together with people they might disagree with for something positive who are the problem. Do you even read the insanity that you post?
What are you even talking about, I and MANY others were right, everyday since the 20th has been a gold star example on how Trump is SO much worse. The article yesterday was literally Trump calling for a “total ethnic cleansing”
Not to mention all the additional people NOW under threat like the LGBTQ+ community.
Harris would have at worst kept the status quo, Trump is turning the dial to 11 on everything from Gaza to a recession to racism and transphobia. Good job though on your protest vote 👍
That’s not worse. Genocide is genocide. Harris was already promising to roll back trans support and implement a worse version of Trump’s 2016 border policy. And you voted for that.
Our fight hasn’t changed. Yours has.
Hope you’re ready.
Let me fill you in on how things would have gone down had you and your fellow
Trump SupportersbluEmAGa mouth breathers just shut up and advocated for Harris.Trump would have lost, he would have been sentenced to jail, MAGA would have likely imploded in on itself and the Republicunts would have been too busy running around panicking to do much
Then we could have all focused on pressuring the DNC/Harris over the next 2 years about Gaza and then if necessary taught them that lesson at the polls at midterms
But no, now we’re going to be too occupied with the SHOCK part of Trump’s shock and awe plan to do much of anything for the Palestinians let alone ourselves.
Why are you pushing misinformation?
Probably because accepting that one was wrong, taking responsibility, and trying to make amends to those that one harmed is really hard.
GLADD seems to disagree with you on Harris’ trans support policy.
I’d suggest you read:
And this
You are free to wrongly accuse democrats of having changed their fight, but at least they have one. Your fight doesn’t even exist as evident in your failed attempt to send a message with litter protest votes.
A party needs forward-looking and backward-looking voters in order to prosper. You can’t win elections without the forward-lookers. But without the backward-lookers holding people accountable, you end up electing candidates who won’t actually accomplish anything when they do manage to win.
The utilitarian folks arguing that “on the net, Harris would be better for reasons A, B, and C…” are forward-looking voters. Those staying home in protest of Palestine were backward-looking voters.
People simply have different cultures; liberals SHOULD realize and accept this. Not everyone thinks like you. Not everyone has the same voting culture you do. You are a forward-looking voter. But you shouldn’t chauvinistically shame those of a different culture. Your way is not the only way.
Bruh, I’m not gonna forgive folk who “okayed” me getting my ass killed in the next four years just because they have “a different culture” on voting.
This isn’t about “holding Dems accountable”, it’s about the literal fucking fascist proclaiming literal fucking fascist things running and the race being tight. This wasn’t 2012. This wasn’t 2008. Fuck, it wasn’t even 2000 or 2004. It wasn’t even fucking 2016, when people could plead ignorance as to Trump’s character, if they were not deeply politically involved.
If they said “Anti-fascism isn’t enough for me to throw my lot in to prevent fascism” in 2020 or 2024, they’re a fascist enabler. End of story.
Ironic to hear about “forward looking” from a protest voters who enabled a genocide to complete its work in the fastest possible way.
You should be ashamed of yourself, sadly you never learned about morality or responsibility 🤷
They still put forth the mutually exclusive arguments, simultaneously. “Our protest couldn’t have had an effect, so we totally didn’t sacrifice American LGBT folk for a chance at saving Gaza” + “If the Dems had just given in to our protest, we would’ve voted for them and they would have won”
Both arguments are stupid on their own merits, but together, they paint a picture of intellectual and moral bankruptcy.
Your supposed to vote for the candidate that represents your views. Doing so should never be considered sacrificing anyone unless you candidate is the bad guy.
Decades of blaming third party voters is why we have two parties that don’t represent the people today. There will be pain breaking that trend, but eventually it will pay off.If protest voters had voted for Harris, she still would have lost, because twenty million democrats stayed home. She didn’t lose because of protest votes, she lost because white middle class voters decided they didn’t want to bother, because the election won’t affect them anyway.
If 77 million people vote for Trump, and 75 million vote for Harris, that any single voter’s vote is only one vote does not mean that if they vote for Trump, it’s a morally neutral act. Not being the tipping point is not absolution for one’s actions or inaction. And doing mental backflips to justify a vote for Trump because they were ‘just one vote’ instead of taking some time to fucking reflect if Trump winning was the outcome they wanted to support would make them an utter cretin.
The core issue is that many Americans don’t seem to care if fascism comes to America. This includes protest voters, but yes, protest voters are only a small percentage of that much-larger category.
Fascism came a long time ago, now they are just ripping off the politically correct mask.
I mean, they didn’t sacrifice American LGBT folks for a chance to save Gaza. They sacrificed us for absolutely nothing.
Actually, they sacrificed us for an even faster genocide of Gaza. So now everyone loses!
But it’s not their fault, and even if it was, America deserves genocide. /s
Yes. The naraccism prayer is on clear display with them:
That didn’t happen. And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. And if it was, that’s not a big deal. And if it is, that’s not my fault. And if it was, I didn’t mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
They’ve cleared stage four and I await to see how they spin the last two.
Based on news of Elon setting up fake pro-Trump liberal advocacy groups before the election do we know how much of these arguments are coming from legit leftists IRL vs manufactured consent? Just curious, when you say ‘they’ are these people you’ve talked to IRL or online?
There are a good number right here on Lemmy.
Others who scrubbed months of their comments immediately after the election.
Lemmy users is really not a group that represents voters in any category other than lemmy users.
I don’t believe I claimed anything otherwise - just pointing out they exist, and you can find examples here on Lemmy.
How prevalent outside of online spaces… I don’t know, not something I’d be tracking personally.
We’re probably making the classic mistake of homogenizing a heterogeneous group.
I doubt any individual holds both opinions simultaneously.
I doubt any individual holds both opinions simultaneously.
They put forth both arguments simultaneously, regardless of whether they believe one or both. Or neither.
Okay, who? Which person specifically is doing that?
Next time I run into one, I’ll send it to you.
Those aren’t mutually exclusive, you’re not that stupid so why pretend?
“There weren’t enough of us to sway the election” and “had more people worked with us we would have one” are the same statement: both point out that not enough people did the thing you’re so pissed about
“There weren’t enough of us to sway the election” and “had more people worked with us we would have one”
“Had more people agreed with us, we would have had more people who agreed with us” is not anything but a statement of obvious, if wishful, fact, and is not what is being said; not in my summary nor in the arguments of the people I’m referring to. Nor does it make any sense as an argument, explanation, or point of any kind. Utterly vacuous.
The argument being put forth, and I suspect you’re well-aware of this, is that if the Dems had taken up whatever position these protest-voters wanted, that would have convinced enough people to vote Dem who otherwise would not have done so.
that if the Dems had taken up whatever position these protest-voters wanted, that would have convinced enough people to vote Dem who otherwise would not have done so.
Yes, that is your strawman of their arguments
Yes, that is your strawman of their arguments
And your claim is that they were actually saying “If more people agreed with us, we would have more people who agreed with us.”
Would you like to explain how that is, in context, anything resembling a salient point? Or is your argument that they were spewing empty phrases, and I was wrong to apply meaning to their words?
I am so tired of strategic voting
First pass the post suuuuucks. Literally anything else is at least slightly better.
Well apart from outright vanguard single party rule or dictatorship. Absolutely.
Alaska actually had ranked choice this last election. No green candidate in a state they could have done the most good in though
deleted by creator
Just one more time bro! Just vote for the Dems one more time bro, and they’ll definitely stop being a lesser evil. I know they’ve never done anything to actually obstruct America’s slide to fascism, but just vote blue no matter who one more time bro I’m sure this is the time!
Have a look at the swiss voting system 😇 hope you see the way for improvement 😁
But first kill this stupid pardon right of president making all courts a fucking joke and waste of money
Unfortunately, that’s the only kind of voting there is, so long as there are factions and negotiations (ie always, realistically speaking).
People think of voting at the polls like an opinion poll, but it’s not, or shouldn’t be treated as such. We are the equivalent of electors in a college or legislators in a parliament. What we wield is not our opinion, it is our political power, what little sliver of it we have in the great mass of the electorate. If Senator John Q. RealtivelyLeft abstained on a bill for universal healthcare tomorrow because the wording displeased him, we wouldn’t say “Well, that’s just his opinion”, we’d lambast him for forsaking a chance to make this fucking country a little less miserable for his own petty partiality. Same with voting.
Look to your left and to your right. Your fellow voters are there, and it’s only by majority vote that anything gets passed.
Be strategic. And also, be loud and unafraid of your own position; it’s the only way the calculus on strategies changes.
Yes, and that is why you have to have a mechanism to trigger a national vote to cancel any new written law before it takes effect
It is called a referendum
As well as a way that anyone can issue a change of the constitution by triggering a so called initiative which than has to win vote to get through
And of course, make sure nothing disturbs separation of powers like a pardon law or president setting judges without a vote.
And vote for ranked voting when it comes up in local elections.
Or approval voting
I’ve been loudly and proudly critical of the democrats while also voting for Harris and urging others to do so. The democratic presidential campaign in 16 and 24 amounted to: you should vote for us because the other guy sucks. We can get into a lot more details than that, particularly on the shortcomings of the policy plank and messaging, but that’s the gist. It didn’t work in '16, there was ZERO reason to think it would work in '24, but fuck it, we can always blame the voters.
Unrelated story time, after I got my driver’s license, my alcoholic dad would get hammered and then demand that I drive him to the liquor store to buy more liquor, and if I didn’t, then I would be responsible when he crashed into someone and killed them while trying to drive himself. It was just a strategy to get me somewhere where I had to listen to him tell me what a piece of shit I was for about an hour, of course, but before I knew any better, I would comply. Eventually I just told him that he was welcome to drive himself, but I’d be letting the state patrol know how to find him.
Dunno why I remembered that story just now. Huh.
A “state patrol” would be nice about now. Know where to find one?
I was alluding to a higher jurisdictional authority which could help in this particular instance.
Ahhh, okay! Got it. Well, in this case, we might not be able to go to the authorities, given that the authorities are kinda the problem. There’s really only two things you can do when that’s the case: give up, or organize within your community to build resilience. I mean, for all the jokes about violence, Trump and Elon are symptoms as well as causes. If someone redacted them, we’d still be stuck in the same causes and conditions that led us here, so it’s not a fix. The best cure for what we have is building resilience as much as we can where we can.
Great analogy.
Not really.
If you wanna compare, the Trump version would be the alcoholic father purposely running into people on the way to the liquor store. While blaming it on somebody else.
The democratic presidential campaign in 16 and 24 amounted to: you should vote for us because the other guy sucks…It didn’t work in '16, there was ZERO reason to think it would work in '24, but fuck it, we can always blame the voters.
It wasn’t just the same strategy. It was a lot of the same people who worked on Hillary’s campaign, as well a bunch of Obama flunkies pushing the, “demographics are destiny,” narrative that keeps convincing the party they can safely ignore the working class and focus on, “moderate,” Republicans. A bunch or them went on Pod Save America to explain what happened with the Harris Campaign, and (Spoiler Alert) turns out they did everything right, the campaign was great, and everything that went wrong was someone else’s fault.
Anyway, I’m sure the OP is right, and the protest voters are why she lost. It’s definitely not the fault of the Democratic Party elites who keep re-hiring the same strategist despite their catastrophic failures. I’m gonna get a head start on making memes blaming the left for Hillary’s 2028 loss to Trump because no one learns anything and we live in hell.
Is that sarcastic nonsense at the end of your rhetoric you admitting that your protest was ineffective and a waste of time?
Because if so- then all those non-voters and third party protest votes got trump elected.
I VOTED FOR HER. But thanks for ignoring every substantive argument made about how the Dems fucked this up. It’s super fun seeing people like you learn nothing from these defeats! Can’t wait to watch this happen again in 2028 because you guys refuse to hold Democrats accountable for campaigns designed to appeal donors and consultants instead of voters! Keep enabling them, it’s going great!
You voted for her while explaining how awful you thought she was, which put other voters off voting for her. The election was won for Donald “ethnic cleansing” Trump by people staying home because Harris was so flawed, a point made by republicans and useful left wing idiots alike.
“Yes, you voted for her, but you vocally criticized her. You’re not allowed to speak out against the party like that.” Do you fucking hear yourself yet? Do you still not understand why people call you Blue MAGA?
“Yes, you voted for her, but you vocally criticized her. You’re not allowed to speak out against the party like that.”
Do you not think campaigning has an effect?
If all it took was people on social grumbling about their terrible policy plank to sink the campaign, maybe, just maybe, they ran a shit campaign and there’s lessons to be learned.
You’re right, Pug, a billion dollars in direct spending was derailed by people pointing out the bad things they were seeing. It definitely wasn’t the bad things that cost her the election, just the people acknowledging that the bad things existed and suggesting she do something different. I forgot, if you’re in a car with someone who is about to drive or a cliff, the best thing you can do is remain quiet; you wouldn’t want to distract the driver with your negativity. Once again, Pug, your brilliant insights have saved the day.
Upvoting before mods delete this
there was ZERO reason to think it would work in '24
Aside from the fact that it worked in 2020, you mean?
They did do some of it in 20, but Biden actually brought some stuff to the table; two things that spring to mind are student loan forgiveness and national passenger rail revitalization, there’s probably some others I can’t think of ATM. Yeah, in hindsight, the loan forgiveness ended up not being much to write home about, and the rail revitalization might be getting derailed, but at least he had some actually useful and interesting policy planks besides “not Trump” and “look, it’s [celebrity]!”
You’re underselling it. They had Bernie Sanders help them write an economically-populist platform in 2020. For all of Biden’s many, many faults, he saw which way the wind was blowing in 2020 and leaned into it. Then, in 2024, they decided it was safe to move back to a middle-class centric, moderate economic message, and boy, was that a bad idea.
Not only that, but many (but not all) of the implementations of those policies were either middling or incomplete, and there was still so much further to go on progressive economic policies, that it was truly baffling to me that they basically rolled out the “mission accomplished” banner on the economy when the 2024 campaigns were asked about it. Democrats seem terminally terrified of casting stones within the party, to the point of refusing to acknowledge the reality that voters are experiencing because it might make the guys not seeking election look bad. It was frustrating to see that while I was financially worse off then when Biden took office, as was almost everyone else I knew, the democrats were crowing about how great the economy was and essentially declaring economic victory for Biden. I remember getting banned by more than one Mastodon account and labelled a Trump supporter when I raised concerns that this messaging was going to fail to resonate.
It’s similarly frustrating now to see the Democratic party leadership and presidential campaign staff saying “well, yes, that makes twice we’ve lost what should have been the easiest election ever, but we made no mistakes and have nothing to learn here except that we need to be more like Republicans.” Likewise, it’s concerning to see Democrats legitimizing this administration and already announcing that they’re eager to work with them where their priorities align. It makes me think a lot about how back in the 30s, the capitalists were all too ready to align with the Nazis, and a big chunk of the democrats are occupied by the crony capitalist block. I really hope the democrats as a party can get their shit together on a national level, but I’m not counting on it. I’m expecting a lot of lip service about resistance as 96% of them fall in line.
100% spot on, although I will say this; it’s not that Democrats are too scared of casting stones within their party. It’s that they’re too terrified of displaying behavior that would displease donors. They’re happy to throw Jamaal Bowman or Rashida Tlaib under the bus if AIPAC is displeased. They’ll sideline AOC if her rhetoric makes one of their, “good,” billionaires nervous. They’ve been trying to find a balance between making their wealthy benefactors and their working class base happy for years now, and they still haven’t figured out that those goals are antithetical.
Well, they were correct that right-wing rhetoric was popular. Diet Republican will just never beat the real thing.
I’m sure if they just go little further right they’ll get 'em next time.
Biden ran a much different campaign.
Harris ran a much more progressive yet inclusive campaign then Biden but I don’t think people were ready to vote for a Black Indian woman.
You can’t be serious with this more progressive than Biden bullshit?
Harris had Cheney and corporations cozying up to her. She acted like she was going to be progressive at first and then she decided to go after those moderate voters. If she was a little bit progressive then she would have allowed the Palestinian to speak at the DNC. Instead she let some right wingers and a billionaire.
People who called themselves progressives had more and more strict purity tests on what actually makes someone progressive until they decided to support the Republicans.
Progressive for who? Not the workers. Not for unions . Not for regulation. Who was it Progressive for? There’s this myth that she was super Progressive but I didn’t see any evidence of it anywhere. The few Progressive movements of the Biden White House we’re on the chopping block for Harris. She nominated a great vice president choice and then she put them in the closet so no he couldn’t spread the message. Her intentions were very clear she was running well to the right of Joe Biden’s campaign.
She was very clearly for big business and for this mythical middle class that doesn’t even exist anymore. She could give a shit about the working class. A sentiment that was being shared by the way in interviews of potential voters which is how you knew she was about to lose.
The few progressive movements of the Biden White House were on the chopping block for Harris.
Which ones?
So Harris was so far right you all flocked to Trump or didn’t vote to send a message that you’d go further right?
And there it is. The old Hillary Clinton that’s all I fucking have campaign in a nutshell. Immediately accuse them of liking Donald Trump. Because the only thing they are is not Trump. Lost them two elections. It’s going to lose them every other election ever to come if we even get any. Cuz these fucking neoliberals have nothing for us. They can’t run on their Promises to the voters because they don’t have any. Every freaking time.
…and they won’t court the leftist because they don’t/won’t vote so it’s just going to go further right.
Why are y’all so obsessed with third party voters lmao
If they can blame the voters then the DNC doesn’t need to change.
Sounds true… but if you remove one excuse, they will find another. They would rather go down with the ship than change.
After all, changing means losing thier cash flow and influence. Letting the reps win means they can probably keep those things for the rest of their personal lives. They’ll be dead before we become a true one party system.
OP has lost their shit over third party voters every day since the election.
I voted 3rd party in the last UK election, it probably helps that our system is 650 elections at once across the country. You are only voting for your local representative. But it is still FPTP which is pretty bad as a system, it’s still less shit than the US system though.
My thinking is that sure they won’t win this time but if support for them starts to increase (it is doing so) then the party may at some point put more focus on this area for a future election and win. This is how they have now got some influence and also if you look at the local level it takes even less. Most local council elections where I live are won with less than 1000 total votes because they cover pretty small areas. There are of course also cases where a party loses narrowly because of a 3rd party, a local one here had the minor parties fighting between each other and the incumbent national party came dead last with 5%.
Because it would be the solution to a better voting system
More parties are better, because there is never just black or wait (or better said just blue and red)
The world is more nuanced than that, but sadly this is already too complex for too many people.
Personally I’m impressed with their sneaky support and unyielding praise of the genocide they administered directly.
To all third party protest voters: I hope you get a red hot wire coat hanger forced into your anus.
Just to be clear this is not a threat, I am unwilling to shove the hanger up your ass. I just want someone else to step up and handle it. (Kinda like your own unwillingness to think critically before a major election, ironic isn’t it?)
These statements aren’t contradictory
Why is this a controversial comment? They truly aren’t.
Fuck off. Those of us who disliked Biden and thought Harris wasn’t enough held our contempt and voted against the bad man. Dems offered nothing compelling, only the stick of a worse outcome. Bring policies like healthcare, housing, and ending genocide and see what outcome you get instead.
But keep blaming progressives rather than fixing your failing party that now got us TWO wins for the bad man.
Those of us who disliked Biden and thought Harris wasn’t enough held our contempt and voted against the bad man.
Yeah, except for the fact that I know a lot who didn’t. It might be a shock to you, but there was a big push in left-leaning communities here on Lemmy and elsewhere on the web to either not vote for Harris or not vote at all. It was so fucking full-force in major leftist communities with so little interest in Trump that I’m convinced it was a targeted disinfo campaign. One that worked.
Lemmy and leftists communities aren’t even a blip on the graph. Go to a PA town and ask them what lemmy is. Or what communism is for that matter. They voted trump because his misinfo campaign was way larger than the one you’re complaining about. And also because the democrats suck.
I love when people ignore parts of my comments for the sake of their argument.
Cope harder. Your comment sucked and I addressed the parts that were worth anything.
I think so too…
When liberals lose, they always blame someone else.
This is what happens when your campaign entirely consists of cringe memes, preaching “civility”, and talking about how eager you are to submit to the wills of the opposition.
I can’t tell if you voted for Harris because you said you voted against the bad man but are being really defensive of the people who helped Trump win.
If you did anything but vote Harris, you did not vote against Trump in our shitty first-past-the-post system. Don’t kid yourself.
I voted against Trump. Voting for Trump wouldn’t be a vote against Biden. Reading further down thread with the attacks you have against another commenter, I don’t think you’re terribly literate at understanding people who disagree with you. It’s either that or disingenuous because you want to fight. Your pick.
If we’re going to start blaming people who let Trump win, let’s start with Joe Biden, who was too stubborn to drop out before the 2024 primary. Then, let’s move on to his aides, who kept his declining cognitive abilities from the public. Then let’s move on to any Democratic Party members who met with Biden before the 2024 election and were aware of his diminished capacity. Then let’s move on to the members of the DNC who decided to protect Biden from real primary challengers (they drove Dean Phillips out of politics for trying to run, by the way), despite the fact that 60% of Democrats wanted a different candidate.
Once we’re done blaming those people, let’s move on to blaming Harris, who did nothing to distance herself from Biden on Gaza despite knowing that it was polling very poorly with a base she needed to motivate. Then let’s blame her for adopting a flacid, middle-class oriented economic policy and abandoning the economic populism that worked in 2020. Let’s also blame Harris’ top strategists, Jen O’Malley Dillon, David Plouffe, Quentin Fulks, and Stephanie Cutter, who ran the same strategy of trying to flip moderate Republicans that lost in 2020.
Anyway, once we’ve held all those people accountable for letting Trump win, then maybe we can see if there’s any blame left for protesting leftists or apathetic working-class voters. And before you ask, yes, I voted for Harris. I just don’t hold the powerless accountable for the powerfuls’ mistakes.
I just don’t hold the powerless accountable for the powerfuls’ mistakes.
…So you agree advocating against Harris was a mistake? The thing that everyone else said would be a mistake?
How are these people any different than “I care about the economy” voters who never verified any of Trumps claims? Just a little mistake, nothing to hold against them.
…So you agree advocating against Harris was a mistake? The thing that everyone else said would be a mistake?
What the ever loving fuck are you talking about? You think when I said the powerful, i meant Muslims and anti-war protesters who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Harris? Or working-class voters who decided Harris’ shitty economic plan wasn’t worth standing in a poll line? And I guess you must have thought the powerless were the people who spent over a billion dollars campaigning with Mark Cuban? Is that how broken your brain is?
What the ever loving fuck are you talking about? You think when I said the powerful, i meant Muslims and anti-war protesters who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Harris?
It would seem that they felt that punishing the powerless for Harris’s mistakes was okay.
Seriously Pug? You think that Muslims watching their people get ethnically cleansed aren’t powerless? You think college students getting beaten by cops and accused of antisemitism for protesting a genocide aren’t the powerless? You think people exercising the tiniest amount of control they have over their democracy by withholding their vote means their not the powerless ones? How many groups are willing to scapegoat before you start holding people with actual institutional power accountable?
Seriously Pug? You think that Muslims watching their people get ethnically cleansed aren’t powerless? You think college students getting beaten by cops and accused of antisemitism for protesting a genocide aren’t the powerless? You think people exercising the tiniest amount of control they have over their democracy by withholding their vote means their not the powerless ones?
Your argument is that the powerless shouldn’t be held accountable for the sins of the powerful. Yet simultaneously, you claim that voters punishing American minorities with genocide and a fascist regime is justified, because of the sins of the Dem elite.
Sorry that you think that welcoming genocide is only bad when Dem elites do it, and not when voters ushering in fascism do it.
We’re talking voters, dude. No idea why you keep bringing up POWER as if people are incapable of blaming two things at once. The Democrats blew it, no doubt about it.
But anyone that didn’t vote for Harris helped Trump win.
It’s literally the first comment, dude. I detail a huge fucking list of powerful people who fucked up so bad the Democrats lost to one of the least popular Presidents of all time, then ended it with, “Anyway, once we’ve held all those people accountable for letting Trump win, then maybe we can see if there’s any blame left for protesting leftists or apathetic working-class voters.” It’s literally a politicians job to win elections, but this community is full of memes blaming the left because the Democrats suck at their job.
The existence of people more deserving of blame doesn’t absolve the people less deserving of blame for their faults. Stein voters/non-voters are not blameless here.
I despise the Democratic Party. That doesn’t make me less pissed off at the voters who campaigned against her
I see the people who insisted that they had to keep doing the genocide for the election are still trying to blame everyone else
And allowing Trump to return to power is stopping the genocide how exactly?
Because at this point it’s getting worse and there’s soon to be a second genocide going on here in the US.
Soo much better!/s
Yea, maybe you should have pressured Kamala to flip on this like I was posting about for a fucking year before the election. Instead centrists told Arabs, Latinos, the poor, and other minorities to fuck off and this is the result. Now you’re here pathetically posting stuff like this almost daily to make yourself feel better, but its really transparent and gross.
You entirely dodged the question.
How was allowing Trump to return to power stopping the genocide? How is it not worse?
Instead centrists told Arabs, Latinos, the poor, and other minorities to fuck off and this is the result.
Remember when you lot said “Fuck off, I don’t WANT the non-fascist candidate, let the fascist candidate who despises minorities and openly yearns for their death, win”?
Good times.
I’ll be sure to show up at your door vomiting blood when they strip Medicaid from the ‘unworthy’. Assuming that comes before the camps for those on psychiatric medication for ‘healing through labor’. And probably both of those will come before the Racial Hygiene laws, so I can’t do it after that.
Remember how I said I voted for her and have said I would be voting dem the whole time and you still insist I didn’t. I also said that Gaza would look really bad for them and would lose them michigan but you insisted that changing their mind was political suicide. So glad they listened to people like you.
Remember how I said I voted for her and have said I would be voting dem the whole time and you still insist I didn’t.
I don’t remember this, though it’s certainly possible, considering how many people playing stupid games I argued with during the lead-up to the election.
I also said that Gaza would look really bad for them and would lose them michigan but you insisted that changing their mind was political suicide.
My opinion on the public opinion on Gaza changed all the way back in March with the emergence of new polling numbers on US Dem and independent opinion on the genocide. Before March I said that it was impractical for the Dems to change their platform when the majority of Dems still supported Israel (or did not support the removal of aid, which amounts to the same thing). Having lived through the US electorate sleeping through Israeli genocide several times in my short life, I don’t think it’s ridiculous that I thought they’d sleep through it again, while us few who cared about foreign policy looked on in horror, as we had the last three times.
I did opine at several points after March that I understood why a change may not be a net gain since opinions were deeply divided, but that they should commit to an anti-genocide anyway, since either position had become a losing position with regards to large portions of the electorate.
So glad they listened to people like you.
Did Gaza protest votes lose the Dems the election or not? I wish you lot would make up your mind.
I think they contributed significantly, but I put the blame on the people who decided Genocide at all costs, aka the candidates.
I don’t think the genocide was the deciding factor. I don’t think winning over swing voters on both sides of the genocide would’ve saved us, unfortunately. The numbers which came in after election day were… not close enough, and the issue not rated highly enough by voters to make up the difference.
I put significant blame on Biden for ignorantly trundling forward for months despite internal polling telling him that he was cooked, some blame on Harris and her allies for running a shite campaign, and the overwhelming amount of blame on the ~90 million voters who said “I don’t care if fascism wins” and the ~77 million who said “I want fascism to win”.
In a just world, Biden would be reviled as the man who lost the republic, and I intend to put that forward regularly for as long as I can. In a just world, Harris’s political career would be dead. I’m less dedicated to that. But neither of their flaws or positions justifies letting fascism win. If Biden and Harris deserve a noose, even, that would still not mean that the electorate was not at fault. The final choice between fascism and a non-fascist regime was ultimately decided by the electorate, not the candidates. You can place blame on the chef who makes a burnt stir-fry and loses the contest for incompetence or malice, but in the end, it’s the judges who decided that they preferred the “Glass, arsenic, and dogshit sandwich” - or didn’t care enough to make a decision either way - who made the ultimate decision.
For those who sat by and let fascism win despite being nominally left-wing, this is essentially an expression of frustration.
This wasn’t even “Trump supports my one issue”. That would be ridiculous, but there’s a logic to it, if one legitimately values a single issue above all others. But it wasn’t. For all of them who stood by and let Trump win, they did so with the knowledge that Trump was worse on the issue they were supposedly protesting against.
It’s exhausting. To see people complain about support for genocide and then decide that if they can’t stop it, they’re okay with INCREASING support for genocide, and starting a few new ones for good measure.
And honestly, I’m only a little pissed that I’m in the sights of the regime, if not the first target (that, unfortunately, will be our trans countrymen and women). Mostly I’m pissed at the idea that ‘left’ people embraced injustice entirely without gain out of either spite or sheer empty-headed thoughtlessness. Are they the lynchpin? Would they have saved us? Probably not. Maybe if they put 100% in campaigning, but I can hardly blame them for not doing that. But they should have known better than to stand by and let fascism in. By the values they preach, they should have known better. And by the fact that most of them still prefer puffing up their inaction as some form of heroic resistance instead of a contribution to a literal fascist victory?
Well, forgive me for not wanting that narrative of ‘Inaction against fascism is heroic’ to take root, in case we still have elections in four years. God only knows what kind of margin of victory or defeat we’ll be dealing with.
And allowing Trump to return to power is stopping the genocide how exactly? Because at this point it’s getting worse
Uh… Big news, fella, there was a ceasefire. Kamala openly said during campaigning that under her rule America would always have “the most lethal armed forces in the world”.
I see the people who obnoxiously shouted at everyone that bOtH SiDeS aRe tHe sAmE for months before the election are beginning to see that they’re not.
It’s too bad they share commonality with MAGA in their shared lack of shame to admit it.
Now it’s OUR turn to tell you we told you so, only we’re far less smug about it.
It is never about winning the election. Or voting in a third party.
What the radical left are doing is sitting out in protest of a broken system. Over here in the UK we had the lowest voter any living generation would have witnessed. The reason why is we are disenfranchised and won’t support the elites.
This is the kindling of a revolution.
Anyone who doesn’t understand this should school themselves on historic materialism. No amount of wining will change how large swafts of people react to their material condition.
deleted by creator
This is a great point. I am a paying member of the SP. I attend major demos across the southwest. Currently building housing unions in my city.
Voting in neo-librisism I won’t do.
Voting in neo-librisism I won’t do.
Yeah, we get it, you won’t vote against fascism and genocide. You’re too pure for that.
Let the suffering of minorities sanctify your cause.
Scratch a liberal a fascist bleeds.
Scratch a liberal a fascist bleeds.
“Letting people be genocided is bad” is apparently a liberal take now, and liberalism is, of course, fascism.
How curious.
deleted by creator
I’m not speaking for the person you’re replying to, nor do I necessarily approve of the actions of what I’m about to share, but I certainly know someone who doesn’t vote but does go to rallies and very often writes/calls their representative and senators. (Though I do think they voted this election cycle for Harris, which was extremely rare for them.)
deleted by creator
Sitting out has definitely been a form of protest. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_bus_boycott
Hell democracy is measured by political votes, a nation with low voter turn out are considered non democratic.
This is not a good counterexample. A boycott has immediate financial consequences for the boycotted company/industry. No such pressure is generated by sitting out an election.
In fact, a central strategy of the right wing in the United States is to reduce overall voter turnout, which is achieved either by restricting access to voting or by discouraging voter participation. By sitting out the vote you did exactly what the right wing wanted you to do.
deleted by creator
This same argument can be used with electoral protest. It would be disingenuous to say none voting in protest materialised from nothing.
Yes? Congratulations, you are therefore contributing to our continued democratic decline.
I don’t see your point. If people aren’t voting then that is a symptom and not a cause. I think also a nuanced lens helps with this. People not voting isn’t binary. some knowingly protest, some are seeing the slow encroachment of inequality and just couldn’t care less which leader will continue to fuck them over.
deleted by creator
There has never, ever been anything approaching a protest that starts with the words “sitting out”.
In a sense you’re right, but it seems like a lot of people participating in this discussion may have a misunderstanding of the history of disagreements about electoralism on the revolutionary left.
Historically, some members of the left don’t want to waste time and resources participating in electoralism that could be spent doing other things that contribute to the revolution that will happen when the Bourgeois electoral system inevitably collapses.
Others want to participate to signal the point when that collapse has inevitably occurred because the corruption will have become blatantly obvious.
Personally, I don’t think just going in and voting counts as the kind of participation that theory is describing (that is, running in elections, participating in campaigns, etc.)
On the other hand, it has also become blatantly obvious to me, personally, at this point that on a national level my vote just doesn’t count. My vote is dictated by the capitalist class owned and controlled media telling everyone which states will vote which way. The puppet politicians aren’t vying for popular support, they’re vying for oligarch support and the media they control to sway that population. It’s voter manipulation on an unbelievable scale that sounds like a conspiracy theory, but I can’t ignore that it has become blatantly obvious to me that the system is rigged by the capitalist class, and participation in it (at higher levels) is pointless.
when the Bourgeois electoral system inevitably collapses.
What you guys don’t get is that when the electoral system eventually collapses it will be far too late, and any chance of your revolution ever happening will be long gone.
What do you think a revolution is if not a collapse of the previous system?
Edit: also, it has already collapsed. That should have been evident in the 2016 primaries.
Just so I understand, you’d rather wait around until the complete collapse of society rather than take five minutes to go vote, is that right? Because what, a democrat might accidently get elected and give you healthcare, but he might get some money from a corporation or something to do it so fuck that, right?
You understand that if things ever got bad enough for the system to collapse it would not be a communist paradise that arises from the ashes, right?
I seriously don’t understand you people. This is like chopping your whole hand off because your fingernails need trimming.Edit: also, it has already collapsed. That should have been evident in the 2016 primaries. You don’t actually own anything of value, like a house or a car, I take it.
Just so I understand, you’d rather wait around until the complete collapse of society rather than take five minutes to go vote, is that right?
Given this response, I’m guessing you read less than a paragraph in to my original response and decided you needed to wield your superior intellect and values and produce a “gotcha” response while not actually understanding what you were reading.
You don’t actually own anything of value, like a house or a car, I take it.
I own a relatively large house and multiple cars. I have a wife and a dog and a daughter and a granddaughter. I have lots of completely unnecessary consumer goods. Likely I’m more well off than you. Just because I can play and succeed in the capitalist game doesn’t mean I don’t recognize it for the oppressive system that it is and sympathize with the people that didn’t get as lucky as me.
You so badly want to pounce you have to build a straw man to dislike instead of trying to understand a perspective different from your own. You are a petty person.
Given this response, I’m guessing you read less than a paragraph in to my original response and decided you needed to wield your superior intellect and values and produce a “gotcha” response while not actually understanding what you were reading.
Couldn’t think of a witty comeback, huh?
I own a relatively large house and multiple cars. I have a wife and a dog and a daughter and a granddaughter.
You obviously don’t seem to care about the kind of country they grow up in, since you’re too lazy to do the absolute minimum required to prevent them from growing up in a fascist hellhole.
You so badly want to pounce you have to build a straw man to dislike instead of trying to understand a perspective different from your own. You are a petty person.
All I’m saying is that fascism is here, which side are you on? Because if you’re just going to sit this one out, then you’re on the side of the fascists.
It is never about winning the election. Or voting in a third party.
Thank you for admitting it. Many of us poors and minorities will die, but that is a sacrifice you are oh-so-nobly willing to make.
You are missing the point, voting in a party that has been moving slowly right isn’t a way to fix it.
deleted by creator
I don’t believe in accelerationism either, the USSR went from shit to worse with no sign of changing. But I recognise that fascism is on the rise, and no amount of finger pointing will stop it. People need to radicalise and actually do something. Voting won’t fix the ruin that is the neo liberal project and the debt its forced us into.
deleted by creator
Not voting discredits the allusion of democracy. I’m all for voting within ones own interest. But I won’t treat someone with hostility for they’re choice.
deleted by creator
Oh, I’m missing the point, of course, sending the disadvantaged to their deaths by a reactionary fascist regime is a small detail when you have the Upcoming Revolution™.
I mean, it’s been Upcoming™ for decades now, but THIS time, with no organization, it’ll happen; definitely, you guys! THIS time the blood of minorities will sanctify your efforts!
The genocidaires will make every move of any revolutionary more difficult and more costly by their control over the levers of power. It would have cost you next to nothing to help avert a genocide. And allowing the genocide will gain the revolution nothing.
And yet, here it is, ushered in primarily by the apathy of the American electorate; an apathy embraced and celebrated by would-be revolutionaries.
News flash: you were going to be sacrificed by the corporations anyway. Voting blue or red legitimizes the system, so if anything, you’re the one elongating the struggle.
Voting blue or red legitimizes the system, so if anything, you’re the one elongating the struggle.
“Elongating the struggle”? What, do you want minorities to kill ourselves as fast as we can and get it over with, in the hopes that once we’re dead, that tragedy will Inspire The Masses to give you your deeply desired revolution?
And you don’t think this is already happening. Look at our prison systems, the wars we fund, the number of homeless people on our streets. Things are rotten to the core and good for you in your unbridled support of neo-librisism but I’m out, I will be active in meaningful political action at demos, door to door but I won’t be pointing fingers playing this sad blame game you guys enjoy so dearly. Keep towing the line and see where you end up.
And portraying this as me killing disadvantage people is so fucking rotten you should be ashamed. I know what its like to be homeless. How it feels for the education system to fail. The brutality of job security. The none existent programmes for mental health in the UK.
But again keep towing the line that allows this broken system to produce fascism.
And you don’t think this is already happening.
Ultra-privileged shite. Jesus fucking Christ. Sorry that the lives of minorities aren’t worth anything to you, I know posing online with your buddies is much more important.
Not a lot to work with Pug.
Yeah, if your response to looking at the Trump administration’s openly declared desires and, even now, a fucking WEEK into this hell, already-passed executive orders, is to declare “Well this was already happening”, there’s not much to fucking talk about. Some of us are going to have our already-hard lives get significantly worse, and quite possibly end.
Every fucking day is a struggle, and seeing people who proclaim themselves as allies of the disadvantaged help flush what little we have down the fucking shitter?
There’s not a lot to be said except that it’s ultra-privileged shite.
By doing so they’re allowing fascists to take over. Isn’t it in your best interest, as a leftist, to prevent the fascist take over of your country?
And before you say “The country is already run by fascists,” over here our immigration dept. is now starting to detain Native Americans. The president is deporting school children. Even other American citizens who aren’t white are being detained. That simply was not happening under the previous president.Fascism is born from economic issues and tention usually created by rich people to move the blame. We have a labour party in place in the UK, Elon Musk has already involved himself in our politics. Reform uk is poling 25% and labour 26%. labour hasn’t even been in for half a year.
Fascism is battled in the streets and unions, historically this is what has happened.
Fascism can be seen as the endpoint of capitalism, when a system predicated on infinite growth hits the ceiling. While yes vote in your interest I wouldn’t depend on politicians to fix the systemic issue that is capitalism.
Edit for clarification: Reform UK are a nationalist party. Labour were a socialist party for workers, now they are liberals willing to sell whatever isn’t strapped down.
None of this changes the fact that by not voting against the fascists, you’re doing nothing to prevent them from taking control of the government.
I struggle to see a direction capitalism can go after topping out.
I struggle to see why it’s such a hard thing for people to do the absolute minimum required to prevent fascists from taking power. Why is it like pulling teeth to get leftists to be civically engaged?
Still thinking the people to blame are the DNC elites that went on to run on a right platform, even inviting fucking war criminal mass murderer Dick Cheney to advocate for them.
Also Trump is not something that just happened. The US is an empire in decline and Trump is a symptom of that. The conditions of decline are maintained by the Republicans and Democrats and voting either won’t be enough to turn things around.
Its been time to fundamentally reform the political system at the very least since 2016.
Its been time to fundamentally reform the political system at the very least since 2016.
Yea, it was happening, not very fast but RCV or other FPTP alternatives were spreading. Now it’s probably going to take a back seat now that Trump and Co has returned to power. Yet another consequence of the short sighted bLuEmAGa folk
As I said in another thread elsewhere on the same subject:
The Protest Vote Paradox™
As we’ve all read time after time in the months leading up to the election, the Protest Vote™ simply states states that:
“We refuse to vote against a Tyrant-Felon in order to send a clear and concise message that we will not stand for [roll D20 for random popular single issue], and alongside our refusal to vote against the Tyrant-Felon, is a collective hope that the aforementioned clear and concise message- if ignored, is received under unmitigated duress!”
-Cut to Tyrant-Felon’s win, and the aftermath:
Whether observed or not, the behavior of the Protest Voter will attempt to achieve the following:
• Obnoxiously tell everyone “We told you all what would happen!”
• Onnoxiously claim there is “No way protest voting could cause trump to win.”As both of these options cannot simultaneously be true in the same reality without breaking important time-space things that we would probably prefer not be broken- we are left with only a few logical conclusions:
- Protest voters have no idea what they’re talking about.
- Protest voters don’t understand the concept of hypocrisy.
- Protest voters have somehow learned to defy reality and become exempt from the concept of paradoxes, thus creating an entirely new study of theoretical science, known as Bulletproof Symbiotic Hypocrisy Theory, or BLsHt.
Something, something, something Ted Talk.
As both of these options cannot simultaneously be true
They absolutely can. Protest voters not voting don’t encompass every democrat vote lost, there are simply many unconvinced people who became apathetic and didn’t vote despite having nothing to do with protest voters, with the latter being a minority. Stop your logical fallacies based on false premises.
So, you’re claiming that the protest both worked to help elect trump, and simultaneously didn’t work to help elect trump……
Gotcha.
I’m claiming that protest voting wasn’t a significant factor in trump being elected, unlike democrats running on having the, I quote, “most lethal army in the world” during an ongoing genocide, bringing the Cheney, and a myriad of other problems. The dems only have themselves to blame for being incapable of offering a better, more desirable option than Donald J fucking Trump
Sooooooo…. All the people saying “you should have listened to us!” and, “We told you this would happen!”
Liars?
Because a LOT of you seem to think that your little protest was a clear message sent and received.
All the people saying “you should have listened to us!” and, “We told you this would happen!”
Liars?
Not liars, just unaware that, outwards (i.e. internationally), there is no difference in policy between democrats and republicans. Now, what are you gonna do, bash to the left of you (the ones who actually organise to fight against fascism), or join us?
Okay, so-
It DID work and you all successfully got trump elected?
You’re kind of making my point for me here. Pick a lane and stick with it. Either your protest was effective and you take credit for where we are now, or it was a waste of time and effort.
The protest is effective not from the electoral standpoint because that was never the objective. The objective wasn’t to decide between lite fascism and open fascism, the goal was to hopefully push the dem administration further towards the left with the collective effort of dem voters. Too sad thay you’d rather suck Cheney than actually force dems to adopt a progressive platform. And by still sucking up to them you are actively saying that they can bring another ghoul next elections because you’ll vote blue no Mather who
- Protest voters fell for a propaganda campaign (maybe by the republicans, maybe by Russia or China trying to destabilise the USA).
all of the above, plus perhaps iran, dprk…
Occam’s razor that versus the campaign was SO POORLY RAN that it didn’t inspire people to vote against a literal dictator.
We fucking told you so:
