No,
I think we’ve decided this. The left (rightfully) hates the Democrats.
Yes, but I hate Trump more.
An inch of gained ground is better than a mile of lost ground.What gained ground?
No ground was gained Trump won. Decades of progress erased in 7 months. The genocide in Israel has accelerated. And our economy is crashing.
If Dems won and kept things as they were 7 months ago everything would be demonstrably better than they are now.
Would there still be issues? Of course there are always issues, but it would have been much better.
That’s true I guess. Way too superficial for my liking, but that’s outside the scope of this conversation. The person I replied to said there would be (small) gains from electing Harris, not just less losses, so I was asking for them yo elaborate.
To address small gains I could have seen at the very least Roe v. Wade being codified by a Harris White House.
Then why didn’t they do that in Biden’s term?
Republican controlled house and senate following midterms. Roe was overturned after mid-terms
While this is all true, i can’t imagine that the left would have been celebrating a democratic win today if she won in the fall. If they truly wanted a democratic win (or to gain an inch) they would have pinched their noses and voted for Kamala
Gay marriage rights, the railroad unions got their sick leave, the rich were being audited created serious revenue gains and if the DNC were in charge then the TCJA wouldn’t have been renewed meaning even more taxing of the rich.
The railroad unions thing is patently false (they wanted a lot more sick leave and a lot more than sick leave), but also: I’m asking what would’ve improved, not what would’ve not deteriorated or what improved in the past.
Okay I’m sorry that decades of evidence of improvements aren’t enough to convince you that things would have improved again, but then my statement about the TCJA expiring in 2026 and not becoming permanent still qualifies as an answer. We would be taxing the fucking rich. How can you even pretend that’s not what we should be doing?
Leftists hate democrats so much they helped vote in Trump instead of a very decent woman twice.
The only thing leftists hate more then democrats are other leftists.
Leftists aren’t numerous enough to have had much an effect on the election.
But I will confirm your second statement.
Two things:
Leftists did vote for Clinton. (You’ll recall she got more votes.) That is despite the fact that she was a piece-of-shit candidate that we didn’t want, and didn’t win the primary.
Kamala was just plain stupidity. You can’t look poor people in the eye for three months and tell them you won’t change anything and still claim to be decent, much less a legitimate presidential candidate.
Respectfully, you’re being very unreasonable. You don’t get to punch the voters in the face and then whine that you broke your hand.
Your profile is interesting. It’s almost like you believe a minority can do everything because you’re “right.” Are you in the burn it all down camp?
Artist, musical performer, and former derby skater from the Midwest.
I’m single, childless, and married to freedom and adventure.
ACAB, Anti-War, and I hate Democrats, Republicans, and billionaires.
Biden still got the most votes of any presidential candidates.
I’m rubbing the non-voter’s noses in the mess they made and hope they’ll do better in the midterms.
Without COVID Biden would have lost too.
Though, it was important to see Democrats demonstrate, publicly, that brain damage and genocide are not disqualifiers for the presidency in their view.
Biden’s ass cancer would have been a better president than the one we ended up with.
How’s the genocide working out, I think Trump is about to give away Ukraine and Israel is about to take over Gaza City, no?
Kamala wasn’t a great candidate. But there were 2 options, and the other is deploying the military against civilians, ignoring due process.and court orders, and ordering states to imprison the homeless while ensuring an economic collapse that will create more homeless people.
Ignoring the problems with Bidens’ and then Harris’ campaign, which were disastrous and failed to earn the votes of many working class Americans, is precisely how the Democrats will continue to lose even in the face of unpopular fascist opposition.
Zohran Mamdani has been a microcosm of this paradigm shift. Progressive policies are incredibly popular because they address the material harms people face. Anti-israel policies are incredibly popular and only getting more so as Israel and the US continue to facilitate this genocide.
The corporate neoliberalism of the Democratic Party establishment is a critical part of the problem that got us to fascism. We need progressive candidates at all levels to dramatically reform the party and represent the working class constituency it’s supposed to represent.
I think you have definitely nailed the issues of the most of the Democratic Party politicians in power. The Democratic Party Politicians don’t necessarily represent the interests of their leftist-liberal voters. They probably will continue to not do so if they are in safe seats and funded by corporations.
What needs to change at the local level, state level, and federal level is implementing an Alternative Voting system. As this is the key way we will be able to get progressive politicians, that support progressive policies, into power.
NYC had Ranked Choice Voting and it likely contributed in part to people feeling to vote their conscience and list Mamdani at the top of the ticket.
it has been shown that many counties voting places were rigged for trump, so she wouldve won anyways, if she hadnt actually conceded too quickly. Also dems dont fight election rigging by the gop at all.
Yeah, true progressives are great.
But that doesn’t mean you should hand power to treasonous, fascist rapists when your favorite candidate doesn’t get the nomination.
The Democratic Party did hand over power to treasonous fascist rapists, and they did so by running such a bad campaign, despite the consistent polling and public sentiment that showed exactly what needed to change. That’s precisely the issue I’m getting at. The Democratic Party establishment clearly prefers losing to fascists over representing everyday americans
Right…here we go with the purity tests again. If you don’t believe exactly what I believe, you dont deserve my vote. Its this attitude that got us a second Trump presidency, and how’s that working out for us?
Purity test = genocide good or bad.
If you fail this test, you deserve everything that happens to you.
If there is anything worthwhile for being a purity test, it’s being pro or anti genocide.
How can people expect any party who doesn’t care about genocide, to care about democracy?
harris was not voted for, purely out of sexisms, sorry but even people on the left can be a little sexist.
Fuck outta here, liberals shit on the left as much as conservatives do.
liberalsleftists shit on the leftFTFY
They’re not that unified & don’t set aside their differences to work toward a common goal.
Case in point: trying to divide left liberals from the left.
I mean in a normal country liberals are on the right of the political spectrum and close to the conservative? Cfr. macronist France.
Liberals are only on the left in the US because the US is far right.
At this point, I just want the lesser of the two evils.
You know, like leftist vs a fucking lunatic fascist pedo rapist who is burning our country to the ground as if his addled slimy ass is going to take any of it with him when he finally cacks.
Yes, we need things to get cleaned out of the Barney Horror Picutre Show, but if we give up ground about twice more, it’ll just be full-on Right vs Right. The next person that goes in has to be left of Biden at the very least or no margins will be made. We couldn’t even get we’ll stop funding the atrocities in Gaza out of the “left” candidate last time.
Should it have been K? F yeah in comparison, but give us something to drag people out of the house to vote for.
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That’s sort of the point of my post. It’s trying to poke fun on people not knowing the difference and depending on how the person define the terms. Instead, they called this post a “psyops” and I guess I also inadvertently caused another leftist/liberal (in-)fighting depending how you look at it.
Agreed. But also, you can just ignore those terms entirely and focus on actual issues…
100%
This is pointless identitarian bullshit that does nothing to stop the fascists currently in charge of the United States.
It all makes me a bit suspicious.
I hate liberals more than conservatives because at least with conservatives they don’t go around pretending to be on my side while doing heinous shit. Conservatives just do the heinous shit without the pretense.
american believing they have a left, Center left is the extreme end of the left in america, theres no lefter than that. most of them are on center right.
Are you from one of the countries where the far right was just named most popular? If not, I’ll throw a “yet” in, because you talk like someone who lets perfection get in the way of not sees.
Truthfully, do you think voting for the less evil is a better course of action than directly addressing an issue? If the Rs say “deport all non-whites” and the Ds say “deport non-whites with records”, do you really think we should vote for the lesser evil instead of stopping the racist deportations?
If chipping away at shit works one way it works the other. Nobody is shifting the pendulum in massive strokes overnight. And so you accept things that don’t necessarily comport with your goal, or you get what we got.
I’m also from Jersey and your name speaks to me.
I really don’t think we can say the pendulum isn’t being shifted in massive strokes overnight when this administration is literally destroying our way of life in massive strokes every hour. The time for the “lesser evil” was ages ago. The time for direct action is now.
I’m always glad to stumble upon another NJ person on Lemmy! My anarchism flies out of the window when it comes to loving Jersey. It’s my home, despite people arguing I’m not from here due to the color of my skin. In my lifetime, sea level rising will reshape what this great state looks like. Homelessness in Atlantic City is bad now, it’s going to be a thousand times worse when the area is under water. This is why I don’t think we can settle for small changes. We need drastic actions, yesterday.
We have two viable political parties.
Fascist extremists and their enablers. Vote blue no matter who, so maybe the fascists won’t come for you.
We have leftists with no one to vote for, shut out of politics by liberal NIMBYs who want good things to happen, they just don’t want to see them. More concerned about the value of their house than the value of human life. We have extreme leftists, they’re just not allowed to participate. And as of yet, none of them exist in enough numbers in the same place to start throwing Molotovs
I’m sure there’s an actual Left in the USA, but it’s not covered by any of the big parties.
There is no far left political party but there are plenty of people who are far left. Yes, even by the European standards of the left.
People here need reminding that every time the Dems lose, they go to the center to find voters. You can’t play Mexican standoff by protest-no-voting (or 3rd party) because they have an out: the center voter. And the center voter actually shows up.
I wish these memes came with a political compass clarification of what these terms exactly mean for the author.
Any “left” that doesn’t promote human rights can fuck right off back to the dictatorship it came from.
I don’t call tankies “left”.
just sparkling authoritarianism
They’re calling themselves that, and probably calling you a Liberal (that is now a derogatory term apparently)
But they are?
Not all rightists are authoritarians, but all authoritarians are rightists. Being leftist literally means being anti-authoritarian. Tankies are classic right wing authoritarians cosplaying as leftist. Whether someone thinks their brand of authoritarianism is more benevolent is not the metric that determines their position on the political spectrum, it is whether power is evenly distributed (leftist) or consolidated (rightist).
Not all rightists are authoritarians, but all authoritarians are rightists
That’s not what being politically right or left entails. Economic rightism involves private ownership of the means of production, not whether “power” (whatever you mean by that word) is concentrated or spread out. Economic leftism involves even distribution of the means of production at least to the point it can no longer be used for personal gain but for societal development. You’re redefining right-wing to mean authoritarian, which isn’t how the term is used in political science. By your definition, you’ve made “left-wing authoritarianism” impossible, which makes your claim unfalsifiable but also meaningless in the usual political context.
Tankies are classic right wing authoritarians cosplaying as leftist.
What does this even mean?
That’s not what being politically right or left entails.
I am using the classic definition of the political spectrum, which was defined by the French Revolution. The Egalitarian revolutionaries sat on the left side of the hall and the institutional nobility on the right. I reject the Cold War era Capitalist propaganda doublespeak re-definition in which it means “whatever rightists want it to mean to more easily demonize the enemies of Capitalism.” I also reject the notion that Marx, who was born decades after the Revolution, was the only leftist philosopher or that he, ironically, would hold a monopoly on leftism.
You seem to have accepted the Capitalist fallacy that social and economic policy can be separated, or that power and wealth and not one and the same. An economy controlled by a few is not leftist, it is feudal and rightist. While the political spectrum is not a binary, leftism always aims for egalitarian ends. Egality involves equitable sharing in authority and economic power. One who shares in an economy but holds no power does not share in the economy. One who shares in power and is destitute does not share in power. These things are at odds. They are fundamental opposites.
What does this even mean?
Tankies support consolidation of power (both “violent” and “economic” authority) into the hands of a few. This is rightist no matter the justification. Benevolent authoritarianism is still authoritarianism and authoritarianism is always rightist (consolidation of power/authority/wealth). They use leftist terminology to justify their authoritarianism, but it does not change the fact that the means and ends are authoritarian in the extreme. If only a minority have authority (control of violence/force) then those few also have complete ownership of the economy, which is the opposite of leftist. If only a minority have wealth (control of the economy) then those few also have the power to buy authority. There is no difference between social power and economic power. Leftism requires egality in both domains or else it dies.
You’re using a moral definition of “left” whereas in political science, “left” and “right” are only descriptive terms about economic organization (collective vs. private ownership respectively), and authoritarian/libertarian describes political power distribution. Your definition makes “left-wing auth” impossible by definition, but that’s a linguistic choice, not an empirical fact.
The problem with collapsing the axes is that it stops us from describing history accurately. Under your framework, a regime like the USSR which abolished private ownership and implemented central planning can’t be left because it wasn’t egalitarian in political power. But in mainstream classification, it’s economically far left and politically authoritarian a very different thing than right-wing authoritarianism.
Yes, wealth and power influence each other, but they are not identical; otherwise we wouldn’t need different terms. A billionaire under a strong democracy can have wealth without full political authority, and a military dictator in a collapsed economy can have political authority without wealth. Conflating them makes analysis less precise, not more.
I just redefined 200 years of political theory in one lemmy paragraphs. Look at me, I’m a dumbocrat!
How did you figure out I was a genie?
Americans sometimes use the two words to mean the same thing. So in that context it’s not as confusing but when they’re speaking with non-Americans it can cause issues and clearer terminology would be nice
Most European countries have an (actually) liberal party; the one in Germany used to have its place between social democrats and conservatives, but has moved way to the right in recent years.
That’s because the definition of the word means promoter of human rights, meaning anybody using it otherwise are the ones misusing the word.
It was kinda done intentionally to muddy the terms to prevent people from thinking of alternatives to the status quo.
I get confused because the right and left both call each other the libs and as far as I can tell, US liberals don’t really align to either liberalism or libertarianism, rather an acute section of them here and there for personal benefit.
The free market, for example, which both ideologies oppose as soon as it encroaches on other freedoms, becoming anti-liberal. But US libs will strip the liberties off anyone for a buck and an entirely unregulated free market will let them do that. Adam Smith covered so much of this stuff and I’m pretty sure US libs would say he’s a commie.
only tankies on lemmy call people here libs, and they are honestly no better than right wingers, both sides of the same coin.
Literally haven’t heard the term “tankie” since I blocked .ml like a year ago.
You’ve got a concept there I’ve thought about myself at times,—your coin faces—but no one’s going to take it seriously if the delivery sucks.
Nobody is left enough for anyone on the left, and no allies are wanted. No wonder the right are your guys lunch, they’re united while you all attack each other
What does this even mean?
thats why the right wins most of the time, they are unified by hate, while having too many different concessions is means the party is in disarray.
This is all bullshit.
Who fucking cares about these definitions? All y’all have the same damn enemy. Worry about the enemy first. Iron out disagreements over terminology once the fascists are gone.
It’s so weird that people spend so much time debating this pointless garbage.
Right? Do you want to get way more in terms of life quality? Then you are opposed to the hyper capitalist government. Do you want to get more money or do you want to give it to the oligarchs. It’s not polarized anywhere
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Debating in right wing spaces is futile. Those morons don’t know the first thing about sourcing material or the truth
That’s a reason to debate them.
Oh, the problem is much deeper than definitions. One group is socially progressive but economically right. Then, the other group is socially progressive while also being progressive on economic issues. The economic policies is where it the rift is.
And the economic right have had all the power for the last god knows how many election cycles… They’ve been chasing the unicorn moderate that would somehow vote Democrat, which doesn’t exist, but in doing so they lose the “left” vote.
Those “centrists” and “moderates” are conservatives that are disgusted by the GOP, but would never vote for Democrats because they don’t agree with their policies. They have no party but the economic right liberals keep trying to attract them… Hopefully now with the change in DNC leadership they’ll stop this losing game and actually be what their voters want them to be.
The “unicorn moderate” used to exist, and they grew from post-war up to the early 2000s. They were called the middle class. Back then when the middle class was much more prominent and bigger, they could still afford both private healthcare and keep up with the cost of living. One of the key litmus test of being “moderate” is the survey on affordable healthcare. In early 00s, socialised healthcare was deeply unpopular. However, it was from during and after the Great Recession of 2008 that the middle class shrunk and recognised that people need more public assistance. Affordable healthcare became increasingly more popular as time went on.
Rent have also become almost unaffordable since the recession. Ever since then, many proposals and plans to create affordable housing has been blocked not just by corporations, but also by individual homeowners who don’t want their house prices to go down. And one of the hard to swallow pills is that many of them are liberals. One could easily search online of affordable housing being voted down in California and New York, states that are liberal strongholds.
There is a reason why Zohran Mamdani’s New York mayoral campaign is more widely successful than other Democratic candidate. He is addressing the growing cost of living by wanting to cap rent prices and providing government run grocery stores, which made him popular among the poor. Because the middle class shrunk and people had been shoved into fringes of poverty. The “moderate” voters that the Democrats are chasing is no longer there. At this day and age, “moderate” for centrists and neoliberals means the wealthy, while pretending that the word means the middle class voters from 2000s.
It gets trickier when you look at other countries where liberal actually means “(mostly) unfettered capitalism”.
That’s not what Liberal means, though. That might be what the Liberal Parties usually stand for, but that’s not what the word means at all.
*sigh*
Modern usage and definitions
In Europe and Latin America, liberalism means a moderate form of classical liberalism and includes both conservative liberalism (centre-right liberalism) and social liberalism (centre-left liberalism).
In North America, liberalism almost exclusively refers to social liberalism.
In my country, the formerly centre-right, now just right “the market will take care of it” party calls itself liberal ever since the 50s.
And the North Korean Dictatorship calls itself the Democratic Peoples Republic, whats your point?
The problem is we don’t have the same enemies, there are people who claim to be left but oppose Liberals, such as Tankies. Tankies aren’t the enemy of the GOP, they want the GOP to win over progressives like the DNC. They use words like “capitalism” to describe everything wrong with the USA because that way they can exclude the eastern dictatorships like Russia and China from the same criticisms.
Shit posts like the one above are the result of psyop campaigns.
Shit posts like the one above are the result of psyop campaigns.
It is a jab at Americans who can’t tell the difference between left and liberal and often conflate the two.
And sure look, if liberal Democrats really want to win again, they have to deal with “kitchen table issues” as Mamdani puts it. And as I mentioned to one of the commenters, who are the ones who keep voting down affordable rent and housing, even in liberal states, because it will bring their house prices down? Mamdani forwarded a solution to that by capping rent prices and he won over people for that. That alone says why American left and liberals are actually different though mainly on economic issues.
CaPitAlIST LIbrUhLS CoNFLaTe HuMAn riGHTs wiTh ProGRESS HUURRGGH DURRRR Yeah I know your whole spiel
Affordable housing, freedom from want and jobs are human rights.
Then why are you opposing them?
You should be asking yourself if you can read at all.
Is this what shitlibs tell themselves?
Any leftist will use words like capitalism to describe the issues because it’s fucking all pervasive. And China and Russia are also both capitalist despite whatever tankiefuck will tell you.
We don’t have the same enemies, because you ally with the ownership class and not your own.
Liberal means advocate of human rights, bare definition. If there is at all an ownership class then liberalism is not being administrated. And I assure you, the word “Capitalism” on Lemmy is used the vast majority of the time as a dogwhistle for “Western Nation”.
In what way does exchanging money for goods cause outlawing gay marriage or banning books? In what way does it cause not taxing the rich? Makes no goddamn sense. Authoritarianism and Conservatives cause those things.
Liberal means advocate of human rights
Not unless you’re creating your own personal definition. At best, liberalism means advocating for individual rights, and where you or I might disagree with the application of that idea is where individual rights are in tension with communal or collective rights more broadly
In what way does exchanging money for goods cause outlawing gay marriage or banning books?
Markets are not the same as capitalism. It’s a description of a system that enshrines abstract ownership over systems of production. If you dont take issue with the coercive mechanisms within capital relations, then im not really sure where to put you ‘on the left’.
Mandated, unconditional individual rights ARE collective rights and also human rights.
You also appear to no know the definition of Capitalism because if Capitalism is not a regulated Market System then the USA is also not a capitalism. Not surprising since you people use it as a dog whistle to mean “western nation” that you lack understanding of what it actually means.
Mandated, unconditional individual rights ARE collective rights and also human rights
Not when those rights are in conflict with another individual’s. The classic example is the individual right to private property, but there are many others. American liberals do recognize these limits and contradictions, but accept as granted the right to private property. It’s the center tenet of leftist critique, so it makes a lot of sense why there’s a lot of cynicism about liberals claiming to occupy the same space. Sure, they have some overlap, but the main contention is left unaddressed by American liberals and so leave themselves open to derision.
if Capitalism is not a regulated Market System then the USA is also not a capitalism
It’s a type of regulated market system, but it’s defined by its mode of production being capitalist in nature. Socialist and communist systems still employ regulated markets, but collectivize ownership over productive capital instead. Abolishing capitalism isn’t a way of saying we should abolish markets, but to remove capital as the mode of production
If rights to one person contradict the rights of another, resulting in loss and harm then guess what? Individual rights aren’t being mandated and upheld and that’s not Liberalism.
Socialist and communist systems still employ regulated markets, but collectivize ownership over productive capital instead.
No, they don’t, because that has never existed and will never if you keep bending over backwards to dictators.
You don’t have to be authoritarian to be a leftist.
Of course not. In fact if there is anything I associate with leftist ideologies it’s anti-authoritarianism.
Tell that to ml lol
No point, I’d just get banned.
Unpaid interns working for Russia don’t count as being “leftist” lol
They’re working for you, asshole. They developed the software you’re using right now.
They are slaves. Bots are slaves.
