While Education and Organizing is building the parts for a new engine the rest of the year.
Reminder that someone online arguing that you shouldn’t vote for Biden because of whatever pet grievance is either a Russian agent or an idiot playing into their hands
If people think an “evangelical” is going to handle the conflict in Gaza on the side of the Palestinians better than Joe Brandon they are sorely mistaken and/or misguided. 45 wanted a straight up Muslim ban ffs.
Yeah, I’d rather deal with someone who enables Israel’s bad behavior instead of someone who not only cheers it on but offers to help make it worse. There’s at least a snowball’s chance of convincing the enabler to stop enabling.
And how quick all these Hamas and Houthi cheerleaders forgot Ukraine too. A country that would not exist anymore if Trump had won 2020.
Reminder that not everyone who disagrees with your guilt tripping self righteous nonsense is a Russian bot. Some of us actually use critical thinking and can see a pattern that must be broken.
look, I can understand the argument that you must vote for the most effective way to contain an evil. It’s a good solid argument.
However it starts taking damage almost immediately when:
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The plan to fight the evil is using the most disliked president in recent history to win a popularity contest.
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They pre-emptively destroy any and all opportunities to find a better candidate to win the popularity contest against the evil.
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They refuse to debate anybody just like the evil they want to defeat. Making it impossible to verify they’re the one for the job.
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They forcibly re-schedule the primary schedule to delay any signs that this plan might be a terrible idea.
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Their age is seriously in question, their mental acuity is in question, and they also decide to dodge being in a completely unscripted environment for two hours while standing.
Certainly with all this you can at least understand why someone would rather vote third party, because this Biden option is not making me feel any safer.
At what point can we stop pointing the finger at the voters and start pointing at the guy they’re “supposed to vote for”? Is there a point we can ever point that finger at Biden? Or is it like Trump,where we need to vote for him “even if he were to shoot someone in the street”?
Is there a point we can ever point that finger at Biden?
Point fingers all you want as long as you vote to keep the rapist, insurrectionist, self-admitted wannabe dictator out of power.
Yeah Biden is only the first one so 1-3 = 2 so he’s good candidate
It works better when you have an idea of what the President actually does and what direct action would mean.
Almost everything we would want to do is at the local or regional level. Want higher density housing? Your mayor and city council control that with no say from the President. Better public transportation? Same, though the President can try convincing Congress to pass grant funding for it. More and better bike lanes? Same thing. Get rid of anti-homeless architecture? All city level stuff.
School lunch programs? State government can stop it if the wrong people are there. Expand Medicare? Same. Better rail networks? Same. Ban gay conversion therapy? All state government.
Foreign policy is the one thing where the President does have a lot of control. That’s actually the exception. I like Biden’s approach on Ukraine–getting most of Europe to go along with sanctions at all, especially after Trump destroyed our soft diplomatic power, was amazing. His approach on the Gaza conflict is far less amazing, to put it mildly. Other than foreign policy, the position is mostly advocacy and horse trading around funding priorities with Congress. Soft power for the most part.
A bad President, especially combined with a bad Congress, sure as hell can stop the local agenda items, though. Pull the grants for cities to implement public transit. Pull Medicare expansion entirely. Don’t provide school lunch program funding at all. Put judges in power who rule arbitrarily in favor of conservatives with no care for precedent.
What voting for Biden is for is to make sure the federal government doesn’t overrule things built locally and regionally. That’s it. The rest needs direct action on the part of all of us at different levels of government.
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“Pet grievance” is one of my new favorite euphemisms for genocide.
Voting does nothing other than reform the capitalist regime. It doesn’t matter whether this cycle’s presidential figurehead is blue or red. Give it a few decades and you’ll see how the US will still be sowing death and destruction across the world, as it always has. The presidential race that liberals get so rabid about is nothing more than kabuki theater.
Yeah? Like our devotion to repeatedly voting in neolibs like Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden has had nothing to do with tilting the political spectrum to the far right?
I’ll probably pull the lever for Biden, but I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t. Based on the results of recent decades of leftists holding their noses to vote for the neolib, even if Biden wins something much worse than Trump will arrive just in time for the 2028 cycle.
Didn’t she win the popular vote?
This is just shit libs blaming the left instead of taking responsibility for running a shit candidate with so much baggage that she lost while “winning”
If you want to be mad at anyone, blame the dnc.
Bernie would have whooped trump in 2016. Shame the dnc decided to change the rules the day of to avoid a split ticket or God forbid, supporting the actually viable candidate.
Sanders, God love him, was not going to be electable. Had they run him, Trump would have picked up the whole of the big fat moderate lump in the middle of the bell curve.
Exactly like Boris Johnson did when he ran against Jeremy Corbyn. The capitalists simply won’t allow socialists to win in this environment.
Sanders, God love him, was not going to be electable.
Literally every single poll says otherwise. We’ll never know for certain, but there’s much more evidence to support a Sanders victory than a Sanders loss, and claiming that Trump would have picked up enough moderates to win is baseless speculation.
Lol, no.
Bernie is the Ron Paul of the left; he has a small group of very loud supporters online who by constantly shouting at each other on the internet have convinced themselves that he’s actually some sort of populist god. I mean seriously, he couldn’t even win the popular vote in the Democratic Primary in 2016, losing to Hillery by over three million votes, where were all the extra voters to “whoop” Trump supposed to come from?
“Pro-Trump Russian asset Wikileaks reveals that DNC said mean things about our Lord and Savior Bernie Sanders”
Seriously, have you actually looked at the Wikileak emails rather than the hype? It’s the weakest shit imaginable.
wikileaks is not pro trump. wikileaks is not a russian asset
The emails were never even denied, and they are damning as hell. That is precisely why the entire response, to this day, has been to ignore what was revealed and go after the people who revealed it. Yes, it was shit people revealing shit about other shit people.
You sound like someone who thinks Russiagate and rachel maddow were legit. WikiLeaks used to be trumpeted by liberals as a bastion of truth untill Assange came out with the corrupt dnc stuff. Which you can still all read, yes they conspired with Hillary. MSNBC and CNN gave her easy questions while grilling Bernie. “Weakest shit indeed”.
If the establishment doesn’t like the candidate they won’t get airtime. Same shit with Dean Philips and Marianne Williamson. The Biden team places some phone calls and bam your campaign is dead and no airtime/coverage. Are they viable candidates, who knows?
Should they at least get airtime and be heard in a democratic process?? Yes…
dont underestimate how much people hate women
So we’re gonna act like winning the popular vote and losing isn’t a problem in and of itself?
Of course it’s a problem. But people point to this and say “the system’s broken [of course it is], so why vote!” Which is what the most fascist, anti-freedom politicians want. Functionality, it’s the same as voting for the ‘R’ in every election.
Systems fucked, but I always vote. Getting blamed while supporting a candidate I despise certainly is icing on the shit cake
I mean, I will always be mad at the DNC for not running Sanders.
Doesn’t mean I’m not gonna vote Biden in Nov 2024 though.
Then you aren’t mad at the DNC you support their decision to keep the status quo in check
Don’t you see the contradiction in “she won the popular vote” and “she was a shit candidate”?
It’s kinda like the contradiction that Bernie could win the general election, but 12% of his voters defecting to Trump wasn’t enough to make a difference.
Leftists are going to be shouting “the DNC is corrupt” on the gallows after Trump wins.
“Leftists are going to be shouting “the DNC is corrupt” on the gallows after Trump wins.”
This is the stupid shit is see all over lemmy that makes me so mad… Yes the DNC SUCKS but guess what? They’re the status quo right now, and the alternative is literally a fucking dictatorship that has vindictive actions as their highest priority.
There aren’t even dog whistles anymore, he’s using the word dictator… But yeah BomberBiden… Mr.Genocide… I get it… So that means let Trump win? Seriously?
Yeah, and I’ll still likely vote for Mr genocide all while being blamed for his loss. So why’s it matter?
Or blame both.
There’s more than one way to solve most problems, and more than one cause as well. Would a stronger candidate have succeeded? Perhaps. But that was a solution for earlier in the process. A solution for late in the process was voters turning up.
We literally had that candidate and he got fucked over by super deligates or some nonsense.
I’m sick of being blamed when I voted for someone as vile as hrc. Dems lost the vote, not me.
Maybe if hrc actually showed up to purple states and appealed to actual voters it would have went differently.
If Hilary hadn’t been a pile of shit doing private speaking engagements for billionaires that were so hush hush that they set up massive white noise generating speaker systems, people would have voted for her.
if Hilary had set a fucking foot in some of the states she lost, people would have voted for her.
if Hilary didnt make stupid fucking comments, people would have voted for her.
Maybe if you stopped blaming voters, and blamed the shitty fucking candidates, someone less awful would have run, and won.
Blame the DNC. They’re the one cramming shitty candidates down our throats. If OP is right, and voting for president is just changing the oil, it’s like getting charged $2000 for Dollar General oil.
Stop blaming voters. Field actual, progressive, leftist candidates. I am fucking sick of voting for right wing, war hawk Democrats to “save democracy.” We aren’t saving anything, just watching stock market addicted octagenarians kill the country slower than the other team.
Actual leftist candidates–or progressive candidates, because those are very much not the same thing–wouldn’t get even 10% of the primary votes, even if the DNC was entirely hands-off. They certainly wouldn’t get the kind of donations that they would need to run a successful national campaign. Genuine leftists simply aren’t popular in the US as a whole, even if Gen Z might trend more strongly towards certain aspects of socialism/communism/anarchism than people of my generation did.
no, clearly we need to show our disapproval by letting the literal fascists win!
Don’t be daft. You need to protest, demonstrate, educate, and engage in outreach and community building, and then when it’s time to vote, you need to vote strategically. Calling everyone a literal fascist that’s even a half-shuffle right of Bakunin isn’t going to help you.
I’m sorry, are the republicans not literally engaging in fascism? I mean, they check almost every box
Your comment implied that you lumped Democratic politicians into that as well.
And no, not all Republicans are fascists. However, there are currently very, very few principled Republicans that are currently serving at a national level, and more and more are getting forced out by the party. John McCain and Mittens Romney were both Republican based on their political principles, and, while I disagreed with their politics, I don’t believe that either of them could fairly be labelled as fascists. But one is dead, and the other is now out of politics, sooo…
Oh, I’m sorry, but in a two party system (something that anything not proportional voting will never be), people refusing to vote letting the fascists win does not in fact mean the other party is fascist as well.
Secondly, i rightfully don’t give two flying fucks if you feel like republican politician X Y or Z is fascist or not, they have been engaging in fascist rhetoric and ideology for over 50 years, just because they have gone more mask off about it under Trump doesn’t mean the party of “Mexicans are scary”, “blacks are all criminals”, “tough on crime”, “gay should be illegal”, “unquestioning patriotism”, “Judaeo Christian nation” etc… haven’t been fascist, they still very much fit any definition outside literally being part of the Italian Fascisti party.
cough Michigan cough. Bitch took us for granted. The DNC shit the whole bed that election.
Did a gendered insult help make your point?
Edit: this is perhaps the most “controversial” thing I’ve posted online and just wanted to say it is an odd thrill to have random internet strangers having a negative reaction to something you said. Brains are strange.
Ok then her dipshit ass campaign took my state for granted, barely campaigned here, and lost Michigan and the election. The dumb fucking DNC gave up on any election that wasn’t federal after Obama and that didn’t help the fucking idiots either.
I wasn’t saying your point was invalid, so I’m not sure why you repeated it here.
Does language policing make you feel good about yourself?
Haha, no, I don’t think so, but I’ve definitely been wrong before :) I guess it’s been something I’ve been trying to ask myself and felt like a valid thing to ask here.
Ya know, getting on each other’s throats because our words aren’t nice enough is a part of how this mess started.
I see what you’re saying but if my comment would be considered getting on someone’s throat than I think it may be time to take a step back and take a deep breath.
Well no. Hillary was a center-right candidate. If she wanted votes from progressives or left-wing voters, she knew exactly what to do. But she threw those votes away, relying on rhetoric like this post. We all saw it happening, and she did it anyway. What if she had pushed for universal health care, or unions, or campaign finance reform, or gun laws, or against wars? It would have been an exciting election.
But people did vote for Hillary, IIRC, she won the popular vote by like 3 million votes.
So it wasnt a lack of voting that gave trump the presidency and repealed abortion rights. It was the mecanisms and institutions that are part of your electoral process and that only seem to exist in order to dilute your democracy (e. voting districts, electoral college) that gave trump the win.
Perhaps people would be more willing to vote if their voices were actually heard.
If Obama had fought for his seat, Roe would still be the law. Dems never ever fight. They cry about how they can’t do anything. Even when they have the house, senate, and white house, they couldn’t do anything. Watch the excuses that follow this comment.
Neither capitalist party will ever help because they’re both avowed capitalists.
Vote dem, move right slowly. Vote GOP move right fast AF, with added racism, hatred, and Christo-fascist oppression as well.
But ultimately, NO capitalist party will ever fix anything in this shit two party system. Both parties get all their campaign donations from the same billionaires., and companies.
Yeah, the corrupt as fuck supreme court made sure that billionaires would run the country.
And they have helped over and over to disable democracy and reduce the ability of citizens to affect change over monied interests who buy Thomas his motor home and other “gifts” (spelled bribes). And Scalia, and the others…
Vote dem, move right slowly. Vote GOP move right fast AF, with added racism, hatred, and Christo-fascist oppression as well.
It comes down to that the DNC/ DCCC and their voters are fundamentally not aligned in terms of incentives and priorities, and most discussant in places like this simply do not appreciate that. Whereas, the GOP and their voter base,are at least aligned, on their priorities and at least dubiously on incentives. This is demonstrated by their ability to provide for their voters once in office. You can and should hate what the priorities of the GOP are, however, you shouldn’t deny that they deliver for their voters when it comes time to do so. They make their voters priorities a priority once elected, and work their asses off to get these shitty, inhumane policies into place.
The DNC/DCCC have historically treated their voters as an inconvenience, in a very technocratic, “we’re the experts, we know better” fashion. Its a kind of anti-populism that was best expressed in the Hillary campaign, but also in how Obama ran his administration. To the DNC/DCCC, their voters are an inconvenience at best. Frankly, they’d probably prefer having a rightwing base, because they would better align with their actual prioritize. The result is that when elected, DCCC candidates don’t work or fight for the things they campaigned on, because they truly don’t think those things are priorities. This trickles down into a lack of results to their base, causing them to struggle because they consistently fail to deliver for the people that vote for them.
Edit because I wanted to highlight some things…
Observe the difference:
Hillary on the trail, 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN6iwqthZrU
Hillary takes the position of “knowing better”, that the protesters need to basically sit down and shut up.
Bernie on the trail, 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjt56Tdhhqk
Bernie gives them the mic and the time to get their message across.
In my lifetime, a dem only ever once gave me something to vote FOR, and I actively campaigned for him-Obama. And the first thing he did was give up on universal care and then even on public option. But he’s making millions by leveraging his presidency, so he’s a good little capitalist.
And the banks still appreciate him vailing them out while ficking us all and all our municipalities, etc.
Your vote matters.
If 100% of voters voted liberal in the upcoming election, the one after that would have way more left leaning candidates.
Your vote directly matters.
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Similarly, if the DNC hadn’t absolutely SCREWED my boy Bernie, we also wouldn’t be in this complete shit-hole.
A socialist will never be elected. When anyone gets close, the entire capitalist world immediately forget their differences and unite to make sure it doesn’t happen.
Happened to Sanders.
If you want read a more heinous example, it’s Jeremy Corbyn. A genuinely good man .
You’ve got to at least try to appeal your base. And no, “vote for me or you’ll get the other guy” is not an inspiring rally cry. It didn’t work in 2016 and the fact that the message seems to be similar in 2024 has me really worried.
I voted for the greater good in 2016 - in the Democratic primaries.
I voted for the lesser evil in the general election, then took a long hot shower.
Things would have certainly worked out better with a Hillary victory instead of the Trumpster fire we got.
This does not excuse the horseshit shenanigans that were going on within the DNC.
if Leftists had voted for Hillary in 2016 abortion would still be legal.
So, this really isn’t true in any meaningful way. People like to make a big deal out of the 12% of Bernie voters who went for Trump, but the majority of them identified as conservatives or centrists, while only 18% identified as liberal or left-leaning. Likewise, a lack of turnout doesn’t seem to be the issue; black voter turnout dropped, but not by an unexpected margin, and young voters (who tend to be more left-leaning) had very strong turnout. Finally, you could try to blame leftists who voted third-party, but analysis shows that even if every single Jill Stien voter had gone to Clinton, she still would have needed to win over 50% of Gary Johnson’s voters (who were obviously unlikely to consider themselves leftists).
You might be able to get the numbers to work if you say that if every leftist who stayed home OR voted third-party OR went to Trump voted for Clinton she’d have won, but that’s incredibly hard to prove and probably relies on some specious assumptions (for example, that every Green Party voter was a disgruntled Democrat). At that point, you’re pulling so many different groups together under a single banner that it’s basically meaningless. You might as well say if women had voted for Hillary abortion would be legal.
I voted for Stein in 2016. My state still went to Clinton by 16 points. If I’d lived in a state that was even remotely competitive, I would have held my nose and voted for Clinton.
It was very brave of you to admit that you voted for Jill Stein, I mean even if she had no chance to win, she’s still a pseudoscience promoter who believes we can use crystals as an alternative to heatlhcare and that vaccines cause autism.
Now do Hillary. When you live in a glass house…
I didn’t vote FOR Hilary, I voted AGAINST Trump, a third party vote doesn’t do that
I don’t back a third party strategy, but a third party vote is almost always a vote against the two parties.
So there is no winning, there’s just lesser losing
For most part, this is by design.
Countries around the world tend to have two major parties: “red neoliberals” and “blue neoliberals”. Which is great if you’re a neoliberal because nobody is going to get in your way of your profits with things like environmental and worker protections.
But they didn’t build this managed democracy by murdering their opposition, they just showed up with class solidarity.
Dig into their lives and they all come from a handful of expensive schools and move in the same expensive circles. Politicians, corporate executives, lobbyists and media owners, all of them only ever a few steps from “went to school together” or “married to some powerful persons sister”.
They look out for one another. Sure, in public they have their little spats, but it’s just a pantomime as they jostle for market share. “Left-wing media” sells left-wing news to left wing people while the right wing does the same, both of them seeking to maximise profits. Journalism is a side effect at best.
The moment someone with actual power threatens actual change, watch them unite to undermine them and keep the profits of their little rich people club safe.
But how often does that happen? They usually run functionally unopposed. Good people just don’t want to be politicians or journalists now, especially when they know they’re going to be constantly attacked until they burn out or get killed.
The power is there for the taking but most people can’t be bothered even reading this post, let alone pledging their lives to an uphill battle.
Until that changes, the rich, greedy, self-serving scumbags will just keep winning by default.
This is just another version of vote blue no matter who. It’s just as dumb as people who only vote Republican. Trump didn’t win that election, Hillary lost it.
Because people didn’t vote for her in some ridiculous form of protest
“ridiculous”
maybe don’t call people deplorables if you want people to like you or vote for you, how’s about that?
Our “lesser evil” option keeps moving further and further to the right each cycle.
Because America isnt voting for change. They’re just moving towards fascism, either slow or fast.
If you tell anyone to change course and vote third party they get really mad at you here on Lemmy.
And Mutton Chops down in Argentina has the audacity to cry at the WEF in Davos saying that socialism is threatening the West…
But yes. If you want Trump to win, by all means, vote 3rd party.
Hence educating and organizing the other 364 days of the year.
3rd party it is. Dems deciding to fuck around and find out…
Dictatorship it is then. 3rd parties don’t stand a snowballs chance in hell right now.
Canvassing and outreach happen first, then you can vote for that party. Right now you’re literally handing Republicans the win if you vote 3rd party this election.
Dems deciding to fuck around and find out…
Yeah! Sending minorities to concentration camps will really show those Dems!
I’d say the people who voted third party are the ones who fucked around in 2016, and ALL of us found out because of it.
