Thank you. I really don’t get those people.
And I mean, the Democratic party doesn’t exist in a vacuum. If you don’t try to change anything, of course the awful “moderates” stay in charge. But it is possible to overtake them, just look at Mamdani. But some people won’t even try that because “it’s a lost case”…
He now holds the primary attendance record in NYC. It was only 30% of eligible voters, up from 21% in the last election. That’s literally all it takes. We just need to show the fuck up.
Congressional primaries see less than 15% attendance. We’ve been letting retirees pack our ballots with centrists for 40 years, then complain about our choices in the general elections. We wouldn’t be calling for term limits if we consistently participated in primaries.
Well that and ranked choice, right?
He won majority first round. Granted, I’d love to see ranked-choice in our federal elections, but that didn’t matter in Mamdani’s case.
Would people have felt empowered to vote for him first if it wasn’t ranked choice?
I believe so. The massive increase in zero prime voters (people who haven’t voted in a primary before) was due to his grassroots campaign.
If you don’t try to change anything, of course the awful “moderates” stay in charge.
Trying to change thing is exactly what the Uncommitted movement tried to do. And while they failed to move the needle in the 2024 election, in 2028, the Democrats will have to think a lot more about whether they want to keep losing in exchange for supporting genocide.
Remember, it’s always “the most important election ever.” Every election is billed as that. But sometimes you need to be willing to accept a short-term loss in exchange for long-term progress. Myopically focusing on just the election right in front of you is how we got into this mess in the first place.
Kamala losing gave space for someone like Mamdani to win. It’s clear that corporate DNC centrism is a toxic losing brand. If Kamala had won, it is extremely unlikely that Mamdani would have won the NYC primary.
Literal accelerationism. Jesus fucking Christ.
The point is that socialism cannot be achieved by electoral means. At best, if the masses in the street really pressure those in power, you get social democracy. That being said the choice for Americans was neoliberalism or fascism. The reasons for fascism winning go deeper than “the left was to whinny”, but that’s beside the point being made here.
neoliberalism
People here keep using that word uncomprehendingly like they’re a dumb AI matching & associating on the root liberal.
Neoliberalism is free market capitalism, a conservative ideology embraced by Margaret Thatcher & Ronald Reagan. Democrats are for many things: environmental regulation, social safety nets, market regulation, spending on social programs, etc. That’s a far cry from free, unregulated markets.
The Democratic platform is a far cry from proper safety nets and regulations.
Every Democratic president since Clinton was a neoliberal. Now that Trump is going with protectionism, they are in essence more neoliberal than the Republicans.
In the most recent elections, Kamala talked good shit initially, until her corporate allies talked her down, and like the good little neoliberal she is she started sputtering out market-based “solutions” to everything.
Every Democratic president since Clinton was a neoliberal.
Nah: they passed the ACA, expanded Medicaid, passed Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms, started the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, tried to ban non-compete clauses, tried to enact rules for “click to cancel” subscriptions & end junk fees, standardized disclosure of fees for finance services, voted in the FTC to enforce right to repair, sustained social programs. That & much more happened after Clinton (whereas Republicans defunded Medicaid, added restrictions, defunded SNAP, defunded school lunch programs, rolled much of this back).
You just have a memory deficiency.
The ACA is not that different from Romneycare or the old Republican HEART bill that was proposed in opposition to Clinton’s attempts at passing universal healthcare. It remains a market-based solution.
The establishment of the CFPB, like the passing of the ACA, was a stripped-down pro-market version of what could have been.
In terms of foreign policy, the Democrats have enthusiastically supported and continued to support the globalisation of capital through such agreements as NAFTA and continued various imperialist adventures (Obama’s use of drones is legendary).
In terms of workers rights, a lot of the bullshit from the Reagan years is still alive and well, unquestioned by the mainstream of either big party (it is frequently said on Lemmy and elsewhere that nearly everything wrong with modern America can be traced back to Reagan). Antitrust measures remain largely unenforced.
Stuff like this is well within the preview of other neoliberal parties like Fianna Fail/Fine Gael or the CDU. They too have limited market-based “solutions” to social problems. Just tax carbon emissions and the market will fix climate change. Stimulate more housebuilding and homelessness will be solved. This pattern continues.
Only during Biden’s term was there some deviation from the old formula, in the form of stimulus checks and more investment in infrastructure, along with some support of trade unions. These were good steps in a shift towards the social-liberal wing of the party. Kamala leaned into this early in the campaign but then towards the end she decided it was better to get the endorsement of people like Dick Cheney.
Your criticisms of those social programs & market regulations only amount to claiming they don’t go far enough, not that they aren’t market regulations & interventions, which they very much are. If they weren’t social programs & market regulations, then the Republicans wouldn’t have anything to cut & deregulate, which they are doing: the current administration is rescinding consumer & labor protections proposed by the previous administration & they’re restricting & defunding major public programs (Medicaid, SNAP, medical research, public health programs).
Calling market regulation & social programs neoliberal indicates you don’t know the meaning of words. Market intervention & regulation isn’t free, unregulated market, ie, neoliberalism. Any policy in support of a mixed economy with regulated markets suffices to not be neoliberal.
I feel like takes like this come from people with no long term memory. Do you remember the pro-palestinian crowd begging Kamala Harris to even pretend like she’d do something to help? And she basically told them to vote for Trump? Blame the Democratic party for choosing to be fascism-light instead of actual resistance.
Multiple people are at fault
- Republicans for being literal Nazis
- Democrats for selling their souls to AIPAC and ignoring their constituents
- Protest voters for not seeing Trump as enough of a threat
- The two party system for allowing this to happen in the first place
- Billionaires for funding a literal Nazi
- The Israeli government for waves hands
As someone who had to leave behind everything and flee the US for safety (2025 was lining up to be a damn good year dammit), I am furious at all of the above
I feel like takes like this come from people with no long term memory.
Christ. How ironic.
Christ. How pointless as usual.
If the “online lefties” were so powerful a block perhaps Dem’s leadership should have courted their vote. If they were so minor a block that “online lefties” should be ignored then you’re targeting the wrong people.
But you know this already, I told you before the election that way to win the “no genocide” vote isn’t to try convince them to vote “yes genocide”. It’s to try convince the leaders to stop supporting genocide.
This post is the same punching down shit you were doing before the election.
Yep. And if both the moral abstainers and the third party protest voters all would have voted for Kamala, we would still have Trump as President because the numbers of those people are so small.
Y’all are blaming the people who care the most, when you should be blaming the billionaires.
Non voting has been the largest group for several cycles now.
That’s why I differentiated moral abstainers from apathetics who aren’t going to vote no matter what.
I’m becoming more apathetic. You’re choosing between two evils. The lesser evil lives in the realm of myth these days.
Become a socialist instead, and work to remove systemic evil entirely.
you say, in your couch, while people are being deported because of YOU.
you, and many of your buddies have done a full 360 and went full Nazi.
that’s a stretch. Trump will deport people who disagree with him about fucking kids so you should be driving a stake through his heart by now instead of some random person you decided to hate because democrats are fascists too.
Ok bud, time to take a nap.
If the “online lefties” were so powerful a block perhaps Dem’s leadership should have courted their vote. If they were so minor a block that “online lefties” should be ignored then you’re targeting the wrong people.
God, if I hear this mathematically illiterate argument one more fucking time, I’m going to fucking blow.
Elections in the US are won and lost on 1 or 2 percentage points.
Tell me this - if leftists make up, say, 3% of the Dem vote, and anti-leftists make up 10% of the Dem vote, is it viable to court leftists at the expense of losing anti-leftists?
If leftists are willing to let literal fucking Nazis win because they haven’t been courted, instead of putting the groundwork in to change the demographic leanings of the Dem party, they can go fuck themselves, because that makes them fucking Nazi enablers, and not much better than the Nazis themselves.
Dems were willing to let Nazis in. Dems wern’t willing to deal with the Nazis when they had the chance. Now Dems are willing to vote with the nazis. Punch UP not DOWN. We blame leadership in all things except politics it seems.
The leadership of the Dem party is absolutely guilty, and most people here, on Lemmy, recognize that.
The problem is that voters (and, especially, non voters) are also guilty, and many on Lemmy refuse to recognize that.
Man, in a just world, probably almost every high-ranking member of the DNC would deserve a noose. But we also fight with the tools we have, and we elected the tools (ha) in the DNC. Have a problem with those tools? I do too. Let’s get rid of them next primary (please, for fuck’s sake, please). But when it’s them or the literal Nazis, you gotta go with the tools.
Idiotic tools who do the bare minimum are preferable to literal Nazi genocide, man.
I mostly agree. Fight with the tools you have but this now, as I told you back then, isn’t the tool you’re looking for. Sowing devision keeps us divided.
On this occasion the ‘no genocide’ people happen to be right. Imagine an animal rights group that constantly and perpetually hate-posted about vegans.
Punching DOWN isn’t the correct tool. Punching UP might be.
But is it sowing division to point out that dividing the vote is, itself, divisive, and has very real and serious consequences?
Is it not divisive to encourage and normalize non-voting even when faced with literal Nazis running because of insufficient policy on the part of the only serious opposition candidate?
Imagine an animal rights group who campaigned against a ballot initiative to stop puppy farms - because it didn’t also stop factory farms, ultimately failing by a measly 1% of the vote? Would it not be realistic and reasonable for people in that animal rights group to be pissed that puppy farms were perpetuated, at no gain to any animals, because a section of the animal rights group wanted a more radical option - a legitimate desire, but one which led to actions which worsened the situation instead of helping it?
Not really. In this analogy I know this group exists and plan for, with, or around them. If vegans found an activist group that better aligned with their goals why would I be surprised or upset they went to that one?
None of this is surprising, or at least it shouldn’t be. We know how people actually behave.
Furthermore in this analogy the animal rights group isn’t campaigning to stop puppy farms, they’re campaigning for puppy farms. Of course people that care about animal rights didn’t support them.
Not really. In this analogy I know this group exists and plan for, with, or around them. If vegans found an activist group that better aligned with their goals why would I be surprised or upset they went to that one?
If that activist group then campaigns against the “imperfect” initiative, sinking it by 1% point, why wouldn’t you be upset at them? “It’s just politics, it’s just their point of view” isn’t a particularly left outlook, it’s… well, very ‘moderate suburban liberal’. Politics are often a matter of life and death - in the most literal sense. Being upset is pretty low on the totem poll for intensity-of-reaction with that in mind.
None of this is surprising, or at least it shouldn’t be. We know how people actually behave.
Not being surprised that some people are self-defeating and being upset that people are self-defeating and that other, ostensible allies are defending them for being self-defeating and encouraging them to continue being so are two different things.
I’m not surprised, for example, that bootlickers vote for Trump, or that there are millions of bootlickers in this fucking country. But I am upset about it. I’m not surprised that there are a significant minority of leftists who prefer purity politics to averting and reducing genocide. But I am upset - and I don’t think that normalizing it in the communities I frequent is something that I should stand by and be quiet about.
Further more in this analogy the animal rights group isn’t campaigning to stop puppy farms, they’re campaigning for puppy farms. Of course people that care about animal rights didn’t support them.
Campaigning for regulation of puppy farms, let’s say, since the Dems were quite clearly not anti-Israel, but had clearly shifted to a less pro-Israel position, especially after Biden dropped out.
In that view - when faced between making puppy farms less horrific or letting them continue as usual - or even making them worse - why should I not be upset that an ostensibly anti animal suffering group opted to let suffering continue or intensify instead of stopping it out of some bizarre sense of purity.
You really think trans people are punching down at you for wanting to evade their own genocide?
You’ll find trans people in the post. What are THEY saying.
I don’t know how to get comment links, else I would do the work for you.
But to answer your question. I don’t think Pug is punching at me at all, I’m not American. I also don’t think trans people are punching at me much either, I’ve read their comments.
It appears you misunderstood my comment. Punching down was referring to people not in power to change the dem platform. Punchin up was referring to people in power to change the dem platform. Which way is Pug punching in this post?
Punchin up was referring to people in power to change the dem platform.
How do you think the Dem platform changes
PROTIP: It’s not by voters abstaining
I answered the question posed to me. In order to make this a DIscourse and not the morally superior MONOlogue it always seems to be please answer mine.
I couldn’t get through to you last time. Perhaps we can have a more productive discussion this time.
In the vain of good faith though: how is centrist democrat policy changed? A mega donor asks Kamala to support fracking and she does.
In the vain of good faith though: how is centrist democrat policy changed? A mega donor asks Kamala to support fracking and she does.
First, the Dem platform in 2024 was still the most left platform in my lifetime. Is that damnation by faint praise? … yeah. But we also work with what we’ve got, and acknowledging that the Dems have become more left since the Clinton years, and even since the Obama years, is an important note to make.
Second, Harris was, unfortunately, always an opportunist ghoul. A lot of fuckery led up to her nomination, most of it the fault of Joe Biden running despite decreasing medical fitness for office (while accusations of dementia were passed around, the simple, natural slowing of the mind with age is more likely - and not really less damning, considering a president must be at the top of their fucking game considering they’re the top official of an entire nation of hundreds of millions of people) and then dropping out (the correct choice, but again, only necessary because of the unwise decision to run again in the first place, while an incumbent).
Third, the way you change centrist Dem policy is by showing up to primaries, nominating progressive candidates and then getting them elected in the general. The DNC is made up of former and current party officials, not randos picked from the Country Club. They are there because they’ve demonstrated an ability to get elected and re-elected at some point in their careers - they are there because we, the voters, put them there. And while you can talk a lot about how moderates and conservative Dems shape the narrative, ultimately, the fault is on us, the voters, or at least the ones voting for centrist ghouls every fucking primary, for not kicking their wretched asses out.
You want Dem policy to change? So do fucking I. Elect, and convince others to elect, progressives in the primaries, and then back them to hilt in the general regardless of whether there’s a sudden change of heart regarding the ‘purity’ of the candidate by some of your radical circles. We need to move the country left, and “It’s not left enough!” may be a legitimate concern, but not when the alternative is “So let’s move it right”.
When Republicans are elected every fucking general election, the message overwhelmingly given to the Dems is either “Go right” or “Fuck, the country isn’t ready for more progressive policy”, depending on whether they’re (respectively) centrist ghouls or left-leaning.
Helping this matter would be ranked-choice voting. If there are any measures in your area, please, support them - there’s been limited success in this country for ranked-choice as interest in the idea has increased - including the Dem primary that saw Mamdani (MAY HIS ENEMIES BE DESTROYED) nominated. It will help many on the fence in primaries make a more progressive choice by reducing the fear of right-wing candidates eking out over moderate candidates.
Ok, again, I mostly agree. Except Dems did go right this election. They had Republicans advocating for them. They lost. The most damning thing an election campaign can experience is losing. Dems may learn from that courting republican votes lose them elections. Their bank accounts will suggest they do the same thing again.
Secondly, I don’t see the “no genocide” vote being a left Vs right issue. There’s plenty of genocides to go around lefties like myself can “no true Scotsman” but history is riddled with genocides.
I don’t know how much I can tell you this, or how I can get it through to you. Blame the Leaders. We don’t blame Steve from the factory floor for Boeing’s doors falling off.
We know how people actually play the “ultimatum game” and it isn’t how game theory says they should. You have to give them enough for them to accept your offer. Offering a penny out of £100 makes them reject your offer even though you’d both be the better for it. That’s the world we live in.
Except Dems did go right this election. They had Republicans advocating for them.
Other than on trans issues, which they became suddenly very quiet about, and much more muted language on police brutality, which polls, unfortunately, turned largely against even from African-Americans after 2020 (copaganda runs strong in this fucking country), Dems largely did not move right from 2020 - the 2024 party platform includes stronger positions on climate change, environmental issues, and wealth redistribution.
Now, courting the right by trying to go for the whole “Country over party” aesthetic was absolutely idiotic and alienating - but it was largely not coupled with major policy changes.
Secondly, I don’t see the “no genocide” vote being a left Vs right issue. There’s plenty of genocides to go around lefties like myself can “no true Scotsman” but history is riddled with genocides.
In the US, the right-wing is overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian genocide, and centrists are overwhelmingly neutral on the matter of Palestinian genocide due to the massive and effective propaganda campaigns run by Israel and Israeli proxies to portray it as some, deep, complex issue and the IDF as “The most moral army in the world” (blech).
The no-Gaza-genocide vote was overwhelmingly left-wing. Or, rather, liberal and left. The point is that it was not evenly distributed across the political spectrum on the justification that genocide is generally viewed as bad; it was overwhelmingly concentrated on the more left leaning end of the spectrum on the justification that right-wing and centrist types tend to be sympathetic to Israel or hostile to Palestine.
I don’t know how much I can tell you this, or how I can get it through to you. Blame the Leaders. We don’t blame Steve from the factory floor for Boeing’s doors falling off.
Steve isn’t voting for safety and QA reductions in this scenario, though. We live (or lived) in a democracy, however flawed it may have been. We, the voters, were voting for safety and QA reductions.
The leaders are absolutely to blame. Every individual member of the DNC bears significantly more blame than any individual voter.
But that still doesn’t absolve voters of responsibility.
When the Nazis invaded Poland, the chief culprits were the ones giving the orders and making the plans - but the rank-and-file soldiers were also still guilty - and so were those who had quietly went along with the Nazi regime because opposing the Nazis was too much trouble.
That there are different levels of guilt does not absolve the least guilty of still being guilty.
We know how people actually play the “ultimatum game” and it isn’t how game theory says they should. You have to give them enough for them to accept your offer. Offering a penny out of £100 makes them reject your offer even though you’d both be the better for it. That’s the world we live in.
“Dems need to give more than an ultimatum” and “When push comes to shove, you have to make the less-bad choice” are not mutually exclusive options. At the infinite encouragement of purity politics, only an exact match with the voter’s desires would be ‘earning’ their vote - all else would be, legitimately, an ‘ultimatum’ forcing the voter to choose between compromise or giving up entirely. While “They disagree with one issue of mine, I can’t vote!” is a extreme example (though, unfortunately, one that does crop up), the principle that disagreement with the less-bad option should be grounds for rejection when the opposition is something as serious as literal fucking Nazis should be emphasized to be insufficient in scale of offense to be a moral reaction.
The abstainers were offered 10$ out of a million - a legitimate travesty and ghoulish behavior from the Dem party - and the abstainers chose to murder minorities instead - a much worse travesty. It’s not even something as ‘mild’ as “We both fail to gain” - my life may very well be forfeit these coming years - and the issue that many of these voters abstained on - Gaza - is set to become, and the opposition openly campaigned on making, significant worse and more murderous. And that’s an… already gruesome scenario. That’s not even getting into all the other factors that we will be suffering from under a Nazi regime.
Holy blame shifting, Batman!
“I was headed right for the tree, but I didn’t slam on my brakes because they make a squeaking sound. I’m paralyzed now, but at least I didn’t have to listen to that damn squeak! See how much better a person I am than you because of my resolve?“
These people…
“we deserve non-squeaky brakes, and I won’t use the squeaky ones!”
I feel like a lot of people are doubling down now because the Democrats on the one hand show utter incompetence and unwillingness to fight Fascism in the US and on the other hand keep up their support for Fascism and genocide by Israel.
Everyone understands in their subconcious but many deny in their conciousness that things will not get better without a struggle. So going down the “i did harm reduction, you were all wrong, lalalala” route makes them feel like they did something and helps to not come to terms that they have been strung along by the Democrats for all those years.
Better light myself on fire! That’ll show those Dems!
Yes, the cognitive dissonance is astounding. As are the consequences.
Is the squeaking sound in your analogy the genocide of Palestinians?
No, because the squeaking sound would still happen in the case of the crash if it was.
You didn’t avert Palestinian genocide by murdering other minorities. You literally opted to make it worse. Congratulations. The hundreds of thousands of additional dead and displaced Palestinians thank you for your concern.
Fascism is not a break from the previous administration, but a continuation.
Libs are still crying about their loss of power, still doing nothing to resist.
Fascism is not a break from the previous administration, but a continuation.
Average privileged ‘leftist’ Nazi supporter.
Blaming people for not voting for shit candidates isn’t going to accomplish what you’re hoping for, just saying.
Yeah, people deserve to vote for a party they actually support.
I’m quite glad where I live has an MMP system, and there is likely to be a party that represents most views.
Elections are a compromise. Democracy by nature is compromise. FPTP sucks, but it’s the system we had, so you either have to work with it, or burn shit, and not nearly enough nonvoters or 3rd party voters are out here burning enough shit to convince me that they are actually against the system. So in reality they were just naive idealists who couldn’t stomach voting for the best viable candidate, and saddled the rest of us with that orange shit-stain instead.
But your candidtaes are voted for in a primary. If you want better candidates they need people like you to organise and put in the work to get them on the ballot in the first place.
That’s what I’m saying! We need people to care more about the quality of our candidates. But the DNC kicks out anyone who is “scary socialist”. Do I think they can’t change? No. And I’m not even a non-voter btw. I’m just saying, to get through to these people, blaming them for the outcome isn’t going to get them to vote blue.
I’m just saying, to get through to these people, blaming them for the outcome isn’t going to get them to vote blue.
Will asspatting them for the outcome get them to vote blue?
The broader issue is to establish purity politics as morally and socially unacceptable rather than “Just politics :)” that you look over to invite people to the barbeque in spite of.
“I acted in favor of your murder!” shouldn’t be acceptable just because the person who did it claims to wear a coat of red paint.
I’m curious - what do you think I’m trying to accomplish?
There’s some good in what you’re doing, which is creating awareness to the issue of what’s going on currently. But this blaming of a very small group of people, using hindsight mind you, isn’t helping us get any further from fascism.
Is it really hindsight if it’s exactly what I was saying before it happened, and what anyone with half a working eye could see was going to happen?
Ultimately, it is, from an objective standpoint, a small proportion of the US that thinks like this. A larger amount is influenced by it.
But we also work in the communities we are in - in Lemmy, this thinking remains widespread. I mean, fuck, look down this comment thread.
Ultimately, my goal is more to highlight that allowing fascism because you really want to teach the shitlibs a lesson is not acceptable. Not ‘not acceptable’ in the sense that it’s a bad thing to do, though it is. “Not acceptable” as in “people who do it should not be treated as friends or comrades”.
I grew up in a conservative area. It’s exactly the same dynamic as conservatives with their liberal friends. Their liberal friends will always, continously asspat them for their ‘economic anxiety’, and the conservatives will keep getting worse - because there are no social consequences. Not a cold shoulder, not even a rebuke. But the fact is, voting for my death, and the death of millions of others, out of some sense of internal purity of the soul, is not the action of anyone who should be welcomed into decent society. It must be highlighted that this is absolutely a grotesque and vile (in)action, and that the cold shoulder is the appropriate response - not giving them asspats for their ‘moral principles’ in murdering millions.
When people suffer no pushback from their social circles - or worse, encouragement - for their actions, they begin to see their actions like a game. It’s part of the reason why the GOP has radicalized so much since the 90s - liberals give no pushback, not on the national stage, and not in their communities. You’re still invited for the barbecue after voting to murder John’s trans cousin. You’re still invited to the Christmas dinner after voting to deport Tim’s wife. “It’s just politics”. And for an online community which rejects that particularly grotesque charade, they seem eager to repeat it if “It’s just ‘left’ politics”, with everything from supporting Uyghur genocide to enabling a Trump victory.
There’s no difference between the two - other than that left (or ‘left’) politics are more rare in America’s meatland. And it shouldn’t be passed over that that’s so.
Ultimately, my goal is more to highlight that allowing fascism because you really want to teach the shitlibs a lesson is not acceptable. Not ‘not acceptable’ in the sense that it’s a bad thing to do, though it is. “Not acceptable” as in “people who do it should not be treated as friends or comrades”.
Is the goal to rally everyone to vote blue with this strategy? How about for the next elections, we look into what leftists’ issues are, and primary someone that will actually win? Because this is a failure of a plan before it’s even going to happen. I want fascism to end as much as you do, but if we are actually serious about ending it, we have to put down our petty squabbles and actually unite against it.
Is the goal to rally everyone to vote blue with this strategy?
There’s no guarantee that the next election will even involve the Dems as a major party. The goal is to isolate and reduce the prevalence of people abstaining or making protest votes instead of serious strategic decisions because they know they’ll get feted from their core online circlejerks, and asspats from their broader online circles. Can’t fix the former, but we can fix the latter.
How about for the next elections, we look into what leftists’ issues are, and primary someone that will actually win?
And what happens when the leftists decide one of their pet issues is more important than winning, like they did in 2024? What happens if that pet issue is one that isn’t popular amongst the general electorate?
We should work to put leftist candidates in, but no candidate is going to be perfect - even Mamdani already has folk on the left attacking him - it must be emphasized that purity testing is not the way forward.
I want fascism to end as much as you do, but if we are actually serious about ending it, we have to put down our petty squabbles and actually unite against it.
… so how is asspatting leftists for refusing to unite against it going to help, again? This whole situation is predicated in part on leftists refusing to unite with the anti-fascist coalition candidate with the furthest left platform in my lifetime, and probably since fucking Truman, against a literal Nazi candidate. If your opinion is that we need unity, encouraging self-righteous leftists in playing purity politics seems pretty fucking counterproductive.
Well your current path only helps the nazis, so maybe try something different.
“It only helps the Nazis if you criticize the people who enabled the Nazis!”
Jesus Christ. So many commenters here are determined to defend the feelings of purity politics voters who literally delivered us to the fucking Nazis and will do so again at the first opportunity.
Honestly, you seem like a right-wing agitator trying to foment division among the left.
This is like the fifth time today you’ve accused someone of that.
I would have voted left if I was physically allowed to.
But also you did have a candidate that came in last minute and was a republican-sympathizer.
Do you actually blame them?
Fucking hate this narrative. Go after republicans at least half as much as you go after leftists and we wouldn’t be here.
Do you actually blame them?
“Do you actually blame people for letting a Nazi come into power because the opposition candidate was shitty?”
Yes, and I’m tired of Nazi enablers playing asspat games to justify it.
Are we talking about the same Democratic Party who put forward Kamala “I believe we should follow the law” Harris as their only candidate for president?
How you people manage to convince yourselves that a Democratic Party win would achieve anything at all for trans rights, is beyond belief!
This isn’t complicated to anyone without brain damage.
Kamala: Prosecutor. Doctorate in law. No criminal record. Member of a party known for NOT targeting trans people and introducing bills to secure rights for them.
Trump: Felon. Rapist. Insurrectionist. Thief. Dumbfuck. Member of a party known for persecuting trans people.
The dems as a whole wouldn’t be moving back as quickly. If your in one of the groups you’d be better off being in a delicate but protected class rather than persecuted. Having obstruction to arms shipments would help Palestinians.
How you people manage to convince yourselves that a Democratic Party win would achieve anything at all for trans rights, is beyond belief!
So back to you, how’s not voting achieving anything? Its proven to be a strategic blunder. Tamkies that say otherwise aren’t serious people.
The dems as a whole wouldn’t be moving back as quickly. If your in one of the groups you’d be better off being in a delicate but protected class rather than persecuted. Having obstruction to arms shipments would help Palestinians.
But that’s not good enough (legitimately true) so we should let Nazis win (unacceptable and literal Nazi shit)!
So back to you, how’s not voting achieving anything? Its proven to be a strategic blunder. Tamkies that say otherwise aren’t serious people.
They’re convinced that it’s awoken the inner leftist soul of the people. “Mamdani would never have won if Harris had prevailed!” is an opinion espoused in this very thread.
Frustrating isn’t it.
Immensely. I find this whole argument tedious, but the alternative is to let people normalize this slop on here.
You choose violence today I see. Wew lad this comment section.
I’m both of these people at the same time. Voting for centrists doesn’t work
Voting for centrists will not get us appreciable progress.
Allowing Nazis to win will absolutely send us backwards into ever-more horrifically genocidal policy.
Harm reduction means voting for the centrists when they’re the only alternative to the Nazis so we have time to make alternatives, instead of arguing over who’s going to stab the kapo in our concentration camp.
O mean I did vote for Biden in 2020. And he won. Didn’t stop trump somehow. That’s a failure, and not of me not voting right. Shitty centrists with no spine is shown not to work to stop fascism
O mean I did vote for Biden in 2020. And he won. Didn’t stop trump somehow.
Was my explanation of harm reduction not clear enough, or are you regarding 2020-2024 as Trump years despite all evidence to contrary?
It didn’t work! If voting blue no matter who doesn’t even get rid of trump even if he loses the election what’s it even good for? It didn’t even stop us from 2 trump terms! Biden was too weak and cowardly to throw trump in jail for a treasonous attack on the Capitol and that’s not my fault as a voter
It didn’t work! If voting blue no matter who doesn’t even get rid of trump even if he loses the election what’s it even good for?
As stated - buying time.
Voting is locking the door when the fascists come to kick the door down. It will not save us on its own, but it buys us time to make other preparations.
If there’s an argument going on about whether to lock the door or not, your answer should be absolutely to lock the door even if the others think that will be sufficient (it won’t be). Because locking the door buys you time to make other preparations and, ideally, perhaps even convince some of the idiots warily eyeing the door that maybe they should grab a fucking baseball bat or something.
Especially considering, in this case, even in the worse case scenario of not making any progress in four years (and, I would like to remind everyone, that we, not the Dems, but organizers on the ground, made significant progress during the Biden years because we weren’t constantly trying to fight off active literal fascists, just fighting centrist proceduralist ghouls, which is much less time and resource intensive), considering Trump’s health, we might have managed at least to outwait that particular ghoul until he croaked on his own, which would have been fantastic for disrupting the fascists further and giving us more of an opening to push progressive politics against a temporarily-disunited GOP.
Biden was too weak and cowardly to throw trump in jail for a treasonous attack on the Capitol and that’s not my fault as a voter
That’s not your fault as a voter, legitimately.
Again, the blame on the electorate here is on people who abstained in 2024 - and the blame there is not for Biden’s absolutely insufficient centrist ghoul of a term - the blame is that we now have fucking Trump in office.
And if you voted for Harris in 2024, and are just disillusioned now? That’s completely legitimate. Fuck, I’m not even sure that there is a way out of this fucking hole. But if there is - whatever solution that comes up will need unity, not purity politics - and I would also like to remind all those people in democracies which are still managing to chug along that letting the fascists win out of some idea of accelerationism is not actually a solution. As seen by… everything in the US.
We’ve been voting centrist for decades now and the nazis have more power than ever.
Signed, a Harris voter
Ah shit, here we go again.
True but it’s a minor point. Even if every single lefty held the line it wouldn’t have made a difference. The people who didn’t vote were mostly disengaged normal people and the blame for that is squarely on the Democrats for sucking absolute shit on purpose because of big money in politics.
Have some perspective, pick better fights with worse people. I personally find it extremely unmoving when the left chastises people over politics so good job emulating one of their worst and least politically effective qualities.
Instead, I humbly suggest you try to inspire a shred of hope among the cynical and apathetic - but deep down actually very cool people of the Earth🌠
True but it’s a minor point. Even if every single lefty held the line it wouldn’t have made a difference. The people who didn’t vote were mostly disengaged normal people and the blame for that is squarely on the Democrats for sucking absolute shit on purpose because of big money in politics.
As I’ve repeatedly pointed out, this is demonstrably not true on the Gaza issue ALONE.
But who needs facts and data when you have vibes to defend and assert as truth?
Have some perspective, pick better fights with worse people. I personally find it extremely unmoving when the left chastises people over politics so good job emulating one of their worst and least politically effective qualities.
I love the part where leftists peddling little Nazi enablement get asspats, but anyone criticizing them gets the fucking tone police weeping over their poor wittle hurt feelings.
TIL: it’s the voters fault when a political party is incompetent.
In the 2024 US Presidential election, one of two candidates was going to win: Trump or Harris. FPTP+EC guarantees that.
Every person who didn’t vote in that race was half a vote for the worst candidate. More to the point, every person who didn’t vote in a handful of critical states was more than an entire vote for the worst candidate.
Remember how pretty much every thread leading up to the election had a bunch of chodes hollering about gEnOcIdE, only in reference to Democrats? And then the moment the election was over, that essentially stopped? I wonder why.
US military aid to Israel is a long story. The US has very longstanding agreements with Israel which all administrations must abide by. And I know this is hindsight, but how’s that Palestinian genocide going since Jan 20, 2025? All fixed now, yes? Wait, it’s gotten worse? Who could have seen that coming?
The Democrats lost millions of votes across the country at every level of the polls. If there are that many leftists that can tank the Democrats, then they should have been doing everything they could to pander to that base instead of pulling out the most vile Republicans from 20 years ago. Or they lost millions of votes because they spent 4 years telling people who got laid off, and could no longer afford rent and groceries that the economy was stronger than ever and they would keep the course. The Democrats banked hard on being Republican light and were blown away that they lost millions of votes. They still insist on doubling down on centrist bullshit because they don’t want to enact the actual societal changes that everyone knows need to occur.
Fascism abroad wasn’t enough, we needed fascism at home too.
The party’s incompetence is its own; the results of an election are on us.
“But the anti-fascist coalition wasn’t exciting enough! And they weren’t competent enough for my tastes! So I decided to let the fascists win” is abso-fucking-lutely on the voter.
More than one actor can be guilty at once. Shocking, I know.
the Democrats were not “the anti-fascist coalition”, the politicians at least were pretty uniformly agreed on continuing their preferred genocide.
You were arguing that their genocidal behavior was a lesser evil than what the Republicans are capable of. That may be true, but it doesn’t suddenly make the Democrats an anti-fascist coalition.
The Democrats were literally the anti-fascist coalition against the Republicans openly promising fascism. Sorry that you think Alligator Auschwitz is just “business as usual”.
as long as you’re not Palestinian the Democrats are “anti-fascist™”
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If supporting Israel, a fascist state, in foreign policy makes one fascist (a point of view equivocating support with total identification that I strongly disagree with, mind) the vast majority of the US is fascist, including a supermajority of Dem voters, and you aren’t going to win a democratic election on an anti-fascist platform.
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Harris expressed a shift away from the unconditional Zionism of Biden and was punished by voters for it. Surely that will teach the DNC to [checks notes] support Israel less.
“But we let the MORE Zionist candidate win because we OPPOSE Zionism!”
Damn bang-up job of expressing that, like beating a dog for not coming to you fast enough when ordered.
- the genocidal terror entity couldn’t do the genocide it’s been doing without endless US bombs, air defenses, and aircraft carriers attacking their enemies that are blockading them. The Democrats have participated in this genocide because as Biden said: “if Israel didn’t exist we would have to create one to protect our interests in the region”
If “winning” means electing people to represent me who then go on to co-sign a genocide I would rather lose and be done with the charade.
- She did nothing of the sort, and any lip service given it was too little too late. They swapped her in at practically the last minute, long after the point where there could have been a primary. Maybe someone who wasn’t already vice president during a literal genocide could have stood a better chance.
Both candidates are zionist, The outcome is the same. Republicans are architects of the final solution, but Democrats would willingly participate as long as it polled well and was spread out on a manageable timeline that was not too visible.
the genocidal terror entity couldn’t do the genocide it’s been doing without endless US bombs, air defenses, and aircraft carriers attacking their enemies that are blockading them.
“Israel couldn’t do it if the Houthis weren’t suppressed!”
Fucking lol.
If “winning” means electing people to represent me who then go on to co-sign a genocide I would rather lose and be done with the charade.
Congratulations, you get your wish. Now millions more people will be murdered, including millions more Palestinians. Congratulations on being an even bigger Palestinian genocide supporter than Joe fucking Biden! It’s no small achievement, so if you want, I can find you a sticker to wear proudly, if you like.
She did nothing of the sort, and any lip service given it was too little too late. They swapped her in at practically the last minute, long after the point where there could have been a primary. Maybe someone who wasn’t already vice president during a literal genocide could have stood a better chance.
Love the scattershot reply to a simple statement. Keep beating that dog, it’ll come to you eventually.
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Two wrongs, as they say, don’t make a right. Or in this case, I guess, they do make a Right.
Happy cake day!
Wonder where all those people are? Immediately after the election for several months lemmy was full of people blaming how shitty things turned out on anyone but themselves. “It’s the Democrats fault I didn’t vote even though I know trump is a fascist POS!”
NOBODY thinks the dems are great. They’re fucked up.
But they’re not Alligator Auschwitz fucked up. They’re not screw the country with tariffs fucked up. They’re not ICE Gestapo fucked up.
But that’s not the non-voters fault because this is better than some neo-lib winning.
But the Democrats are:
- Bomb kids fucked up
- Torture innocent people fucked up
- Build out the infrastructure for fascism fucked up
- Genocide supporting fucked up
- Refusing to fight against MAGA fucked up
- Taking money from the poor and working class, and giving it to the rich fucked up
- Bragging about how many people they deported fucked up
- Not giving people fair immigration trials fucked up
Some of us think that those things are kind of a big deal. Are Democrats better than Trump? Sure. Is a Neo-lib better than Trump? Sure, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to vote for a party that openly fights against the things I believe in, like:
- Healthcare for all
- Equal treatment for everyone under the law
- The rich paying their fair share of taxes
- The US to stop bombing innocent people
- Stopping the war machine
- Stop backing a genocide
- Free Education
- Affordible housing
- Fixing the immigration system
Sure, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to vote for a party that openly fights against the things I believe in
Thanks, the lives of marginalized folk thank you from inside Alligator Auschwitz. I’m so glad you just couldn’t bring yourself to vote against the literal Nazis.
But the next Democratic president isn’t going to close that place. Likely they will expand it. That’s what happened with the last Democratic president.
Oh, were you planning on electing Republicans again and backing NIMBY politicians and then being surprised when they act like Republicans and NIMBYs, like when Obama made repeated efforts to close Gitmo?
If the Democrat Party continues the way it has, they will look exactly like the current Republican party in the next decade. Republicans will be full puritanical. Supporters of the DNC will still be supporting the lesser evil. The only solution is for intelligent voters to take the stick of fear out of their asses and go full support for better candidates in primaries or other parties. The people who continue to run our two party system will not give up their power.
If the Democrat Party continues the way it has, they will look exactly like the current Republican party in the next decade.
This is exactly the same blinkered view that was peddled in 2000, and in 2010, by useful idiots for the Republican Party. Do you not know how far the Dems have fucking come in the past 30 years, both socially and economically?
Maybe listening to people who think worsening the genocide in Gaza is Left Praxis™ because it hurts Shitlibs like AOC and Bernie aren’t a good resource for American politics?
The only thing I can think of that improved socially is federal recognition of same sex marriage, but that was actually set in motion by state level judicial rulings. I can’t think of any economic improvements.
You mean like supporting unions and forgiving student debt? Or do you not count that because republicans sabotaged it?
I think you mean fighting unions, and failing to deliver on the less-than-bare-minimum that he set out to forgive on student debt. It wasn’t sabatoged, it was because he was too busy boming innocent people, backing a genocide, and writing checks to his rich friends to get things done for the voters.
I’m sure the kids that the US bombed are super grateful that you were so eager to chose genocide over winning an election. I’m so glad you just couldn’t bring yourself to vote against literal child-killers
You don’t vote for everything at once. You vote on what’s on the ballot. Palestine wasn’t on the ballot. Concentration camps, fascism, economic meltdown, removal of the social safety, women’s rights, and the rule of law were.
You decided that you were okay with all that bullshit because of something else unrelated. And look - Israel is acting worse than ever now because Trump doesn’t even pretend to be against genocide.
You chose this, and you should lose sleep over it.
Concentration camps, fascism, economic meltdown, removal of the social safety, women’s rights, and the rule of law were.
Those were all on the ballot if Kamala had won.
I’m sure the kids that the US bombed are super grateful that you were so eager to chose genocide over winning an election. I’m so glad you just couldn’t bring yourself to vote against literal child-killers
Don’t worry, I’m sure you know what’s best for Palestinians far more than… [checks notes] Palestinians
Yeah that seems anything but decisive.
Really it reads similar to the disaffected anti-establishment arguments that some folks in the US put forward to defend their support of Trump - with the difference that Palestinians 1) do not vote in US elections and 2) have really good fucking reasons to cling to hope in any kind of change at all.
Not that Trump ever offered that in any way that would help people, but I cannot blame them for grasping at straws. Most seem aware of the fact that US imperialism is inevitable either way.
Ah yes, Truly Enlightened Voters like you realize that Trump having performed Zionist bootlicking above and beyond what even the Republicans, the more Zionist of the two pro-Zionist parties in our society, were willing to do in his last term and promising an even greater expansion of support to the murderous apartheid state, is actually No Difference At All with the Dem candidate backing away from unconditional Zionism.
God, I’m so glad these Both Sides Bad takes are so prevelent here, it would be really awful if it was all cope to avoid the fact that you helped literal Nazis win who have been helping the Nazis in Israel to a far greater degree than the other Zionists.
