You can fight to install progressives at the local level while voting defensively at the national level. Local progressive movement are not only a LOT easier to pull off, but will help create widespread acceptance of progressive ideals as they get good outcomes. Then you expand to the state level and house, then the senate, then you're well positioned to push for a progressive in the presidency.
KoboldCoterie 91 points 4 months ago
Septimaeus 4 points 4 months ago
These are good examples of what it takes, however, including primary participation and grassroots activism. In addition, the NYC mayoral featured ranked choice voting.
In other words, Duverger’s Law can’t simply be ignored in FPTP systems like those of the US, and anyone who suggests otherwise (like saying you should vote non-strategically to defeat the MAGA opposition) is either terribly ill-informed or, more likely, is working for the opposition.
WillStealYourUsername 15 points 4 months ago
This is true, but it's also important to be aware that if all americans ever do is vote then things will never improve. It's important to vote still, but it can't end there
Ensign_Crab 0 points 4 months ago
You can fight to install progressives at the local level while voting defensively at the national level.
And the national party does everything it can to make sure you're stuck with trumpist shit like Henry Cuellar.
TowardsTheFuture -12 points 4 months ago
Or, hear me out, you just let people vote for progressives if they want and don't blame them for dems losing. Maybe look at why people stopped voting after Obama? Maybe he happy that people vote at all because it allows more votes for progressives/dems in the local level, even if it doesn't help at the national level? Cuz dems have a lot of issues, not just leftists "not" voting for them. (sure, some don't but iirc they're actually the highest % dem voting block, even if they are much smaller in population. )
KoboldCoterie 25 points 4 months ago
I'm not blaming them for dems losing, and they can vote however they want, I'm not stopping them. This isn't about how you can and can't vote, it's about how to make your vote work to prevent situations like we're in right now, while also pushing for longer-term outcomes, and we can all have - and share - our opinions on how to do that.
Personally, I think it's counter-productive to refuse to actively vote to prevent our current situation in the name of ideals or whatever else. It's going to take years if not decades to fix the damage being done right now, in all likelihood. But you're welcome to have your own opinion on that matter.
TowardsTheFuture -3 points 4 months ago
if that sort of voting prevented this situation at all we wouldn't be here?
Do you think supporting the lesser evil magically makes the two parties put forward BETTER candidates? All that shit does is lead to parties racing to the bottom, voters getting fucking tired of it and either stop voting, or look at trump and go "at least he isn't a politician he'll do something different" and vote for him. Dems refuse to do shit about it but run shit after shit after shit. When they had huge turnout for Obama's message of "change" and now their message with biden is "nothing will fundamentally change" which.... cool. Great. Way to energize your voters. "Not trump" isn't enough. and until the DNC learns that, they can fuck themselves as they aren't improving or preventing shit. I'll always vote, but I'm voting for candidates that are the most worthy of a fucking vote.
isleepinahammock 27 points 4 months ago
Yeah, people seem to forget history. Often institutions become so sclerotic that the only way forward is to work outside of them. Look what it took to defeat slavery in the US. Slaveholders had co-opted both major parties. Abolitionists tried for decades to work within the existing two party system, voting "lesser evil" election after election. In the end, this strategy failed at ending slavery. It took the founding of a new party, the Republican Party, to really make progress on abolition. It ended up leading to the Civil War, but slavery would have continued for another generation at least if abolitionists had just kept voting defensively election after election.
moakley 3 points 4 months ago
So you're saying they just stopped voting for a few elections and let the bigots have free reign for a few elections? Or did they keep voting for the lesser evil in the mean time? Because that's what this discussion is actually about, and your example doesn't seem to apply.
isleepinahammock 7 points 4 months ago
No. They didn't vote lesser of two evils. You need to get out of the headspace that the only option is to vote for one of the two parties. That's an ahistorical viewpoint. They just voted Republican until their candidate won. The Republican party was only founded after "voting for the lesser evil" failed after decades of trying. This is what I mean when I say people need to learn their history. We've been in this situation before, and our ancestors did not escape it by voting for the lesser evil.
We live in a two party system. We're going to have two parties. However, the parties themselves are not eternal. We'll always have two parties, but which parties those are can change. And often it's easier to completely swap out parties than to reform one from within.
If you want to create a new party in the US, the only way to do so is to destroy one of the existing parties. Namely, that means making the other party completely electorally nonviable.
Imagine if the most liberal 20% of the electorate simply refused to ever vote for the Democratic Party again and switched over to the DSA. Yes, that would mean losing for a few cycles. But again, history shows that sometimes you have to put up with pain now for a better future later. Centrists will slander this as "accelerationism," but this isn't really that. You're not hoping things get worse before they get better. You're just recognizing that the only way to create a new party is to destroy an old one. Politics becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you make one of the existing parties nonviable, then a power vacuum is created, and the whole electoral alignment shifts. If leftists completely abandoned the Democrats, the Democratic party would completely collapse. It would go the way of the Whigs. When a party dies, the electoral coalitions realign. And they would realign around the old Republican Party and the new DSA or other chosen party.
I know this is hard. But really, this is just learning from history. Yes, it means you sometimes lose ground in the short term to gain ground in the long term. And that is hard. It's painful. But compare that to what we've been doing instead - hoping to gain ground in the short term while losing even more in the long term. Voting for Democrats now is just voting for the lock on the ratchet. They have no real desire to change anything. At best you get a temporary reprieve from creeping fascism, while nothing changes in the circumstances that lead to the fascism.
whatiswrongwithyou 4 points 4 months ago
The Republican Party was formed in 1854 and Lincoln was elected president running as a republican in 1860.
Quill7513 23 points 4 months ago
credit to slrpnk.net instance admins for sharing this often:
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pelespirit 3 points 4 months ago
But remember that to fix it you need to fight for a revolution.
Nah. We got LGBTQ+ marriages without a revolution. Civil Rights got better for a time. You're going to have to give examples in the last 20 years where a revolution worked. Meaning, the government wasn't taken over by an authoritarian and/or military leader.
EldritchFeminity 28 points 4 months ago
To be fair, both of those were won with plenty of violence and took decades to accomplish.
The first Pride was a riot started most likely by a black trans woman who refused to be grabbed by the cops during one of their usual roundups of gay people and threw the first punch (brick to the face?) that set off a brawl across the whole area. IIRC, 100 cops were injured in the fight. But it still took nearly 50 years for gay marriage to be completely legal in the US. 1969 was when Stonewall happened, 2015 was the Supreme Court ruling (and that can be repealed at any time, like they did with abortion). Even the first state to officially write it into law, Massachusetts, only happened in 2004.
MLK Jr credited the Black Panthers being armed and willing to do what he couldn't as a major part of why he had the success that he did. And his protests were already illegal, risking possible prison time for those involved if they weren't done very carefully. And even after 10 years, Civil Rights laws were only written after a week of riots and billions of dollars in property damage sparked by his murder. 10 years of protests, but it took less than a week for the laws to be drafted and signed into law when entire city districts started to get burnt to the ground.
However, revolutions can be cultural as well. Gay marriage is a great example with actual polling numbers to present. By the time that the Supreme Court ruled on it, polls said that the country was equally split on the issue while as of 2021 a full 70% of the US apparently supports gay marriage.
almost_genocide 20 points 4 months ago
Civil Rights got better for a time.
Widespread riots gave us the Civil Rights. Crack open Wikipedia for a minute on that champ.
pelespirit -10 points 4 months ago
First of all, Civil Rights wasn't a revolution. Second, that's one of the reasons I said in the last 20 years, the military wouldn't let that happen again.
almost_genocide 18 points 4 months ago
First of all, Civil Rights wasn’t a revolution.
I don't give a shit what you call it.
Point is it wasn't brought about by voting. Certainly not by voting for pro-corporate trash.
Tedesche 4 points 4 months ago
Yeah, I agree. Too many people on Lemmy are too keen on being revolutionaries and tearing the system down. They forget that most revolutions just wind up installing equally corrupt governments, and quite honestly, I think a lot of people romanticize revolutionary figures and dream of being like them. It’s a tempting thing, to be a part of something so big that it topples a world order.
But stable governments are really hard to build and they take time to solidify. They should not be discarded unless absolutely necessary. I don’t think we’re at that point in the West yet, even in America. Capitalism has its problems and needs reform, but Communism clearly isn’t the answer either. I think the socialist models in Europe are good models to follow, but they’re not perfect either.
kingofras 1 point 4 months ago
Afghanistan, Nepal,…
It’s not because we got into a new millennium that human’s violent nature (aka nature’s nature) is suddenly going to disappear. Voting and protesting is for sustaining peacetime. And that does only part of the legwork. A very long traumatic war is the best breathing ground for peace. But it never lasts. Because the sons of grandsons stop telling the tales, because it was so long ago and we’re better now
pelespirit 1 point 4 months ago
Afghanistan
Wtf? Are you saying the Taliban is a good government? lmao
Nepal, I'm not sure. Afghanistan wipes out any good will in your comment.
kingofras 1 point 4 months ago
That’s so obviously not what I’m saying. Your argument is that we don’t need revolutions anymore or that they don’t happen. I’m not saying they always have the result we want, but they happen.
The irony is that your LGBTQ argument is partially responsible for the attempted revolution of Jan 6. We have Trump because the South couldn’t stomach having 8 years of a descendant of slaves as president. Your country never made peace after the civil war, in a way your last revolution never properly landed, which is why there’s as many confederate flags in the south as American flags.
If you’re not sure about Nepal, then look into it. You’d be surprised.
uriel238 -4 points 4 months ago
Hence the crabby letters and the protests. Right now in the US, there are a lot of issues that are popular, and Democratic candidates can be pressured into movement on those issues. Republican candidates have to obey Dear Leader or face getting primaried by the propaganda machine, hence billion-dollar ballrooms and no accountability for the $1.776 billion slushfund.
...or the inadvisable elective war on Iran.
If Americans were more literate about their elections (which is a prerequisite for democracy to work) then we wouldn't be in this mess.
almost_genocide 15 points 4 months ago
Right now in the US, there are a lot of issues that are popular, and Democratic candidates can be pressured into movement on those issues.
This simply isn't true. Biden witnessed the protests regarding him supporting Israel and he told them to go fuck themselves.
uriel238 -9 points 4 months ago
One counterexample does not make it untrue. I have the same complaint regarding Obama's failure to rise to the moment after the slaying of Michael Brown in 2014 and the Ferguson unrest. That incident demonstrated that law enforcement was due some severe reformation. It did happen, and the high rate of officer-involved homicide entered public consciousness and the Overton Window. We've actually seen some police reform since in some counties, but not coming from Obama or the Congress of the time.
It doesn't take every time. But it does sometimes.
Right now things are severe, especially now that SCOTUS can pretty much veto anything it wants (including the Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments). The US public may have to resort to noncooperation, general strikes or even civil war to create a governmental system that is public-serving. At least those of us who survive will have to try.
But for now, we're focused on the midterm elections, to see if we really can push enough of the GOP out to stop Trump and his push towards autocracy. Things are going to get far worse if the Republican party is able to lock in a permanent majority in both houses of Congress, and that's exactly what they're trying to do.
almost_genocide 17 points 4 months ago
We’ve actually seen some police reform since in some counties
Oh wow. Such a victory.
Give me a fucking break.
Ensign_Crab 1 point 4 months ago
One counterexample does not make it untrue.
Name one centrist that has changed their mind on genocide. One.
alapakala 13 points 4 months ago
Democratic candidates can be pressured into movement on those issues.
Why didn't they do so thrice when they were in power?
uriel238 -3 points 4 months ago
You're going to be able to find instances where it doesn't fully work, where positions don't evolve. Obama era Democrats were mostly neoliberal, which factored into why Trump was able to take power.
But that shouldn't stop you from voting against the guy who is going to do more damage.
Voting is the least an activist might do.
almost_genocide 16 points 4 months ago
You’re going to be able to find instances where it doesn’t fully work
What you mean is it never works when it actually matters. The two pivotal moments of Biden's presidency was the rail workers gearing up to strike and the protests around support of Israel. In both instances he and nearly every Democratic politician told voters to go fuck themselves.
Which is infuriating enough and the only thing more irritating is the endless number of people like yourself trying to tell us that didn't happen.
alapakala 5 points 4 months ago
Leave your electoral apologia out the /c/: Your votes all amounted to empowering Nazis back into power. You refuse to directly act, because it's inconvenient to your positions.
Voting is exactly how the electoral college elected them 5 times. Thrice against you, twice for you.
Ensign_Crab 1 point 4 months ago
You’re going to be able to find instances where it doesn’t fully work, where positions don’t evolve.
Positions evolve in the direction you want. Which is why we're here.
Nonconfrontational 13 points 4 months ago
Democratic candidates can be pressured into movement on those issues.
No, they literally can't. Kamala chose to lose rather than change the dems stance on Israel. They chose genocide over winning.
Grail 51 points 4 months ago
In Australia, you can vote for whoever you want first, and then you just have to make sure to put the better big party before the worst big party.
In America, your voting system is fucked, so you only get three options: Democrat, Republican, no preference. Abstaining is no preference. Abstaining and saying you want to burn down the system, is still no preference. You gotta make a good choice with your vote, so you can move on to making change on the ground with your hands and your feet and your voice. If you spend all day at your keyboard talking about how abstinence actually means whatever you want it to mean, then you're not making change, you're just getting mad.
rothaine 18 points 4 months ago
Abstaining is actually voting Republican, because of the voter demographics wherein Republicans have a dedicated chunk of zealots who will vote 100% of the time, and the Democrats having no such thing
RamenJunkie 6 points 4 months ago
Yes, OP's point is also that generally speaking Republicans are less likely to abstain.
almost_genocide 4 points 4 months ago
and the Democrats having no such thing
And instead of asking yourself why Democratic politicians are failing to inspire loyalty you blame the voters of a democracy?
Hot take bud.
Grail 2 points 4 months ago
Democracy means you have the freedom to elect a fascist government if you want to, and that's exactly what the American people have done. They exercised their freedom to choose Trump over Harris.
American people don't get very many freedoms. They don't get the freedom to vote third party. They don't get the freedom to vote "neither of the above". They don't get the freedom to use the popular vote. But they do get the freedom to choose between the two big candidates, and that's the freedom they exercised.
almost_genocide -1 points 4 months ago
Democracy means you have the freedom to elect a fascist government if you want to,
If that's all democracy is then it's benefits have been vastly overstated and I see no reason to protect it.
almost_genocide 2 points 4 months ago
“Loyalty” to a party is not a good thing, for one.
That's pretty rich coming from someone arguing we are morally obligated to vote for Democratic politicians. You can't get any more loyal than that.
RamenJunkie -3 points 4 months ago
Republicans, are by nature, essentially a mono culture. Conservativism demmands conformity. Hate taxes, Hate foreigners, hate "the gays", hate science and edumacashun.
Democrats, while not Progressive, pick up everyone else, which includes progressives. Progressives, tend to be open and accepting of what is different.
Except increasingly, they are not. Just with the last election, because every Democrat didn't 100% say "Fuck Israel, Free Palestine", then now all Democrats are evil and should never be supported.
Ya'll are single issue voting just as bad as the shitty Republicans will single issue vote on say, No Abortion.
The Democrats aren't great, but they exist as the compromise based system our Government SHOULD BE.
And maybe they would run more Progressive types and shift back Left but why should they bother right now? They could run some hyper progressive trans candidate who hatees Israel, but that candidate says one "wrong" thing on one issue and the mob turns on them and says "SeE, aLl DeMoCrAts aRe bAd."
That said, I am still not entirely convinced that a lot of the "All Dems Suck" rhetoric isn't the Left side version of bad foreign actors that have turned the GOP into the MAGA Nazi party.
almost_genocide 4 points 4 months ago
And maybe they would run more Progressive types and shift back Left but why should they bother right now?
Because they're losing without us.
Triasha 8 points 4 months ago
There is not. Bill Clinton won the presidency with something like 42% of the vote in 1992.
Neither Trump Nor Bush won more than 50% of the vote to secure their first term in office.
Passerby6497 4 points 4 months ago
It's important to note that both Bush and Trump won their initial election by the electoral college and lost the popular vote. So not only do you not have to get >50%, you don't even have to get a plurality of votes to win.
Also, Roger Stone just happened to participate in both elections, and both had fuckery involved.
almost_genocide 1 point 4 months ago
Who's both siding now?
RamenJunkie -1 points 4 months ago
Libertarianism is societal cancer and those Stein voters would have supported Trump over Harris anyway since the MAGA GOP is basically a Libertarian system (the fuck you got mine Government) at its core.
zarkanian 4 points 4 months ago
Sometimes there is a Green option on the ballot, and in those cases, you should vote Green! The US Green Party has had a solid leftist platform for decades, including ending support for Israel, universal healthcare, free college, and more.
Archer 32 points 4 months ago
Thank fuck someone is saying this. There are a few posters in c/progressivepolitics that seem to be saying Democrats have to pass all their purity tests or you shouldn’t vote and that’s nuts because it hands Republicans elections. Luckily they usually get downvoted
cloudskater 14 points 4 months ago
Fucking literally.
Ensign_Crab 3 points 4 months ago
"Purity test" just means "I have no standards and I expect you to abandon yours."
Nonconfrontational 12 points 4 months ago
Where is the good?
Ensign_Crab 2 points 4 months ago
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good
Centrists think genocide is "the good".
perspectiveshifting 26 points 4 months ago
Yes, obviously to anyone paying attention. How does letting republicans get elected help get rid of first past the post though?
prole 0 points 4 months ago
Obama literally tried to close it and Republicans fought tooth and nail to stop that.
alapakala 4 points 4 months ago
Damn Democratic Senators and their Nazi ways!
Why didn't Obama do another executive order to bypass the Senate‽
alapakala -5 points 4 months ago
- Not, Skullgrid, def. not ableist.
- Liberal concessions is what allowed the deaf & blind to be segregated from public life, until one too many of us had enough. Directly intersect every time you can.
Quokka 12 points 4 months ago
I don't know a thing about this skullgrid person, but 'reee' is a 4chan thing making fun of autistic/nd people. Certainly something we can move beyond when wanting to say people are angry.
alapakala -3 points 4 months ago
Precisely!
I am allowed to be angry at electoralists for never leading a revolution, and genociding us, again, again, and again.
I grow tired of liberal concessionslies. Time to crack those chains and free the enslaved.
chortle_tortle 3 points 4 months ago
I voted third party. I am glad we can still be friends 🥰
freddydunningkruger 4 points 4 months ago
You should look up "First Past the Post", check out how many times a 3rd party has won the presidency in the 60 elections held over the past 325 years, and slowly realize you actually helped ensure Trump was elected President. Then I don't know.. take a victory lap? Keep telling yourself you did the right thing because it's easier?
starman2112 5 points 4 months ago
You have a point. Maybe it's time we actually put some effort into getting a different party in office, since both the dems and repubs hate us
Passerby6497 4 points 4 months ago
Sure, then we can have the republicans and the neo-whigs as the two parties fighting over the presidency. Much better. /s.
We need to change the system, and letting the republicans put their finger on the scale by letting them in office will only solidify and amplify the inequities we have now. Strategic voting is necessary to keep the avenues of change open.
zarkanian 24 points 4 months ago
I guess this is what you do if there are only two candidates running and they are "100% Hitler' and "99% Hitler". Fortunately, I've never encountered this situation, but I'd really be in a moral dilemma if I did.
We should have a "None of the above" option on the ballot. If "None of the above" got the most votes, then they'd have to run another election with all new candidates.
Jankatarch 12 points 4 months ago
We would still have centrists going "I am looking for a 99.6% Hitler."
uriel238 7 points 4 months ago
There are a number of election system models better than the ones used in United States elections. Sadly, our elected officials get more power with the system as it is, and it's difficult to organize general strikes around election reform...or court reform for that matter. And I say that since the US Supreme Court has succeeded in vetoing the VRA and is carving into the 14th and 15th amendments.
flying_sheep 3 points 4 months ago
Better do of the other acceptably functional democratic models that don't result in a 2 party system. Proportional representation, instant-runoff, …
Liz 23 points 4 months ago
I am too tired at the moment to really talk, but here are the systems we need to no longer need defensive voting.
And
LurkingLuddite 21 points 4 months ago
Every dumbass voting this down is EXACTLY why we have Dumbass as president.
LetThereBeNick 2 points 4 months ago
... don't you think a lot of Trump votes were defensive votes against Hilary/Harris? Telling people to vote against the worse candidate is morbid and devoid of hope.
Elections should be restructured so people aren't forced into 1-on-1 battles. People naturally have more diverse beliefs than a left/right spectrum. The current system was gamed into crisis. Time for an amendment
Crashumbc 13 points 4 months ago
The system needs to be changed, absolutely.
Do you think that is going be easier with a Democrat in charge or Trump? Given that Trump has already done everything possible to destroy what little voter rights Americans do have. And may not be done.
At this point wouldn't be surprised if he made up some bullshit excuse to cancel the fall elevations all together.
RamenJunkie 8 points 4 months ago
A MAGA Idiot voting for Trump "defensively" against 5 Trans Athletes and non existent people eating cats and dogs un Ohio, are not voting defensivrly, they are stupid and voting stupidly because god for they actually not accept blatant and obvious lies.
KairuByte 24 points 4 months ago
Pretty sure America is the most obvious place this would be referencing.
It has to be a FPTP country, and it has to be a country with so few possible parties that the choices are bad or worse. Not to mention it has to be a country with free and fair elections.
How many countries fit that bill?
alapakala -12 points 4 months ago
Scroll up. You’re scaring the Aussies, Bri’ish, & Deutsche in this /c/.
Finding @uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone was talking about omnium California midterms took a secondary retort to press.
free and fair elections.
Ahistorical take, or rhetorical?
Grail 4 points 4 months ago
Aren't you Butch Ware, the Green Party vice presidential nominee and candidate for governor of California, and therefore an American?
Elsewhere in this thread, Gormadt told you to run for office. You said "I did", and linked to a news story about Butch Ware messing up the paperwork to run for California governor. So it seemed like you were saying you're Butch Ware, an American.
darthelmet 19 points 4 months ago
Here's the thing that bothers me with the whole harm reduction/purity test/don't let perfect be the enemy of the good argument when it comes to US politics:
Saying that I should vote for the person who agrees with me on some stuff even if it's not everything kind of assumes that for some list of policy stances, they're all essentially equivalent. Not saying mean things about minorities is put on the same level as continuing to run a massive, racist prison and policing system or a massive military that is essentially only used for killing foreigners to exploit their resources. It's insane to argue that I should be able to overlook these truly reprehensible and harmful actions because they're a bit better on some smaller thing.
Even if you ignore the bad things that are still done by the less bad party, structurally, the systems we have in place all but guarantee that we will repeatedly have more of the worse party every election or so and that they will have access to tools that let them abuse their power. So at best, voting for the lesser evil just slightly delays the greater evil. If we just go vote every few years then go back to brunch and trust that the people we elected will be doing a good job, nothing will ever change. We never see these blue no matter who people go "I know it sucks, lets do this for now, but here is the plan for the next few years to make sure we can get a better option in the future."
The way things work now, even if a politician says they agree with you, you just have to trust them. There is no real recourse for holding them accountable if they were lying. You just have to let them do whatever they were going to do, maybe write some strongly worded letters, and then in 2/4/6 years you end up having to vote for them again because of the way the system is fucked. And as long as they are taking corporate money, they aren't representing you. You can't trust anything they say.
If a Democrat came around who:
Didn't take corporate money and seemed trustworthy.
Promised significant democratic reforms in both how elections work and the government works so that we can actually have real choices next time.
Promised to significantly reduce the military so we couldn't keep doing imperialism everywhere.
Promised to significantly reduce the police and surveillance state so that they won't have the capacity to keep spying on us and disrupting real opposition.
Then I would 100% vote for them and even canvas for them even if I disagreed with them on some other issues that I cared about. At least then we'd be moving forward. We'd have a chance to do better in the future. But they're not going to do that because the people who have made it into power benefit from things as they are, so they're not going to change that. As things are now, we're just stuck in an endless loop, slowly drifting towards oblivion.
To be clear, just not voting and doing nothing else isn't super helpful either, but the key is we need to get everyone on board with an organized plan to fix things. The people who show up every election just to tell you that actually trying to organize a new party is bad, voting for the progressive in the party primary is dividing the party, and you can't complain too much about the bad things the lesser evil does because it'll hurt our chances next time are NOT HELPING.
The question then is how do we do this? We have a bunch of people who know the system is fucked, but there's no direction for them to express that. How do they even begin to fight? "Let's organize a new party for this purpose!" Ok now we have yet another 3rd party to divide the vote even further. (Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/927/) "Lets all pick this existing party and use it for this purpose!" Ok, which one? The DNC? They're part of the problem and actively work against progressive candidates in primaries. Sure, we sometimes get the win, but those victories often take all of our time and attention just to secure one relatively small seat of power that is useless without winning way more of them. Another existing 3rd party? Can we get people to agree which one to join? This is where the leftist infighting argument holds some water. There are a few existing parties of varying lefty persuasion, but people aren't necessarily going to agree with all their policies, so getting people to compromise on one of them when we have no central organized structure is borderline hopeless. And that's before you even consider the collective action problem of getting enough people to take the leap that they aren't worried about the splitting the vote issue.
And regardless of what path we decide to take, how do we spread this message to get people on board? All of the major channels for mass communication are captured by corporate interests. Even social media, which had the hope of being a place where the people could talk to each other directly, has become almost useless for that function since the corporations that own them control the algorithms that allow messages to spread beyond their starting group.
And I already know someone is going to say something to the effect of "Don't worry about the big picture. It's too big for you to handle, so try to do things locally that are more possible." To that I say: Holy shit we are running out of time. The government keeps getting more and more fascist, he environment is falling apart and will kill us at some point, and technological advances in surveillance and military technology are going to keep making it easier for the powerful to cling onto power without care for what people want. Getting on your town's school board or something sounds nice and all, but it's like being on the Titanic and telling people to grab some buckets. Like I said earlier, even winning a single seat in congress doesn't mean much if it took our entire movement's collective effort to get that seat while the capitalists used their money to win the rest of them.
I really don't know what to do, but I'm so fucking sick of hearing people chastising people for not wanting to just keep doing what we've always been doing when that clearly hasn't been working and not only not helping to change things, but actively working to disrupt the efforts of people who do want to try to change things.
EDIT: Just to add my own personal anecdote to this: In 2020 I both volunteered for Bernie's campaign and worked on the campaign for a progressive congressional candidate in my district. The mood felt so optimistic. We were all working so hard to try to change things and for a while it seemed like it had a chance... and then we just straight up lost both elections to some absolute pieces of shit. Our incumbent representative was such a fucking terrible person he might as well have been a Republican.
Not that this has any bearing on the broader argument, I just want to share how my own experiences have shaped my feelings on this, but the broader pattern kind of reinforces that.
AdolfSchmitler 10 points 4 months ago
Love this comment. You expressed so well what I've been feeling these past few months. And when people say "idk the dems don't seem too promising" they get attacked with people saying they basically let trump win and you need to vote blue etc etc.
We do need something different but that task seems near impossible. I feel like I'm trapped in the passenger seat of a car that's crashing in slow motion and i can't get out.
Especially hard when 1/3 of the country is still rooting for trump. Legit overhead a guy at my work say "I have to pay twice as much for gas but he's having a UFC fight at the white house so that's pretty cool." Like dude... gahh idk man.
Thebeardedsinglemalt 5 points 4 months ago
Yep, and unlike a lot of other people, that dude goes out of his way to vote for the orange turd
godsammitdam 16 points 4 months ago path: 0 24159391, hotness: undefined, score: 16, children: 0
IEatDaFeesh 15 points 4 months ago
3rd option voters seething at a reasonable strategy.
DrSteveBrule 3 points 4 months ago
Interestingly, this post doesn't dissuade from 3rd party voting.
freddydunningkruger 10 points 4 months ago
It assumes that even the SIMPLEST of minds understands by now that in a First Past the Post system, a third party doesnt stand a chance and is a wasted vote, not a defensive vote. For reference, see all past 60 presidential elections covering the 235 years between 1789 and 2024, and look at how many times a 3rd party candidate has won. If you want third parties, we need to start with dismantling FPtP.
InternetCitizen2 4 points 4 months ago
I'd rather see people go 3rd party or even spoil their ballot. Beats the apathy.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod -1 points 4 months ago
Just don’t fill your ballot out, at least not completely. That’s what I do. I only voted for one person in the primary.
BeardededSquidward 13 points 4 months ago
It doesn't feel that the Democrats will actually listen much anymore, we're shouting we're drowning at the top of our lungs everyday and they're like "Thoughts and prayers with a pride flag."
uriel238 5 points 4 months ago
There are more progressive candidates now than before, and some of them are getting into office. Pledging not to take AIPAC money is now such a thing that AIPAC is creating anonymous subsidiaries with which to donate to their opponents.
Yes, much of the Democratic party is still captured by corporations. The DNC and DCCC are still operating against Democratic Socialist candidates, but that also shows that the corporatist establishment regards the internal movement as a legitimate threat.
Also the Democratic party as a general rule still believes there should be checks and balances, and rule of law (whether or not they fully respect them at all times). The Republican party believes they should move fast and break things, and disregard laws and courts so long as they can do so without consequences.
There is a difference between the enemies you can vote for, and right now we're experiencing the consequences of too many voters failing to show up at the polls.
velma 9 points 4 months ago
Being willing to vote against Republicans isn't the same as being willing to vote for Democrats though.
When those of us voted and still got fucked over, what is left? The Dems do not care to change or challenge the Republicans because it might mean their own kickbacks get cut.
Y'all are yelling at everyone to vote, but then what? Is it just going to be more of the same slow march to fascism that the Dems were all too happy to help speed along?
People came out and protested at Harris, like what is suggested in the meme, and she told them to shut up.
LodeMike 3 points 4 months ago
Writing in "anyone else" is still voting. I'm not saying that you should show you're willing to vote for anyone with a D next to their name, I'm saying you should show you're willing to vote at all. Not every non voter shares your opinion, some just don't care.
Ryanmiller70 2 points 4 months ago
See I like talking voting with people like you. I'm on the side of voting is worth doing, but I'm not fine with anyone saying "You either support my party or you might as well have not voted" like OP tells people. That's reductionist, something they seem to hate people who dislike the major parties doing.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod 1 point 4 months ago
I’ve been showing that since the year 2000.
Had a Kucinich for President bumper sticker and everything.
When will it start to work?
cogitase 12 points 4 months ago
I was thinking about those red states where they're now eliminating the last remaining black districts. In so many red states the real election is the Republican primary, since whoever wins that will win the general no matter how abhorrent they are. So why don't all the now effectively-disenfranchised voters start voting in the Republican primary for the least-awful Republican? I can't imagine the reaction of Louisiana Republicans if busloads of elderly black people started showing up to "their" primary after church on Sunday.
uriel238 6 points 4 months ago
That might actually make a difference between a true MAGA loyalist who will vote as Dear Leader directs him to do at all times, and, someone who in fact will not manifest 11,780 votes for Trump if they aren't actually there to be found.
Even the current congressional Republicans have their factions who take offense to Trump portraying himself as Jesus, or conjuring a slush fund of $1.776 billion, or giving himself, his family and his businesses permanent amnesty from tax audits.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod 12 points 4 months ago
Disclaimer: This strategy takes decades or centuries to have any effect.
carotte 16 points 4 months ago
if the progress can be so easily undone by fascists, as we’re seeing right now all over the world, then maybe this strategy is not adequate, no?
if you need a victory every time to maintain a steady progress, and they need a victory once to undo it all, you’re playing a game you’re almost certain of losing.
pelespirit -3 points 4 months ago
What do you suggest?
I had a boss from russia who had a quote on the wall. Something like, yeah America's democracy sucks, but it's the best government out there.
Vittelius 7 points 4 months ago
It was probably this quote, which is less about America specifically and more about democracy in general:
Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’
Winston Churchill, 11 November 1947
carotte 7 points 4 months ago
we need a to organize towards a revolution, and a new system
this is easier said than done, of course. i'm not gonna deny that. and i don't know exactly what is to be done, precisely, i am not knowledgeable and experienced enough to answer that. but one thing is certain, liberal democracy brought us into fasicsm, it's not gonna get us out of it.
kingofras -2 points 4 months ago
America's democracy sucks, but it's the best government out there.
You yanks are so far up your own you can’t see anything. Heck, Canada is flawed, but just across the bloody lakes there’s already a government better than the USA.
Say you haven’t travelled the world without saying you haven’t travelled the world.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod 8 points 4 months ago
May the next fuck around generation appreciate our sacrifice.
cloudskater 6 points 4 months ago
Yeah and how far has that gotten us? Why are we still dealing with issues and acting like they're solved? Especially now, this is not viable. We'll kill the earth before we manage to fix anything.
4grams 3 points 4 months ago
We will if we keep expecting the “one weird trick”
What it will take is coordinated action, applied consistently, not this “I’ll fix everything immediately” bullshit people keep falling for.
Ensign_Crab 2 points 4 months ago
Disclaimer: this is how long progress takes.
Remember, everything takes forever except arms sales for genocide. That's immediate.
uriel238 0 points 4 months ago
It's only part of a strategy, but yes, it takes time. I think we might see what happens when general discontent of the public becomes severe enough that they develop class consciousness. Well, those of us who survive the misery will get to see it.
TropicalDingdong 0 points 4 months ago
to have any effect if it has any effect at all.
ftfy..
rtxn 17 points 4 months ago
And in protest, you've let the other guy win. Now you have your very own Stasi in the streets and your tax dollars are being spent on bombing schools and celebratory UFC fights. You... sure showed them, haven't you.
TropicalDingdong 4 points 4 months ago
Ahh the neoliberal "its the voters who are the problem" fever dream, where Democrats can never fail, they can only be failed by voters.
A fever dream which has resulted in the Democratic party having a lower approval rating than Trump. Surely defending Democrats as an institution and blaming voters will gather more people to your coalition and help stop Trump.
You gotta get it through your head homie. You blaming voters for the failures of the Democrats: Its why Trump won in both 16 and 24. You're the problem if you take issue with how voters vote.
TowardsTheFuture 10 points 4 months ago
"VOTING IS SO IMPORTANT"
"So you have to vote how I tell you."
"Also everything is your fault, we've done nothing wrong."
Fuckin dems lol.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod 1 point 4 months ago
The effect of an individual vote is indistinguishable from it not having any effect at all.
TropicalDingdong 2 points 4 months ago
The infinitesimal power of the vote.
Sanctus 10 points 4 months ago
Ignore the ivory towers atop which the officials sit. Cleanly above your protests, so that they might see the horizon beyond your squabbling. Had the people consumed the choices, and rebuked the officials, maybe they would not have to choose between marauders and raiders.
uriel238 4 points 4 months ago
We do not yet know what it takes to organize the people to seize power from the ownership class. It's a race we're falling behind with every hour as the far-right propaganda engine that dominates social media and televised news is able to better draw people in and tell them what to think.
Eventually, there will enough of us dead, and enough of us discontent and set on revenge that we're willing to fight just because we have nothing left to lose. But American history has shown that we can also have incremental revolutions, usually steps of reform in response to hardship driven by inequity.
deft 3 points 4 months ago
It never happens this way.
Once group A "seizes the power from the ownership class" THEY BECOME THE OWNERSHIP CLASS.
This is history, this is how it works. It's very foolish to believe what you see on TV or what you're told when reality has never gone that way ever not once.
Voting has positively impacted the world, democracy has moved mountains.
deft 2 points 4 months ago
Remember when people tried to say Hillary was just as corrupt? Now it's Kamala sat atop her ivory tower and is a marauder and/or a raider. They're just as bad as Trump. It's equal.
Don't vote, destroy your system from the outside. Let Trump win, let it burn.
That is this guys message. And as cute this idea is when you're 16 or whatever, once reality hits it's not what you're describing.
Destroying, decaying and damaging a system hurts the lowest rung first and the highest rung, never.
Voting does make change. It doesn't when every election bozos like you try to dissuade more people from voting.
Sanctus 11 points 4 months ago
You enjoy your preaching? My message is the same as everyone else's here. Voting isn't enough. A choice between two corporate representatives, one rabid and the other cleanly presented, is not a fucken choice. You don't have to like it but every system gets gamed and eventually the people oppressed by that system must destroy it in order to gain a better quality of life. The writing is on the wall, everything is going down but the stock market. Wake up.
deft 0 points 4 months ago
You're literally preaching you bonehead.
Your message is not the same as everyone here.
Voting works. The problem is people like you.
If not voting was a candidate it'd win every election in a landslide. Dopes like you create an ouroboros of self confirmation, a self fulfilling prophecy. Voting doesn't work, so why vote and now that people don't vote, voting doesn't work. So why vote?
It's a crap message stemming from a misunderstanding of the problem of our system. People have to buy into it. It's "cool" not to buy into it.
Sanctus 5 points 4 months ago
"If NoT VoTiNg WaS.." Bitch I voted. Every fucken time, and these monsters continued to tear the world apart, destroy anything I ever built, and say fuck you I got mine. I HAVE BEEN VOTING THIS ENTIRE TIME AND SHIT IS STILL BEINF CONSOLIDATED AT LIGHT SPEED. TRUMP STILL HAPPENED. THE NEXT TIME SOMEONE SAYS JUST VOTE HARDER IM GONNA THROW UP. Voting is the peaceful alternative, but ask the fucking miners at Blair Mountain how well voting worked for them compares to praxis. You sound ignorant as fuck. Every right we ever had came from the people getting fed up their blood was being spilled, their dead filling the cemeteries for the pockets of oligarchs. Fuck off with this "people like you" bullshit. I've been here and its not FUCKING working.
almost_genocide 4 points 4 months ago
It doesn’t when every election bozos like you try to dissuade more people from voting.
Not true. We always try to get you to vote for someone who isn't trash in the Democratic primaries.
But then you go and vote for trash in the Democratic primaries.
Do you plan on voting for trash in future Democratic primaries?
deft 0 points 4 months ago
Completely ignorant.
If not voting was a candidate it'd win every election. That's the problem. That's why they hand the candidacy to Clinton, that's why they can assert Kamala and not worry
Not like people are gonna vote anyway, they're penny pinching for votes. The decent politicians cannot afford to campaign on the same scale and the fact nobody comes out to vote means pound for pound, spending money on elections isn't entirely worth it
Go vote. That's the solution. Tell other people to vote. Believing a system that people aren't buying into doesn't work is a misunderstanding of the system.
almost_genocide 2 points 4 months ago
I do tell people to vote. In the primaries.
But when the Democratic primaries produce a trash candidate I don't bother to tell people to vote in the general election.
IpsumLauren 10 points 4 months ago
Nice try, Kamala
RamenJunkie 15 points 4 months ago
Yeah, imagine if we had gotten Harris as President...
How... much... "worse"... things would be.
IpsumLauren 8 points 4 months ago
The White House would be intact.
Thebeardedsinglemalt 1 point 4 months ago
fElon wouldn't be approaching trillionaire status and gas would be about half the price
RamenJunkie 1 point 4 months ago
I eat smores pretty often really. Its not quite the same but I had some smores cereal like a week or so ago.
Ensign_Crab 1 point 4 months ago
Imagine if we had actual primaries.
There might have been a non-genocidal candidate we could have voted for. People might have been excited to vote.
Of course, centrists would have stayed home or voted for trump so they could still get the only thing they live for.
Passerby6497 9 points 4 months ago
Too bad the people who need to hear this aren't listening. I tried to make the same argument in 24 and constantly got responses that didn't amount to anything more than
Nope, I'm gonna take my ball and go home, who cares if temu Hitler wins? Both sides blah blah blah
TotallynotJessica 4 points 4 months ago
If your response to the 2024 election is to blame non-voters rather than the party that alienated their base, then you're part of the problem. The Democrats lost because they are a disgrace to the values they claimed to champion, which is a reputation they earned over Biden's 4 year term. If you refuse to put pressure on the people who built that wall, then you will never create a sustainable strategy for positive change. If Democrats voters don't apply maximum pressure to the establishment, we are guaranteed to get fascism back within a cycle, even if the Dems win.
As someone who has voted in every election I could and still continues to vote despite having no faith in liberalism, I feel like I have a right call out this childish bullshit. You cannot shame the people you're calling out; all you're doing is taking out your anger in the most counterproductive way possible. You make me feel ashamed to ever vote (D). It isn't the Republicans that make me hopeless for the future; it's you.
starman2112 4 points 4 months ago
I also made this argument in '24, and then I considered the fact that electing a democrat did exactly Jack Fucking Shit besides ensure a republican victory in '24. Can you think of anything that Biden did to mitigate any of the damage Trump has caused? Because as of now, the only person getting in the way of Trump's plans is Trump
chortle_tortle 2 points 4 months ago
Too bad the people who need to hear this aren’t listening.
I don't think this is fair, and I don't know that I trust you could steel-man your opposing view.
freddydunningkruger 3 points 4 months ago
Brother, you voted third party. Steel man THAT decision by finding any evidence AT ALL that voting for a 3rd party has EVER been a successful strategy in a First Past the Post voting system.
Passerby6497 0 points 4 months ago
The steel man against my argument (and the actual arguments I've heard) is that they do not want to support genocide at all, so they wouldn't vote for the Democrats.
The problem with that stance is that with only 2 viable candidates on the ballot, there is no option, including abstention, that doesn't support genocide. Voting Democrat would have let us potentially pressure the government, but staying home has always been a tacit endorsement of the right just due to how the electoral college functions and weights smaller (red) state voters heavier than larger states.
I'd love to hear a steel man from the other side about how not voting was the proper way to go. Especially one that calls out all of the unnecessary loss of life that was caused by the results of that collective choice.
Jankatarch 9 points 4 months ago
I would have done this if I was not an immigrant, and physically allowed to vote.
Tho I do still understand the 46 year olds getting tired from chosing better of two evils for the 7th time.
Especially while watching other countries chose best of 6 evils and 3 goods.
anotherspinelessdem 9 points 4 months ago
VOTE
Semi_Hemi_Demigod 1 point 4 months ago
CelestialBunny 9 points 4 months ago
This kind of post isn't helpful. It's useless finger wagging at this point that isn't actually going to substantively change things and it does nothing to challenge Democratic ineffectiveness.
Is the Democratic party better than the Republicans? Sure. But during the whole time Biden was in office that didn't stop my rights from eroding in the state I live in and the current Democratic status quo is to claim that standing for some civil rights is a problem. I won't say some things didn't get better but an improving economy didn't help with the cost of living for those of us who actually have to live in THIS economy.
The general argument though, is that if you vote for the lesser of two evils, therefore you're picking the opponent that you feel you are most likely going to nudge on the issues. The DNC ran a postmortem, claimed that they were going to be open and honest about the results, then hid the results when it contradicted their pro-Israel stance.
Nevermind that our leaders are fighting corruption and fascism with strongly worded letters, while the establishment is engaged in actively trying to destroy any momentum from their left while they seek out this mythical centrist Republican that'll vote for them. Am I supposed to feel okay with a party who's establishment thinks my rights are optional? Are brown people supposed to feel safe when out government is engaged in active ethnic cleansing and the opposition is dog whistling about how much they love strong borders? Are people of middle eastern descent supposed to feel okay when the opposition party supports a genocide?
Are we supposed to be convinced that a political party is willing to pay attention to protests and act on them, when they can't even be bothered to be transparent about and learn from a postmortem that told them actual fucking genocide is a line in the sand that enough people are unwilling to cross that it'd cost them one of the most consequential fucking elections of century?!
Voting blue is a tool, but how is doing it no matter who going to be meaningful when the Democrats won't learn from their mistakes, will double down on their harms, will throw their own candidates under the bus for being too far left, and will continuously shift rightward?
I'm all for not letting the perfect get in the way of the good, and I have absolutely followed through on the "picking your opponent" mindset, but you actually have to have good on the board.
starman2112 1 point 4 months ago
Not voting for dems is how you signal that they need to change. If they keep getting elected no matter what they actually do, then why on earth would they listen to the people telling them to change?
reddit_sux 8 points 4 months ago
What if both the candidates wish to torture you where one will kill you while other will keep you barely alive while torturing you.
uriel238 11 points 4 months ago
Then, yeah, you're stuck between a proverbial rock and a hard place. But when we're talking about general Republicans vs. general Democrats, there's a significant difference between what we can expect of them. Jamelle Bouie makes a case for that difference (on Youtube)
Ensign_Crab 1 point 4 months ago
So they both support genocide, but republicans revel in it publicly instead of in private.
uriel238 0 points 4 months ago
In a lot of cases, both of them take contributions from and are supported by AIPAC, but that's why it's a matter of voting against the one that wants to dismantle USAID, by doing so killing a fuckton of children.
People not voting based on principle factors significantly into how we're now watching Trump implement Project 2025.
It's a system that is willfully rigged to force you to choose between bad choices hence establish contrived consent. But we're going to be subject to the consequences of the election whether or not we vote ethically or pragmatically.
cloudskater 12 points 4 months ago
I'm not voting for genocide supporters.
Oppopity 8 points 4 months ago
Doesn't genocide kill a fuckton of children? If the system only gives you options where a fuckton of children get killed then the system needs to change and you aren't doing that by voting for the lesser evil that's still evil.
Nonconfrontational 6 points 4 months ago
Do you mean no good option?
Nonconfrontational 3 points 4 months ago
I spose.
Ensign_Crab 0 points 4 months ago
You got what you wanted as soon as there was no anti-genocide candidate.
Ryanmiller70 5 points 4 months ago
I refuse to continue the "lesser evil" BS that got us here. Either the Dems put up actual progressives (and not the crap like Biden that people like to praise as "the most progressive president") or don't whine when people like me look elsewhere at the ballot box. Third party candidates actually do the legwork in red states to get votes unlike Dem presidential candidates.
cloudskater 10 points 4 months ago
Keep blaming voters for the system's problems. That always works.
Ryanmiller70 5 points 4 months ago
Considering, again, I live in a deep red state my vote for anyone outside conservatives matters about the same. So I might as well stick with who I actually want representing me and not just representing who I slightly less prefer murdering.
Grail -1 points 4 months ago
You know, in 2024 there was some talk about whether to dispute the results of the election. But people saw that you'd chosen to let Trump win the popular vote, so they figured you wanted Trump to win, and they didn't bother to demand a recount.
Ryanmiller70 4 points 4 months ago
Even if everyone who voted third party voted for Harris, she still wouldn't have won the popular vote, and that's assuming all of them would have voted Harris and not Trump if forced like beyond at gunpoint (somehow like they can't even pick to just be shot) which is extremely unlikely.
Ensign_Crab 1 point 4 months ago
Congratulations on being represented perfectly by every genocidal politician.
almost_genocide 0 points 4 months ago
Congratulations on continuing to vote for trash in the Democratic primaries.
13igTyme 2 points 4 months ago
I vote for progressive candidates in the primary. For example, I voted for Bernie in the primary both times.
Morons like you however appear to not vote in primaries. Most of you idiot "both sides" fucks don't even know what they are. Very surprising to hear that from you. Then again, if you knew what they were then you wouldn't have accused me of voting for the centrist, which I assume you did since that's all you idiots parrot.
morto 3 points 4 months ago
I today's world, I will judge the capacity of anyone who think "both candidates are the same" in any elections. We have seen in real time how rights conquered through decades can be destroyed in a matter of months
almost_genocide 6 points 4 months ago
And I judge people for failing to acknowledge a vote for Joe Biden in the 2020 primaries was a vote for fascism.
GeeDubHayduke 2 points 4 months ago
Ok, what was a vote for Trump in the 2020 election..?
almost_genocide 4 points 4 months ago
Also a vote for fascism.
almost_genocide 5 points 4 months ago
I can't imagine a better method to sow voter apathy than making sure a strike blocking, genocide supporting senile geriatric white man won the 2020 Democratic primaries.
ironycanal 3 points 4 months ago
Its only democracy if you're choosing your sbyser.
Refusing to endorse abuse is childish.
If they're both going to literally kill you, choose the one who will kill you less.
uriel238 0 points 4 months ago
In the case of the 2024 general election, the difference between the one trying to kill you, and the one trying to kill you less, was substantial.
Much needs to be done beyond voting, but there's debate whether the country can last to 2028, or after Louisiana v. Callais we'll see another Democratic majority in either legislative house after 2026.
Ellie Mystal observes that since the 1960s, it's only been the black vote that has pushed Democrats to the Presidency. White voters vote majority Republican. Now that black districts are being gerrymandered away, we may well be a one-party state by 2028 or 2030.
ironycanal 0 points 4 months ago
That's what I said. Voting matters.
ironycanal 2 points 4 months ago
No I've never been marginalized in my life. I'm a real person. Not some undesirable useless eater untermenchen.
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds 0 points 4 months ago
Vote in the primaries, and it's better to vote third party and lose than reward and maintain the current ratchet system.
moakley 9 points 4 months ago
I just read a story about an American toddler who was left with a violent uncle when his mother was deported. She didn't have the option to take him with her, and the uncle murdered him a few months later.
But sure, it's better that you vote for a third party rather than the only party that could have stopped these atrocities from happening.
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds 7 points 4 months ago
Reminder that Obama began mass deportations, Trump began family separation, Biden maintained them and rised ICE's budget.
If you blame only one party for the state of this nation, you are part of the problem.
I will acknowledge that one party is significantly worse. Absolutely no doubt about it. Democrats are there to protect the status quo republicans create. Voting for BS neoliberal democratic candidates only makes things worse.
Also, elections are usually decided by razor thin margins. If the polls show that a third party is going to eat 2% of the democratic vote, they will be forced to push their candidates to pander to progressives and adopt their policies. But it would be much much better if you participate in the primaries to ensure progressives win the primaries in all levels of government.
moakley 1 point 4 months ago
I stopped reading as soon as I spotted a lie. So, first sentence.
Obama didn't support deport mothers without their children. And Biden reversed Trump's policies.
Both sides are not the same. One side is significantly worse.
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds 9 points 4 months ago
I assume you mean "deport" rather than "support".
Obama began mass deportations, got the nickname deporter-in-chief. I stated that Trump began family separation. While it is true that Biden reversed some policies, he didn't reverse the majority and most influential Trump policies, including family separation .
I said no lies. One side inches towards fascism, the other one runs towards fascism. they are a ratchet system .
Both are objectively bad, just one is worse.
voting lesser evil is what brought us here.
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds 6 points 4 months ago
that's the opposite of abstaining.
it will show very clearly, what policies and type of candidate get how many votes and what policies they need to adopt if they want your vote back. and seeing how elections are won on razor thin margins, they will adopt those policies.
Abstaining is great for the establishment, less people to pander. they want people to give up, they want the public to not vote.
Are you familiar with Brexit? a fringe idea that ended becoming reality because UKIP was taking a few percentage votes from the Tories. so Tories promised a Brexit referendum. by doing so Brexit went from a fringe idea to part of the Overton window.
Voting third party is a seriously strong move. Voting lesser evil leads to Trump.
uriel238 1 point 4 months ago
By my understanding, the Brexit vote didn't work out for the UK public, and retrospectively they didn't fully understand the consequences of what they voted for.
Very much the way that Trump voters didn't understand what they were getting, even though he told everyone who he was.
Historically, at least in the US, voting third party has not been the flex you appear to believe it is.
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds 4 points 4 months ago
my point is that voting third party is a really good way to get what you want. and it's more powerful than voting one of the two main parties. not how good Brexit was.
Ensign_Crab 0 points 4 months ago
Vote in the primaries
Stop gloating that we didn't get a primary.
HrabiaVulpes 0 points 4 months ago
So this is why so many people voted for Trump?
Jyek 11 points 4 months ago
No this is why so many people didn't vote at all. Dem voters who are unhappy with the candidate chosen by the establishment tend to just not vote at all... Republicans always always always vote for the Republican on the ballot no matter how they feel about them.
zarkanian 4 points 4 months ago
It isn't like they don't know what to do. Just ask Bernie, AOC, or Warren. They don't want to do any of that stuff, though, because it would upset the status quo and they'd lose money from their donors: AIPAC, et al.
HrabiaVulpes 3 points 4 months ago
To be honest sounds to me like it's the Republicans here who are not playing democracy. Voting for someone no matter whether you agree with them or not is a bot behavior.
zarkanian 7 points 4 months ago
Trump managed to get Roe v. Wade overturned. This is something the religious right has had on their bucket list for decades. It's the equivalent of a Democrat achieving Medicare For All.
chiliedogg -2 points 4 months ago
I didn't understand everyone refusing to vot for Harris over Israel and Palestine.
What's happening there is abhorrent, but it wasn't on the ballot. If it's not on the ballot, it doesn't matter in that election.
zarkanian 9 points 4 months ago
"Refusing to vote for Harris" is a hell of a way to frame it. Why do you think that people owed Harris their vote? If she wants to win, she has to earn her votes, just like every other politician.
As for it not being on the ballot: there were two anti-genocide candidates on my ballot --- Jill Stein and Cornel West. Were they not on your ballot?
chiliedogg -4 points 4 months ago
Voting for a third-party in a 2-party system is worse than not voting at all, because at least refusing to vote didn't involve the incredible waste of resources that went to the third-party.
And the Green Party is to blame for so much of the state of the world. If just 1 percent of the Florida voters who supported Nader had voted Dem instead, Bush would never have been President. So, so many of the world's problems can be traced back to the Green Party running an environmentalist ticket against Gore.
And Stein is the worst of all of them. She's anti-vax, called Clinton more dangerous than Trump, and was pushed online by the Russian government in 2016 specifically to help Trump get elected by splitting the left.
And it's not like Dems are required to bend the knee. Bernie isn't aligned with the establishment Dems, but he still gets some stuff done and keeps issues in the national spotlight because he caucuses with them. AOC, Zandami, and more achieve shit because they're Democrats.
You don't move America left by throwing away your vote. You do it by voting in the primaries to move Dems left, and voting for the Dems in the general election.
Smaile -7 points 4 months ago
you know, people can just... leave america, for somewhere else.
its a sinking ship anyways and you see the little libs sticking to they're party thinking that voting is important by default and willfully ignoring there issue inherent to your country. its not a political group worth defending and the republicans are mental, our nations really haven't given a shit about many of us so id say leaving is fairly justified. hope you can bail.
StarvingMartist 9 points 4 months ago
Ah yes, lemmy. Where nuance goes to die. "Just leave!" He says
PhoenixDog 8 points 4 months ago
you know, people can just… leave america, for somewhere else.
I'm in Nova Scotia and my partner and I are trying to get my transgender girlfriend out of the States and it's a lot harder than just leaving. We both fear for her safety and she does as well since she lives in Ohio. Even with Canada having refugee status for trans people it's not as easy as "just leaving".
uriel238 8 points 4 months ago
I certainly cannot afford to just… leave America, and that's the case for the majority of US citizens. Given how immigrants are unpopular everywhere, there are few places that are ready to take Americans as refugees.
pressanykeynow 2 points 4 months ago
immigrants are unpopular everywhere
Not everywhere, just the places you most likely to come to.
100_kg_90_de_belin 2 points 4 months ago
I guess that a sizable chunk of Americans wouldn't fit the quite narrow definition of refugee.
Moreover, European countries have been borrowing Trump's rhetoric of "they're not sending their best".
GeneralEmergency -10 points 4 months ago
Lemmites:"but I might accidentally vote for a woman"
uriel238 2 points 4 months ago
Having grown up in the 1970s and 1980s, when racial tolerance and women's lib was hammered into me even via Sesame Street (it was just after the Civil Rights movement and all fresh on everyone's minds) I am terrified of the possibility that our voting population is so obtuse that they'd be afraid of officials that are not all white Christian men.
Though part of Trump's popularity in his 2015-2016 campaign was due to reactionary offense to Obama. So we Americans may just be that lowbrow.
trainsrkool -11 points 4 months ago
Hehe yeah vote for bluemaga, now with 0.001% less genocide! See way better!!
Ensign_Crab 4 points 4 months ago
"Not destructive" is too much to ask.
alapakala -14 points 4 months ago
Every vote is a concession.
Your ancestors fought through bloodshed, bones, and teeth to allow you the priviledge to post liberal concessions in the centralized internet.
Concessions is what tyrants abuse.
Be like water, unstoppable, and unyielding. Never allow yourself to become a swamp.
Colors 5 points 4 months ago
Love all these calls for a revolution that none of those rallying for will ever participate in. Radical idea begin with small steps. It’s not that hard. Vote in primaries, vote against insane people in general elections. Eventually the flow of water reverses.
No one on this thread is ever gonna start a fucking revolution. Stop pretending like you are above everyone because your plan is some radical overtaking of the government. It’s a fantasy.
Grail 1 point 4 months ago
No one on this thread is ever gonna start a fucking revolution
Well... I'm working on the whole revolution thing by advocating a new political theory of anarchism, that I hope will lead to a new sort of revolution. It's called anarcho-antirealism. We advocate for a revolution in which the workers take back control of the means of perception from the capitalist media, alongside a material revolution for the means of production. But it'll be decades before we can do much rebelling, so right now I'm focused on protecting our community and growing our movement through direct aid and local electoral change.
Colors 3 points 4 months ago
Protecting the community, local elections, volunteering, and organizing/participating in protests is a great example of how to change institutions. You can make your neighborhood better, change the lives in big ways of those you can reach, and hopefully that impact spreads further than your local circle.
People should be less focused on unrealistic and radical world shaping events (unless somehow the opportunity arises) and more on the small changes a single, ordinary human without connections or influence can make.
By growing a cause in number, “revolution” sparks. Not through talking shit on Lemmy.
alapakala -5 points 4 months ago
I am glad you choose to waste your time commenting on your choice to defeat your political inactions on a leftist network the Zionists have infiltrated.
Since you have acquiesced to your Führer‘s tyranny, can you simply return to licking your Nazis’ boots and leave us intersectionists alone?
Our “small steps” were crushed by electoralists. So my comment is for the ignorant, the uneducated, the unlearned.
onehundredninetysix
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Most 196 posts are memes, shitposts, cute images, or even just recent things that happened, etc. There is no real theme, but try to avoid posts that are very inflammatory, offensive, very low quality, or very "off topic".
Bigotry is not allowed, this includes (but is not limited to): Homophobia, Transphobia, Racism, Sexism, Abelism, Classism, or discrimination based on things like Ethnicity, Nationality, Language, or Religion.
Avoid shilling for corporations, posting advertisements, or promoting exploitation of workers.
Proselytization, support, or defense of authoritarianism is not welcome. This includes but is not limited to: imperialism, nationalism, genocide denial, ethnic or racial supremacy, fascism, Nazism, Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, etc.
Avoid AI generated content.
Avoid misinformation.
Avoid incomprehensible posts.
No threats or personal attacks.
No spam.
**Moderator Guidelines**
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- Don’t be mean to users. Be gentle or neutral.
- Most moderator actions which have a modlog message should include your username.
- When in doubt about whether or not a user is problematic, send them a DM.
- Don’t waste time debating/arguing with problematic users.
- Assume the best, but don’t tolerate sealioning/just asking questions/concern trolling.
- Ask another mod to take over cases you struggle with, if you get tired, or when things get personal.
- Ask the other mods for advice when things get complicated.
- Share everything you do in the mod matrix, both so several mods aren't unknowingly handling the same issues, but also so you can receive feedback on what you intend to do.
- Don't rush mod actions. If a case doesn't need to be handled right away, consider taking a short break before getting to it. This is to say, cool down and make room for feedback.
- Don’t perform too much moderation in the comments, except if you want a verdict to be public or to ask people to dial a convo down/stop. Single comment warnings are okay.
- Send users concise DMs about verdicts about them, such as bans etc, except in cases where it is clear we don’t want them at all, such as obvious transphobes. No need to notify someone they haven’t been banned of course.
- Explain to a user why their behavior is problematic and how it is distressing others rather than engage with whatever they are saying. Ask them to avoid this in the future and send them packing if they do not comply.
- First warn users, then temp ban them, then finally perma ban them when they break the rules or act inappropriately. Skip steps if necessary.
- Use neutral statements like “this statement can be considered transphobic” rather than “you are being transphobic”.
- No large decisions or actions without community input (polls or meta posts f.ex.).
- Large internal decisions (such as ousting a mod) might require a vote, needing more than 50% of the votes to pass. Also consider asking the community for feedback.
- Remember you are a voluntary moderator. You don’t get paid. Take a break when you need one. Perhaps ask another moderator to step in if necessary.
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If you’re always on the defence, you are losing long term.
Voting might stop a problem from getting worse, but it’s not a viable solution to fix the underlying issues that require real systemic change to occur and that cannot happen from inside the system.
So vote, do all you can to stop it from getting worse. But remember that to fix it you need to fight for a revolution.
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