Voting is changing the Oil to keep the engine running
Voting is changing the Oil to keep the engine running
While Education and Organizing is building the parts for a new engine the rest of the year.
Reminder that someone online arguing that you shouldn't vote for Biden because of whatever pet grievance is either a Russian agent or an idiot playing into their hands
If people think an "evangelical" is going to handle the conflict in Gaza on the side of the Palestinians better than Joe Brandon they are sorely mistaken and/or misguided. 45 wanted a straight up Muslim ban ffs.
Yeah, I'd rather deal with someone who enables Israel's bad behavior instead of someone who not only cheers it on but offers to help make it worse. There's at least a snowball's chance of convincing the enabler to stop enabling.
Evangelicals want this conflict, because in order for Jesus to come back and rapture them, the mosque on the Temple Mount must be destroyed so the temple can be rebuilt, which is step one of their prophecy. That’s the real reason they pretend to care about the Jews.
They truly believe this is their end times, and worse, a few years ago their perfect red cow they’ve been waiting for these thousands of years was certified; if that cow dies before they get the chance to sacrifice it to rebuild their temple, they may have to wait another thousand years.
It’s a death cult and they’ll kill us all.
And soon those farms are going to be powered by ChatGPT. When you hear that Russian line it's going to have ten replies all agreeing and giving supporting arguments.
I wonder if we'll be able to spot hallucinations in such a simple task.
bots congratulating each other on right thoughts.
Reminder that not everyone who disagrees with your guilt tripping self righteous nonsense is a Russian bot. Some of us actually use critical thinking and can see a pattern that must be broken.
look, I can understand the argument that you must vote for the most effective way to contain an evil. It's a good solid argument.
However it starts taking damage almost immediately when:
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The plan to fight the evil is using the most disliked president in recent history to win a popularity contest.
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They pre-emptively destroy any and all opportunities to find a better candidate to win the popularity contest against the evil.
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They refuse to debate anybody just like the evil they want to defeat. Making it impossible to verify they're the one for the job.
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They forcibly re-schedule the primary schedule to delay any signs that this plan might be a terrible idea.
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Their age is seriously in question, their mental acuity is in question, and they also decide to dodge being in a completely unscripted environment for two hours while standing.
Certainly with all this you can at least understand why someone would rather vote third party, because this Biden option is not making me feel any safer.
At what point can we stop pointing the finger at the voters and start pointing at the guy they're "supposed to vote for"? Is there a point we can ever point that finger at Biden? Or is it like Trump,where we need to vote for him "even if he were to shoot someone in the street"?
It works better when you have an idea of what the President actually does and what direct action would mean.
Almost everything we would want to do is at the local or regional level. Want higher density housing? Your mayor and city council control that with no say from the President. Better public transportation? Same, though the President can try convincing Congress to pass grant funding for it. More and better bike lanes? Same thing. Get rid of anti-homeless architecture? All city level stuff.
School lunch programs? State government can stop it if the wrong people are there. Expand Medicare? Same. Better rail networks? Same. Ban gay conversion therapy? All state government.
Foreign policy is the one thing where the President does have a lot of control. That's actually the exception. I like Biden's approach on Ukraine--getting most of Europe to go along with sanctions at all, especially after Trump destroyed our soft diplomatic power, was amazing. His approach on the Gaza conflict is far less amazing, to put it mildly. Other than foreign policy, the position is mostly advocacy and horse trading around funding priorities with Congress. Soft power for the most part.
A bad President, especially combined with a bad Congress, sure as hell can stop the local agenda items, though. Pull the grants for cities to implement public transit. Pull Medicare expansion entirely. Don't provide school lunch program funding at all. Put judges in power who rule arbitrarily in favor of conservatives with no care for precedent.
What voting for Biden is for is to make sure the federal government doesn't overrule things built locally and regionally. That's it. The rest needs direct action on the part of all of us at different levels of government.
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Yeah? Like our devotion to repeatedly voting in neolibs like Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden has had nothing to do with tilting the political spectrum to the far right?
I’ll probably pull the lever for Biden, but I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t. Based on the results of recent decades of leftists holding their noses to vote for the neolib, even if Biden wins something much worse than Trump will arrive just in time for the 2028 cycle.
You don't have to if you live in a state that will vote overwhelmingly democrat. Maryland, California, New York, Massachusetts, Hawaii, and DC Biden won by over 20% margin I have wiggle room to vote 3rd party.
Maryland:
Hillary beat Trump 60 - 33%
Biden beat Trump 65 - 33%
I would argue that the folks who voted 3rd party in 2016 decided we needed to do more than just not vote for Trump in 2020. The folks who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 are gonna vote for him again in 2024.
I’d say equally this year it is worthwhile to do more than just “not vote for Trump” but vote for Biden (especially if you intended to vote 3rd party … but by all means vote your conscience first!) to further cement the statement that we did not choose Trump.
The stats show he lost no ground, the issue will be how much ground Biden has lost because of the attacks about their age and pushing folks to vote 3rd party or whatever as an act of protest.
Vote your conscience first, but don’t protest by a third party vote. If you have no good option CHOOSE HARM REDUCTION ALWAYS
I say this as a Bernie 2016 / 2020 voter. It still hurts. I’m choosing to reduce the harm regardless.
What if I think people should still vote but they should be ready to be unhappy with the outcome either way and that it won't actually provide meaningful change?
[patriotic music swells]
"Pet grievance" is one of my new favorite euphemisms for genocide.
Voting does nothing other than reform the capitalist regime. It doesn't matter whether this cycle's presidential figurehead is blue or red. Give it a few decades and you'll see how the US will still be sowing death and destruction across the world, as it always has. The presidential race that liberals get so rabid about is nothing more than kabuki theater.
Didn't she win the popular vote?
This is just shit libs blaming the left instead of taking responsibility for running a shit candidate with so much baggage that she lost while "winning"
If you want to be mad at anyone, blame the dnc.
Bernie would have whooped trump in 2016. Shame the dnc decided to change the rules the day of to avoid a split ticket or God forbid, supporting the actually viable candidate.
Bernie would have whooped trump in 2016. Shame the dnc decided to change the rules the day of to avoid a split ticket or God forbid, supporting the actually viable candidate.
DNC/DCCC isn't exactly in the business of winning elections. If it comes between winning an election and BAU (they'd rather have a republican they can 'work' with), they pick BAU. They'll happily (and have) fund Republicans over Progressives.
Sanders, God love him, was not going to be electable. Had they run him, Trump would have picked up the whole of the big fat moderate lump in the middle of the bell curve.
Exactly like Boris Johnson did when he ran against Jeremy Corbyn. The capitalists simply won't allow socialists to win in this environment.
Lol, no.
Bernie is the Ron Paul of the left; he has a small group of very loud supporters online who by constantly shouting at each other on the internet have convinced themselves that he's actually some sort of populist god. I mean seriously, he couldn't even win the popular vote in the Democratic Primary in 2016, losing to Hillery by over three million votes, where were all the extra voters to "whoop" Trump supposed to come from?
So we're gonna act like winning the popular vote and losing isn't a problem in and of itself?
So we’re gonna act like winning the popular vote and losing isn’t a problem in and of itself?
Right?
Apoligists. Apologists all the way down.
If you want to be mad at anyone, blame the dnc.
1000x over this.
Neat. I'm over being chastised while voting for a piece of shit that was "the lesser evil"
Don't you see the contradiction in "she won the popular vote" and "she was a shit candidate"?
It's kinda like the contradiction that Bernie could win the general election, but 12% of his voters defecting to Trump wasn't enough to make a difference.
Leftists are going to be shouting "the DNC is corrupt" on the gallows after Trump wins.
Don’t you see the contradiction in “she won the popular vote” and “she was a shit candidate”?
No, because the popular vote isn't how US elections are won. She needed to appeal to the people in the 5 or so states that actually matter and failed to do so.
"Leftists are going to be shouting “the DNC is corrupt” on the gallows after Trump wins."
This is the stupid shit is see all over lemmy that makes me so mad.... Yes the DNC SUCKS but guess what? They're the status quo right now, and the alternative is literally a fucking dictatorship that has vindictive actions as their highest priority.
There aren't even dog whistles anymore, he's using the word dictator... But yeah BomberBiden... Mr.Genocide... I get it... So that means let Trump win? Seriously?
Don’t you see the contradiction in “she won the popular vote” and “she was a shit candidate”?
Both of these things can be true. If "did not vote" had been a candidate in 2016, it would have won in a landslide. Just 8 states + DC had enough voters turn out such that any candidate won more votes than there were eligible voters that didn't bother. As a percentage of eligible voters, Clinton received 28.43% of eligible voters, with Trump trailing at 27.2% of eligible voters. While Trump outperformed Romney (2012) by 2M votes, Clinton underperformed Obama in 2012.
As a percentage of the entire US population (including those too young or other ineligible to vote) Clinton got votes from 20.30% of the population and Trump got votes from 19.41% of people.
They both sucked so badly that just over a quarter of eligible voters/less than a fifth of everybody was all it took to elect Trump
Or blame both.
There’s more than one way to solve most problems, and more than one cause as well. Would a stronger candidate have succeeded? Perhaps. But that was a solution for earlier in the process. A solution for late in the process was voters turning up.
We literally had that candidate and he got fucked over by super deligates or some nonsense.
I'm sick of being blamed when I voted for someone as vile as hrc. Dems lost the vote, not me.
Maybe if hrc actually showed up to purple states and appealed to actual voters it would have went differently.
I don't want to be mad, I want to change things and improve people's lives. So I vote for the lesser of 2 evils until we can abolish this "first past the post" nonsense.
This
But people did vote for Hillary, IIRC, she won the popular vote by like 3 million votes.
So it wasnt a lack of voting that gave trump the presidency and repealed abortion rights. It was the mecanisms and institutions that are part of your electoral process and that only seem to exist in order to dilute your democracy (e. voting districts, electoral college) that gave trump the win.
Perhaps people would be more willing to vote if their voices were actually heard.
Similarly, if the DNC hadn't absolutely SCREWED my boy Bernie, we also wouldn't be in this complete shit-hole.
A socialist will never be elected. When anyone gets close, the entire capitalist world immediately forget their differences and unite to make sure it doesn’t happen.
Happened to Sanders.
If you want read a more heinous example, it’s Jeremy Corbyn. A genuinely good man .
A socialist will never be elected.
Christ, they've been calling every democrat a socialist for 20 years now and it's chased half of the democrats rightward so far that it's a problem for a lot of democrats to keep voting for that
If Hilary hadn't been a pile of shit doing private speaking engagements for billionaires that were so hush hush that they set up massive white noise generating speaker systems, people would have voted for her.
if Hilary had set a fucking foot in some of the states she lost, people would have voted for her.
if Hilary didnt make stupid fucking comments, people would have voted for her.
Maybe if you stopped blaming voters, and blamed the shitty fucking candidates, someone less awful would have run, and won.
Blame the DNC. They're the one cramming shitty candidates down our throats. If OP is right, and voting for president is just changing the oil, it's like getting charged $2000 for Dollar General oil.
Stop blaming voters. Field actual, progressive, leftist candidates. I am fucking sick of voting for right wing, war hawk Democrats to "save democracy." We aren't saving anything, just watching stock market addicted octagenarians kill the country slower than the other team.
Yes, I want octagenarians that kill the country slower than the other team. Why? Because I know the game is rigged against the trust busting hero we actually need... but I'm hoping they'll drop dead of "Being absurdly old" while we still have a country, so a younger generation can fix it.
Sorry, but there's no easy hollywood solution where Sylvester Stallone blows up Capitalism, gets the girl, and throws UBI out of his "Just Married" sports car... Does that metaphor scan? I know that's not really how movies work anymore... now it's more like Tom Holland blows up Socialism because it ate a puppy in the third act to remind the audience it's evil, doesn't get the girl because getting the girl is "problematic" (which to be fair it kinda is), and then teases yet another god damn crossover event that we know and care nothing about....
Actual leftist candidates--or progressive candidates, because those are very much not the same thing--wouldn't get even 10% of the primary votes, even if the DNC was entirely hands-off. They certainly wouldn't get the kind of donations that they would need to run a successful national campaign. Genuine leftists simply aren't popular in the US as a whole, even if Gen Z might trend more strongly towards certain aspects of socialism/communism/anarchism than people of my generation did.
A part of me, a part I buried because I didn't want to believe Trump would win, but.... a part of me had basically accepted that she already lost when she brought out the "Bernie Bro." narrative, and actually tried to paint Bernie Sanders as this misogynist and pretend that his supporters just "Hated women"
Not only was it a desperate move that revealed a lot of negative things about her character. Honestly even if it was true (and it was!), the "Basket full of deplorables" line definitely scared off Centrists who weren't fully lucid of just how dangerous Trump was... A close friend of mine who hated both candidates and planned to stay home actually voted Trump solely because a candidate was willing to say people who didn't vote for her were straight up evil... (I begged him not to, but politics is the one thing he will never listen to me on) Between Deplorables and Bernie Bros. it gave off the impression that she was a spoiled brat who demonized anyone who didn't faun over her. (Even though Trump demonized everyone who didn't faun over him, but let's be honest men and women are held to very different standards)
The talk about how "It's my turn!" didn't help, and the fact that Hillary already tried the "Oh they support that guy because they're too sexist to support me!" card, and failed miserably, when she brought out the "Obama Boys" line back in 2008.
Hillary is a geniunely unpleasant person, Trump is also a genuinely unpleasant person, the problem is... and I hate to say it, Trump had more charisma. He didn't have a way with words or anything like that (Hamberders, covfefe), but he had the persona of a no nonsense businessman ready to trim the fat and say "You're Fired!" to anyone who stood in the way...
Hillary....was just Hillary.
I'm not saying Trump was this novel idea or this cult of personality (Pretty much everyone but his most extreme base hates him)
I'm saying Hillary is so unworkable as a candidate and so horrifically distasteful, that she may have been the only one who could lose an election to the walking punchline that thanks to the failure of the electoral college, is also the most dangerous man in the West... Donald J. Trump
she ran a centrist elitist corporate campaign against a fucking cult of personality just lol
no question her policies would be better than Trump but fuck did her campaign suck
The DNC showed voters exactly what they think of leftists when they shafted Bernie for Hillary. They showed their voters exactly what they think of them when they went to court to have it ruled that their voters aren't shit. At some point, you don't get to ShockedPikachu anymore that people aren't supporting you.
Democrat voters are just as bad, look in any thread about elections, and they make two arguments in the same comment. 1- Leftists are stupid babies who will never be taken seriously and need to STFU already like the stupid babies they are, 2- Leftists who didn't vote Dem because we call them stupid babies are single handedly behind every Republican win.
I've had a number of Democrats in this thread reply to me who (supposedly) do dnc volunteer work. Who pay lip service to welcoming leftists for half a sentence to pretend they welcome leftists, but then have spent half the day raging and manifesto-ing. How they tell them all to fuck off for showing up during an election year. How they chastise and bully them into oblivion for coming in due to interest in an issue that isn't the DNC talking point of the year.
They've all thrown around the shtick that leftists don't come out to help because they're insert your favorite chronic internet user trope here, and not a one is open to the fact that it turns out people don't want to work with you or help you if you just spend your days insulting them for not agreeing with you.
In 2016, they went to court to tell their voters they don't owe them shit. In 2024, we're watching Biden sidestep Congress to fund genocide. DNC supporters are openly and actively hostile to anybody left of Biden (on a functional level, moreso than they are Republicans even.) Democrats are just the mid right to Trumps far right, autocrats who think that a pride pin in their cap makes them The Good Guys.
Honestly I'm really tired of "woke shit"
I don't mean I'm tired of "women and minorities in my vidya games", I mean at this point I think I prefer outright bigots to a passive aggressive neolib who thinks that I need to sniff his farts with a smile on my face simply because he wore a rainbow on his t-shirt that one time in June.
I just don't understand why I, as a transwoman, live in a world where I hear that something is "Pro-LGBT", only to find that it's the most forced, tone deaf, and ironically extremely homophobic/transphobic god damn thing I've ever seen in my life. That's not new, I tend to avoid movies tagged as being "LGBT", because I know it's going to be some overdramatic tryhard bullshit likely written by a cis white guy looking for an easy payday.
Now webcomics and indie animations tagged as being LGBT are fucking awesome, mostly because they were made by actual queer individuals who know that I wanna see big daddy werebears who love each other more than I wanna see another "Feel good teenage drama" where every line is predictable, right up to the ending where the lead comes out as gay, and all of his friends "Come out" as... whatever the movie wants me to think is weird and embarrassing.... or another "We've got gays in our trailer! But in the actual movie it's Cishet shit outside of that one scene with the blink and you miss it lesbian kiss that we're cutting out of the international film"... or another where the gay character is actually present throughout the movie but EVERY LINE serves only to remind us of how totally gay they are...
This is the kind of "woke shit" I'm mad at, people screaming about how Pro-LGBT/Pro-Black/Pro-Woman they are to the point, where it starts to come off as the exact opposite. I don't care that you "support me" or that have a "I met God, she's black" bumpersticker on your car, I just want the GOP to stop gleefully pushing America to Far Right Extremism until they reach the point where they can throw me into a concentration camp and the local news is legally required to talk about how I deserved it, because they'll be "fined by the Supreme Court" if they don't. The Neo Liberal's empty platitudes mean nothing to me.
cough Michigan cough. Bitch took us for granted. The DNC shit the whole bed that election.
I love how the day after the election it was all "Russia pushed fake news on social media and confused the voters!" Which it turns out there was some of that, it was such an obvious scapegoat to avoid publicly admitting you botched the campaign that badly. 2016 was such a shit show
I do agree. However, we tend to talk a lot and point fingers even more. So rather than us not unifying and speaking up on issues, us not stepping up in the districts and States we live in, and us chirping away and generating white noise on the internet, how about we reverse course?
Run in your local elections. Organize unions. Start working to bring your and our communities together. Bernie proved it was possible. One of the biggest, if not the biggest, grassroots movements in memory. Could you imagine if we took that unification and built on those foundations after that election cycle so many years ago? We would, in this moment, have a powerful, nationwide voice and platform powered by the very same people who now speak loudly almost daily and take no real action.
Voting is just the end result of thousands or tens of thousands of hours of effort across the nation. We could literally be doing so much more. Together we are strong and despite the incredible malicious and absolute idiocy that is MAGA, you gotta give them this: They work together. Even if moving in this case is more defined by a herd of drunk cows stumblpeding across a field.
You've got to at least try to appeal your base. And no, "vote for me or you'll get the other guy" is not an inspiring rally cry. It didn't work in 2016 and the fact that the message seems to be similar in 2024 has me really worried.
Would be pretty cool if like, I dunno, the primaries actually worked and could vote in another candidate instead of running with literally one of the least popular first term presidents in American history.
He's also completely losing the left by refusing to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. He's made it abundantly clear he doesn't give a shit if Israel is committing crimes against humanity or not. Not much of a compelling "lesser evil" to the people who actually give a shit. Not that I'm saying Trump wouldn't, you know, turn America directly into a totalitarian dictatorship and immediately prompt a civil war or anything. Just that Biden himself is a terrible person and inspires very little hope in any kind of moderate establishment that could reasonably fight back against fascism. There's no doubt leftists will vote against Trump, but there's no enthusiasm from the left with regards to Biden's campaign.
Trump would surely solve the Palestinian crisis with the one state solution. It'll be a great solution folks. The best solution of all solutions. Some may even call it the final solution. Biblical.
Candidate: "I will not bash your kneecaps in! The other guy? He's definitely gonna."
Le pick me voter: "Wow, that's not any reason to vote for you, fuck you, you have to win me over."
*The other guy wins. Le pick me voter's kneecaps get smashed in."
Candidate: "I told you he was gonna!"
Le pick me voter: "Oh like you're any better! I'll remember how you didn't win me over every time I limp from these smashed kneecaps!"
Well no. Hillary was a center-right candidate. If she wanted votes from progressives or left-wing voters, she knew exactly what to do. But she threw those votes away, relying on rhetoric like this post. We all saw it happening, and she did it anyway. What if she had pushed for universal health care, or unions, or campaign finance reform, or gun laws, or against wars? It would have been an exciting election.
Except that the left actually did show up and vote for her. Anyone who cares enough about politics to call themselves "left" is not likely to sit out an election, and third party votes didn't make the difference. Bernie supporters overwhelmingly showed up for Hillary. That shouldn't have been surprising since Bernie campaigned harder for her than she did for herself.
It's every day apolitical Americans who stay home and cost the Democrats elections, and the reasons why are clear. Democratic political strategies are intended to be vacuous and put the electorate to sleep. The establishment doesn't want to win an election then have the voters actually expect them to do something with the office.
The left has been telling the establishment what's going wrong for decades. Campaigns that actually speak to the people win elections. The Democrats would rather just shoot the messenger.
This. Every single time the democrats have power they do nothing to cement any kind of progressive or moderate holdouts when inevitably the Republicans win an election. They lost the Supreme Court, they watched the Republicans bend the rules, break the law, try and overthrow the government, and here we are. Biden has had the presidency this whole time and has done precious little to actually push back on anything the Republicans have done. Too concerned with appearing civil and considerate to actually hold senators accountable for their words and actions. If Trump wins this election, he will smile and shake his hand as he transfers power to a literal fascist dictator.
In regard to abortion the outcome certainly would have been different had she won the election. Trump put 3 anti-abortion and strongly right wing justices on the Supreme court directly leading to this outcome.
Obviously like other mainstream Democrats there's a ton to be desired in policy, but the whole point of this post is that it is still important to vote even if it's the lesser evil.
Right? All she needed to do was start parroting Bernie's platform, get the votes, follow up on none of it like when Obama promised similar things, and.. well... it'd not be great, but it'd be better than what we have...
Yes, but it's not a black and white situation where blame falls exclusively on one person or set of people.
Hillary should have run a better campaign, but anyone that is against right wing politics should still have voted for her.
Hillary shouldn't have bought the DNC and used dirty tricks to get the nomination. Had she felt just a little bit less entitled to the office, I bet she would have run a much better campaign.
I voted for the greater good in 2016 - in the Democratic primaries.
I voted for the lesser evil in the general election, then took a long hot shower.
Things would have certainly worked out better with a Hillary victory instead of the Trumpster fire we got.
This does not excuse the horseshit shenanigans that were going on within the DNC.
Ooh Trumpster fire, I like that. And yeah I have learned that generally when voting for president is not ever someone I want or like.
Our "lesser evil" option keeps moving further and further to the right each cycle.
Because America isnt voting for change. They're just moving towards fascism, either slow or fast.
If you tell anyone to change course and vote third party they get really mad at you here on Lemmy.
Well I don't care about that.
Hey everyone stop voting for conservatives. No matter what party they align with they are beholden to the same ruling class, not the working class. Vote third party. Vote for Claudia & Karina 2024.
Hence educating and organizing the other 364 days of the year.
I think a better strategy is to run for office rather than vote. Because voting doesn't do much if the available candidates are turncoats or shills. It should be educate, organize, and run. Otherwise we get more Scinemas running for raising minimum wage and not at all voting for it when it counts most.
Leftists did vote for Hillary in 2016.
12% of Bernie's supporters didnt vote for Hillary in 2016. Source
It's normal for some amount of primary supporters in a contested primary to not vote for the eventual candidate. 88% of us did vote for Hillary - which, ironically, is more than Hillary supporters in '08 voted for Obama.
The issue here isn't leftists, or what passes for them in the US, not holding our noses, by and large.
According to CNN exit polls, 15% of Clinton voters went for McCain in 2008. Maybe instead of hand-wringing over a statistically normal amount of party defection we should be focusing on turnout.
A sizeable fraction of them voted for trump let us not forget. Not every Bernie supporter was a leftist
What a bad take. If regular normie DEMOCRATS had voted for her, she'd have won. She failed on so many levels.
Edit: or if she hadn't rigged the primary, we would have had Bernie, and abortion would also have been legal. Reforming the DNC is harm reduction.
I think a lesson the DNC definitely learned is never rig a primary if you can't rig the general. (And at this point, it wouldn't matter if they did, they're going to get accused of it by the Right either way)
I basically gave up any notion I had that Hillary was on the level (not that I had much of one) when they did the vote count early that day, Bernie one, so they just pretended he didn't and did the count again later that same day.
And second, yeah... the Media kept parroting that Hillary was a sure thing (Even as Nate Silver begged people not to trust his own site's polling)
I actually knew people who skipped voting altogether to go to a "Hillary Won" party... The look of shock on their faces would have been funny if not for the horror of what happened on that night. I think the most tragic was a friend of a friend who was bullied into suicide that night.
Her parents told her that "Trump won" and she's "Not allowed to pretend she's a girl anymore", and made it clear they'd point to Trump as justification to reject her trans identity... She killed herself very shortly after, it was...
Look when Republicans win, the consequences are literally deadly. That's not a threat, that's a warning about how dangerous America's true enemies are.
Copying and pasting my own comment from another thread:
If you want leftists to vote for dems, despite dems pissing on leftists at every possible chance and yelling at leftists to fall in line, I'll show you how.
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Point out that voting will never, ever, ever move the democrat party to the left. You cannot vote the party harder to the left.
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Point out that Republicans are going to remain fascists.
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Point out that voting third party is a spoiler vote and will result in fascists winning.
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Point out that the actual way to move to the left is to unionize and organize at the grassroots level, to apply bottom-up pressure on the top.
The answer is not to pretend that Biden is anything other than a Neoliberal Capitalist. Leftists will correctly point out that Biden is still a lukewarm neoliberal maintaining the status quo, and feel further alienated by being told they should love him anyways. That just encourages voter apathy.
Additionally, this meme is wrong. Leftists voted, it was the centrists and moderates that didn't. Hillary wasn't appealing in any way, so only the people who really cared voted. Hillary still won the popular vote, she just lost the electoral college, and Trump succeeded in riling up the fascist base. Do not blame Leftists for not falling in line for an extremely unlikable candidate, they did regardless. Blame Hillary for doing jack-shit to energize the base.
It would also help to acknowledge the people who voted for Biden in the 2020 primaries are selfish pieces of shit who intentionally voted against progressive and leftist efforts. Attempting to gaslight us into thinking "we're on the same side" when in fact these people intentionally fuck us over is ridiculous.
It's certainly entitled, and I think a lot of it comes from liberals not understanding that both fascists and liberals have candidates that represent their views, but leftists do not. They lack the experience of having to settle for a lukewarm Capitalist and actually having to touch grass to attempt to fix things, while both Liberals and Fascists just have to vote for their respective parties.
Blame Hillary for doing jack-shit to energize the base.
Damn right! Like, so many people who could have gone out and voted in 2016, didn't. Why? Because Hillary campaigned on "I'm not Donald Trump." And clearly, that's not good enough. If you want people to vote for you, you don't campaign on "at least I'm not the other guy!".
And that's not discounting the shenanigans going on at the DNC in 2016. According to former DNC Chair Donna Brazile, essentially, at the end of Obama's term, the Democratic Party was broke. Flat broke and had debts to pay off. Hillary wanted to run for President. So, her people call up the DNC and say "We'll take care of your debts if you make Hillary the nominee." It was a Faustian bargain, as several key figures in the DNC were replaced with Clinton Foundation personnel. Essentially, they bought the whole DNC.
Because Hillary campaigned on “I’m not Donald Trump.”
It was worse than that. She campaigned on, "it's my turn to be president!" Her focus seemed to be entirely on being the first woman president because she was right after the first black president (who did not run on being the first black president).
I think a lot of us are just scared right now. I know I've made some reactionary comments to people attacking Biden from the left out of my own sense of fear, and I'm a cishet white guy with a good paying job. I'm also a father of 2 daughters (one of whom may not be cishet, they're still figuring that part of themselves out). I feel sick to my stomach when I think about the Palestinians, and I feel sick to my stomach when I think of them inheriting a ruined planet, getting shot at school, needing or wanting a safe medical abortion at some point and a million other things that a vote for Biden is my only way to protect right now. I wish we had a more European-style, coalition-based party structure here, but we don't yet.
There are some powerful stereotypes about the Republican party being more homogeneous and the Democratic party being a big tent with lots of internal strife. The saying goes, "Republicans fall in line, Democrats fall apart." That and the unreliability of polls and all of those polls showing Trump way ahead mixed with the shit Project 2025 is talking about...its a lot, and it's scary. I think that's where a lot of the browbeating of leftists is coming from...the fear that a lot of them won't vote at all or won't vote for Biden and what the likely outcome of anyone besides Biden means...which is Trump.
Yep, that's why I gave a guide on how to properly talk to leftists. I'm about as left as they come, and will begrudgingly vote for Biden, because I understand just how pointless trying to vote America to the left is. Every major concession from Capitalists came from revolutionary pressure, such as the Civil Rights movement.
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More like of rbg hadn't been so stubborn and had actually stepped down when Obama was in office, we wouldn't have a republican majority on the supreme Court.
Yeah, she totally should've stepped down so Obama could appoint... checks notes... Merrick Garland. Oh fuck, never mind I see her point
Did anyone ever pay attention to most of the people Obama appointed to his cabinet? They were like hand-picked by Wall Street lobbyists.
Didn't the Republicans stonewall approving a supreme Court justice for 18 months so that their guy, Trump, could appoint one. Then when rgb died they just ignored everything they did and said because they were in charge.
You aint wrong
If Obama had fought for his seat, Roe would still be the law. Dems never ever fight. They cry about how they can't do anything. Even when they have the house, senate, and white house, they couldn't do anything. Watch the excuses that follow this comment.
Neither capitalist party will ever help because they're both avowed capitalists.
Vote dem, move right slowly. Vote GOP move right fast AF, with added racism, hatred, and Christo-fascist oppression as well.
But ultimately, NO capitalist party will ever fix anything in this shit two party system. Both parties get all their campaign donations from the same billionaires., and companies.
Vote dem, move right slowly. Vote GOP move right fast AF, with added racism, hatred, and Christo-fascist oppression as well.
It comes down to that the DNC/ DCCC and their voters are fundamentally not aligned in terms of incentives and priorities, and most discussant in places like this simply do not appreciate that. Whereas, the GOP and their voter base,are at least aligned, on their priorities and at least dubiously on incentives. This is demonstrated by their ability to provide for their voters once in office. You can and should hate what the priorities of the GOP are, however, you shouldn't deny that they deliver for their voters when it comes time to do so. They make their voters priorities a priority once elected, and work their asses off to get these shitty, inhumane policies into place.
The DNC/DCCC have historically treated their voters as an inconvenience, in a very technocratic, "we're the experts, we know better" fashion. Its a kind of anti-populism that was best expressed in the Hillary campaign, but also in how Obama ran his administration. To the DNC/DCCC, their voters are an inconvenience at best. Frankly, they'd probably prefer having a rightwing base, because they would better align with their actual prioritize. The result is that when elected, DCCC candidates don't work or fight for the things they campaigned on, because they truly don't think those things are priorities. This trickles down into a lack of results to their base, causing them to struggle because they consistently fail to deliver for the people that vote for them.
Edit because I wanted to highlight some things..
Observe the difference:
Hillary on the trail, 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN6iwqthZrU
Hillary takes the position of "knowing better", that the protesters need to basically sit down and shut up.
Bernie on the trail, 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjt56Tdhhqk
Bernie gives them the mic and the time to get their message across.
In my lifetime, a dem only ever once gave me something to vote FOR, and I actively campaigned for him-Obama. And the first thing he did was give up on universal care and then even on public option. But he's making millions by leveraging his presidency, so he's a good little capitalist.
And the banks still appreciate him vailing them out while ficking us all and all our municipalities, etc.
Yeah, the corrupt as fuck supreme court made sure that billionaires would run the country.
And they have helped over and over to disable democracy and reduce the ability of citizens to affect change over monied interests who buy Thomas his motor home and other "gifts" (spelled bribes). And Scalia, and the others...
This…
if Leftists had voted for Hillary in 2016 abortion would still be legal.
So, this really isn't true in any meaningful way. People like to make a big deal out of the 12% of Bernie voters who went for Trump, but the majority of them identified as conservatives or centrists, while only 18% identified as liberal or left-leaning. Likewise, a lack of turnout doesn't seem to be the issue; black voter turnout dropped, but not by an unexpected margin, and young voters (who tend to be more left-leaning) had very strong turnout. Finally, you could try to blame leftists who voted third-party, but analysis shows that even if every single Jill Stien voter had gone to Clinton, she still would have needed to win over 50% of Gary Johnson's voters (who were obviously unlikely to consider themselves leftists).
You might be able to get the numbers to work if you say that if every leftist who stayed home OR voted third-party OR went to Trump voted for Clinton she'd have won, but that's incredibly hard to prove and probably relies on some specious assumptions (for example, that every Green Party voter was a disgruntled Democrat). At that point, you're pulling so many different groups together under a single banner that it's basically meaningless. You might as well say if women had voted for Hillary abortion would be legal.
I voted for Stein in 2016. My state still went to Clinton by 16 points. If I'd lived in a state that was even remotely competitive, I would have held my nose and voted for Clinton.
Same, and the number of people who voted for Stein in swing states was not enough to change the election outcome. I support voting for the lesser of two evils (when your vote actually counts), but I'm tired of people blaming leftists when it's just factually wrong.
I live in a swing state which went to Hillary by a narrow margin and voted for Hillary even though Stein was a preferable candidate
This is just another version of vote blue no matter who. It's just as dumb as people who only vote Republican. Trump didn't win that election, Hillary lost it.
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When Democrats are normal sleazy politician evil and Republicans are straight up Saturday Morning Cartoon Evil, so there is sense in it.. Ya don't vote Democrat expecting them to fix shit, you vote Democrat to keep the Republicans from being as evil as they could be.
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Yeah... I feel like Hillary was the ONE opponent Trump could actually beat... I know the DNC felt like they "owed her" the nomination, but never rig a primary if you can't rig the general. I mean even if Hillary wasn't Hillary, people are going to vote in Literally Hitler before they let a woman be in charge.
I entirely agree with you that sometimes we have to hold our noses and vote for the lesser of two evils. On the other hand, blaming the left for Hillary's failure is both dumb, and self defeating. It's a tiny percentage of the politically engaged electorate that need to hear this message, and an even tinier percentage of those who might listen. Meanwhile, it just further alienates more people than it attracts. Anyone who persists in blaming voters is more concerned about virtue signaling than winning elections. If you want to win elections, figure out how to reach voters who have given up and checked out.
We've been playing this game for decades where "lesser evil voting" keeps pushing both parties further right as Republicans say more of the quiet part out loud and Democrats keep clawing further to the right to "capture the moderate vote."
Voting for 10% more evil instead of 20% more evil still gets you more evil and still puts you eventually at 300%+ more evil. The best time to fucking stop it was around Reagan times, the second best time to cut it out is now.
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Because people didn't vote for her in some ridiculous form of protest
"ridiculous"
maybe don't call people deplorables if you want people to like you or vote for you, how's about that?
Isn’t the entire job of campaigning politicians to convince people to vote for them?
And also to convince people to convince other people to vote for them.
Some people will be convinced by the candidate, others by the secondary influencers. Sometimes, if the convincing doesn’t work anywhere, it’s not the fault of either the candidate or their voters - it’s the fault of people being stubborn moronic idiots.
Source: Colgate can’t convince me that toothpaste is real, and YOU CAN’T EITHER.
So there is no winning, there's just lesser losing
Now you're getting it, welcome to adulthood, where each day is the worst day in your life ... yet! /s
For most part, this is by design.
Countries around the world tend to have two major parties: "red neoliberals" and "blue neoliberals". Which is great if you're a neoliberal because nobody is going to get in your way of your profits with things like environmental and worker protections.
But they didn't build this managed democracy by murdering their opposition, they just showed up with class solidarity.
Dig into their lives and they all come from a handful of expensive schools and move in the same expensive circles. Politicians, corporate executives, lobbyists and media owners, all of them only ever a few steps from "went to school together" or "married to some powerful persons sister".
They look out for one another. Sure, in public they have their little spats, but it's just a pantomime as they jostle for market share. "Left-wing media" sells left-wing news to left wing people while the right wing does the same, both of them seeking to maximise profits. Journalism is a side effect at best.
The moment someone with actual power threatens actual change, watch them unite to undermine them and keep the profits of their little rich people club safe.
But how often does that happen? They usually run functionally unopposed. Good people just don't want to be politicians or journalists now, especially when they know they're going to be constantly attacked until they burn out or get killed.
The power is there for the taking but most people can't be bothered even reading this post, let alone pledging their lives to an uphill battle.
Until that changes, the rich, greedy, self-serving scumbags will just keep winning by default.
It's just that things happen very very slowly and there are lots of steps backwards. Things have been getting more socially progressive when you look in the span of decades instead of years. Economically it has been getting worse though.
Things have been getting more socially progressive because it didn't impact profits.
The environmental, welfare and worker reforms we desperately need continue to move at a snails pace. Unambitious ideas, pushed by people who don't really want them to pass and opposed by the richest and most powerful people in the world.
And now, all that social progress has just become another thing to package up and sell to people.
Do you want your beer to be inclusive or bigoted? They're probably both owned by the same parent company anyway, so it's all the same to them.
If democrats didn't shove through hillary as the nominee, we wouldn't have had trump. Democrats don't actually care about harm reduction, they'd rather let fascists win than let progress through.
You aint wrong, thats why i specifically mentioned educating and Organizing throughout the year.
Not just that, but all four years too. All these fucking Bernie Bros just showed up at the eleventh hour and expected to get their way.
I was one of the few people in my local party office that was for Bernie. I consider myself to the left of him. When they started to show up I thought "great, finally some more people on my side." Then they started flooding the meetings, yelling and screaming, at people that have been putting in hard work for years. They expected everyone to do what they want just because they showed up to a few meetings just before the primary.
Not a-fucking-one of them phone banked, canvassed, or anything else. Just red faced yelling at people that had donated their time for years. People I disagreed with, but knew and respected for years. They might have been on my side but I sure as hell wasn't on theirs. It almost turned me off of Bernie even though I know it wasn't his fault. I went from being firmly for him to considering Hillary because fuck those guys (not really, but I was pissed).
If you want the party to change, show up every meeting, not a few weeks every four years. I'll be there waiting, I could really use your help pulling this place to the left and getting more progressive candidates the support I think they deserve.
US: "Vote for the lesser evil."
Europe: "Vote for the party you want and have them still be represented either as a coalition majority or during crucial votes where every party matters."
US is more like "vote against the guy you don't want in charge"
US parties are coalitions
The fuck they are.
Maybe the coalition of the almighty dollar and American ignorance.
If the democratic party had put forth the best candidate, more people would have come out and voted. Maybe instead of pushing for voting for the less bad candidate, you put advocate voting for someone you actually like? The problem isn't left leaning people not voting for hillary. The problem is the systemic issues in the US voting system which only really allows a 2 party system and which can completely disregard the will of the populace by instead going through the electoral college system.
If the democratic party had put forth the best candidate
This is exactly why America isn't a democracy.
If the democratic party had put forth the best candidate, more people would have come out and voted.
This is true.
[...] you put advocate voting for someone you actually like?
Sacrificing your knight to capture a pawn is still a bad move. The game we're playing is first past the post. That game needs to change or the optimal strategy won't.
Hillary Clinton is better at motivating conservatives to vote against her than she is at motivating anyone else to vote for her.
I voted for her despite my distaste for her, after primarying for and making calls for Sanders against her. I cast my ballot like I was attending a funeral. But I did it. Out of least worst, water pumps on the Titanic time buying harm reduction. Polling place was a ghost town.
What was your excuse?
Better yet, you hate her so much, where were you during the primary? There was a significantly better option.
Leftists were absolutely not the problem unless Hilary lost most states. Independents, people in the middle, are usually the ones that are the important voters to win over. The rest of the info is correct. Don't shoot yourself in the foot that 1 important day, because the candidate isn't perfect.
If the Dems are serious about beating Trump, they still have time to pick a different candidate in their primaries. Joe Biden is clearly very unpopular - the last election was way too close, and this one is at real risk of Trump winning.
I will literally vote for a non sentient slime mold over Trump, and I will walk barefoot through broken glass to do so if need be. Anyone doing less is playing Russian roulette politics.
Like who?
Does this mean that your two party system is actually just a one party system?
They are both Capitalist parties. America doesnt have a working class party
Your vote matters.
If 100% of voters voted liberal in the upcoming election, the one after that would have way more left leaning candidates.
Your vote directly matters.
I don't honestly see why that would be the case. If they've already won, why bother changing?
If the right never wins, they move further left to collect more centrist votes. If the right moves more left, the left moves more left to differentiate themselves and appeal to the more progressive crowd that might otherwise vote green party or some other third party.
This has actually been happening for the last few decades but in the other direction. Left leaning voters not turning out for elections, partially because Dems have a history of suppressing exciting progressive candidates meant that Dems sought more centrists to compete with the right. Particularly after 5 of the 6 presidential elections went to Republicans between the late 60s and late 80s So they moved further right as a result. Both Clinton's, Obama and Biden are not progressive, they're barely left of center. The Democrat Party actively discourages progressivism, particularly in presidential candidates, to make them feel "safe" and "reasonable" to centrists. That shift to the right meant that the right has had to appeal more to the relative eccentrics on the right like anarcho-capitalist libertarians, the Christian nationalists, and the white nationalists. And not just at a presidential level but on every level even down to school boards. Thus our current status quo.
Not that Nixon, Reagan, or the Bushes were at all good people, but at the very least they didn't feel comfortable publically and openly appealing to bigotry and the dismantling of the federal government as a campaign tactic. That is no longer the case with the modern GOP.
To move the Overton window.
As we see with the Republicans eating themselves, there will always be opportunists looking to take down their own and fill the Gap. But we can use that to our advantage to get the legislation we actually want. But we kind of have to take care of the crazies before we can 100% focus on fixing our house.
Question on more left leaning candidates - do you think there's a possibility a progressive party can actually gain traction?
I like the thought of revamping the Green Party as it's goals seem more relevant than ever, though they have to shed the kooky perception they've gained.
If they aren't even winning in state elections, aren't even winning in house elections, aren't even winning in senate elections
They don't have the voting base for president.
except when I'm the minority in my area and my vote gets thrown in the trash
It still matters. It pushes candidates towards you ever so slightly.
The two party system isn’t good, but it works fine as long as people fucking vote.
🙄
This is SUCH a pointless thing to harp on. Take it up with the Republicans instead of the miniscule fraction of a percentage of leftist who didn't vote. Finger pointing at people who agree with you produces nothing.
There is an argument (that I don't necessarily agree with) that the people this post is targeted at are more likely to be convinced to vote Democrat next election than the people who voted for Trump.
Or maybe she's concerned Round-Up missed those fucking weeds in the kitchen sink?
"If Poliece voted for Hillary in 2016..."
Hillary Clinton is/was not obliged to anyones vote and should have run a better campaign to attract leftest by doing bare minimun actions like supporting trans people or election/education reform. She also could have chosen a different candidate for running mate rather then the complete personality void that she ended up with as a sop to some imaginary "moderate conservitive" that was simpathetic to humanity over their net worth.
But she didnt. I wish she ran a better campaign as well, we may have been better off with her in office in 2016, but the issues that trump brought into focus in our society were not caused by him. They have been here the whole time.
The whole "you didn't vote for Hillary so Trump is your fault" is a typical liberal statement. Just like how their solution to plastic pollution wasn't to regulate the producers, but to get everyone to recycle things. And then if an individual didn't recycle that person was bad, but they ignore what the massive industry is doing.
Same with health care. Their solution wasn't universal coverage, it was making sure every individual had to buy health insurance, and then fining the individuals who didn't. No action against the massive, inefficient industry causing most of America's health care problems. Nope, it was passing the buck off to individuals yet again.
The Clinton campaign sucked. It was so dull the news shows would rather show an empty Trump podium than a speech by her. I thought the reason Clinton won the primary was because people wanted adults in charge who knew what they were doing, but clearly they didn't because she lost to a reality TV show con man.
How many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote FOR something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?
Hunter S. Thompson, 1972.
50 years.
Counter point: If centrists had forced RBG to retire OR had they codified Roe into law in 2008 when Obama held the WH and the Democrats had the House and Senate... abortion would still be legal coast to coast.
I've held my disgusting leftist nose to "vote for the lesser of two evil" for two decades now. Shaming voters for having serious qualms with the Democratic Party's inaction on important issues isn't a good look for... the Democratic Party.
Finn here. You guys can't let Trump win. Gaza will be even more fucked than now. Ukraine will be fucked, which will lead to all of Europe being fucked. Your own country will also be more fucked than now. I hate Biden too, but Trump will be a total nightmare.
I have seen some bad takes, but this one makes me want to power vomit.
This is a fine attitude when you have to choose between eating the shit sandwich and the shards of glass. It's not so good during the primary, when you're deciding whether the first option will be a shit sandwich.
This is also not a good thing when it's weaponized to make sure that no genuinely progressive candidate can be realistic.
If leftists in Florida voted for Gore instead of Nader, we would have started a comprehensive program to address climate change in 2001. And the Iraq War would not have happened.
maybe instead of demanding the votes of the left you should earn them. Of course, this only really applies in systems where 2 parties dominate while other parties aren't really a credible option for most people, like the US, which in itself is a systemic flaw that should be addressed if you want a healthy democracy.
You don't get to blame people for not voting your candidate because "it was less bad than the other", if your whole point is being less bad than the other, rather than actually being good, then you're already losing and you should start looking at how to fix this issue before it gets worse. When turnout is lower than usual, like in 2016 in the US but also other elections like Italy in 2022, it means that democracy isn't healthy and there's a systemic problem which is leading to voters getting disillusioned, disengaged and disenfranchised from politics, which is extremely bad and should signal to you that "There's an issue! We need to fix it!" not that "Voters are so lazy/dumb/scum for not getting off their couch and voting [for me]".
Finally, I'd like to reiterate that if you keep asking leftists to vote for you at every election (to beat the other bad guys), yet every time you move further away from the left and/or disappoint leftists, eventually leftists will stop believing your bullshit and not vote you anymore, and you deserve that.
I feel like the two party, two candidates I get to chose be every election is like picking a rapist or murderer. Which one's less evil? I don't know. They're all evil , what now?
I pretty much gave up when Trump became the right candidate....AGAIN
I mean I think I'd rather have a loved one be raped instead of murdered. I actually had a friend of mine who was murdered, I miss him everyday... if he was raped, he'd talk to his therapist about it, live to testify against the person who wronged him, and there wouldn't be an awkward hole in our friend group that we don't talk about.
I'd much rather help him recover from a traumatic experience than have to bury the guy, but I wasn't that lucky.
Actually, the general elections are on leap year, so you can educate and organize 365 days a year!
Well, most years anyway. Not in 2100!
I will sit that one out.
It would also still be legal if the Democrats had pursued any of the early obvious corruption, especially the Mueller report, instead of waiting for an election to replace an obviously corrupt man.
Eventually voting against corruption is not a sufficient check on corrupt power.
If Democrats had ever done anything to fight fascism instead of just enabling it literally for generations, we wouldn't need to defend abortion.
Edit: also, of course a liberal uses a car analogy. How much more accurate could you get than to relate the democratic party to a thing most Americans are forced to use against their will, that kills their children and destroys their future... With an incredibly racist history and only slightly less racist present.
"whine ineffectually about it the rest of the time, but throw your unquestioning support behind our shitfuckery when we need it, no matter how bad we get"
I get the sentiment, but I don't owe anyone a vote. Voting for the lesser of two evils is one thing when it's someone useless like Obama, but the "good" option is balls deep in a genocide and destabilizing the world in his allegiance to another country. Not voting for the senile genocide guy is the least I can do.
I'll be the first to say it sucks. Despite busting the railway unions his NLRB was doing good shit. It really really sucks.
Okay, but not voting for Biden is effectively a vote for Don Cheeto, and I guarantee you his Israel policy will make Biden look like a saint.
And if it makes you feel any better rumor has it that Biden is getting near the end of his rope trying to work with Israel. Last I heard he hasn't talked to Netenyahu in over a month now after a particularly nasty phone call. Wouldn't be surprised if his tune changes before the election and he starts attaching some pretty heavy strings to any further Israel aid.
In 2020, after Bernie was kneecapped by the dems, one of the state dems got on our organizing discord and said something to the effect of "sorry guys, but don't forget to vote dems". I voted Biden and got this. I got a party that refused to govern, who let a single rogue dem stop trillions of dollars worth of programs for what was it, a year?
I respectfully reject the framing that a non-vote for Biden is a vote for Trump. At literally any point, the dems could have chosen a different way. Hell, they could've just NOT eliminated the primary in all but name, but no. They've chosen the undemocratic, unproductive, detremental path we're on. They refuse to own their fuckups, blaming them on conspiracy theories and an American populace that doesn't understand the great things they're doing. They don't deserve votes and, I'm sorry, but I don't owe them shit for what little they've done. We don't know what comes of this in the end. Maybe Trump does win, maybe it's so grotesque that it snaps people in the other direction (cope).
If they lose, it isn't my just fault. It's also theirs, mostly theirs. They've worked long and hard to repress the left. So I'll be here, comfy in my bed on election day, completely repressed.
(And yeah, they are leaking that Biden is an old annoyed boy with Netanyahu. But that's just because they know Biden's committed path is so unbelievably unpopular, but also they don't want to do anything about it, so they "leak" that our senile boy is thinking reeeeeally hard about all this. The US hold ALL the cards here, and every day this goes on is a day Biden is choosing not to do anything about it. So I don't think him not talking to Bibi for a month while still offering unwavering support is a sign of progress)
Vote local, vote often, and try to help people be able to do the same. We'll get better candidates if and when we start voting them into smaller positions first. Republicans are generally more likely to vote locally, and this allows them to gerrymander the voting districts and control stuff from the local level up. Change your town and state officials to be more progressive, and they'll support more progressive policies and politicians at higher levels of government.
Anyone I like enough to vote for would be someone I like too much to subject them to what being in government is like.
Voting the lesser of two evils has arrived us at our current situation. It is not a solution.
Voting the lesser of two evils gets you less evil. The problem is the system that offers you two evils to vote for. 364 days a year to work on that.
Expecting either party to solve the problems they cause is foolish. Ranked choice voting will never get pushed by them. I live in GA, the state reps are about to outlaw ranked choice. What solutions do you think can be provided to people living here 364 days a year? Move to the middle of nowhere and try to build a grassroots movement with a bunch of inbred Maga kool-aid chugging fools?
If liberals had voted for Bernie in 2016, the same would be true.
Depends on where in the process we’re talking about. OP is(to me) clearly talking about the general election. If Bernie had won the primaries, then yeah, that would be true, considering where his base mostly is.
My private and professional perspective as a trans woman and political scientist if there is low voter turnout this next election:
I feel your pain. The ability to disengage and not engage with the political process is the height of privilege, especially when the right wants to do as much harm to trans folk as possible.
You realize that Hillary won the popular vote and Trump won the Electoral College?? You're argument is void.
The argument is that there were enough Leftist voters who didn't vote in the closest swing states that it would have changed who won the overall election.
I don't think it's true because Leftist voters are vastly overrepresented online and I doubt there's actually enough of them that the subset who could have voted but didn't, would swing an election.
When corporate lobbyists completely control the only two viable parties, then voting is rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic.
Inspiring.
Reminder, you get to choose from the 2 canida8that were chosen for you.
America gets the voting part but not the democracy part?
The primary system is shit. Even more so when only the extremists participate.
Do you think hyping up elections with a free democracy dog (a hotdog on election day) would make voting sexy enough that people would show up to the polls? Like Australia.
Make it a holiday so it's illegal to keep people working through polling days.
Couple of small corrections about Australian elections:
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The democracy sausage is not free (at least when I've gone to vote)
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Everyone has to vote or they get fined, it's not like people go just because of the sausage
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If you wanted to win an election, maybe you shouldn't have run with the example of the absolute worst that a democrat can be. The Clintons and Hillary in particular are garbage people who need to go the fuck away, they are toxic. They need to shut the fuck up and leave.
It’s Bernie’s fault!
Bruh hilliary was funded by anti abortion lobbyists. Funny how no one remembers that
I distinctly remember she tried to make it a state issue. To me that meant she did not care about Roe vs Wade. It could also be an error in my recollection. Personally, I don't care enough about what ifs to go back and check right now.
You honestly think she'd put conservative justices on SCOTUS?
Electoral College ensures my vote for president doesn't matter.
Lol screw off. Hilary was as indecisive as Biden on pop issues, only benefit she would have brought would have been the SCOTUS appointment and it still would have been given to some corporate shill judges who happen to be very slightly "progressive" just like the current bum chief justice who deleted like half of citizen's rights for no reason.
This is also the same person who was very publicly exposed along with the DNC proving that primary voting is a complete scam in the USA.
Most leftists did vote for Hillary, even after Bernie got screwed over. She lost because none of the centrists voted at all and republicans voted slightly more.
Seeing as the biggest problem facing the world right now is that there are too many internal combustion engines, you should probably come up with a better metaphor.
Note: this year has 366 days
Oh, what's the last day for? Can it be guillotine day?
I would prefer torches and pitchfork day
They did...
Oh, they did vote for her. So much so that everyone thought she won until the final count.
But she decided to call everyone not voting for her a terrible human being by default and they voted to spite her.
The lesson to take away is pretty obvious.
I refuse to accept the premise of lesser evil. It's a false choice.
Here's an idea, actually have candidates that support the people, not their donors. Until then, I won't vote for any of them.
Tell that to every rape victim that's been forced to carry their rapists child to term.
politicians make laws.
I'm afraid your requirements aren't in the interests of those manipulating the rules, and so likely don't be met. What's step 2?
well said
Voting is changing the Oil to keep the engine running
Unfortunately, its the Torment Engine from the Sci Fi classic novel "Don't Build The Torment Engine", and its slowly crawling across the country sucking people up into its maw and eviscerating them.
But hey, someone's got to change the oil on this thing, and it keeps you from being on the business end (most of the time). Better keep our national Roko's Basilisk running smoothly, lest it turn its gaze upon thee.
The issue is that way more people will be eviscerated if we let trump regain power. It will harm our most vulnerable demographics. Refugees, pregnant people, trans people, all will suffer exponentially more if we don't vote.
You have a faction in American politics that gleefully eggs on the evisceration and a faction that's horrified by it.
Then you've got a Presidential candidate that screams at the top of his lungs how he's going to turn that evisceration engine on his domestic opponents. And you've got another candidate who just kinda shrugs and says "Let's aim the evisceration engine at those brown foreigners, so it won't bother us over here."
At some point, "We have to do war crimes abroad so they don't come back home" just isn't a motivating force. I think there's a certain masochism within the liberal voter base that's almost eager to see Trump bring the empire back into the core. A kind-of death drive that concedes we've failed to deliver on a promise of a better country and now we just need to let the forces we've unleashed destroy ourselves.
Refugees, pregnant people, trans people, all will suffer exponentially more if we don’t vote.
They'll suffer regardless of whether we vote. The only question is whether these people will be in our immediate line of view or if they'll be buried half a world away.
Honestly at this point there's no convincing his cult that anything else matters.
You just have to hope that are more democrats in the right places, and that they vote.
I'd say the average person who needs to be told to vote would require a little bit more punctuation in this meme to actually understand what it's saying without tuning out halfway through!
How do you move the Overton window? By voting in the most left candidate possible and not letting the far right win elections.
*People hella mad about basic things like this.
When the most left leaning candidate is right leaning I moves the overton window right
If the right wing candidate is a far right fascist, you prevent it moving to far right fascist. Shut that down and then next time they won't run a far right fascist and guess what the Overton window moves left.
Case in point: they are running a far right fascist again because they think he can win. If he was shut down the first time, the Overton window would have moved left.
It's not a lesser evil. It's the same evil wearing a different dress.
Because Joe Biden banned transpeople from the military and wanted Muslims to wear special ids, just like Trump did!
Yeah, no.
No, but he's kept and opened more border camps than 45 and is actively facilitating the genocide in Gaza. There are plenty of good things Biden's done, but shouting at D voters who have suffered a moral injury because of his actions isn't really going to help anyone.
Seems you haven't been paying attention.
You aren't voting to change the world, you're buying time so that there's a world left for you to change.
no, we are voting on who should have power. I'm voting for cornel west.
Tell your handlers that for this farce to continue you must concede us a win occasionally. Practice what you preach. Incremental progress. Min wage increase here, universal healthcare there.
As it stands now all you fuckers do is lie. Lie and wag your fingers at people who know how the system works better than you do.
Thats the compromise. We accept your lukewarm, limpwristed, milquetoast bullshit in exchange for incremental progress. But you've offered no progress. When challenged even slightly you sprint for votes from the right which only leads to you losing elections and further alienating those to the left of fucking Reagan.
Those Republicans you're courting despise you and will never support you in meaningful numbers. They're comfortable and only care about 2 things. Property Values and Taxes.
I did vote for Hillary and it did nothing. Move on honey.
Nice try Liberals/Democrats. Not getting my vote for free anymore.
https://youtu.be/yITYgCJcD2o?si=UqohRcTUsy_feJX3 Joe Brandon does work though. 45 wouldn't have done jack shit for passenger rail.
You can't have a woman for president, after a person of color or the assholes will think you're too woke.
i live in indiana. my vote for the presidency literally does not matter
that's not what harm reduction is.
Abortion is still legal in the United States? Several states have enacted state laws restricting it.
What a loser post. I've voted for the lesser evil before and Duterte won anyway. Then I voted on principle and Marcos won anyway. Votes for Leody de Guzman did not have a spoiler effect on the lesser evil candidate Leni Robredo.
How sad is the person who made this meme? This was made by somebody who’s given up. It was made by a coward, and a bootlicker. This person has made a slave of themselves, in the hopes their master will save killing them for last.
Pathetic, and beneath all my consideration beyond contempt.
I would rather have a candidate everyone knows is bad than continue to slip into a worse and worse state
if Democrats had voted for Jill Stein, she would have won. the margin of victory was less than the votes stolen by Democrats splitting the left.
It's already been said, but if there had been a Left candidate, I wouldn't have staid home. There was no real Left option. Trump wasn't my fault. It was Hilary's.
I abandoned you all because I couldn't get exactly what I wanted, but it's totally not my fault that countless other morons did the exact same thing as me.
Man, you're almost qualified to be a Republican senator with those mental gymnastics.
Edit: allowing fascism to win because the alternative isn't good enough is extremely counterproductive and pushes us further away from a society that actually works for everyone. It's a trap that far too many people fall into and I'm goddamn tired of it.
But the radio is on the wrong station!! I can’t participate to keep the motor running unless changing the station is top priority.
If only the Democrats with Obama encoded abortion rights like everyone screamed at them to do when they had full control of everything.
But it was too good a carrot to make people scared for the Repooblicans and force them to vote Democrat.
Also Genocide Joe wanted to get rid of abortion rights in the past. He's probably glad it's gone even though he's acting like he's sad about it:
"I do not view abortion as a choice and a right. I think it's always a tragedy, and I think that it should be rare and safe, and I think we should be focusing on how to limit the number of abortions. And there ought to be able to have a common ground and consensus as to do that," Biden, who was a Democratic senator for Delaware at the time, said in the video.
Lol what a meme. Abortion is illegal in the states eh? And making it legal is harm reduction? Hilarious
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