Voting works for what it’s designed to do: select the most popular candidate among voters. If you didn’t vote, or voted for an unpopular candidate, that’s not the fault of the election. What it doesn’t work for is unfocused feedback against a party. When Hilary lost, we got Biden. When Biden was rebuffed, we got Harris.
Hitting a bolt with a wench instead of using it as intended is not proof that wrenches don’t work. You’re just using it wrong.
The vote totals were closer to my goals than yours, in my state. How much do you have to fuck around with the math to make Illinois not only go red, but be the tipping point state? That’s a completely unrealistic fantasy, and most Americans are in similar boats.
Were they? Harris won Illinois, so it looks like the opposite is in fact true. And I must have missed the part of your plan where you tailored it strategically based on state. It seems like you’re telling everyone to act the same way, in which case vote margins of each state aren’t really relevant.
Harris won Illinois, so it looks like the opposite is in fact true.
That’s an interesting claim. What you’re telling me is that your strategy delivered Harris a victory in Illinois. Now, if we take your strategy to be, simply, “Be a liberal and vote for liberals because you’re a liberal,” then sure, it was because of liberals like you that she won. But if your strategy is, “Be a leftist, but act in a way that’s completely indistinguishable from liberals,” then whether the specific faction you represent was significant enough to determine whether she won or lost the state depends on how many of you there are. And that number is impossible to determine, since they act in a way that’s completely indistinguishable from liberals, there is no quality I’m aware of that we could look at that would tell us if that number is 1% or 90% of Harris voters.
Now, obviously, you are a liberal and the first interpretation is correct. But if I were to entertain your absurd pretense that you’re not a liberal, that there’s some meaningful distinction between your position and liberalism, then it seems very likely that all your faction accomplished was increasing the margin of victory a bit. Harris would have won anyway because of the number of liberal voters. Furthermore, no matter how much stronger you faction got here, it would continue to have zero influence over the outcome of the presidential election, because Harris is always going to get 100% of the electoral college votes here no matter what. Meaning that your strategy is both ineffective, but lacks even the theoretical potential to be effective.
It seems like you’re telling everyone to act the same way, in which case vote margins of each state aren’t really relevant.
It seems like you’re telling everyone to act the same way, in which case the situation of each state is relevant, because of any state should not follow your advice then you are wrong to proscribe it universally. Your argument cuts both ways.
Now, obviously, you are a liberal and the first interpretation is correct.
You are just as obviously a fascist sympathizer trying to ensure they stay in power by encouraging leftists to act stupidly.
There’s a difference between strategy and liberalism. But if you don’t understand strategy, then you must be a fascist trying to splinter the left because you’re acting indistinguishably from a fascist trying to splinter the left.
Oh, what a surprise. You’re falling back on the classic liberal, “you’re secretly a Russian bot/Trump supporter” line. All of you liberals sound the same, as if you’re speaking from a script, very uncreative and unoriginal, unable to think on your feet, roll with the punches, or adapt.
My arguments that you are a liberal come from two primary points: first off, by pointing out all the little things you’re constantly saying that reveal your true beliefs. For example, downplaying the Gazan genocide, Harris’ active role in it, and the violent suppression of protests as merely, “telling Palestinians to wait their turn.” If you were a leftist, you would be intensely critical of systemic violence, seeking to call it out even, or especially when it’s being casually accepted or being kept out of sight and out of mind. Because that’s what leftists do. Instead, you seek to downplay it, to keep it out of sight and out of mind. Why? The only reason is because you’re a liberal. This might be a new concept for you, but this is something called “evidence” which is important to have when you make claims and accusations.
The second thing I’ve done is to show how your stated positions are indistinguishable from liberalism. This is very different from what you’re doing when you lazily attempt to turn it around on me. Otherwise, I will simply say that the fact that I voted for PSL rather than a fascist candidate such as Trump or Harris demonstrates that I’m not a fascist.
Of course, just as there are all sorts of little things you say that are constantly revealing that you’re a liberal, there are all sorts of little things that make the idea of me being a fascist incredibly implausible. For example, the fact that I’ve read leftist theory and can cite it to support my positions. Fascists are famously anti-intellectual (as are liberals, to a slightly lesser extent) and don’t even read their own theory. If you can get schooled on theory by a fascist, that’s on you.
I know you haven’t read theory because, well, none of you have. Someday, perhaps, I’ll encounter someone arguing your positions who actually knows whose intellectual tradition they’re inheriting and has actually read the works of people like Bernstein, and who can therefore actually defend their positions from an informed perspective. But that day is certainly not today. Where you, and everyone like you, get your ideas is not from actual study but from passive absorbtion of the dominant, bourgeois ideology of the status quo. Such shallow ideas cannot withstand actual scrutiny, and so you have this toolkit of tactics to avoid having them scrutinized, such as dismissing anyone who attempts to as an other, a “secret fascist” or whatever, as well as putting up fronts and pretending you believe something else so that your real beliefs cannot be attacked.
I’ll note, of course, that you haven’t answered any of my questions this conversation. Because you can’t actually defend your beliefs, because they’re wrong. Liberals were still winning Illinois when the left was virtually non-existent, so if you want to take credit for it, it only works if you accept that you are a liberal. Otherwise, it’s clear that your strategy, at least in the conditions of my state, is completely useless and has zero chance of accomplishing anything. And yet, you assert that the only reason someone would deviate from that nonsense, incoherent strategy, is if they’re secretly a fascist trying to get the left to act in “silly” ways. If I were a fascist trying to act in silly ways, I’d simply say what you’re saying. If only there were more people like you in fascist spaces, calling themselves fascists, and telling everyone to set aside their radicalism and fall in line behind whatever the Republican party offers them, then their radicalism would have been diluted and we might have never gotten Trump. That is, if they actually listened to you, which they wouldn’t.
if you know voting doesn’t work, then we’re done here
Voting works for what it’s designed to do: select the most popular candidate among voters. If you didn’t vote, or voted for an unpopular candidate, that’s not the fault of the election. What it doesn’t work for is unfocused feedback against a party. When Hilary lost, we got Biden. When Biden was rebuffed, we got Harris.
Hitting a bolt with a wench instead of using it as intended is not proof that wrenches don’t work. You’re just using it wrong.
you know that you didn’t stop trump by voting.
I came very close. Another couple percent of the voters and it would have worked, it was a very achievable goal.
How many percent short were you?
but it didn’t work. it never has stopped him.
Removed by mod
he wasn’t stopped, and he’s worse than ever
Much like chemo, it is not a one and done solution. Guess what happens when you throw a tantrum and start skipping chemo sessions?
this is grasping at straws. please get in touch with reality.
The vote totals were closer to my goals than yours, in my state. How much do you have to fuck around with the math to make Illinois not only go red, but be the tipping point state? That’s a completely unrealistic fantasy, and most Americans are in similar boats.
Were they? Harris won Illinois, so it looks like the opposite is in fact true. And I must have missed the part of your plan where you tailored it strategically based on state. It seems like you’re telling everyone to act the same way, in which case vote margins of each state aren’t really relevant.
That’s an interesting claim. What you’re telling me is that your strategy delivered Harris a victory in Illinois. Now, if we take your strategy to be, simply, “Be a liberal and vote for liberals because you’re a liberal,” then sure, it was because of liberals like you that she won. But if your strategy is, “Be a leftist, but act in a way that’s completely indistinguishable from liberals,” then whether the specific faction you represent was significant enough to determine whether she won or lost the state depends on how many of you there are. And that number is impossible to determine, since they act in a way that’s completely indistinguishable from liberals, there is no quality I’m aware of that we could look at that would tell us if that number is 1% or 90% of Harris voters.
Now, obviously, you are a liberal and the first interpretation is correct. But if I were to entertain your absurd pretense that you’re not a liberal, that there’s some meaningful distinction between your position and liberalism, then it seems very likely that all your faction accomplished was increasing the margin of victory a bit. Harris would have won anyway because of the number of liberal voters. Furthermore, no matter how much stronger you faction got here, it would continue to have zero influence over the outcome of the presidential election, because Harris is always going to get 100% of the electoral college votes here no matter what. Meaning that your strategy is both ineffective, but lacks even the theoretical potential to be effective.
It seems like you’re telling everyone to act the same way, in which case the situation of each state is relevant, because of any state should not follow your advice then you are wrong to proscribe it universally. Your argument cuts both ways.
You are just as obviously a fascist sympathizer trying to ensure they stay in power by encouraging leftists to act stupidly.
There’s a difference between strategy and liberalism. But if you don’t understand strategy, then you must be a fascist trying to splinter the left because you’re acting indistinguishably from a fascist trying to splinter the left.
Oh, what a surprise. You’re falling back on the classic liberal, “you’re secretly a Russian bot/Trump supporter” line. All of you liberals sound the same, as if you’re speaking from a script, very uncreative and unoriginal, unable to think on your feet, roll with the punches, or adapt.
My arguments that you are a liberal come from two primary points: first off, by pointing out all the little things you’re constantly saying that reveal your true beliefs. For example, downplaying the Gazan genocide, Harris’ active role in it, and the violent suppression of protests as merely, “telling Palestinians to wait their turn.” If you were a leftist, you would be intensely critical of systemic violence, seeking to call it out even, or especially when it’s being casually accepted or being kept out of sight and out of mind. Because that’s what leftists do. Instead, you seek to downplay it, to keep it out of sight and out of mind. Why? The only reason is because you’re a liberal. This might be a new concept for you, but this is something called “evidence” which is important to have when you make claims and accusations.
The second thing I’ve done is to show how your stated positions are indistinguishable from liberalism. This is very different from what you’re doing when you lazily attempt to turn it around on me. Otherwise, I will simply say that the fact that I voted for PSL rather than a fascist candidate such as Trump or Harris demonstrates that I’m not a fascist.
Of course, just as there are all sorts of little things you say that are constantly revealing that you’re a liberal, there are all sorts of little things that make the idea of me being a fascist incredibly implausible. For example, the fact that I’ve read leftist theory and can cite it to support my positions. Fascists are famously anti-intellectual (as are liberals, to a slightly lesser extent) and don’t even read their own theory. If you can get schooled on theory by a fascist, that’s on you.
I know you haven’t read theory because, well, none of you have. Someday, perhaps, I’ll encounter someone arguing your positions who actually knows whose intellectual tradition they’re inheriting and has actually read the works of people like Bernstein, and who can therefore actually defend their positions from an informed perspective. But that day is certainly not today. Where you, and everyone like you, get your ideas is not from actual study but from passive absorbtion of the dominant, bourgeois ideology of the status quo. Such shallow ideas cannot withstand actual scrutiny, and so you have this toolkit of tactics to avoid having them scrutinized, such as dismissing anyone who attempts to as an other, a “secret fascist” or whatever, as well as putting up fronts and pretending you believe something else so that your real beliefs cannot be attacked.
I’ll note, of course, that you haven’t answered any of my questions this conversation. Because you can’t actually defend your beliefs, because they’re wrong. Liberals were still winning Illinois when the left was virtually non-existent, so if you want to take credit for it, it only works if you accept that you are a liberal. Otherwise, it’s clear that your strategy, at least in the conditions of my state, is completely useless and has zero chance of accomplishing anything. And yet, you assert that the only reason someone would deviate from that nonsense, incoherent strategy, is if they’re secretly a fascist trying to get the left to act in “silly” ways. If I were a fascist trying to act in silly ways, I’d simply say what you’re saying. If only there were more people like you in fascist spaces, calling themselves fascists, and telling everyone to set aside their radicalism and fall in line behind whatever the Republican party offers them, then their radicalism would have been diluted and we might have never gotten Trump. That is, if they actually listened to you, which they wouldn’t.