While Education and Organizing is building the parts for a new engine the rest of the year.
Reminder that someone online arguing that you shouldn’t vote for Biden because of whatever pet grievance is either a Russian agent or an idiot playing into their hands
If people think an “evangelical” is going to handle the conflict in Gaza on the side of the Palestinians better than Joe Brandon they are sorely mistaken and/or misguided. 45 wanted a straight up Muslim ban ffs.
Yeah, I’d rather deal with someone who enables Israel’s bad behavior instead of someone who not only cheers it on but offers to help make it worse. There’s at least a snowball’s chance of convincing the enabler to stop enabling.
And how quick all these Hamas and Houthi cheerleaders forgot Ukraine too. A country that would not exist anymore if Trump had won 2020.
Reminder that not everyone who disagrees with your guilt tripping self righteous nonsense is a Russian bot. Some of us actually use critical thinking and can see a pattern that must be broken.
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.
look, I can understand the argument that you must vote for the most effective way to contain an evil. It’s a good solid argument.
However it starts taking damage almost immediately when:
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The plan to fight the evil is using the most disliked president in recent history to win a popularity contest.
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They pre-emptively destroy any and all opportunities to find a better candidate to win the popularity contest against the evil.
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They refuse to debate anybody just like the evil they want to defeat. Making it impossible to verify they’re the one for the job.
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They forcibly re-schedule the primary schedule to delay any signs that this plan might be a terrible idea.
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Their age is seriously in question, their mental acuity is in question, and they also decide to dodge being in a completely unscripted environment for two hours while standing.
Certainly with all this you can at least understand why someone would rather vote third party, because this Biden option is not making me feel any safer.
At what point can we stop pointing the finger at the voters and start pointing at the guy they’re “supposed to vote for”? Is there a point we can ever point that finger at Biden? Or is it like Trump,where we need to vote for him “even if he were to shoot someone in the street”?
Is there a point we can ever point that finger at Biden?
Point fingers all you want as long as you vote to keep the rapist, insurrectionist, self-admitted wannabe dictator out of power.
It works better when you have an idea of what the President actually does and what direct action would mean.
Almost everything we would want to do is at the local or regional level. Want higher density housing? Your mayor and city council control that with no say from the President. Better public transportation? Same, though the President can try convincing Congress to pass grant funding for it. More and better bike lanes? Same thing. Get rid of anti-homeless architecture? All city level stuff.
School lunch programs? State government can stop it if the wrong people are there. Expand Medicare? Same. Better rail networks? Same. Ban gay conversion therapy? All state government.
Foreign policy is the one thing where the President does have a lot of control. That’s actually the exception. I like Biden’s approach on Ukraine–getting most of Europe to go along with sanctions at all, especially after Trump destroyed our soft diplomatic power, was amazing. His approach on the Gaza conflict is far less amazing, to put it mildly. Other than foreign policy, the position is mostly advocacy and horse trading around funding priorities with Congress. Soft power for the most part.
A bad President, especially combined with a bad Congress, sure as hell can stop the local agenda items, though. Pull the grants for cities to implement public transit. Pull Medicare expansion entirely. Don’t provide school lunch program funding at all. Put judges in power who rule arbitrarily in favor of conservatives with no care for precedent.
What voting for Biden is for is to make sure the federal government doesn’t overrule things built locally and regionally. That’s it. The rest needs direct action on the part of all of us at different levels of government.
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“Pet grievance” is one of my new favorite euphemisms for genocide.
Voting does nothing other than reform the capitalist regime. It doesn’t matter whether this cycle’s presidential figurehead is blue or red. Give it a few decades and you’ll see how the US will still be sowing death and destruction across the world, as it always has. The presidential race that liberals get so rabid about is nothing more than kabuki theater.
Didn’t she win the popular vote?
This is just shit libs blaming the left instead of taking responsibility for running a shit candidate with so much baggage that she lost while “winning”
If you want to be mad at anyone, blame the dnc.
Bernie would have whooped trump in 2016. Shame the dnc decided to change the rules the day of to avoid a split ticket or God forbid, supporting the actually viable candidate.
Sanders, God love him, was not going to be electable. Had they run him, Trump would have picked up the whole of the big fat moderate lump in the middle of the bell curve.
Exactly like Boris Johnson did when he ran against Jeremy Corbyn. The capitalists simply won’t allow socialists to win in this environment.
Sanders, God love him, was not going to be electable.
Literally every single poll says otherwise. We’ll never know for certain, but there’s much more evidence to support a Sanders victory than a Sanders loss, and claiming that Trump would have picked up enough moderates to win is baseless speculation.
Lol, no.
Bernie is the Ron Paul of the left; he has a small group of very loud supporters online who by constantly shouting at each other on the internet have convinced themselves that he’s actually some sort of populist god. I mean seriously, he couldn’t even win the popular vote in the Democratic Primary in 2016, losing to Hillery by over three million votes, where were all the extra voters to “whoop” Trump supposed to come from?
“Pro-Trump Russian asset Wikileaks reveals that DNC said mean things about our Lord and Savior Bernie Sanders”
Seriously, have you actually looked at the Wikileak emails rather than the hype? It’s the weakest shit imaginable.
You sound like someone who thinks Russiagate and rachel maddow were legit. WikiLeaks used to be trumpeted by liberals as a bastion of truth untill Assange came out with the corrupt dnc stuff. Which you can still all read, yes they conspired with Hillary. MSNBC and CNN gave her easy questions while grilling Bernie. “Weakest shit indeed”.
If the establishment doesn’t like the candidate they won’t get airtime. Same shit with Dean Philips and Marianne Williamson. The Biden team places some phone calls and bam your campaign is dead and no airtime/coverage. Are they viable candidates, who knows?
Should they at least get airtime and be heard in a democratic process?? Yes…
wikileaks is not pro trump. wikileaks is not a russian asset
The emails were never even denied, and they are damning as hell. That is precisely why the entire response, to this day, has been to ignore what was revealed and go after the people who revealed it. Yes, it was shit people revealing shit about other shit people.
dont underestimate how much people hate women
So we’re gonna act like winning the popular vote and losing isn’t a problem in and of itself?
Of course it’s a problem. But people point to this and say “the system’s broken [of course it is], so why vote!” Which is what the most fascist, anti-freedom politicians want. Functionality, it’s the same as voting for the ‘R’ in every election.
Systems fucked, but I always vote. Getting blamed while supporting a candidate I despise certainly is icing on the shit cake
I mean, I will always be mad at the DNC for not running Sanders.
Doesn’t mean I’m not gonna vote Biden in Nov 2024 though.
Then you aren’t mad at the DNC you support their decision to keep the status quo in check
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.
Don’t you see the contradiction in “she won the popular vote” and “she was a shit candidate”?
It’s kinda like the contradiction that Bernie could win the general election, but 12% of his voters defecting to Trump wasn’t enough to make a difference.
Leftists are going to be shouting “the DNC is corrupt” on the gallows after Trump wins.
“Leftists are going to be shouting “the DNC is corrupt” on the gallows after Trump wins.”
This is the stupid shit is see all over lemmy that makes me so mad… Yes the DNC SUCKS but guess what? They’re the status quo right now, and the alternative is literally a fucking dictatorship that has vindictive actions as their highest priority.
There aren’t even dog whistles anymore, he’s using the word dictator… But yeah BomberBiden… Mr.Genocide… I get it… So that means let Trump win? Seriously?
Yeah, and I’ll still likely vote for Mr genocide all while being blamed for his loss. So why’s it matter?
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.
cough Michigan cough. Bitch took us for granted. The DNC shit the whole bed that election.
Did a gendered insult help make your point?
Edit: this is perhaps the most “controversial” thing I’ve posted online and just wanted to say it is an odd thrill to have random internet strangers having a negative reaction to something you said. Brains are strange.
Does language policing make you feel good about yourself?
Haha, no, I don’t think so, but I’ve definitely been wrong before :) I guess it’s been something I’ve been trying to ask myself and felt like a valid thing to ask here.
Ya know, getting on each other’s throats because our words aren’t nice enough is a part of how this mess started.
I see what you’re saying but if my comment would be considered getting on someone’s throat than I think it may be time to take a step back and take a deep breath.
Ok then her dipshit ass campaign took my state for granted, barely campaigned here, and lost Michigan and the election. The dumb fucking DNC gave up on any election that wasn’t federal after Obama and that didn’t help the fucking idiots either.
I wasn’t saying your point was invalid, so I’m not sure why you repeated it here.
Blame the DNC. They’re the one cramming shitty candidates down our throats. If OP is right, and voting for president is just changing the oil, it’s like getting charged $2000 for Dollar General oil.
Stop blaming voters. Field actual, progressive, leftist candidates. I am fucking sick of voting for right wing, war hawk Democrats to “save democracy.” We aren’t saving anything, just watching stock market addicted octagenarians kill the country slower than the other team.
Actual leftist candidates–or progressive candidates, because those are very much not the same thing–wouldn’t get even 10% of the primary votes, even if the DNC was entirely hands-off. They certainly wouldn’t get the kind of donations that they would need to run a successful national campaign. Genuine leftists simply aren’t popular in the US as a whole, even if Gen Z might trend more strongly towards certain aspects of socialism/communism/anarchism than people of my generation did.
no, clearly we need to show our disapproval by letting the literal fascists win!
Don’t be daft. You need to protest, demonstrate, educate, and engage in outreach and community building, and then when it’s time to vote, you need to vote strategically. Calling everyone a literal fascist that’s even a half-shuffle right of Bakunin isn’t going to help you.
I’m sorry, are the republicans not literally engaging in fascism? I mean, they check almost every box
Your comment implied that you lumped Democratic politicians into that as well.
And no, not all Republicans are fascists. However, there are currently very, very few principled Republicans that are currently serving at a national level, and more and more are getting forced out by the party. John McCain and Mittens Romney were both Republican based on their political principles, and, while I disagreed with their politics, I don’t believe that either of them could fairly be labelled as fascists. But one is dead, and the other is now out of politics, sooo…
Oh, I’m sorry, but in a two party system (something that anything not proportional voting will never be), people refusing to vote letting the fascists win does not in fact mean the other party is fascist as well.
Secondly, i rightfully don’t give two flying fucks if you feel like republican politician X Y or Z is fascist or not, they have been engaging in fascist rhetoric and ideology for over 50 years, just because they have gone more mask off about it under Trump doesn’t mean the party of “Mexicans are scary”, “blacks are all criminals”, “tough on crime”, “gay should be illegal”, “unquestioning patriotism”, “Judaeo Christian nation” etc… haven’t been fascist, they still very much fit any definition outside literally being part of the Italian Fascisti party.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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)
nicely done
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.”
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.
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.
I don’t expect a lot of understanding from the kind of people who voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 primaries. But my view is if the same people who have all this energy to try to shame us into voting for Biden in the general applied that to shitty decisions in the primaries it might start to have an effect. Right now people proudly say they voted for Biden in the primaries because the alternatives were “too radical” or whatever. If every time they admitted that they got shamed for being selfish pieces of shit it might actually make a difference.
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You’ve got to at least try to appeal your base. And no, “vote for me or you’ll get the other guy” is not an inspiring rally cry. It didn’t work in 2016 and the fact that the message seems to be similar in 2024 has me really worried.
I voted for the greater good in 2016 - in the Democratic primaries.
I voted for the lesser evil in the general election, then took a long hot shower.
Things would have certainly worked out better with a Hillary victory instead of the Trumpster fire we got.
This does not excuse the horseshit shenanigans that were going on within the DNC.
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.
