This isnt accelerationism - the fascist boot is here already. The only silver lining to being where we are is that the problem and the dividing lines have never been more clear, and that makes organizing marginally more possible
There may be some liberals who still believe that compromise is still the only way forward when it was compromise with capital that got us here, and they’re the ones that must be brought into the resistance by force or be treated as collaborators.
When the fascist boot is coming down on people’s necks is possibly the best time to be building popular resistance
The people who turned up were the 20-somethings who are politically-minded
When voting turnout exceeds expected numbers, we call those additional voters ‘low-propensity’. It doesn’t matter if it’s a national election or a local one - when turnout blows out expectations, that’s a high-enthusiasm election. Trying to describe those low-propensity voters as ‘politically-minded’ seems intentionally misleading, since I can only assume that’s based on the fact that they turned out when they were expected not to (i.e. they turned out because they responded to a typically low-turnout election, thus they must be ‘politically-minded’).
Setting aside the circular definition - any time a candidate is able to turn out more voters than expected, that’s a definitionally good candidate by any electoral standard. The question isn’t really ‘who would non-voters have voted for if it were a national election?’, but, ‘does this election translate to a national voter base?’. And while that’s not something you can easily generalize, Mamdani did run on policies that are resoundingly popular in all 50 states. There’s very little reason he wouldn’t have performed better-than-average on a national stage given what we know for certain.
All this to say: anyone trying to downplay the significance of an Indian-American, Muslim, Democratic Socialist sweeping an election against one of the most famous political dynasty names in the US, where corporate media across the entire political spectrum were united against him, and where opposition spent tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollar more than him - and in of all places the financial capital of the world and in a city that was the sight of the most famous terrorist attack conducted by Arab Muslims in the western world - is absolutely coping. That kind of candidate winning in a place like New York would have been inconceivable since at least 2001.
You can deny it as a significant moment of socialist achievement if you want, but you’d be fooling only yourself.
Unless a political change happens, and quickly, it’s coming
What is?.. Revolution? I mean way to be an optimist I guess…
to ignore the entirety of the voting system simply because it’s going to be overthrown anyway is dumb
I’m advocating that we roundly object to liberal democracy - e.g. democracy revolving around individual capitalist principles. Vote, but vote for working-class representation. I roundly reject the idea that 3rd party voting or uncommitted votes are pointless or ill-advised, so long as liberals refuse to acknowledge the popular momentum of their base. If an acceptable candidate from the left flank does emerge, vote for them, by all means. Participate in primaries, canvas for quality representation. In the end, vote however you want. But certainly don’t be running around whipping support for a milquetoast shitlib just because it’s a lesser-evil to a republican, and don’t be shaming others for sticking to their principles and holding democrats to a higher standard. *You cannot organize on lesser-evil electoral politics.
politically-minded people
You’re misunderstanding the turnout. The record number of voters that turned out are exactly those typical non-voters that you’re talking about.
Dems have been hemorrhaging their base because people don’t think they do anything for them, and a populist candidate like Mamdani is how democrats bring those disenfranchised voters back.
He is exactly the case in point i’m talking about. Calling those voters ‘politically-minded’ is the cope.
The message isn’t “Democrats cannot be trusted to represent our interests, they are our opposition to radical change……” it’s “Nobody within our government gives a shit about our interests.”
Even that message is confused by following it with “but we must vote for them anyway”. Either the system is broken and we must rebel, or the system can be mitigated by dutiful participation. There’s no middle ground where we can minimize the decent into enslavement by biding our time until the revolution comes.
So please, tell me who I should actually vote for for president in the coming years
Vote for whoever the fuck you want. You wont change anything by voting for liberals, because liberals will increasingly lose regardless because people are that much more apathetic about them every cycle. If you want to prevent republicans from tearing everything down, then don’t waste your time with lesser-evil bullshit. Spend that time agitating other liberals - make them see how complacently participating in a system that enslaves them only serves to ensure it will always enslave them. The only candidates worth voting for are those that the democratic establishment actively opposes.
By all means, vote for your favorite benevolent fascist. Just stop pretending like the strategy is to quietly comply with democratic obstruction until exactly the right moment when we all suddenly stand up and rebel against them, while simultaneously complaining about how leftist candidates just aren’t popular because none of these liberals ever vote for them (see how circular this bullshit is?). That isn’t how leftist organizing works. We gain momentum by showing how broken liberalism is, and we can’t do that if we’re sheep-dogging other leftists into committing themselves for the shitlib du jour 3 years in advance. Democrats get our vote only if the represent our interests. full-stop
You might think of yourself as a leftist, but from where i’m sitting you’re just a liberal in denial.
Lmao, this is just cope my man. Mamdani won against the exact establishment and system of billionaires you keep claiming as the mechanism that will never allow a leftist candidate from reaching popular support
Democrats in office right now will never, never put up a fight
Aside from a few notable exceptions, I agree. That’s the reason why it’s important to have a clear message - “Democrats cannot be trusted to represent our interests, they are our opposition to radical change…”
Immediately following that with “… but we must continue voting for them anyway” confuses that message. It also serves as evidence that there is no popular movement for radical change because those people advocating for it keep voting for status quo anyway. Again, it’s not about how you actually cast your ballot, it’s about spending all your time proselytizing about how important it is to support them anyway, even if begrudgingly. It turns your leftist principles into nothing but a performance.
The only thing that will reverse the trend within this generation will be outright revolution
You can’t do either of those things by gaslighting liberals into thinking radical change isn’t possible because radical change isn’t even popular enough to overcome soft-power legacy media, so you must continue participating in lesser-evil politics until the revolution comes.
The civil rights act didn’t get passed because liberals patiently waited until there was a critical mass of popular support - it passed because the movement and MLK specifically agitated liberals repeatedly and threatened to interfere with their political standing if they continued obstructing the change they pretended to care about. Liberals then, and liberals now, threaten the destruction of the union by obstructing that change which is being demanded.
The democratic party won’t ever put forth a leftist candidate until there are literally no other candidates for it to choose from
This is almost true, but just a little misleading - it’s not the democratic party that won’t allow it, it’s liberals who make up the party that will selfishly obstruct radical change until their place of privilege within the existing system is materially threatened, either by the fascists they have been collaborating with or by hemorrhaging the working class they have abandoned. Any protest, direct action or “”“revolution”“” will amount to how large of a threat that is, and if the online ‘radical leftists’ can’t even agree on an uncommitted stance in public then those aren’t really leftists at all, they’re just liberals in denial.
I think you’re confusing “not into politics” voters with ‘disaffected’ voters. Those are the ones Mamdani won - it isn’t as if a flood of young ‘into politics’ voters popped out of nowhere in new york - those voters have always been there but simply never vote because democrats keep dumping cold water on populist reform.
But he won because the “not into politics” voters don’t go to local elections - as far as they’re concerned, voting day only happens once every 4 years
Mamdani won because a record number of those people came out and voted for him, dumbass.
You think that democrats will change if we just stop voting for them
I don’t know how many times I have to repeat this point for you to wrap your head around it:
the problem isn’t the choice of voting in-itself, it’s the choice of placing rhetorical weight on it at all
Democrats will continue losing on their own as conditions for millions of Americans continue getting worse and the democrats continue obstructing popular efforts to fix it. That isn’t me organizing against them or boycotting elections - that’s a very simple statement of fact. Millions of Americans will lose enthusiasm for the democrats if they do nothing. They will continue doing nothing if they think they can still win their elections by appealing to the center. If the people who are screaming at the democrats to take drastic action proudly keep proclaiming that they will dutifully keep voting for them anyway, there’s a very good likelyhood that they will both lose due to voter attrition and mis-diagnose the problem as having not appealed to the center enough. They assume (because the left keeps telling them so) that they aren’t losing support from the left, so they must just be unsuccessfully appealing to the center right.
Clarity of message is everything. Democrats have rock-bottom approval because they continue to obstruct systemic change. Full stop. They will continue losing votes to voter apathy if they continue undermining the popular momentum in the base. Full stop. There is no amount of ‘lesser-evil’ proclamations that will reverse that trend, but it will absolutely mislead liberals into conflating a lack of enthusiasm for democrats for an abundance of appetite for reactionary policy.
You are making that mistake right now. “You’re just republican lite” is the same type of damaging conflation as when Zionists accuse anti-zionists of being antisemitic.
It’s so strange to hear this self-defeating propaganda not more than a week after a demsoc was elected mayor of the financial capital of the fucking world after a record-setting billionare spending spree against him.
At the risk of repeating myself, i’ll try restating the point- the problem isn’t the choice of voting in-itself, it’s the choice of placing rhetorical weight on it at all in a system that is designed to diffuse the political power of the working class to begin with.
The overwhelming majority of liberals will do nothing more than whinge about how unfortunate it is that we live in such a broken system so-long as they remain secure in their personal status within that system. It isn’t just about ‘overthrowing the government’ - it’s about stirring the masses into action by raising the issue to such a volume that they can no longer ignore it. That means making it quite clear that democrats writ large risk becoming victims of the fascist movement they helped to create if they continue ‘biding their time’ until a more convenient moment. It isn’t even about boycotting general elections - it’s about making it perfectly clear that they cannot count on voters holding their noses indefinitely, and that they do not have a winning coalition without the working class. That will eventually be true no matter what we say as leftists - under late stage capitalism conditions will continue getting worse until eventually enough people will have lost all faith in democracy itself that the only people voting are various factions of the capitalist class and the petty-bourgeois (if we aren’t there already, frankly).
Democrats believe that voters may not like the way they govern, but they’ll still vote for them anyway to avoid a hostile opposition party. Any popular movement for radical change will be predicated on the notion that nothing short of drastic action will avert that inevitability
The fundamental problem with liberalism is that it makes well-meaning people believe that justice will eventually arrive simply on its own merit, when liberal democracy itself is designed to ensure that popular reform can never happen without organized resistance.
I’m not advocating for people to accept the lesser evil, I’m asking them to understand that their vote is no longer a form of acceptance
This is a fun rhetorical trick, but I’m not interested in playing a semantic game over the definition of ‘acceptance’. This:
A vote in the presidential election currently only holds the power to slightly shift the current power between bad and worse
is absolutely advocating for the lesser evil. Fine if you don’t want to call that ‘acceptance’, but what I’m pointing to is not the choice itself, it’s the act of advocating for it to begin with. Spending any amount of energy trying to convey the importance of voting for the moderate wing of fascism is a distraction from the message that both parties pose an existential threat to the working class. If your goal is to build support for radical systemic change, then there should be no ambiguity about what actions are necessary to achieve it. To use your bullshit trolly problem analogy- the ‘two tracks’ forced choice is a distraction from the fact that we need to stop the fucking trolly. Even if we end up pulling that lever in the end, you will never get enough people to get off to help derail it if you keep ensuring them that the worst will be averted even if they chose not to.
You can’t build a popular movement against the democratic coalition while openly admitting that you have no choice but to support them no matter how aligned they are with the fascists. Liberals will continue happily existing in the status quo until it’s made clear to them that their privileged position within it is threatened along with everyone else’s if they choose not to act.
It doesnt matter if they’re democrat or independent - what matters is that they aren’t a class traitor.
Do whatever you want but I sure as fuck wouldnt vote for a democrat who is going to sell me out as soon as acting in my interest is politically inconvenient.
You cant build popular support for dismantling the system as it is while you’re actively advocating for people to accept the lesser evil.
Imagine if Sanders got up on the senate floor and said “i believe we cannot compromise on ACA subsidies and let millions of americans lose health coverage, be forced to ration their insulin or die because they cant afford a doctor, but I’ll be voting to reopen the government without them anyway because i have no choice”.
Democrats rely on the inherent violence of a 2 party system. Playing into it isnt pragmatic, it’s denial. Either we’re in this together or we aren’t, and democrats have made it perfectly clear that they aren’t.
Disagree.
Democrats have the leverage now, and there isn’t any reason why Republicans can’t put a temporary extension in the ACA credits now anyway.
Buying time does nothing for democrats but gives Republicans slack to change the focus before committing to anything. This is a cowardly backpeddle, not a calculated maneuver
Why the fuck did they start offering concessions and bargaining after they swept the state elections last week?
More evidence that moderates are not allies and are just as fearful of a leftward popular swing as the Republicans are.
I can’t wait for angry liberals to blame leftists for another historic loss after they choose to run Newsom against all reason.
Nothing lost by protest voting then