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.
“Forgot”?
No, they think Ukraine is a fake Nazi state run by a Jewish drug addict puppeted by the globalhomo Western imperialists.
In other words, insanity.
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.
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.
finally somebody gets it dude hoo lee I feel like I’ve been wearing the nightmare vision goggles and taking the crazy pills or something
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.
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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.
How many other people are thinking that same thing?
There is NO wiggle room this election. Not even in blue af California.
Save your principles for the local elections if you want future elections.
Haha every election is THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION EVER NO WIGGLE ROOM.
This election is equally important, or equally unimportant as any other election.
Bruh. Before 2022 I had bodily autonomy and Trans people could receive their medications with a semblance of reliability. Immigrants weren’t being bussed around the country against their will.
We have gone way more right, way faster, than I think anyone could have foreseen.
Bruh. Before 2022 I had bodily autonomy
If you’re referring to the lack of roe v wade, that was the supreme court, not the president, and I’m not aware of any current justices planning to retiring in the next four years. It’s now a states rights issue. Support the state level candidate who is inline with your views.
Trans people could receive their medications with a semblance of reliability.
With few exceptions, “trans” adults can do whatever they want. Assuming they’re an American citizen, they have the exact same rights as you and I.
Immigrants weren’t being bussed around the country against their will.
You’re right. They were piling up in border states and no one gave a shit until they started getting bussed around.
We have gone way more right, way faster, than I think anyone could have foreseen.
These issues are far more complicated than you would pretend.
Who do you think stacked the Courts in the favor of Republicans? And if you think Trump won’t press it further by expanding the Courts and putting more Conservatives in, you’re high. Additionally, if you don’t think a Republican will push for a nationwide abortion ban, you’re even more high.
Well, you’re worse than high. You’re likely a Russian troll.
Yep, I’m high, and a Russian troll. Ya got me :/
Fucking online fear mongering. Honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Feels like home.
In Maryland there is like 33% wiggle room I am ok. If I was in Pennsylvania it would be a different story.
Hillary and Biden both beat Trump by huge numbers in Maryland I can vote for 3rd party no issues. People are just scared that people from Pennsylvania have the same idea which it would actually cause harm.
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.
Hillary and Biden both beat Trump by huge numbers in Maryland I can vote for 3rd party no issues. People are just scared that people from Pennsylvania have the same idea which it would actually cause harm.
You can vote for whoever you please and should.
Vote your conscience every time.
I’m simply arguing that it is a good idea to not rest on your laurels and when we are faced with what feels like a crazy threat to democracy maybe then its especially good to vote in your best interests instead.
Only you can choose what your best interests are, but anyone who argues that you SHOULD protest vote probably has an agenda which is likely to get you to not vote for Biden or Trump.
voting is not harm reduction.
“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.
Ah yes, the bearer of truth right here, fellas. So your plan is do nothing, but bitch about everything. Gotcha.
Read some Marx and you’ll understand that political action doesn’t start, and end, at the ballot box.
Marx? The guy that advocates for waiting until society collapses and then waiting for a better society to be built from its ashes?
Literally not what he says, though.
I already have toilet paper. Thanks though.
“progressive”
“thinks you should wipe your ass with the entire works of Karl Marx”
Pick a lane buddy
Lol way to show you know nothing about your own ideology, buddy.
Progressivism: Progressive liberalism is a response to marxism, (radical) socialism, and communism. It was a recognition that the problems marxists, (radical) socialists, and communists were bringing to the forefront were proper problems, but it contests that marxists, socialists, and communists have the correct solutions. For that matter, progressive liberalism is anti-marxist, anti-socialist, and anti-communist.
Progressive liberals hope to “save capitalism from itself” not abolish it unlike genuine marxists, socialists, and communists wish to do.
Sorry, what is my ideology?
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?
I will be very different levels of unhappy with a too moderate democrat than a wannabe dictator.
So long as we have “too moderate democrats”, the wannabe dictators are gonna look great for actually believing in something. Fuck Biden for appeasing and therefore empowering the right, shifting goalposts back decades- I hope he suffers excruiating back pain today and forever if not ruinous guilt. He makes the democrats look SO bad. Especially on a international scale.
Is abortion being nationally illegal “meaningful change”? Explain how that’s not meaningful for us stupid people.
Under Biden it is still illegal put someone better in
Sorry, I should have been more specific. Meaningful positive change. Our government is great at fucking shit up.
Ah i see, so positive change is worth pushing for, but avoiding calamity isn’t and you through throw away your vote instead. Insightful political philosophy.
Did you miss the part where I said people should still vote? They should just drastically lower their expectations.
[patriotic music swells]
Then I’d understand and mourn your cynicism, but not think of you as a bad citizen.
Damn. I don’t particularly like being a citizen of anywhere, let alone a good one.
Citizenship is responsibility - participation in the civic life of a polity. That’s what being a citizen, and not simply a subject, means - to have the right to a share in the direction of the polity. Like it or not, if you’re active in exercising your influence to affect politics instead of abrogating that power to the elite, you’re a good citizen of wherever you live.
There, there. It’ll be alright…
Okay but what if I only vote as a joke?
In that case, you can be a bad citizen.
Good. I don’t want people thinking I approve of nation-states or anything like that.
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.
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.
This is simply false, and the same consistent misunderstanding of real politic that keeps the DNC on the struggle bus.
By the same logic Trump would not have been considered viable. See how that played out.
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…
Yeah, you might want to scroll down to “Secret correspondence between WikiLeaks and Donald Trump Jr.” on the Wikipedia article.
I swear to God if any fucking idiot is here to relitigate the 2016 election they can suck a fucking egg. It was toxic then and it is toxic now. Please do us all a favor and go the way of the_donald and drop off the face of the earth.
wikileaks is not pro trump. wikileaks is not a russian asset
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?
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.
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
Bruh I participated in the 2020 Nevada caucuses when I lived there, and I stood for Bernie (which he won btw, Biden took second). Idk what else you want me to do when he didn’t make the final cut.
I will always vote for the Dem in the General, and do my best to make changes in the primary/local elections where I vote Progressive.
Otherwise, you risk a Republican winning the General, and that will mean FURTHER devastation for American society at a quicker pace.
Otherwise, you risk a Republican winning the General, and that will mean FURTHER devastation for American society at a quicker pace.
Make no mistake - that’s what these people want.
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?
Yeah, and I’ll still likely vote for Mr genocide all while being blamed for his loss. So why’s it matter?
No that just shows she was more popular out of the 2 shit choices
TF do you think our vote was? I can’t vote any harder or some shit.
The hilarious bit was all the shit libs backing comey during russiagate. It’s literally his fault she lost.
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
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”
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.
NaPoVo InterCo FTW
Hexagons are bestagons
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 .
Demsocs (really, socdems) still believe in capitalism. They’re not quite Debs levels of socialist.
Not yet
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.
Yup. The DNC is what’s trying to stay in power, which is why Biden and Kamala were forced in, because they obey.
It’s also why Niki Hailey is being pushed on the news. They want her to win because she’ll also obey.
Isn’t Niki Hailey a republican?
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.
no, clearly we need to show our disapproval by letting the literal fascists win!
This, I keep wondering what the hell the “Anarkiddies” expect, they act like we can just pull up to the CEO of Fascism’s house with a katana and be all “Nothing personnel kid!”
Actually it’s been found Left Wing ideas win elections pretty easily
cough Michigan cough. Bitch took us for granted. The DNC shit the whole bed that election.
Did a gendered insult help make your point?
Ya know, getting on each other’s throats because our words aren’t nice enough is a part of how this mess started.
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.
Does language policing make you feel good about yourself?
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.
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
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
Additionally, the GOP had been putting in the effort to crush her for decades. She was the least-electable candidate the DNC ever put forward by a landslide.
Trump didn’t have the same level of loyalty back then. He would have failed against any other candidate in 2016.
I keep telling people that, Hillary was literally the one person Trump could win against.
It’s why I knew he wouldn’t be re-elected unless he pulled something. His base thinks that Trump is unbeatable because the “White House is trying to prosecute him for crimes they made up, the more obvious the Witch Hunt the more invulnerable he is!”, but it’s clearly echo chamber bullshit, guy’s been a walking punchline since day one… he’s just one that’s no longer funny because he’s threatening our lives.
I mean… wasn’t there an investigation that found that they totally did?
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.
Our “lesser evil” option keeps moving further and further to the right each cycle.
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.
Ah a slogan. Truly helpful.
Slogans are helpful yes.
Thoughts and prayers to you then.
More of an action and policy removed
3rd party it is. Dems deciding to fuck around and find out…
I’d say the people who voted third party are the ones who fucked around in 2016, and ALL of us found out because of it.
Dictatorship it is then. 3rd parties don’t stand a snowballs chance in hell right now.
Canvassing and outreach happen first, then you can vote for that party. Right now you’re literally handing Republicans the win if you vote 3rd party this election.
3rd parties don’t stand a snowballs chance in hell right now.
Which is a problem that needs to be addressed.
This voting the lesser of two evils won’t stop the republicans from getting further to the right, and the democrats to do the same to try and capture more moderate right wing votes.
How many elections will be “don’t vote 3rd party vote us or else the other guys will win”? How many problems will be addressed that way? How bad are you going to let these systemic issues plague the US before realizing that “hey maybe this is damaging our democracy and leading down a path towards autocracy”?
Cause the main way for autocrats to rule is for people to stop engaging in politics as they don’t feel represented, and that’s something you’re seeing happening in the US due, also, to a lack of 3rd parties. This creates apathy which autocrats thrive on. And you’ll be whining about people not voting your lesser evil all the way to fascism because you were too shortsighted in winning X election to see the issue at large.
3rd parties don’t stand a snowballs chance in hell
Because of you and other useful idiots spreading RNC/DNC propaganda.
BINGO. Don’t ever question it. Hand-waving away our democracy for DECADES as the lesser of 2 evils.
Fuck this shit. Fuck the MIC. Fuck the 1%.
If you act like a dragon (hoard enough wealth to solve all of humanity’s problems), you deserve to be cut up and fed to the local town of the Hero who ended your life. There just aren’t that many of you fuckers. Best of luck.
On today’s episode of “leftists are simultaneously both stupid babies who exist solely for us to mock AND single handedly responsible for every Republican win.”
If democrats ran Bernie who won the primary, instead of telling him to eat a dick then going to court to tell their voters to eat a dick - THEN all those things in op.
2016 we watched that, in 2024 we’re watching Biden sidestep congress to fund genocide. Democrats aren’t any less fascist, they just put a little rainbow pin on their cap and you call them the good guys.
Ignore the fact that the DNC can quite literally pick anybody regardless of who “wins” the Primary
Dems deciding to fuck around and find out…
Yeah! Sending minorities to concentration camps will really show those Dems!
Punch up not down. Democrat leadership decides on policy, Democrat leadership decides on election strategy.
“I won’t vote for leader that heinous thing x” is a reasonable position to have. “I will vote for leader that doesn’t heinous thing y” is also a reasonable position to have.
The compromise isn’t to get people to vote for x, it’s for the leader to stop x. Particularly, if the opponent would do x but worse. That only shows, to the Democrat leader, y is a resonable cost for x.
“I won’t vote for leader that does heinous long-standing thing that most of the electorate agrees with even though the only other viable candidate wants to pursue an even worse policy on the issue!” is just “I support heinous long-standing thing getting worse!” with extra steps.
Except those that don’t vote to support the thing can’t be said to support the thing at all. “Those that didn’t support the thing are the same as those that wanted it more” is self-serving at best and intellectually dishonest at worst. By the same token I wouldn’t suggest anyone that votes Democrat supports anything the Democrats do because that would also be self serving at best and intellectually dishonest at worst.
I get you’ve had these arguments before, I’ve certainly read them, and I’m not trying to rehash them.
The point that I’m tying, and failing I suppose, to make is the frustration/anger is misplaced.
Exactly.
What @PugJesus@kbin.social fails to realize is that the infighting is by design
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.
And Mutton Chops down in Argentina has the audacity to cry at the WEF in Davos saying that socialism is threatening the West…
But yes. If you want Trump to win, by all means, vote 3rd party.
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.
Leftists did vote for Hillary in 2016.
So 88% of Bernie supporters did.
Leftists did vote for Hillary in 2016.
Its funny to see folks lose their shit at Bernie Voters, when the far larger block of votes Hillary lost came from Obama voters.
Specifically, 4.4M Obama voters slept through 2016, primarily in the Midwest, in response to Hillary’s failure to campaign or advocate for their interests during her time as Sec State and on the trail.
A campaign that absolutely obsessed over winning the Deep South, dumping millions into state coffers from South Carolina to Arizona, virtually ignored the pivotal swing Great Lakes states and ceded that territory to Trump.
Combine this with the Dem Party’s chronic inability to advance any meaningful election reform (no DC statehood, no national motor-voter or mail-in ballot protection laws, no effort to beef up the DOJ’s civil rights department or overturn felony disenfranchisement, no constitutional ballot initiatives to repeal the electoral college, nothin’, nothin’, nothin’) with a SIXTY VOTE SENATE SUPERMAJORITY, and she was lead straight to the slaughter in November.
Like, if you really want to say who stabbed Hillary in the back in 2016, it was the same guy who kicked her legs out in 2008. Obama failed to secure a national majority of Democrats through the end of his second term. And his successor paid the price (along with everyone else who hate to eat Trump’s bullshit for four years).
it really illustrates the enormous amount of entitlement the clinton wing had to expect a win out of that campaign where they alienated every one they could at damn near every turn.
Combine this with the Dem Party’s chronic inability to advance any meaningful
electionreformFtfy. Biden almost passed universal 3-k (effectively state-funded daycare) which was far more than I ever expected and would have been a boon for my family. He nearly got student loan forgiveness passed which also would’ve been a boon for my family. Honestly most of his campaign promises which he was unable to deliver on would have directly put me in a brilliant financial position right now and instead I’m on a far slower path to get to where I want to be financially thanks to BS political infighting.
Now that Biden is pissing off everyone by ignoring the fact that most Americans seem to hate seeing orphaned children pulled from rubble in Gaza he’s pretty damn likely to lose the election he was a shoe in to win just 6 months ago.
Ultimately we have broken promises more thousands of dead children than I can think about in Gaza due to Biden’s unwavering support of Israel, and while there is actual good one can point to (Biden’s IRA and infrastructure bills both have wildly turbocharged both passenger rail and renewable energy projects to a degree that is hard to believe, and the new Income Driven Repayment plan for student loans is extremely lenient) for the average American there is nothing they can point to that Biden did for them in the short term.
This is clearly directed at the ones that didnt.
Diminishing returns.
Complaining that 12% of a sub-group of a sub-group of a population didn’t vote the way you wanted is worrying about open portholes on the Titanic.
You are never going to get 100% agreement on… basically anything. 88% of group X voting the way you want is literally more people agreeing with you than Dentists agreeing toothpaste is important. (4 out of 5 dentists recommend = 80%)
Over 80% of the 12% of Bernie voters that went to Trump were conservatives or centrists, not leftists. The leftists voted for Hillary, Bernie was just more likeable across the board.
You’re getting down voted for maybe not being the most tactful but I appreciate you calling it out. I sat out in 2016. I haven’t missed a vote since. I hope others recognize their mistake and pull their weight.
It is what it is, its not a mistake if you learn from it. Just made this meme as a response to that dumb ass barney meme someone posted earlier.
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.
Clinton supporters formed a PAC to get McCain elected.
A sizeable fraction of them voted for trump let us not forget. Not every Bernie supporter was a leftist
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.
Yeah and Hillary would’ve been better? What about Amy Coney Barrett?
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.
Soon of a bitch, that could have kept is at a 5-4 conservative court.
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.
Yeah, the corrupt as fuck supreme court made sure that billionaires would run the country.
This…
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.
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.
How many of them were turned off by getting the treatment leftists get by democrats in any other public space of being blamed for every Republican win then being ridiculed when they point out dems don’t give a fuck about their opinions either?
As long as dems play this Schrodingers Leftist bullshit, leftists aren’t going to give a shit. If we’re so fucking critical to dems winning they should probably stop telling us to suck a dick, shouldn’t they? 🤷
I don’t give a fuck what they think when they only show up two or three times every four years. And then when they do show up, instead of helping, they just denigrate good people who actually show up consistently.
If they show up consistently and have my back, I’ll have theirs. If we have the numbers and some bullshit is pulled to keep us down, I’ll raise hell with them.
Until then those lazy dilettantes can eat my entire ass.
Gee I can’t possibly tell why somebody would be turned off by the idea of volunteering with you. 🙄
Couldn’t possibly be the 20 minute rant they get for
disagreeing with you“denigrating good (read ‘my’) people”I’m in the same camp as Roscoe here. There are a bunch of people I disagree with on plenty of topics within democratic and left-leaning spaces who otherwise are doing the lion’s share in all varieties of GOTV, local or federal organizing and elections support activities like being a poll judge. I will have their back all day every day.
Disagreement ain’t an issue, coming in at the 11th hour and expecting me to bend over backwards for their pet thing 100% is.
Do I REALLY need to tell you it’s not a surprise you don’t make long term volunteers out of new people by treating them the way Y’all do? Go reread those comments and tell me you’d hang around after being treated that way.
Democrats are just equally fascist and yall think “not trump” is all you need to win elections. See ya after the downfall boys!
Not my people, quite the opposite, although I respect them.
They’re just the people who are actually putting in the work. Unlike your people who’s idea of effort is wiping the Cheeto dust off their fingers before they post.
But don’t worry, just keep screaming impotently into the void. I’m sure progressive candidates with strong organizations will start magically appearing any day now if you just keep posting hard enough on Lemmy. No need to get off your couch.
Yeah I’m definitely going to lend my manpower to people who shriek about anybody left of Biden eating cheetos and upholding the dnc as the saviors of “democracy” after telling the nominee to eat shit then telling their voters to eat shit and watching Biden sidestep congress to fund genocide.
Whatevs bro, enjoy your righteousness and we’ll just see ya after the downfall. 🤷
Same. I generally really like Bernie and his politics, I strongly dislike his most fervent supporters and the bare minimum he does to rein them and his surrogates in has left a sour taste in my mouth though. (Also, David Sirota and Briahna Joy Gray can eat a bag of dicks)
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.
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
It was very brave of you to admit that you voted for Jill Stein, I mean even if she had no chance to win, she’s still a pseudoscience promoter who believes we can use crystals as an alternative to heatlhcare and that vaccines cause autism.
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.
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…
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.
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
Bingo
We just say “That’s a bingo.”
(source 
