- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16451158
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I did some political stuff back in the day. We used to say “when people vote, democrats win.” I don’t need a win, I just need the fascist pedo kleptocratic octogenarian to lose.
Both sides are bad. One is markedly worse though.
Yes. Also, there is zero, ZERO path to anything better through the Republocan party.
There are plenty of ways to eventually get somewhere through the Dems. It may mean “suffing” alot of do nothing bull shit, but there are paths and ways.
The fun part is, that the Republicans didn’t even start out as a Maga cult party. They got infiltrated. Not just by rich people, but by people from all sorts of backgrounds, joining or voting for support. Nothing is stopping the left from doing the same with the Democrats. But for that to happen, they’d need to stop with the constant purity tests…
“The right falls in line, the left falls apart.”
Nothing is stopping the left from doing the same
Intellectual honesty. The left will say what they actually want, the alt-right will lie their way in. “I’m literally an anarchist” versus “oh I’m just a fiscal conservative”.
The tea party was supposed to be normal “folks” but was really funded by the Koch’s Americans for Prosperity (a proto-superpac).
Progressives would have to vote in primaries first.
We pragmatic progressives are doing that right now
We unfortunately do not seem to be the majority of the progressives, at least as represented here. Way too many here advocate not voting.
Bruh, I’m trying to be pragmatic and that includes voting, so many tankies and doomer selfish leftists here
And these days, the left is doing that as we speak.
The MAGA cult is basically onky two groups.
Fanatic idiots who cling to religious fantacy like its fact because they are too stupid to comprehend the world, this stupidity also fuels a shitload of racism and bigotry, for the same reason.
And richblibertarian assholes who want to tear the world of regulation down to better allow them to rape the population and planet for maximum profits.
The rich assholes figured out how to weaponize the idiots using fear to grest advantage. I used to feel a bit sorry for the idiot cult for being manipulated but they basically refused to ever change so fuck those people.
Actual mainstream Democrats are not doing “purity tests”, a lout, super left wing branch is. I am not saying they have bad wants and desires, and ultimately they are right on a lot of issues, and personally, I agree with them on a lot of issues, but they are loud, and a bit of a fringe part, and for the greater good, for now, can be mostly ignored.
Mostly.
They should NOT be ignored in favor of just, sliding more tonthe right. Like, just picking an issue, maybe there is a compromise on trans athletes, because it probably is tricky, but that doea not mean compromising on trans people ompletely, andletting it start to slide to other queer groups, which is starting to happen.
The big lynchpin that feels like its brought up a lot is the Israel/Palestine war. Which is probably the stupidest one. Yes Israel sucks, and what they are doing to Palestime is very terrible, but hesus fuck you don’t sacrifice the country and ultimately everyone else in the world to the fucking Fascists over it. Both sides are shit, and who fucking cares in the end.
Actual mainstream Democrats are not doing “purity tests”, a lout, super left wing branch is.
Yeah, i’m not talking about democrats as a whole, they’re not “left” from a European perspective, i was talking about those who are quite a bit further left of centre. The people who “taught the Dems a lesson” by *checks notes* hiding at home, writing performative bullshit on social media and are dogpiling on anyone who dares to cast a shadow of a doubt at their imaginary moral high ground. As i had the pleasure of experiencing first hand, when i dared to question the decision of some random US non-voter commenting on Bluesky…
The point is, that pretty much every party can be changed from the inside, if people are persistent enough. Change never happens on its own. At least not for the better. And if you want to help people in other countries, you first need to make sure your own country stays safe. Sadly, the US is a two-party failed state, and in my opinion, the only realistic peaceful way to change that, is to join the lesser evil of the two parties and force the change from within. The other option is to just burn everything to the ground and start from the beginning.
It’s called reforming a party. And yes, the Dems are much more likely to be reformed and it is the true path forward.
As long as people are not apathetic what most likely will happen is that Republican will disappear and Democrats will split into two parties. It happened in the past.
i take every opportunity to shit on, mock, ridicule, insult, verbally abuse bothsidesbad dipshits everywhere they show their stupid fucking faces
whatever happened to all the “vOtE 3rD pArTy BeCuZ gEnOcIdE” fucking morons? actually j/k i don’t miss them at all. how’s that iran war going? we sure helped palestine by throwing away our vote, huh? fucking idiot clowns
Why do people keep purposely misrepresenting the criticism people had for Harris? Like, I know, it was hard at the time to listen to people warning about her potential to lose. But, we have the advantage of hindsight now. Do we have to pretend the main criticism of Harris was that Trump would be better? No one that wasn’t a grifter was saying that.
The vast vast majority of people criticizing Harris were doing so because they correctly warned people that if she did not separate herself from Biden and run FOR something turnout would be low and she would lose.
- The people critizing her for trying to run “strong border” ads were correct.
- The people that criticized her for saying “nothing comes to mind” when asked if she would have done anything differently than Biden were correct.
- The people that criticized the campaign for stopping the very well received “weird” messaging Walz brought. They were correct. Walz brought momentum and they shut it up. It’s like they were allergic to things that were working and getting people interested in her campaign.
- The people that critized her when she suddenly stopped talking about her ONE concrete policy idea on grocery store price controls. They were correct. She stopped talking about a vastly popular position because Trump called her “communist”. And then they kept calling her a “communist” anyway.
- The people that criticized her for supporting Bidens Israel policy; THEY WERE CORRECT. We are living in a world were 75% of lifelong Democrats are against any support for Israel. This didn’t happen overnight. This has been happening since Bidens genocide began. And her absolute failure to LEAD and understand were the country was heading was a complete failure. We told you in 2024. The country was begging for a real leader and this issue would shown that she had that ability to lead. That she could call a spade a spade and not be another bull shit politician afraid to upset AIPAC. She failed.
Do you know what a leader does? They LEAD and guide others in the correct direction. We are there NOW. The people that vote for the Democratic party are ALWAYS significantly ahead of there leaders on the actual issues. They were begging for a leader that would actually step forward and be unafraid and unapologetic in leading on issues and policy.
We don’t have to wonder. We are literally seeing it growing RIGHT NOW. From Mamdani to Abdul (soon) we are seeing anti Israel and leftwing populism wipe the floor with Harris style Democrats.
A 15 term incumbent losing DEMOCRATIC primaries to a 29 year old that was saying “fuck Kamala Harris” for not taking a stand against Israel. The people you are crying about that “lost Kamala the election”. They are the people literally going out and organizing right now because they are sick and tired of having to explain why the Democratic party keeps losing to Trump and being told “you’re the reason Harris lost.”
We’re done with just explaining it. We’re done being used as a scapegoat for the failures of the Democratic party when we offer constructive criticism. We’re forcing these politicians out of office that refuse to actually lead.
I don’t know a single person I organize with in DSA that didn’t go vote for Harris. We aren’t the ones that didn’t show up. The ones that didn’t show up were the people that didn’t even know who the presidential candidates were a week before the election. And a lot of them didn’t have reason enough to take off work, not be able to pick their kid up from daycare on time, or didn’t want to get stuck in traffic, so they decided to not vote that day.
So, please, stop pretending the people actually organizing for good candidates like Mamdani were the people that didn’t show up. And, please, come join us at DSA and help us elect people that actually have the motivation and knowledge to be leaders.
Edit: And for the love of God, please stop confusing the majority of the socialist movement with Anarkiddies and the socialist that like to LARP as Maoist third worldist online. We don’t like them much either. They are kinda stinky and need to shower. But, they aren’t worth even caring about. They don’t have any negative effects outside your twitter feed.
I don’t know a single person I organize with in DSA that didn’t go vote for Harris. We aren’t the ones that didn’t show up.
Why are you writing novels to defend yourself against something that wasn’t even directed at you?
OP clearly referenced people who protest-voted against Harris and subsequently made everything measurably worse for the Palestinians and Earth at large (which was obviously going to happen if Trump won).
My very first sentence categorized their comment as a misrepresentation of what caused the Harris loss. I had a paragraph in my “novel” originally that said that even if all protest votes went to Harris she still would have lost. But I guess my editor removed it in the final draft /s.
So, since I categorized the comment as a misrepresentation of what happened (protest votes having impact), provided evidence for why people stayed home, and provided an explanation of the campaigns failures; the quote you took was a defense of this conclusion in my “novel” and the actual actions of the people that spoke out against Harris for not standing against a genocide.
You can joke about the length of my comment. I am myself. But, don’t quote a single sentence out of the context of “the novel” and pretend it was irrelevant to what I was explaining. Do you disagree with the protest vote being irrelevant? It doesn’t sound like you do.
I’ve had this conversation for years now. The next step after I point to the protest vote as mathematically irrelevant is for Harris defenders to blame the “stay at home”. It’s why I addressed the reasons people stayed home and the failure of the campaign to win against “the couch”. The problem was people staying home. But people stay home because they are apathetic, uninformed, misinformed, or aren’t excited for either candidate.
We can be frustrated about why that is. But, if a presidential campaign doesn’t run their campaign on how things actually are; and instead try to motivate this large voter base through morality or fear. They’re going to fail like they did to have people “pokemen go to the polls”.
Why didn’t all those non-voters bother to vote for Harris? You say it was because she didn’t run a good campaign, that she had a bad platform. You criticized her ‘bad’ mistakes and spread the word on how bad she was. Don’t you think that might have been a contributing factor as to why too many people thought she wasn’t worth getting off their asses to vote?
Let’s assume for a moment that what you’re saying is true. I’ll “steelman” you’re argument. Let’s assume that the criticism of Harris “from the left” played a large enough role for enough people to stay home.
What you are advocating for is that if a political campaign is bad, but “less bad” than the alternative, we should not criticize it. We should not demand the candidate for our party run on policy positions that we want.
You realize you are advocating for an increasingly worse and worse political choice over time. If no concessions are ever offered by politicians to their voters, and those voters still show up religiously, that is not democracy. That is a cult.
Not only that. But what you’re advocating for is impossible. You will never live in a world in which people don’t criticize a candidate that is “less bad” than the other candidate. You can, however, live in a world where the politicians that lose elections to historically unpopular candidates like Trump, are replaced by candidates that actually offer policies the voters of their party WANT. We are seeing this grow with DSA right now.
So, even if what you are saying was true, the solution would not be to shame voters. That literally will cause MORE of them to sit on the couch on election day. That’s just people. You can’t sustain a political party by being “less bad” than the alternative. People will stop showing up. People sitting on the couch when their politicians ignore their material needs is literally how democracy should work.
You’re saying the same thing I am saying. But you’re for some reason placing blame on potential voters doing exactly what they SHOULD do in a healthy democracy. You seem to want a party that has cult like loyalty as long as “the other guy is worse”. Well, that’s exactly how you get worse and worse political policy, constantly shifting rightward, for decades.
Ok. So things are working perfectly then with the upshot being Trump gots elected, and so we’ll probably never get reasonably fair election again? And we’ve already destroyed our global alliances, started unnecessary wars, sent the economy to hell, put corruption off the charts … and that’s just perfect.
You wanted to have a discussion about the influence of criticism in the elections. I yielded concessions to your point of view to make an important point about what you are advocating for. This is your reply?
Why do I even bother? You didn’t respond to a single thing I said.
Probably because people still don’t seem to understand the electoral college. Which is very bad for demonstrating being a knowledgeable member of the American electorate.
Votes for president have negligible to no meaning due to the electoral college system. We now know that the protest votes counted in the hundreds whereas millions failed to vote at all. No outcomes in any race were decided by protest votes. More right wing libertarians protested the GOP.
The protest voters demonstrably did not make everything measureably worse. They are quite frankly the reason we have seen the dial shift towards elections of people like Mamdani. They’re still throwing McMurrows out at every turn.
It’s weird how much effort you have to put into convincing people that the team who lost had a bad strategy…
I know. It’s exhausting. Especially when you yourself want that team to win rather than the other team win.
People seem to treat the voters like “the players”. The voters are the fans in this analogy. If the stadium is empty it’s not helpful to keep screaming about the team losing because they aren’t being cheered for enough. “The players” are the people that actually have power to make political change. We aren’t a direct democracy. If the players aren’t “scoring” and don’t even try to “swing” the fans stop showing up.
Hell, the Democrats are essentially playing like the 1919 white sox. That’s an old analogy. But it’s fitting.
If you’re active in organizing with DSA, you’re literally not the problem. The people we’re criticizing would call the DSA “fascist-lite” for not being far enough left. You hinted at acknowledging those people exist in your edit, but I don’t think you realize how prevalent they are.
Don’t take it personally when people criticize them, because they’re not talking about the DSA. Literally no one would call the DSA tankies. Tankies hate the DSA because it proves to people that you can have socialism without authoritarianism. Tankies gatekeep and purity test leftist specifically to keep democratic socialists out of leftist spaces, because they don’t want people realizing that the two can go together.
Your critiques of Kamala Harris’s campaign aren’t without merit, but they’re a bit misplaced in this discussion. No one here is saying she was an ideal candidate. But we had two choices: trump or harris. No matter how the election turned out, we were going to get one or the other. Many of us took the harm reduction approach, knowing that opposing trump was worth voting for someone who wasn’t great but was not as bad.
We can relitigate this till we’re all blue in the face, but I don’t think it would be productive. What’s done is done, and the current political climate is different from the one in 2024. We have an incumbent Republican trifecta with which many people are displeased, and the pendulum is swinging back into the Democrats’ favor right when the internal tides of the Democratic party are shifting towards the DSA and progressive caucus.
There’s a lot of momentum right now building for progressive candidates and democratic socialists, so let’s not waste that by fighting with each other. Centrist Dems want that. Republicans want that. Let’s not give it to them
I think it’s reasonable to warn people to look out for bad actors stoking division by using trite catchphrases like “both sides,” “blue fash,” “fascist lite,” etc. Let’s focus on the positive momentum. Let’s not squander it on purity tests and infighting
Fuck off with your gpt slop.
I wish. Every single word was typed by my adhd/autistic brain. If you read it it’s painfully obvious from my writing style. I am not nearly digestible in my writing as an AI is. It usually leads me to misunderstandings with people that reply to me.
If you find a gpt that can shorten my comments, make it more digestible to liberals, but also still provide the same information I’d love to hear about it.
Unfortunately, almost embarrassingly so, my comment history is all my own original thought.
Oh, also be sure to have several dyslexia related typos. It’s my signature writing style. I need the gpt to mimic that. /s
Edit: it’s weird how long comment with a minor amount of structure and hyperlinks means it’s AI now. It’s pretty unfair to those of us that have been doing it for decades on the internet. How do you think these AIs were trained in the first place?
Edit2: damn, they just downvoted me and didn’t respond. My brain will not wonder if I sound like an AI bot for the rest of the day.
LOL trump is potus
Yes. My comment is entirely about the failures of the democratic party and how they lost to a racist narcissistic old white man twice.
People critical of voters are for some reason trying to place blame on them instead of the political campaigns with near limitless funds that lost to him TWICE. And still keep arguing for the same tactics.
They don’t realize how embarrassing it is to admit their defeat and not reflect on the political party itself as the thing that needs to change. Arguing for voters to change without the party changing is arguing for no change at all. Voters change VIA the messaging and actions OF THE PARTY.
Blaming voters is an admission that the party is unchangeable and that democratic process is dead. Because, like it or not, the party and it’s representatives hold the power through elections. If the party refuses to change policy based on voters then we are just bouncing between two parties that do not represent the majority of the population. Which we are.
It sounds like you supported Hillary and still don’t understand why she lost, so you keep the same approach… In reality, tens of millions of voters actually care who the Dem candidate is. If you feed them a pro-corporate anti-worker center-right tool, they might stay home. That is reality, my friend. Blame them all you want. I would blame the DNC, but you do you.
There was a primary, she won the primary. Sure the DNC tried to sway public opinion, but ultimately the voters gave us Hillary. That is reality my friend.
There’s a difference between supporting the ideology of a candidate, and supporting effective voting. You can blame the DNC for pushing a bad candidate, but the people who’d rather stay home than choose lesser evil deserve the greater evil when they get it.
You play the hand you’re dealt, not the one you wish you had.
She won the primary because the DNC did everything they could to undermine Bernie. Dabbie Wasserman Schultz had already anointed Hillary the chosen one and didn’t want anyone screwing with her plan, democracy be damned.
It was my first primary paying attention as an adult. I turned 18 when Obama had already won in late 2008. The primary process of the Democratic party was shocking to me. The super delegates were just insane to me. I phone banked for Bernie. The entire process is like millions of people pretending that the primary process is not a rigged system. News networks showing massive vote leads for states that hadn’t cast a single vote because of “super delegates”. Over and over just pretending that a candidate had already been chosen. When, well, they had been. We just all were pretending it didn’t.
Then you learn of history of the party. Like what was done to drop Wallace from FDR. You realize that this just how it’s always worked. There is a massive amount of tools used by the political party to pick their preferred candidate in a smoke filled room. They just don’t do that directly. They create all these anti democratic rules and all collectively pretend they are “protecting the party”.
They are protecting the party from winning popular support and being able to win against Trump. That’s all that’s happening. It’s on purpose. They are captured by the same capital interest as the Republicans.
Dude nobody voted for Bernie in the primary. He never came close. If his supporters showed up that would be one thing but y’all didn’t.
Are you just here to troll? Bernie* had the largest grass roots movement in a generations. Over 100,000 unique people phone banked for him volunteering. Are you European? You sound like you know nothing about how the political process works in the US beyond TV. If you’re from the US you definitely have never actually involved yourself in the political process beyond just voting. So many ignorant comments you keep leaving here.
He overwhelmingly lost in the primary because not enough progressives voted for him in the primary like I did. What part about that don’t you understand?
Again, you’re looking at American elections and pointing to the outcome as your only analysis. I know how voting works mate. But for some reason you are just interjecting useless comments when someone decides to analyze the factors that lead to that outcome?
You have no thoughts beyond “not enough people voted for him”? Is your analysis really that one dimensional? What are you even trying to say? It’s like looking at a basketball game and saying “the team lost because they had less points”. Wow! Very insightful! What other amazing things do you have to tell us?
you’re talking about idiots as if they’re something other than fucking idiots. tens of millions? because more idiots make the idiocy more valid? GTFO
i couldn’t care less who you think i should blame. we are fascism now.
how’s that iran war going?
Yeah that’s what happens when both “parties” support genocide. More genocide.
How’s voting for genocide and then blaming non-voters going? It seems pretty smug.
yea, harris and the entire dem party is weak on israel.
but we wouldn’t be in a stupid pointless bullshit war with iran if literally anyone but trump were potus
we wouldn’t be a literal fascist state
all the agencies, research grants, consumer protections-- everything that is now gutted, wouldn’t have been gutted
yes i concede “both sides are bad,” but as it’s been mentioned by other commenters, one side is orders of magnitude worse than the other
if you voted for Kamala, you got the same result as everyone else.
how’s that iran war going? we sure helped palestine by throwing away our vote, huh? fucking idiot clowns
They were bots. All of them. And the public is too dumb to tell.
Great job punchin’ left and missin’ the whole point. 👍
LOL yup there it is
and no. i didn’t miss shit. try again
all you’re going to come back with is “uR dUm” or something equally stupid.
the fact is 3rd party/ abstaining is objectively the dumbest fucking position anyone could ever take, and now we have a fascist rapist racist pedophile president who sucks israel’s cock. honestly gtfo with your vote 3rd party bullshit. fucking clowns
Continuing to antagonize the people you want to help you is pretty close to just as stupid.
yea. “catch more flies with honey” right?
reasonable non-stupid people have been trying that for YEARS
DECADES
and here we are. yes, it’s possible harris would have been worse for palestine than trump has been.
LOL j/k no fucking way.
but yea. i will continue to antagonize. these people aren’t helping anyone, they’re harming. fuck them
You idiots have been antagonizing people for decades. I say idiots because you think this insulting drivel is honey?
This is why Democrats lose.
Antagonize whom? Lemmy was FILLED with leftist preachers telling everyone that Harris needed to earn their vote. They loudly proclaimed that everyone needed to vote 3rd party to send a message.
It was no different than politely debating a Trump supporter. Anyone debating them was an attack. When they talked they believed it wasn’t antagonizing, only responses were “antagonizing”.
At this point those true leftist need to be publicly shamed for their mistake so it doesn’t get repeated. Pretending it didn’t happen will allow history to repeat.
Lemmy is a niche platform with, I believe, about 45,000 monthly active users. Let’s say for the sake of argument that all of us were influenced into not voting. (Ridiculous, I know, but for the sake of argument.) That’s less than a rounding error on the millions who didn’t come out to vote in 2024. That is to say, all of the raging Lemmy Leftists affected basically nothing.
On top of that, surveys and interviews in the media after the election found that politically-engaged people, even leftists by and large, did vote for Harris. It’s the politically disengaged, and disillusioned voters who didn’t understand the stakes, or see any advantage in putting in the effort to vote. (What, did you seriously think that all Americans have perfect information, and make only deeply-considered, rational choices?)
On top of that, Republicans in control of state governments have been doing everything that they can to make voting harder, and less convenient, to suppress the turnout.
On top of that, the GQP ran Spanish-language ads in many markets peddling bald-faced lies. These ads were largely not countered by any Democratic messaging, and what there was was largely in English. The impression that I got was that Democrats felt that they had brown people’s votes on lock. Never mind that brown people is a granfalloon, and they’re just as ideologically diverse as any group of people, and many of them were not naturally inclined to vote Democratic. (That was certainly the case in Michigan.)
So, factually, we have a poorly-informed or not politically-engaged population that’s not inspired to overcome the inertia and obstacles to go vote, and an uninspiring candidate who didn’t speak to their daily lives and worries, and, no, forget all that, let’s expend effort blaming the Lemmy Leftists.
THIS is why Democrats lose. It’s so much easier to focus on a strawman and browbeating a handful of irrelevant loudmouths than it is to address these real issues, and actually inspire people to come out and vote with a message that reaonates with them.
You are why Americans deserve trump.
Care to elaborate?
Agent of the enemy, right here. Zero self awareness.
☝️
You are the problem
abstaining is objectively the dumbest fucking position anyone could ever take
One of the other positions is pro rape, pro concentration camps and pro explosive diarrhea.
Then you should be voting against it.
That’s all the same thing, not 2 sides. If you’re abstaining, you’re supporting the pro rape, pro concentration camps, and pro explosive diarrhoea.
Vote in the primaries. Vote in the general. Know who you’re voting for or against, make sure you haven’t been purged.
If you’re abstaining, you’re supporting
no. words mean things.
now we have a fascist rapist racist pedophile president who sucks israel’s cock.
Who only became a viable candidate because of thirty years of lesser-evil voters covering for the Democratic Party to shift from slightly right of center to right of Reagan, but just slightly left of the “fascist rapist racist pedophile”.
Nakedly fascist and white supremacist candidates have been in the Republic Primary forever. They never got the time of day from Republican voters until the bipartisan Neoliberal austerity had squeezed the working class so hard that a fascist strongman selling easy answers seemed attractive. And after the guy who ran on Hope and Change delivered Narratives and Crumbs instead, yeah a lot of disillusioned people who’d been first time voters during the Obama years went back to staying home. That’s not because of “both sides” messaging depressing turnout, that’s because of “both sides” reality showing them it didn’t matter. They voted for a Public Option and got United Healthcare denying their claims. They voted to codify Roe and end the Bush Tax Cuts and got open air slave markets in North Africa and the Space Program handed over to Billionaires to cannibalize.
Then after Trump’s first term, they watched the party push Biden from sixth to first without even trying to be subtle about it. And it was obvious even on Super Tuesday that Biden wasn’t being annointed because he could stop Trump, but because he could stop Bernie Sanders. So why on Earth would anyone who finds the status quo untenable continue to support a party so obviously and totally devoted to defending the status quo against any attempts to improve it? Voting for the ratchet because you fear the wheel isn’t going to motivate anyone. The only people still on your side are the ones too blind to see that ratchet effect policy and identity politics is the only thing the DNC has to offer.
So you’re saying Trump accurately represents US Americans.
US Americans with their backs to the wall, with wages stagnant and costs of everything constantly going up? US Americans whose education has been gutted so that they have barely a high school civics understanding of how their government works? Yeah. Trump is an accurate representation of America’s id, and the uniparty has gleefully created the exact conditions to bring out the worst in the greatest number of people.
I voted for Kamala 🤷♂️
You’re the one now alienating people we need.
Your reading comprehension sucks. If ypu voted for harris the above post is NOT about you
Yeah, no shit it’s not about me.
One of us definitely need work on comprehension.
In the Coke vs Pepsi system of the US, its hard to see how voting for one over the other would be any better. Sometimes 3rd and 4th parties actually have a little bit of power in Canada’s Westminster system if there’s a minority government. It just goes to hell when the Liberals stop pretending to not be conservatives.
In the Coke vs Pepsi system of the US, its hard to see how voting for one over the other would be any better
living in america, i just can’t comprehend how anyone could think that literally anyone/anything is every bit as terrible as trump.
are you really sitting there trying to tell me that harris wouldn’t be any better than trump?
jesus fucking christ
From an outside perspective, the “both sides” arguments in the US sounds so fucking stupid and fucking lazy.
It’s like some worthless pricks watched some South Park episode about a turd and a douche and took it seriously for some fucking reason and used it for their entire political identity. For fucks sake, it’s even worse hearing, “yeah Biden did a lot of good, but he didn’t advertise it enough”. Fuck that shit. That’s on you being a fucking stupid uninformed (non?)-voter.
Ok, I’m an outsider looking in. Up here, I’ve been an NDP member for years, I know that we are not making government any time soon, but we have pushed the Liberal government to implementing universal healthcare, and made steps toward universal dental care and pharmacare. A vote for the 3rd party can be effective.
Looking south, it’s hard to see how voting for someone will incrementally make your life worse is that much better than the one who will make your live worse today.
Up here, we voted in Carney to keep Poliver out (I don’t respect him enough to spell his name correctly), but really their policies are so similar that a ton of conservatives joined the Liberal party to give him a majority.
Were I in your system, I don’t know if I would vote. I wouldn’t have voted for Hillery, Biden, or Harris, I sure as hell would never have voted for Trump. But I’m not in your system, so I can’t say for sure.
40 plus years of neo liberal policy, that yes have been embraced by ‘both sides’, has been destroying the nation and for some reason people don’t want to admit it.
The “some reason” is because most educational text and all entertainment media are published by the same six corporations, all of whom are owned by billionaire parasites who profit greatly from that Neoliberal policy.
And for whom both parties work
Okay, but there’s a difference between “both sides are bad” and valid criticism of the democratic party.
Exactly. Only fight the Democrats 364 days a year.
So vote blue no matter who?
If you push them 364 days a year you actually might want to vote for them
How delightfully reductionist. Though essentially, yes. Our system of elections is antiquated and should be changed, but until it is, voting how you WISH the system functions instead of how it actually functions is working against your own interests.
To side-step the electorialism conversation a bit: Americans need to take a page out of the French handbook. Civil engagement should not begin and end at voting.
We should be joining leftists organizations, anti-capitalist reading groups, mutual aid groups, workers unions, tenants unions, self-defense groups, community gardens, and real grassroots communities built on trust. These will form the foundation for future protests, boycotts, workers strikes, renters strikes, and, if necessary, civil disobedience. The workers of America have become so anemic that our politicians no longer fear us.
We were trained how to protest, and the history of protest, wrong on purpose. Our cities were atomized which happens to make quelling, compartmentalizing, and hiding unrest much easier. We would be doing great if we were simply anemic. If I had to put numbers to the current landscape: 1/3 anemic, 1/3 actively supporting their own oppression, 9/30 concerned but confidently doing the wrong things to solve their problems, 1/30 pretty much fucked.
Our cities were atomized which happens to make quelling, compartmentalizing, and hiding unrest much easier. We would be doing great if we were simply anemic.
On a personal note, I’ve been to several protests where (it feels as though) the only people who are watching us are the police on the ground and the drones in the sky. We march down the approved path, which has been sectioned off from the rest of the city, and yell about various issues. Then we all go back to work on Monday. Pretty demoralizing at times but it’s better than being terminally online.
Getting slapped and getting stabbed are both bad. But not equally bad.
Voter: That guy’s got a knife and he’s coming for me! What do I do?
D: Vote for me and I’ll keep you safe!
Voter: OK! Here I go… let’s… voooooooote!
D: I win the election, thanks to everyone who donated to my campaign. This is a win for all of us, not just me.
Voter: Ok, now take that guy’s knife away.
D: <slaps voter> How dare you criticize me after my very tenuous and delicate victory!
Voter: But he still has the knife and he’s still coming for me.
D: Donate $25 to my campaign for re-election and we’ll stop the knife wielding maniacs!
Voter: But you won already. Are you going to stop the knife wielding maniacs?
D: We can’t unless you vote D in the next election.
Voter: But I voted D in this one, and you won, and he still has a knife
R: Haha! I have won the next election. Here I come with my knife that no one took from me!
D: How would we have lost?! It must be the voters’ fault! Donate $25 to my campaign and we’ll send out weird postcards saying that we’ll know if you voted or not
Voter: Well, getting slapped is not as bad as getting stabbed!
To give some more specific examples:
Liberal voters: We pay more for healthcare than anyone else! Can you use our money for Medicare for All?
Politicians:
Voters: Why have we been blockading Cuba since fucking 1962? Make it stop!!
Politicians:
Voters: Scientist are warning about climate change!! We need to take drastic measures!
Politicians:
Voters: ICE is killing people and racially profiling! It’s a danger to us all and must be abolished!!
Politicians:
Voters: Stop killing brown people with our tax dollars! Pull support away from Israel!!
Politicians:
Leftists: I can no longer support the Democratic Party
Liberal voters:
Fucking banger!
Withholding your vote only puts gasoline on the fire. Voting for something is not support, it is selecting from available paths and they are not of equal harm. The most important elections to vote in are primaries where you get to choose who you’ll be choosing.
Please note that voting should always be done in conjunction with civil protest and mutual support networks.
Withholding your vote only puts gasoline on the fire.
Can you say this to a Palestinian-American or Latin American with a straight face? The Democratic Party is still complicit in genocide abroad and refuses to accept abolition of Trump’s personal white supremacy army. Several Democrats are implicated in the Epstein Files and their colleagues are covering for them. If you don’t think these are the appropriate lines in the sand to draw, then the line doesn’t exist. The “lesser evil” rhetoric will justify anything.
…civil protest and mutual support networks
We should all be joining leftists organizations, anti-capitalist reading groups, mutual aid groups, workers unions, tenants unions, self-defense groups, community gardens, and real grassroots communities built on trust. Such communities will form the foundation for future protests, boycotts, workers strikes, renters strikes, and, if necessary, civil disobedience. That is the only way the American people can regain control at this point.
Look at the data. Under Trump, Gaza got an embassy move, funding cuts to UNRWA, and open talk of annexation. Under Biden, it got bombs,but also pauses, pushback, and at least some rhetorical distance. That’s not enough. It’s nowhere near enough. But it’s less. Same with Iran, Trump tore up the JCPOA and maxed sanctions; Biden at least kept diplomacy open. Same with SNAP, Trump gutted it; Biden restored some of it.
I’m not asking you to recognize this scale as legitimate. I’m saying it’s the scale that actually exists and the difference is real.
The absence of your vote doesn’t punish them, it hands the keys to the people who will do worse, faster, to the communities you’re trying to protect. You want to build mutual aid and unions? So do I. But those need time and cover to grow. One administration gives you more of both than the other.
Being morally pure does absolutely nothing for the people lives that get actively worse.
While we do that we need to also work in primaries to get people into Congress that will apply pressure for change because if you look at any actual societal progress we’ve had it’s been civil action in tandem with political pressure.
My point stands. D taking your vote and your donation while not doing anything is still less bad than R actively stubbing you with his knife.
LOL. And the good cop giving you a coffee with a gentle tone of voice is better than the bad cop screaming at you. The D is literally watching the guy with the knife and going “whatever” and you think they’re on your side?
as an immigrant, can you guys please not vote for me to get stabbed?
Sorry, the best we can do is vote for people who will stab you or people who won’t stop the people who will stab you. As it turns out, voting isn’t how we avoid getting stabbed. Who knew!?
R can only stab when if elected. While D holds office, R may get to keep his knife but actually stabbing is a felony. Once R is in office, it is perfectly legal for him to stab and he can thus do much more stubbing. He also gets to direct federal funding toward stabbing.
Voting is what keeps R away out of office. Voting prevents stabbing.
These are some very complicated concepts, so let me draw you a diagram:
Have you ever seen an R go to jail while Ds are in office? Again. The Ds share in the bipartisan consensus to give military surplus to the police, they are fine with cop cities, they are fine with bombing brown people into oblivion, they are fine with couping other governments. They are always an accomplice to the stabbings. Keeping Rs out of office, which you mathematicallly cannot reasonably rely on, will do nothing to stop the stabbings.
The research across decades has shown no reduction of police violence under Democrats and no increase under Republicans. The research has shown corporate profits are higher under Ds than under Rs. Stop believing your bullshit flowchart. It doesn’t match reality.
that’s unfortunate, but in this case, if it were up to me (I know it isn’t), I’d pick the ones who won’t stop the stabbing over the ones who will do the stabbing.
I don’t wanna be selfish though. It’s your choice, not mine. It only impacts me.
I vote so I can cancel out a maga vote
We need to show the Democrats that being conservative light is not good enough by making it have consequences in primaries.
The lesser of two evils trap demoralizes people and makes them think that this is the best we can hope for from a politician but it’s not, We’ve seen a rise of left-wing politicians lately and we can do better.
We must participate whenever possible and the choices aren’t always great but they do still matter.
So yes, Democrats actively doing less damage than the Republican counterpart, and no it isn’t good enough.
People deserve a world where hope can be a part of it.
Yes, participate in primaries, but if the corpo dem wins a primary still vote for their disgusting self over a Republican (unless there is a VIABLE third party candidate)
unless there is a VIABLE third party candidate
Which there absolutely isn’t.
I mean I gotta put it in to stave off the “but what about bernie” s
Yes, participate in primaries, but if the corpo dem wins a primary still vote for their disgusting self over a Republican (unless there is a VIABLE third party candidate)
This assumes that the problem is that Republicans are in office. That’s not actually the problem. The problem is that the corpo bloc has candidates in both the Ds and the Rs. and replacing Rs with corpo Ds is not actually making any progress.
There’s multiple problems. Society isn’t so simple as to assume there’s one problem. Corpo dems and Republicans are both problems, both worsening society, but one is an accelerant.
Given that the country was founded on the same principles of EuroFascism, by ultraminority white supremacist christian patriarchs who wanted to create lebensraum on the continent by genociding and enslaving anyone and anything in their way and enlisting every citizen in the project through vast systems of social influence and control… I would say the Republicans are the status quo, not an accelerant.
Any argument that is based on “it was founded on” where the founding situation is 100+ years ago is ridiculous. Times change. Times have changed.
Insult the present not the past and realize that Republicans are an accelerant.
Perhaps you don’t understand what I’m trying to say. I’m not trying to insult the past. I’m saying that the Republicans cannot be an accelerant towards our starting point. The USA has always been an ultraviolent blood-soaked fascist Christian-White-Supremacist mass murdering rapacious child-kidnapping torture paradise for the rich and depraved. It’s never not been that. The Republicans aren’t accelerating anything except the inevitable end of your fantasy that middle class white Americans and those who assimilate to be like them would have comfortable lives that were distant from the material and moral consequences of the empire.
I understand what you’re trying to say. I have the presence of mind to realize the progress that was made since the 60s. I have the presence of mind to also realize it wasn’t founded as a christ state as you so pretend too, even if the rest is certainly true. It has been things other than that, and we worked very hard to make it that way, trump is trying to tear it back down again.
I’m by no means saying the USA is good. But in all politeness, if you’re saying that about the usa I hope you have the presence of mind to realize that china and Europe were founded on the same, and Europe has demonstrably changed for the better. Being bad is a spectrum.
I’m saying that the Republicans cannot be an accelerant towards our starting point.
I can tell you failed math class by this alone. Just as an aside.
Yeah because when I look at this political landscape it’s all of them voting together. Pretty easy to see /s
Jfc the stupidity I see here. Fuck
The Democrats are CONSTANTLY participating in the bipartisan consensus. Biden has been supporting Israeli ultraviolence for 5 decades at this point. Bill and Hillary had house slaves in the AR governor’s mansion. Obama and Biden brought in Tom Homan and made it possible for ICE to deployed into cities and deported more than twice the number of people Trump has. Obama and Hillary fanned the flames of Libyan civil war and then gloated when the 70-year-old leader of the country was sodomized with a bayonet in a public lynching by the mercenaries they funded and armed. Everyone knew that the telecoms broke the law when they were caught recording all internet traffic for the NSA and everyone voted to grant them retroactive immunity. Obama declared Venezuela a national security threat in order to ramp up the torture on its citizens.
Racialized mass incarceration is a bi-partisan consensus.
Racialized means testing for public services is a bi-partisan consensus.
Racialized ecocide is a bi-partisan consensus.
Militarization of the police is a bi-partisan consensus.
Putting immigrants and asylum seekers into solitary confinement is a bi-partisan consensus.
Killing 800k people globally from sanctions alone, predominantly children and elderly, is a bi-partisan consensus.You’re not looking at the political landscape. You’re looking at the PR. You know what the Rs and the Ds are doing together? Golfing. Vacationing. Eating lunch and dinner. Meeting up at alumni events. Networking at private school events for their kids. They’re fucking dancing together, on video, with no fucking sense of shame. They are literally working for the same people every single day of their lives, and those people are the same ultraminority that founded the country and designed it to work this way.
What part of vote for progressives in the goddamn primaries do you fuckin morons fail to grasp?
The part where it would work? The Democrats have already shown that they will do everything to stop it, from ratfucking to procedural malfeasance to standing up sheepdogs to siphon off the vote.
And even if you get a handful of progressives primaried in, you’re still looking at a Senate structurally incapable of representing the voters. 70% of the Senate seats are decided by 30% of the US population. That’s by design and original intent. It’s been that way this whole time. You think voting in a couple more reps with progressive politics is going to make a damn bit of difference?
You’re right progressives totally didn’t just sweep the primaries all over the country… Fuckin people get what we deserve.
Yeah, well said. We need to start forcing them into left and make the Democrats support leftism again
When did the Democrats support leftism? FDR literally created racialized redlining and put anyone who looked vaguely Japanese into concentration camps and stole their property. Obama deported 3M people. You mean the minor political offices of a few mayors around the country that were Sewer Socialists? The party has never been leftist
If you’re going to vote for them regardless of the candidate, there are no consequences for the party in the primaries.
I can see the point when more than 1% of the population votes in primaries
votes third party
No not like that
Seriously though, I think it’s important to confront and admit that voting for the lesser evil does legitimize the evil they do, even if the greater evil does it worse. Because critically digesting both that fact alongside the fact that voting for the lesser evil really does result in better outcomes for society is what will actually get the hesitant on board with going and doing it. If you try to dismiss or handwave that fact, you are dismissing and handwaving the very real concerns of the disillusioned non-participants. Acknowledging the dissonance is far better.
I think it’s also important to point out that while direct action and social organizing are the most effective things things you can do to change society, they are incredibly time consuming while voting usually takes 5 - 30 minutes. And if you’re actually interested in the former, there’s little to no excuse to avoid the latter.
Just whatever you do, don’t shame people for being disillusioned. That makes people really dig in their heels.
Is this outcome today from everyone supporting third parties over and over, or from everyone voting lesser evil over and over?
Its from more people voting on the right than people voting on the left.
And how does voting green alter that dicotomy for the better.
Begging the question
It wastes your vote.
What is the spoiler effect?
The only people in favor of the spoiler effect want Republicans to win.
Nobody is in favor of it because it causes the republicans to win. But it exists whether you acknowledge it or not, third party votes in generals are votes for republicans in most cases.
If we restrict the answer to just electoralism, I’d say it’s because more people are voting greater evil than lesser evil and OP’s image explains why.
voting for the lesser evil really does result in better outcomes for society
Not when the Lesser Evil gets progressively more evil over time to try and pull votes from the Greater Evil camp. They have no incentive to implement any policies you’re in favor of as long as they have your guaranteed support. If the next Democrat promises to be as worthless as the last one, don’t vote for them.
It actually does, even considering that. That’s just how bad the greater evil party is. There’s a lot of space for the lesser evil party in their wake. But yes it does get worse overall either way. That’s why while voting is important, you really should be doing something beyond that as well, if you really care. And if you really care enough to do something beyond that, then merely voting should be trivial for you to manage.
Not in the long run. “Vote blue no matter who” is how we end up in 2036, with the republican on the ballot promising to execute all trans people, and the democrat promising to merely jail them.
Agreed, not in the long run. Voting is like stop the bleed on a traumatic injury. It’ll keep you alive in the short term so you can get more comprehensive care.
So if you know that it’s harmful in the long term, then when will you stop voting for the lesser evil?
When the organizing and fighting that that you do beyond voting finally pays off. Like back to the analogy, if a wound is all dressed and banaged and healing, you no longer have to worry about stop the bleed.
Realisticay though, for the rest of your life. Because these are very large social moves that typically happen over generations. Unless you’re the next Che Guavara or something. In which case hell yeah go you.
Honestly ranked choice voting can help somewhat
Ranked choice voting is way overdue
Well that’s just nonsense. Any criticism of the democratic party, a famously spineless and dismissive organization, is a psyop?
A party that has collaborated with the Republicans the whole way? Going so far as to make ICE one of the best funded militaries in the world?
Oh is it the time of year for liberals to start telling us we can no longer complain?
Complaining is fine, butinaction or negative action, is not at all productive to fixing those complaints, ever. Life is very often about compromise.
And at the scales we are talking about, it barely qualifies as “the lesser of two evils,” because one of the two meaningful choices is so much MORE evil it makes the other evil pretty much saintlike.
Liberals are the ones inactive and taking negative action.
They did nothing about trump, they did nothing about healthcare, they did nothing about climate, they did nothing about wages.
They supported Trump’s immigration policies, they funded ICE to extreme levels, they voted to fund surveillance programs, they continue to support the genocide.
It’s not the lesser of two evils it’s the same evil: capitalism and imperialism.
Almost, and intelligent leftists too. Complain all you want for now, until primaries are over. This is the best time to do so actually.
Once the primary results are in, then yes complaining needs to stop until after the midterms. After the midterm results are in, you can go back to complaining.
The OP clearly doesn’t like people complaining now, but also: “Dissent is evil 33% of the time” sounds very undemocratic.
The couple of months between the primary and general elections is far less than “33% of the time”.
Do you think temporary water restrictions during a severe drought is tyranny?
“Suck it up and fall in line” seems like sound advice in the spaces that closely follow US politics. Except most americans don’t, even now. Most americans want to feel like they’re voting for something, not against this or that figure. Kinda the big lesson of the last decades of politics. Keep up this rhetoric, and it’s gonna depress turnout more than it helps.
Given negative ads work extremely well, not sure that’s true.
And honestly, voting is a civic duty and SOMEONE will win. If you don’t vote you fucking suck, period.
Good thing that’s not what I said.
Tone and perspective can make two statements that look different but essentially say the same thing. “Fall in line” or “stop complaining until after midterms”.
Here’s a third: “Only voice criticisms when its most convenient for the institution you’re criticizing.”
Here’s one which actually says what I did: “Don’t voice criticisms when it’s counter-productive to achieving the goals you want to accomplish”.
Voicing criticisms in the primary season? Excellent choice, helps to push people towards the primary candidates which best align with your goals.
Voicing criticisms after the general election? Not as productive, but still fine; helps inform people what the issues are.
Voicing criticisms after the candidates have been chosen, but before the general election? Absolutely moronic, the last thing you want to do. It accomplishes nothing except increasing the the possibility that the worst candidate wins. Totally garbage, toddler-brain decision.
After the primary, your best outcome is defeating whichever popular candidate most opposes your views. Drawing support away from the biggest threat to the worst outcome is counter-productive.
Voicing criticisms after the candidates have been chosen, but before the general election? Absolutely moronic, the last thing you want to do. It accomplishes nothing except increase the possibility that the worst candidate wins. Totally garbage, toddler-brain decision.
What if the criticism is “you’re running a bad campaign and going to lose the election because of it”? I really don’t think going easy on our representatives is helping them. A healthy party should be capable of digesting criticism at any point in time, not just in pristine conditions.
If that’s your criticism, give their office a call or send them an email. This is not productive criticism to present to voters, it’s literally the exact opposite.
You deserve Trump.
Buddy, we’re the inheritors of the British Empire. We all deserve Trump.
George Carlin put this idea to rest a very long time ago. If you truly believe that Democrats are somehow fundamentally different from Republicans you have lost the plot.
This is something I disagree with Carlin on.
Dems have utterly failed in doing anything other than fighting progressives the Dem party is truly insane in that they are obstructing the very thing that would save us all which is more Dems everywhere. Time for the old guard to step down or turn their attention to combating the GOP. Like it’s utterly fucking stupid. And fuck the fuck out of Israel get the fuck out of the Dem party and American politics.
And yet time and time again, things have gotten demonstrably worse while Republicans have control far more often and severely than when Democrats do.
This is a true statement.
You can disagree if you want but he is right.
Carlin would have legit killed himself if he was still alive for this. He’d have voted for Kamala too, because he wasn’t a fuckin idiot.
The two party system is a lie. Actually there are factions within and without each party. If your analysis stops at D and R, you cannot possibly describe American politics accurately.
In other words, your oversimplification is not useful for comprehension of the situations at hand. But it is also true that corporate lackeys exist everywhere.
It’s not an oversimplification to say both sides are bought and paid for by billionaires and constantly support the wealthy. The working class have been getting fucked by both parties ever since Ronald Reagan left us with “trickle-down” economics.
I’m debating whether I want to engage with you on this. I can’t tell if this is ragebait or if you genuinely arrived at this conclusion.
Your comment appears to conflate two separate ideas, and I think there’s a contradiction in your reasoning. That makes me question whether you actually understood the point being made.
Especially if this is the conclusion you drew from the clip in my previous comment, which, to be fair, I don’t even know if you watched.
Did you actually watch the clip, or are you responding only to my summary?
Both sides are bad, but both sides are not the same. One shows time and time again they are scared of their voters and will change course with enough pressure. The other one only puts pressure on us under the heel of a boot.
Yes, both suck, but we are not getting anywhere with this stupid flip flop between two awful options. You take the less bad one, then work really fucking hard to get better people to replace them. Don’t keep falling for this one weird trick bullshit, where one cultish figure that claims to solve it all will get the nod in an effort to “try something different”.
Third parties are useless, unless we can get ranked choice. Until then, we play the fucking game, not keep flipping the board every few years.
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Third parties are useless
Then i don’t wanna be a part of the farce. Which is my plan, lived here my whole life and working on emigrating, this shit is fucked. Go vote for the dems so trump can go back to raping children in maralago instead of the white house. So the dem appointed president sends a little bit of food aid to palestine along with the weapons they give to the IDF to blow up the food aid palestine gets. (Not just the weapons like the republican appointee does.)
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love 3rd party representation, but the way it works right now in this country, they don’t stand a chance. They exist today as spoilers, I mean, how effective is Jill stein for anything outside of an election?
What I’d like to do, is get dems in place, then pressure the shit out of theme through the primary process, through town halls, through letter writing, and all the ways we can manifest our power. Pressure them to get ranked choice voting, then we can start focusing on third parties. There is NO republican support for this, there are several Democrats who do (Mpls uses it now).
This country doesn’t fucking work right now, we had four years of biden just to end up in the same fucking place or even worse. Yeah that’s great NYC and Minneapolis have ranked choice in their city elections, those are just Democrats by convention only. The Dems in Washington led by Schumer and Jefferies are happy to let trump ruin the country as long as they get to fundraise off purported “opposition.”
The largest non-voting registered group in the 2024 election were those associated with neither party: independents and unaffiliated voters.
About a quarter of eligible voters aren’t even registered on top of that.
“Both sides are bad” statements aren’t necessarily driving partisans to not vote. They are, or can be however, an important message for those two big parties running the elections to hear from the people.
It’s also, possibly one of the few talking points that forces acknowledgement that those independent, unaffiliated, and unregistered voters exist and whose interests might matter towards the outcome of policy and/or elections.
But yes, the interests that align with at least the GOP are furthered when votes are suppressed, that has been demonstrably true for decades.
What if people are unaffiliated or unregistered because they believe both sides are bad?
Then the posts aren’t encouraging them to change any behavior. This premise only works if you have partisan voters deciding not to vote because of the Both-Sidesism.
If it is the default case that a party already does not have the
anyvotes of the largest mass of voters, then the parties should focus on gaining their support.But also: more libertarians protested the GOP over Both-Sidesism than leftists, so technically it still had a net benefit effect for Harris. Which further demonstrates how flawed the whole premise is.
I don’t really follow.
We’re not talking about well informed Lemmy users weighing the policies of candidates and deciding to abstain from voting because Gaza.
We’re talking about apathetic low information voters looking for an excuse not to get off the couch on polling day.
“Both sides” is the classic strategy to keep these voters on the couch.
We’re not talking about well informed Lemmy users weighing the policies of candidates and deciding to abstain from voting because Gaza.
We’re talking about apathetic low information voters looking for an excuse not to get off the couch on polling day.
I guess, though a meme on Lemmy talking about social media posts would have me leaning to the former than the latter. I would wager, in fact, this meme is very strongly directed at Lemmy users who weigh policy.
Wait are you legitimately claiming that both sides rhetoric doesn’t discourage voter turn out? Do you have literally any evidence to support that claim?
I don’t know about ‘discourage’ since I was referring to protest 3rd party votes. But too many people didn’t even know Biden dropped out to suggest the rhetoric was causing meaningful influence.
Now, I do know that RFK and Chase Oliver together took more votes (~0.9%) than the Greens and PSL combined (~0.7%). So as far as protest votes over Both-Sideism likely went it probably didn’t hurt Harris, and may have actually been a net gain for Harris.
The entire combined third party vote would have had to pretty much 100% gone for Harris for the Democratic Party to have won the popular vote (which is still irrelevant because of the electoral college.)
It’s also, possibly one of the few talking points that forces acknowledgement that those independent, unaffiliated, and unregistered voters exist and whose interests might matter towards the outcome of policy and/or elections.
On its own, it doesn’t quite force the second half of that acknowledgement: The missing part is the “or else”.
So far, the most charitable interpretation, if we disregard corruption for a moment, is that the party elite doesn’t really see those interests because they have been too far removed from these voters for too long, if they’ve ever known it at all. Humble beginnings don’t mean shit if you haven’t lived humbly for the last few decades any more. So even in the best case, these people will struggle to actually comprehend. They also know that voters are faced with the choice between them and Republicans and can count on a chunk of people to vote just to avert the worst result. And they themselves aren’t affected that badly by a potential defeat.
This disconnect is clearly visible in the shocked reactions to the “insurgency” of progressive politicians winning primaries: They don’t know or don’t want to admit what appeal those upstarts have that they don’t, but at least they now realise that these other groups exist and matter.
Hence, “both sides bad” on its own is a criticism without a solution. It incites fatalism without rallying support for an alternative. Voting in primaries can have an effect, and if people genuinely don’t want to vote D just to stop R in the general election, they should vote for some third party. Agreeing on a progressive candidate would help, but even without agreement, it would signal support for breaking out from that game of two.
(This also matters beyond the pure democratic mechanism: signalling that support can help other unhappy people to see that they’re not alone and encourage them to join whatever form of resistance may emerge in their area. Even if votes might not change anything directly, they’re a communication tool.)
A Roman satirist once remarked on the fact that the people were all too excited to celebrate a failed coup, but would have been just as excited to hail the new emperor. To paraphrase, they have given up oversight, and those whose votes once decided over offices and command of armies now only hope for “bread and circuses” (stable grain supply and public entertainment, basically). The full meaning is more complex, but the part that’s relevant to me here is his contempt for the non-voters whose complacency led to a situation where they can no longer hope for more than bare necessities and a bit of distraction.
In that sense: Vote. Don’t cede ground to those who want you to not vote. A voice that doesn’t speak isn’t heard. Even a “wasted” vote is better than silence.
Hard truth. Nobody gives a fuck about those voters. If they are mad and decide not to vote for whatever reason a decision will still be made without their input.
Witholding your vote will not stop the process and will actively Help the worst elements of each party.
Nevermind that we hold parties accountable and make them actually represent the people. If centrist/corporatist Democrats wanted to win, they should be listening to the people, and they refuse to do that. They are absolutely complicit in what’s been happening over this past decade, even long before that.
