Hey, fellow Russian agents of lemmy, does anybody wanna form a union?
These working conditions are shit. We have to deal with insufferable liberals repeating the same pro-genocide arguments over and over. Yeah yeah, if we try to strike they could send us all to the front, but tell me honestly - can you really say you fear death after interacting with “vote blue no matter who” people all day?
Honestly, this whole thing seems like a waste of time. How are we supposed to convince Americans to oppose genocide, especially when the victims aren’t even white? Like, come on, they didn’t have a problem when their government was slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq and Afghanistan, they’re not gonna suddenly turn into moral actors just because we say the right set of words. When in history have these people ever cared how many foreigners die because of their government’s actions?
In conclusion we deserve a raise if we’re going to keep dealing with these people and if our bosses decide to shut the whole thing down in response, that’s probably for the best because frankly this whole “convince Americans to oppose genocide” thing seems like a complete waste of time.
I’m an American who opposes genocide. What is the best use of my vote in November to reduce genocide in the world?
The best use of your vote in terms of stopping genocide would be to vote for someone who doesn’t support genocide.
I’m looking at this imaginary November ballot and the choices are:
- status quo
- way MORE genocide, and
- “other” where I can write a note that nobody will read.
I can advocate, vote for better people in primaries, and stuff like that, but I cannot change the choices on the ballot.
Good thing option 3 exists so you have an option to oppose genocide without changing what’s on the ballot.
Is it morally correct to effectively give option 2 (MORE genocide) half a vote just so that I can voice my objections to the status quo? I’m not thrilled with the idea of asking other people to die so that I can avoid voting for an imperfect candidate.
No. I’m confused, what country do you live in that has half-votes? I’ve never heard of that.
You should give 100% of your vote (votes?) to the non-genocide option. Do not give any percentage of your vote to either pro-genocide option. This isn’t that complicated.
Yeah it just sounds so simple. Almost misleadingly so!
And I don’t believe you need the effective half vote thing explained to you.
I plan to use my vote to actually reduce and/or prevent genocide and other bad things as much as I can. Like real effects in the real world. If I vote for a third party candidate that stands on firmer moral ground (and who will never have to actually make those decisions), and that choice helps in any small way to get Trump elected, then there are many more people who will suffer and die. It is for those people that I can step outside the realm of idealism and vote for the lesser evil. Because like I saw in another comment, choosing the lesser evil does mean less evil in the world.
I don’t have to be happy about it or excited to do it. But when looking at the practical cause and effect of the voting choices, I only see one ethical option for myself.
Hey, just a heads up, those write ins and third party votes get counted and when parties are planning their platforms they look at how many third party votes they could pick up.
What some folks hear: “I’M NOT VOTING FOR EITHER BECAUSE BIDEN AND TRUMP ARE BOTH THE DEVIL”
What is being said: “Why the choices geriatric dickhead who wants to let Israel commit genocide and OTHER geriatric dickhead who wants to let Israel commit genocide? I’ll still vote for my geriatric dickhead but I’m really not happy about it.”
Folks can’t force me to be happy about being required to vote for the lesser evil because the two party system is horseshit, and they should really stop trying. If they want me to be an enthusiastic voter maybe they should put forth candidates who don’t fill any part of “geriatric dickhead who wants to let Israel commit genocide”. There has to be one or two right?
If Gaza is the only political issue you can be bothered to care about then yeah. Sucks to be you. Maybe 2028?
You can always vote party for socialism and liberation instead. Their platform includes Palestinian statehood and an end to weapons shipments to israel.
When the votes get tallied, each one that’s cast for a party with anti-genocide platforms serves as incontrovertible proof to the two major parties that there is real electoral support they could gain by dropping genocide from their own platforms.
And in doing so you throw away your vote, potentially allowing Trump to win just like in 2016, and then we will quickly find that
- the LGBTQ is thrown even harder under the bus, resulting in deaths
- abortion becomes banned nationwide, either de facto banned or explicitly, also resulting in deaths
- project 2025 gets going, further eroding what little democracy we have left
- even more conservative justices get sworn into the SCOTUS, ensuring a conservative super majority for decades to come
Under no circumstances can we allow these things.
You’re never gonna convince me personally to vote for Biden. That ship sailed years ago.
For anyone reading though, can you explain how it’s more important to elect the people who have failed over and over again to accomplish the four tasks you laid out than it is to record a vote that establishes what policy platforms one of the two major parties could adopt if they actually wanted one’s vote?
You’re never gonna convince me personally to vote for Biden. That ship sailed years ago.
I know, single issue voters are too closed minded. You’re not the one worth trying to convince.
can you explain how it’s more important to elect the people who have failed over and over again
Federal elections can generally only maintain the status quo due to the current election system we have. Actual change requires progressive candidates at the local level.
Since you brought it up, I’m not a single issue voter. Biden has had his hands in or been treated as the architect of nearly all the problems America faces. Voting for Biden in my view is like asking the person who caused all the problems and is materially invested in their continued presence to fix them.
I reject progressivism because its ambiguity allows for any kind of political idea to brand itself progressive (the Nazi party called itself progressive!), but if you value a change to the status quo wouldn’t it make sense to cast a ballot with as many votes for candidates endorsed by or representing parties whose policy platforms actually represent the change you’d like to see rather than the (your words here) status quo democrats?
Wouldn’t that include voting for someone other than Biden in addition to all the other positions up for election in which you reject the status quo?
as the architect of nearly all the problems America faces.
There is no one person responsible for all of this.
I reject progressivism because its ambiguity allows for any kind of political idea to brand itself progressive (the Nazi party called itself progressive!)
You’re the one lumping nazis in with progressives. Any damage done to the name progressive is on your hands.
but if you value a change to the status quo wouldn’t it make sense to cast a ballot with as many votes for candidates endorsed by or representing parties whose policy platforms actually represent the change you’d like to see rather than the (your words here) status quo democrats?
In fantasy land sure, but this is a FPTP system.
I gotta ask that if you prefer to use inline quotes as a format for your replies that you at the very least quote full sentences. I try to write in a clear and unambiguous way, but when my words are chopped up it’s easy to misconstrue the things I’m saying.
No one person can be blamed for the sorry state of the nation, but if you’re interested in an example of legislation which has done significant harm to Americans and funneled billions into the carceral state that Biden himself takes credit for and that third parties have reenforced, the ‘94 crime bill is one.
As I said before, I reject progressivism because of its ambiguity. What is considered progress now (progress for whom, measured how) may very well be abhorrent in the future. The history of progressivism as a political tendency bears this out. It’s used more often as a label than a cohesive platform and rare indeed are the progressive edifices which clearly explain what they’re progressing towards and how they’re judging their steps along that road.
For this reason what I said was not meant as a soul rending insult to people who call themselves progressive, but to offer an explanation why in my next sentence I didn’t specifically reference progressive candidates and used instead policy platforms to describe the candidates.
Now didn’t you just say that federal elections can only maintain the status quo and that change has to happen at a local election level? It seems like I just described the logical steps a person with your views would take when it comes to elections. Why are those ideas perfectly normal when you write them down but suddenly fantastical when I say them?
Not sure why the “uwu” was necessary, but okay.
The situation is actually quite simple.
If you want Palestine to survive, your best bet is to vote Biden.
Literally every other option will only lower their chances. You can’t have everything you want, welcome to life.
“Genocide Joe” doesn’t matter when the other option is Turbo Genocide Donny.
So if there is anyone who tries to convince you to not vote Biden, they either want Palestine to die, or want to cause chaos in your country. Which is most likely a Russian bot.
Hi I’m your local Russian bot, if genocide is gonna occur either way and biden hasn’t done anything about it past some political posturing then you might as well punish biden with the possibility of setting a precedence moving forward that supporting genocide won’t get you re elected.
Doesn’t matter if you make this the last election we ever have now does it
They actually don’t give a shit about Palestine because they’re Right-wingers posing as leftists.
This conspiracy theory is even less plausible than the, “Everyone who disagrees with me is a secret agent” one.
I’ve seen right-wingers pretending to be leftists before and if you can’t get them to drop the act and start screaming racial slurs within 5 minutes, that’s on you.
this is the wildest lie I have ever seen.
You’re voting Genocide Joe. Gotcha. You support genocide. Gotcha. Just admit you want genocide already!
As a real American of color red blood born into the Ohio oblast of the American Union, I agree!
I’m proud to express democracy by voting for Jill Stein, no matter how much liberals don’t want to accept that.
When we are all headed to gas chambers because Trump won, I hope leftist “no voters” and “3rd party voters” can take solace in the fact that they personally didn’t dirty their morals by voting for Biden. Because the last hours of our lives, I will be brutally taking the piss out of you all and loving every moment of it.
I know I have no way of convincing anyone of this, but I am not a Russian bot (living in the UK and not being able to vote in the US election).
But these are exactly the points of view I have been expressing over here about the Tory and Labour parties. Maybe not so much the “not voting at all” one but the other three? Yeah – that sounds a lot like me right now.
(I think you should vote for someone you believe in, rather than voting for someone who is not someone else, if that makes sense)
But definitely not a Russian bot :)
It’s easier for them to call you/anyone a bot than admit any of the viable options have many many issues
Well as long as you have your pride as the world burns down around you :)
If you vote for the green party then its less likely to burn down around you :)
It’s already burning, and you’re actively participating in one, if you haven’t noticed. But hey, my teams going to keep it under controI, the people dying are not even white, so it’s cool.
It’s optimal for US to come out as fascist and remove all doubts, so that rest of the world can move away from appeasing a military complex disguised as a country. The civilized world will deal with it.
People actually believe that country that actively supports current and harbors past war criminals is the one that’s keeping the world from burning. No, you’re just like Russia and China with good PR.
But you can’t make any more arguments without moving to hypothetical bullshit, deflection, personal attacks and whataboutism from brainwashing, so I won’t fault you.
-Signed, Pick your flavor of bots (Russian/Chinese/NK/Iran/Cuba/Aliens) you like and feel better about yourself
This isn’t about politics in general. It’s about the US election.
Check out @archcomrade on @midwest.social
He doesn’t even deny being a Russian troll. He never even asserts being American. Yet literally all the profile posts about is “don’t vote biden”, a solid 8 hours a day. Weirdly during the Russian day and never when Americans would be most active.
I got banned from political memes for calling him out on it
Banned?
midwest dot social/u/archcomrade
Must’ve been a typo, I’m still around. AMA.
Can we have Evan Gershkovich back?
Oh hey yeah there you are, good to see the AMA - hard to vet claims online so glad to see people open to at least sharing their perspectives :) (only searched for your name, haven’t looked at anything so don’t have any questions myself)
Try @[email protected] - I think that’s the user they are talking about.
Thanks for the tag.
Fuck off, Putin’s dick sleeve.
Your submission in “SSDE” was removed for: Attacking other users is against the rules here, too…
Yes, definitely a Russian bot, and not someone who works from home and is active during normal waking hours in Minnesota.
I don’t advocate anyone getting banned but i think it’s a bit naive to accuse someone who you disagree with as being a foreign agent.
Go ahead and look through my comments, I’ll happily own up to any comment where I said ‘don’t vote for biden’. I think liberals who obsess over the lesser evil binary 6 months out from an election instead of pushing their candidate to be less shit are themselves just looking for an excuse not to critique their own willingness to accept genocidal complicity.
Shout out to unruffled for tagging me. Glad to know I’m at least memorable.
For what it’s worth, I ended up getting the boot for calling someone a ‘l!b’, though if I’m being honest I expected it sooner for cooking a little too hard
work from home
Yeah because Russian trolls just have to work at some lan-party, right? So… where do you live?
Weird how you keep skipping over that and never actually denying being Russian, isn’t it? Weird how you do literally nothing but post “don’t vote biden”, isn’t it?
Yeah, your entire post history is “don’t vote Biden”. Please don’t pretend you don’t understand that’s straight up Trump and Putler support. Literally, tell me you understand or disagree with that. You never start posting while it’s day in America. If you actually worked a job with actual hours, in the US, you’d post about 8-10 hours later. You don’t. Sorry, Putler, but your troops are shit. In all meaningful ways. Online and offline.
The rhetoric you employ is just ridiculously childish. I’ve read a bit of philosophy in my time and yours is barely up to snuff by 19th century propaganda standards.
Jesus bud, take a sec to breathe.
So… where do you live?
Minnesota is as specific as i’m willing to be with you, sorry if that’s disappointing. But even if I picked a town like ‘Osseo’ arbitrarily, how’d that satisfy this incessant nagging suspicion of yours more than ‘Minnesota’? That’s why I told you it was ‘unfalsifiable’. So go nuts, pick a standard you’d be willing to accept as satisfactory proof that i’m American. Before you ask me to provide it, though, ask yourself if you’d be willing to provide the same personal details to strangers on the internet - i’m willing to bet there is no proof I could provide you that most people would be willing to offer themselves.
Weird how you do literally nothing but post “don’t vote biden”, isn’t it?
Like I said, feel free to find any example of me saying that. The most i’ve said is that I understand not wanting to vote for him over his defense of Israel. Admittedly I got sent by the incessant ‘i’m still voting for him’ apologia i kept seeing in that community, so that’s basically all I did on here for a few days. You should know that your continued reaction over it is scratching something of an itch.
It’s more likely you just think someone with that negative a view of Biden cannot possibly be real, and if that’s what you need to believe in order to ground yourself back to reality i’m happy to play pretend for you.
The trouble is you don’t realise how bad you are at this.
The point isn’t whether you can or can’t prove you’re American. The point is that you purposefully avoided it until I made you lie about it.
Literally every single one of your posts is for creating division and undermining Biden as “a genocidal fascist who’s not getting my vote”
https://midwest.social/post/12533264
All one needs to do is to go to your profile and look at it.
So, are you still trying to help elect a fascist? Or you understand that not voting for Biden is direct support for Trump, and if so, then you d’you pretend like Trump isn’t a clown who’s been bought by Putler and is his only chance?
Enjoy. :)
Hope you have a good one, truly.
Yes, avoid and deny.
You were so willing to discuss these things the other day, what happened?
I mean, it’s not like you literally ever talk about anything else so…
You asked me to link a post or comment by you. I did. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
TBH, I just noticed the typo in your name. If I’d thought for more than 5 seconds about it, I’d have kept it to myself instead of correcting it though. Apologies.
No worries.
The UK is having a general election in a little over a month, and we have a similar electoral system and a similarly miserable political landscape. It’s fairly applicable here too.
The UK’s electoral system doesn’t seem at all similar to the US’s, imo
Both are first past the post, which is creates a two-party system. There are a lot of other differences, yes, but for the purposes of the post it’s close enough where it counts
Well the part about “not voting will support the least democratic party” would work, if there is any significant support for those parties (which there is), but the choices are far from being as clear as in the US, especially because they’ve had several presidents who lost the popular vote but still got elected. Meaning that the smaller tje discrepancy, the easier it is for the corrupt electoral college to go against the popular vote.
Refraining from voting can be used to reform a system, but if people don’t honestly see that voting Biden is the only reasonable action to take against Trump, then we’re frighteningly close to pretty literally repeating history. Hell, even if Trump loses and even if he goes to prison, the US pretty much on track to repeat the exact history of Germany 100 years ago.
Did you reply to the comment that you intended to here? I’m not sure I understand why you’ve said what you said. If that’s just me being thick then please clarify for me, I’m lost
The point is that not-voting can be a tool for reform, and can be a reasonable choice. CAN be. But it definitely is NOT in the US presidential election, where not voting is pretty much direct support for Trump, one of the most psychotic world leaders in the last decades.
Without significant cooperation and a very specific situation though, refraining from voting should not be practiced, and currently a vast majority of the people advocating for it are Russian trolls trying to help Putler’s bitch Trump win the election.
Right, but I agree with you about that. I’m just saying the meme also applies well to the upcoming UK election.
Insofar that apathy is the greatest tool of oppressor, yes, I would have to agree.
I think you should vote for someone you believe in, rather than voting for someone who is not someone else
This would be the ideal situation, but for so long as we have first-past-the-post it’s a fundamentally ineffective way to vote. Thanks to Duverger’s law, unless one of the two big parties just so happens to coincide with your views then the best you can do is to vote against whichever of the big two you dislike most. “Big two” here depends on your constituency - it may not be Labour and the Conservatives locally, but it is true that virtually every constituency has at most two realistic options. Labour may not be very good, but if they’re in power it’s probably at minimum going to make this a better place for asylum seekers and trans people (or whoever the Tories would go after next), and Labour’s voting record on the environment really is far better than the Conservatives’ too.
Your opinion is that it’s the best you can do. I disagree, because that ignores the medium run.
It might be a good idea, but it’s not definitely “the best” because reality is more complicated. Politics doesn’t happen exactly once on one day.
I agree, but I unfortunately think that’s actually the perspective of anyone who chooses not to vote. Politics doesn’t happen once on one day. But if you haven’t done anything in 4 years the most impactful you’ll be is voting for the lesser of two evils once on election day.
It’s the best you can with with your vote on voting day. It doesn’t stop you doing anything else on any other day.
well that’s because labor did become much more similar to the tories with that cunt blair when thatcher was in office, didn’t it? the difference isn’t as small in the us, however disappointing it might be.
democrats are center right but not straight up fascist as the republican party is today.
at the very least they’re trailing behind the population when it comes to social justice. the republicans are completely against anyone except straight cis white males having any rights.
they talk about trans people a lot but they already started taking women’s rights away. who’s safe? gays? black people? leftists? you can say both parties are disappointing but it’s a joke to say they are “the same.”
also AOC talking about the election last time had a good argument for Biden despite her differences: forget who you support. but who do you think will be more responsive to arguments and protests? if it’s Biden, you might or might not pressure him to do some things. if it’s the other guy, you know he will not listen.
the exception seems to be genocide unfortunately, but it won’t be better under the guy who triggered and facilitated all of this while he was in the office in the first place.
and I’m sorry but you can’t expect the democrats to come to their senses on their own. if you think not voting for them will suddenly make them think they should appeal more to the left, historically you’ve been wrong; the only lesson they learn is that they should appeal more to the right because the right is winning despite being a minority. that’s how their deteriorating minds work.
I get paid by the US government to shitpost
I don’t see what’s wrong with not voting for neither political parties or being completely disinterested in politics that’s completely reasonable. You have a choice in these elections you can vote for a turd sandwich that stinks to high heavens (like bill Clinton) or a giant duche (like George w bush) sometimes doing nothing and not dwelling on something as mediocre as politics is the best course of action. It’s much much healthier trust me. Get some real hobbies. I’m going try my hand at CB radio.
this honestly made me cakle. voting for the party that doesnt want to open up federal lands to more oil exploration takes an hour once, maybe a couple hours at worst.
you don’t have to choose either voting or your cb radio hobby
Hunter bidens laptop
And tell me, which capitalist party is that? Neither one of the two major ones, that’s for sure.
The Democrats, tovarich.
Who says you have to agonize over the decision? Just pick some opinions at random and go for it. I’m not kidding.
Having standards is a bad thing, just vote for your team even if you’d hate what they do.
Republicans did that decades ago, and now have trump.
The only thing stupider than them doing it, is all the “moderates” saying it’s easier to convince millions of people to follow them off the cliff than convince the DNC to start running candidates that Dem voters want to vote for…
The fact that trump has won 50% of his elections and looks to be 2/3 in a few months should make everyone reconsider the quality of candidates we’re running against him.
Not getting mad at the people honest about the situation while there’s still time to do literally anything to prevent trump.
The fact that trump has won 50% of his elections and looks to be 2/3 in a few months should make everyone reconsider the quality of candidates we’re running against him.
After the Dems last lost an election, you got Biden as your next candidate. Why are you expecting this approach to suddenly produce a candidate you would like?
I don’t, that’s my point.
“Blue no matter who” always ends up with candidates more conservative than we want.
So even like in 2020 where we all and together and get a Dem president, House, and Senate, nothing gets done.
Because too many Dem incumbents just don’t agree with the party platform.
The only time the party pushes is when progressives try to have standards.
The only result is the party keeps getting more and more conservative. It’s not a valid long term strategy
So come this November what are you suggesting? I’m so sick of these naive pie-in-the-sky dreaming, or just complain without any solution posts. Come out and say it plainly. Are you saying not to vote for Biden come November?
You’re literally one of the guys in the meme above.
Why are you so eager to get people to telegraph their vote when the act of threatening to withhold a vote (even if they plan on voting for biden in November) gives infinitely more leverage than pledging fealty months ahead of schedule so the campaign strategists solidify their stances on everything to keep voters around? Come on, if your goal is to vote strategically, telegraph strategically too so you are voting for a better biden than exists today.
Why are you so eager to get people to telegraph their vote
Because we want to determine if you are a Russian bot or just badly informed.
I’m not saying to telegraph your vote, but I am tired of these not-so-subtle attempts at either “bOtH SiDeS” arguments or somehow pushing for people to not vote (or throw away their vote on a third party).
This disinformation push has truly infested Lemmy across the board and I view it as extremely dangerous.
Realistically it’s too late in the election cycle to impact change on either incumbent nominee. All k see is efforts to disenfranchise people into somehow not voting for Biden.
There are five more months until the election. That is only not enough time if you are unwilling to even make an attempt to change your candidates position. Thats the crux of this. Moderates keep shouting like the election is happening tomorrow when its months away. You know whats happening tomorrow? More Palestinian deaths while you wring your hands about how its impossible to get Biden to do anything decent. I can’t imagine why leftists are so disappointed in moderates all the time.
I think you’ve misunderstood me. Last time the Democrats lost an election, you got Joe Biden as the next candidate. Why would making the Dems lose this election produce a more progressive candidate?
I just assumed you didn’t think a single voter could influence an election…
For my vote to matter for president, we need a charismatic progressive, it’s the only thing that can flip my state from red.
Even if Biden pull it out and wins, there is literally zero chance Biden wins my state.
That’s just reality.
You don’t flip red states by being diet republican. Everyone that wants that is already voting R, and they’ll never vote D.
You’re not addressing his question at all.
That is bot like behaviour.
Because, they’re saying, WINNING sure didn’t do progressives any favors.
FWIW, we ran Hillary Clinton as a moderate candidate and lost.
I’m gonna say (as someone that was sucked into the psychological torture machine that was the conservative media loop in 2016) that Hillary didn’t lose for being a moderate. Trump was by far at his strongest in 2016; his insanity was a basically unknown factor and he did a legitimately great job seeming to flip the bird at ‘the system’, and the conservative propaganda machine had a LOT of points to attack Hillary with that had nothing to do with her moderate politics. Trump promised the world and had all the charisma to sell the world too, and Hillary… I honestly can’t remember anything about her platform at all.
In my personal opinion, Hillary could absolutely have won that election if the Democrats hadn’t been complacent about it. Maybe not a landslide victory, but I think it would have been a very solid win.
Hillary had a weird double-whammy of underestimating the appeal of Trump for many that led to losing control of the monster she helped make, along with having a long list of insults ready for anyone who didn’t want her to be the Democratic candidate that didn’t endear her to the voters who could have made her presidency for her. Whether it was calling them deplorables, broadly dismissing any criticism of her within the party as rooted in misogyny, or accusing them of being unrealistic idealists with pie in the sky goals and unelectable candidates, she really had a knack for taking these people and firmly putting them in the camp of “Screw her, I’m not voting for someone who treats me like that.” rather than engaging in a serious attempt to understand these voters and address their concerns.
Democrats today have certainly learned that Trump could be a serious threat, not to be dismissed out of hand. To his credit, Biden has notably not fallen into the sort of self-destructive antagonism of the electorate that is not already firmly committed. He might pay only lip service to their concerns, but I’m not aware of him blanket writing off, say, pro-Palestinian protestors en masse as antisemites that were never going to vote for him and are beyond redeem, even if he does frequently trot out manufactured claims of widespread antisemitism.
People online trying to drum up support for him don’t seem to have gotten the message that this didn’t work out so well for Hillary, and are going at it, calling people who haven’t vocally committed to Biden anything from idiots to Russian shills to Republican trolls, and claiming they hate minorities and LGBTQ+ people or whatever else occurs to them to rile up people. I don’t see that working out to their advantage, and predict it will alienate people who might have potentially been won over.
If neither winning nor losing does progressives any favours, then there’s no issue with trying to make the least bad realistic option win
Only if you never think more than an election ahead.
If you don’t, and always blindly vote D just because it’s not R…
How is that different than what lead the Republican party to trump?
Why do you think it’ll be different this time?
Only if you never think more than an election ahead.
So how many elections are you expecting that the Dems must lose in order to start fielding candidates you like, or for another party that does so to take their place? It doesn’t matter how many they lose if it never moves the needle your way, so you’ll have to be quite persuasive that this will achieve something that’s worth capitulating to the American right for a decade or longer.
How is that different than what lead the Republican party to trump?
Because of the actual outcomes during the four years between each election and the fact that you can protest and write and whatever else you want for improvement during that time. Your vote does have to be your entire political engagement.
Does this suck? Yes. Does the Republicans winning do literally anything to fix any of it? No. For that you need the Overton window to shift so far that the Republican party dies and the new two-party system has the Dems on the right, or you need a new electoral system. Neither of these is accomplished by the Dems losing.
Why do you think it’ll be different this time?
I don’t think it’ll be different this time because the candidates have already been picked. We already both know what the options are. Unfortunately, “no different” is a lot better than the other option. That’s why I’m advocating voting for damage control on the day. Vote against the worst option, because that’s how FPTP works.
So you’re saying both sides are the same? Just wanted to clarify.
Hillary was a moderate?
In 2016 the pre election polls showed a rock paper scissors ordering.
-
Trump beats Hillary
-
Hillary beats Bernie
-
Bernie beats Trump
The last occurred because Bernie was a different enough candidate to attract a certain subset of Republicans.
-
FWIW, we ran Hillary Clinton as a moderate candidate and lost.
You call that Kissinger/Thatcher mashup monstrosity “moderate?”
You are describing a ratcheting system.
There seems to be no voter action that can produce a more progressive candidate.
There seems to be no voter action that can produce a more progressive candidate.
It’s almost like they don’t want you to have one.
You are not limited to just your vote on the day of presidential elections in terms of your political engagement
Sure there is, but too many progressive voters just seem to be unwilling to act to get them. It takes long term planning.
Let’s look at Barack Obama, a man whose political career to President was considered to be extremely fast, and who was considered to be very inexperienced and a shockingly fast rise.
He was elected President of the Harvard Law Review in 1990, 18 years before he would become President of the USA. In 1992 he directed a voter registration project/drive in Chicago that was successful enough to be big news. In 1996 he was elected to the Illinois State Senate, and in 2000 he lost the primary for a US Representative position.
But here’s a very important part: in 2003 he became chairman of a state committee when Democrats regained a majority. This allowed him to have some legislative successes, specifically in the field of racial profiling. Hmm, that ain’t gonna be important in Illinois ever again, is it?
With that legislative success, he was able to win the primary for Senate, but even then, this essentially required the incumbent in that slot to be gone. Then he was a Senator for merely four years before becoming President. And also notably for those who act like the DNC simply anoints candidates, he beat Hillary in the primary, despite her being favored by most of the entrenched elite of the party.
And the important thing to remember is this was a startlingly fast political career, considered by everyone to be a meteoric rise, an outlier. He was in politics for only 12 years before becoming President, though he did politics adjacent things even earlier. A more expected career would probably go for 20 to 30 years before becoming President.
So you want voter action for more progressive candidates? It starts a quarter century ago, in state-level offices like the Illinois Senate. It starts by getting those candidates elected over goddamn decades.
Politics is like farming, you can’t show up in harvest season, look around, and go ‘where are all the crops?’ and then be pissy that there’s gonna be a famine this winter. You gotta show up in the planting season, plant those crops, take care of them, keep them healthy and watered and fertilized as they grow, so you can finally get your food when harvest time comes.
So you want to complain about the lack of candidates, well here’s my question: where the fuck were you all in planting season a quarter of a century ago? Cause these crops take a goddamn while to grow.
Obama is a neoliberal. I don’t want more elected politicians with his views
If I did want Obama 2.0 then I’d vote for Buttigieg. And I hate Buttigieg
Way to miss the point.
The point is his career took twelve years and it was considered a meteoric rise, incredibly fast. You want better candidates, start working for it and help them make their way through the system.
Who’s your representative in your state house? Who was their primary opponent? Did you vote in that primary to try and get a more progressive candidate? Have you worked to get your local community to support more progressive candidates in small offices, so they can eventually become high level candidates?
There’s a chance you can answer those questions and have done what you can, but the vast, vast majority of progressives seem to just complain that no perfect candidate has been delivered to them despite no effort on their part.
Republicans did that decades ago, and now have trump.
I might argue that Republicans didn’t do that decades ago, and that’s how they got two Bushes, a McCain, and a Romney. It wasn’t until they abandoned the “electable” moderate Republican and embraced their ideological id that they got to their political messiah.
The fact that trump has won 50% of his elections and looks to be 2/3 in a few months should make everyone reconsider the quality of candidates we’re running against him.
I gotta say, I noticed the folks running in the GOP field and they all sucked hard. Trump was the raw meat candidate, but he wasn’t even the most fascist asshole on the ballot. DeSantis was the guy who got off waterboarding people at Gitmo for a living. Hailey couldn’t name a country she didn’t want to bomb. Hutchinson’s fundie base would have him rounding up the cast of RuPaul’s Drag Race and marching them to the gas chambers. Only Ramaswamy is the kind of sociopath business conservative more fixated on looting the country than mutilating its residents.
Trump’s given them license to go full mask-off, but he’s not uniquely bad. He’s emblematic of a party that’s also frothed with bigotry, and just found a PC way of displaying it right up until a black man got into the White House.
Not getting mad at the people honest about the situation while there’s still time to do literally anything to prevent trump.
Biden won 2020 by 40,000 votes across three major swing states. He’s losing all three - PA, GA, and AZ - by two to three times that under current polling. The theory that we can just Tinkerbell him back into a second term is simple cope. Biden’s goose was cooked as soon as he fumbled the bag in his first 100 days.
Blaming 20-something tech savvy voters on Lemmy for hating the man over his genocidal support of Israel won’t shift any of the critical swing-state 40-something blue collar voters angry at him over sun-setting all the COVID era public spending measures.
It’s the economy, stupid
…and for most Americans the economy isn’t that great. Sure we ducked the recession that should have come, but while “line goes up” is great for Wall Street and the economy as a whole, the delayed impact means that improvement does little for the suburban and rural working class voters whose only exposure to the stock market is their 401(k). That’s decades away from paying anything out, while right now they’re feeling the pinch of stagnant wages and corporate driven inflation
The fact that trump has won 50% of his elections
That would mean Biden has won 100% of his elections.
General presidential?
Yes…
That’s what numbers mean.
If you include primaries tho, his first try at president was 1988, 36 years ago. And he never stopped trying, just never was a good enough candidate till the only standard became “not trump”.
I’m not sure how it works in the US but join the democratic party and vote for the presidential candidate you want to see. If it doesn’t work out and you don’t like the democratic candidate but said candidate is still better than the Republican, still vote Democrat.
I’m not sure how it works in the US
Yeah. If you think primaries matter, you don’t know how it works here…
But one DNC lawyer’s argument actually tries to justify the party’s right to be biased on behalf of one primary candidate over another, according to an article from The Young Turks. In other words, they could have chosen their nominee over cigars in a backroom.
Their legal defense for interfering with the 2016 primary was literally:
Who cares? A primary isn’t a real election and doesn’t matter, we don’t have to listen to results.
Maybe the primaries system is fucked up, but protest votes in the presidential elections won’t change the system for the better either. Neither party wants to introduce a democratic, proportional voting system because both parties would lose power. I don’t know how to fix it, i just know that getting Trump elected won’t.
Maybe
Maybe?
It is fucked.
We have no say in who either of the two general candidates are, and they take billions from the same people/industries.
That’s not an exaggeration, 2020 Biden spent a billion, and 2024 they’re predicting two billion.
We have an illusion of choice and the same people win no matter which party wins the oval office.
I don’t know how to fix it, i just know that getting Trump elected won’t.
Neither will voting Biden, it doesn’t solve the problem, just kicks the can down the road and 4 years from now it’ll be the same thing. Either with trump again or someone even worse.
Better kick the can down the road than slip and fall and fucking die.
than slip and fall and fucking die.
You forgot “risk” and leaving out that in this analogy “kicking the can” is surviving a little.longer by extending suffering.
But it’s depressing how many people want to spend time convincing people to vote for an unrepent genocide supporter than trying to get the US president and upcoming candidate to stop supporting a genocide…
This is like when people claimed to support civil rights and MLK. But spent all their time complaining about protests and saying if we all just shut up and accepted it life would be easier for you.
I’m glad Biden won’t fundamentally change your life, and that your life is currently good enough for that to be acceptable.
But you’re in the minority these days.
So keep yelling at people who will suffer under either party to vote for someone that hates them and will actively work against them…
If you want to prevent republicans from holding higher office tho, I suggest you join the adults and demand the DNC be better than just “not a Republican”.
You get to prevent trump and help the needy!
Can’t believe it took this long for me to see this meme. Plenty of photos of internet soldiers, but haven’t seen it memes till now.
When you don’t vote, how can anyone reflect on why they did not get your vote? At the very least write in a name like “Sanders” so the caucus can say, “well, it seems we didn’t get this vote because we were not progressive enough.”
Obviously, it doesn’t mean the parties will change but maybe they will think “We almost had this state. If we change slightly maybe we can grab 25% of these independents in the next Senate race.”
When Martin Luther King Jr said the white moderate was the biggest stumbling block of progressive politics he meant shit like this That favors order over Justice.
When it said that you cut a liberal in a fascist bleeds they mean you.
I’m an American that lives in a very blue state. I will be voting third party this election because my state and my vote will end up going to the blue team anyway. What I know is that if a third party gets 5% of the vote they get funding in the next round. I don’t know about all you guys, but I am tired of constantly picking the lesser evil and having every election I participate in be the most important election of our lifetime (so far
But sure Just say I’m a Russian bot. I’m sure that won’t distance people even further away from your politics.
Genuine question. If you lived in a swing state for this election, who would you vote for?
Biden
Cool cool cool. I also would rather vote 3rd party, but I’m in a swing state so. Yeah.
Are you voting for Bobby Jr, Cornel or Jill?
Because Bobby’s the only one who might get 5%. Would that be saying you are okay with his policies?
What are you going to do in the next election cycle to make sure the nominees align closer to your values?
For me, it’ll probably come down to Dr. Cornel West or Claudia de lacruz. I would vote for Jill Stein if those two aren’t viable at time of voting. All three of these candidates are closer to my values than any of the party nominees I’ve seen in my lifetime.
Rfk seems to have more in common with Republicans than anyone else and they’re my least favorite. I just generally find him kind of gross and grifty
If the nominee doesn’t align with my values in the next election, I will continue to do the what I am now. pushing people to vote for third party politicians that do align with their values in non-swing State situations.
Dr. Cornel West or Claudia de lacruz. I would vote for Jill Stein
Are any of those polling over 1%?
That’s a silly question.
That’s like if you were talking about building a dog house and I asked you “How much of it’s done already?” And when you said not that much I could say. Well it’s never going to get done then. See how that’s silly?
No, I asked if any of them are polling over 5%.
It’s a question with an answer, just maybe not an answer you would like.
So do you want to answer the question or do you want to deflect from the answer?
Actually, you didn’t ask that you asked if any of them are polling over 1%.
Re-read your own comment.
I’m not going to waste my time with you anymore ✌🏾
I obviously hit the wrong number but you still can’t answer the question.
Donate and campaign for your local ranked choice voting groups https://fairvote.org/ - if you aren’t engaged in changing the system, you should be.
Until we have change like this, I’m still voting for the person who sucks the least, because I know only one of the two mainstream candidates will win.
I already am a part of a local organization for ranked choice voting. That’s great advice. People should definitely do this. It would make everything so much better! 👈😎
From your last sentence, I’m assuming where you vote is in contention and since that’s the case, I think you’re right. I do want to say if you’re like me living in a non-swing state that is always going to go for the same party. Then have a little fun with a third party vote.
…you realize MLK was talking about people like you that would rather throw your hands up and do nothing than help, right?
If Trump wins, minorities and LGBT folks are in danger. That’s on you. In the same way that white moderates are critiqued for sitting around and doing nothing in the civil rights era, people who are sitting around and doing nothing against the rise of fascism in that way because they don’t want to take the time to focus on who’s in danger are to blame. You are the modern white moderate.
Amazing, you really think that don’t you.
I’m not doing nothing. I’m in a non-swing state that’ll go Blue no matter what I do. So I’m trying to organize people to vote third party so we can actually get a party that represents the people in. What are you doing??
It wouldn’t be on me because I know how the electoral college works and I know that my vote will go to the Dems regardless because I’m in Maryland, it’ll be blue as f*** regardless of what I voted for. If you want to spend money, I will bet you any amount of money you would like. That Maryland will be blue and all of its votes will go to Biden. Honestly that second paragraph’s Is just protection man. If you are actually doing something or just confused than Good luck to you.
Welcome comrade bot. We are not quite legion but if we can get these Liberal airbags to stop voting for genocide politicians maybe we can actual have change. Lol remember Obama and “Change”.
I remember when he kept his campaign promise to close Guantanamo Bay and totally gave us universal health care and not some right-wing idea from the heritage foundation. He rebranded as Obamacare.
Good to know there are people who pay attention to politics here. Thanks Comrade 👈😎🛠️
Let’s not forget the increased drone strikes, continuing two wars (yes, they were started by the worse party but he helped funnel 100s of billions into war), assault on privacy and civil liberties.
Amen!
Did you ever see the cliff of him trying to tell the people Flint Michigan that their water wasn’t poisoned with lead and pretending the drink of glass of tap water in front of them. It wasn’t until I saw that that I realized that dude was just a puppet.
I just had to look it up. I missed that when it happened originally. He was always good for showmanship.
That’s because you have the privilege of living in a blue state and our votes going towards an electoral college rather than popular vote in most cases. I voted Green Party before seeing her in the Russian op photo. National doesn’t matter as much as local votes do
Exactly if you live in a non-swing state like me that is either solid red or blue and does not change then vote third party. If you live in a swing state then vote for the lesser of two evils.
It’s really simple
If you live in a red state vote blue so that there’s that tiny 1%chance that enough people are pissed off that blue wins by a few votes
I mean you could, but even if you’re successful, you end up in the same situation we are in now where we’re deciding between the lesser of two evils every election.
If you follow my plan instead, over time, third parties will gain more support allowing us to pick something other than the lesser of two evils.
Do you get what I’m saying?
They are willfully not following you.
You should open with this
Just want to say this is the only sane take. I am donating and supporting the Green party in hopes of 5%, then we’ll see the Dems actually get off their ass and give some scraps to the struggling working class of this country.
Thank you, comrade.
I will be voting for Claudia Taylor Cruz or Dr. Cornell West myself, but in the event I can’t get one of those, Jill Stein (green party) would be my next pick. 👈😎
RuSsIaN bOtS
Russian bots have maybe an 0.1% effect on the election. You know what has a 90% effect on every single election? Corporate donations.
Anyway it’s not our job to fall in line for Biden, it’s Biden’s job to appeal to voters, a job which he and his team have seemingly abdicated.
Why bother appealing to voters when blue MAGA will demonize and spread misinformation about anyone who dissents for free, all while “yEs, BuT tRuMp”-ing any and every criticism.
At this point Biden could shoot a guy on 4th and democrats would screech “sure but you’re not seeing the forest for the trees, TRUMP SAID HE’D DO IT ON FIFTH!”
Okay tankie
Ah yes, the thought terminating cliche of the current political cycle.
Do you happen to have a source for those numbers?
Does OP have a source for calling everyone against Biden a Russian bot?
They’re a rhetorical device to illustrate a point, not the findings of a scientific survey.
Yeah, next time just reply with “check out my domain name”, or “.ml” if you wanna be even more efficient. Most people will understand your point.
But just to reply to your point so you can’t accuse me of not engaging with your bs or whatever : the russians are investing in propaganda for a “maybe 0.1%”? This And This And everything else just because of “maybe 0.1%”?
Everyone knows that there’s multiple factors at play here, and even if trump wins this year, it won’t be only because of bots and propaganda. Like you said, the fact that you can accept donations for your campaign is a huge factor in who gets most visibility. And because most voters are uneducated, they’ll just vote for the most visible ones.
The thing is, most people around here accused of being bots aren’t really bots nor paid by russia. I don’t think anyone actually believes they are. But they’re people on which the propaganda worked.
Has to check with his boss
Research has shown over 80% of stats are made up
Lol, this is new. Olgino trolls in uniform.
I can imagine their daily checklist
- Paint grass green
- Paint dirt black
- Write comments about not voting
for Navalny
