“Oh damn I lost the race I thought was easy again. Could I be a shit party with shit messaging and wet farts for fans? Nah its everyone else whos wrong”
Seeing how Democrats keep gnawing on this bone really lets me know the Democrats are never going to ever win another election. Anything in the world to avoid having to change their failed strategy. They ran the Hillary Clinton campaign and lost again, but God forbid they changed that no it’s the voters who are wrong. Should we appeal to voters who care more about the working class than the business class? Nah fuck that. Should we appeal to people who don’t like people like Henry Kissinger and Dick Cheney? Nah fuck that. Keep fucking that chicken.
They still put forth the mutually exclusive arguments, simultaneously. “Our protest couldn’t have had an effect, so we totally didn’t sacrifice American LGBT folk for a chance at saving Gaza” + “If the Dems had just given in to our protest, we would’ve voted for them and they would have won”
Both arguments are stupid on their own merits, but together, they paint a picture of intellectual and moral bankruptcy.
I mean, they didn’t sacrifice American LGBT folks for a chance to save Gaza. They sacrificed us for absolutely nothing.
Actually, they sacrificed us for an even faster genocide of Gaza. So now everyone loses!
But it’s not their fault, and even if it was, America deserves genocide. /s
Yes. The naraccism prayer is on clear display with them:
That didn’t happen. And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. And if it was, that’s not a big deal. And if it is, that’s not my fault. And if it was, I didn’t mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
They’ve cleared stage four and I await to see how they spin the last two.
Based on news of Elon setting up fake pro-Trump liberal advocacy groups before the election do we know how much of these arguments are coming from legit leftists IRL vs manufactured consent? Just curious, when you say ‘they’ are these people you’ve talked to IRL or online?
There are a good number right here on Lemmy.
Others who scrubbed months of their comments immediately after the election.
Lemmy users is really not a group that represents voters in any category other than lemmy users.
I don’t believe I claimed anything otherwise - just pointing out they exist, and you can find examples here on Lemmy.
How prevalent outside of online spaces… I don’t know, not something I’d be tracking personally.
Your supposed to vote for the candidate that represents your views. Doing so should never be considered sacrificing anyone unless you candidate is the bad guy.
Decades of blaming third party voters is why we have two parties that don’t represent the people today. There will be pain breaking that trend, but eventually it will pay off.Those aren’t mutually exclusive, you’re not that stupid so why pretend?
“There weren’t enough of us to sway the election” and “had more people worked with us we would have one” are the same statement: both point out that not enough people did the thing you’re so pissed about
“There weren’t enough of us to sway the election” and “had more people worked with us we would have one”
“Had more people agreed with us, we would have had more people who agreed with us” is not anything but a statement of obvious, if wishful, fact, and is not what is being said; not in my summary nor in the arguments of the people I’m referring to. Nor does it make any sense as an argument, explanation, or point of any kind. Utterly vacuous.
The argument being put forth, and I suspect you’re well-aware of this, is that if the Dems had taken up whatever position these protest-voters wanted, that would have convinced enough people to vote Dem who otherwise would not have done so.
that if the Dems had taken up whatever position these protest-voters wanted, that would have convinced enough people to vote Dem who otherwise would not have done so.
Yes, that is your strawman of their arguments
Yes, that is your strawman of their arguments
And your claim is that they were actually saying “If more people agreed with us, we would have more people who agreed with us.”
Would you like to explain how that is, in context, anything resembling a salient point? Or is your argument that they were spewing empty phrases, and I was wrong to apply meaning to their words?
If protest voters had voted for Harris, she still would have lost, because twenty million democrats stayed home. She didn’t lose because of protest votes, she lost because white middle class voters decided they didn’t want to bother, because the election won’t affect them anyway.
If 77 million people vote for Trump, and 75 million vote for Harris, that any single voter’s vote is only one vote does not mean that if they vote for Trump, it’s a morally neutral act. Not being the tipping point is not absolution for one’s actions or inaction. And doing mental backflips to justify a vote for Trump because they were ‘just one vote’ instead of taking some time to fucking reflect if Trump winning was the outcome they wanted to support would make them an utter cretin.
The core issue is that many Americans don’t seem to care if fascism comes to America. This includes protest voters, but yes, protest voters are only a small percentage of that much-larger category.
Fascism came a long time ago, now they are just ripping off the politically correct mask.
We’re probably making the classic mistake of homogenizing a heterogeneous group.
I doubt any individual holds both opinions simultaneously.
I doubt any individual holds both opinions simultaneously.
They put forth both arguments simultaneously, regardless of whether they believe one or both. Or neither.
Okay, who? Which person specifically is doing that?
Next time I run into one, I’ll send it to you.
I hope they at least got paid. Doing that level of BS for free would just be sad
I don’t think its even paid shills. We have generative AI now, and can VPN with fake accounts pretty easily as regular consumers. If we can do it, they can do it on a larger scale and professionally, and not just ‘their side’, but global rivals.
If another country wants your country to do something stupid, all they have to do is get a bot army to upvote bad ideas and pump out memes and comments supporting whatever policy you think will negatively impact your rival.
If they’re NOT doing this already, then they’re terrible at their jobs, and I don’t think they’re honestly that incompetent.
That said, don’t assume they’re only trying to influence everyone other than you. All that social media data created a system to predict who you are and what buttons to push to get you to act.
That would also be nicer than an army of people sincerely believing they’re doing the right thing by not voting
Removed by mod
When liberals lose, they always blame someone else.
This is what happens when your campaign entirely consists of cringe memes, preaching “civility”, and talking about how eager you are to submit to the wills of the opposition.
Left and Right wing liberals, it would seem… if 2020 was any indication.
Those of us who disliked Biden and thought Harris wasn’t enough held our contempt and voted against the bad man.
Yeah, except for the fact that I know a lot who didn’t. It might be a shock to you, but there was a big push in left-leaning communities here on Lemmy and elsewhere on the web to either not vote for Harris or not vote at all. It was so fucking full-force in major leftist communities with so little interest in Trump that I’m convinced it was a targeted disinfo campaign. One that worked.
Lemmy and leftists communities aren’t even a blip on the graph. Go to a PA town and ask them what lemmy is. Or what communism is for that matter. They voted trump because his misinfo campaign was way larger than the one you’re complaining about. And also because the democrats suck.
I love when people ignore parts of my comments for the sake of their argument.
Removed by mod
I think so too…
I can’t tell if you voted for Harris because you said you voted against the bad man but are being really defensive of the people who helped Trump win.
If you did anything but vote Harris, you did not vote against Trump in our shitty first-past-the-post system. Don’t kid yourself.
If we’re going to start blaming people who let Trump win, let’s start with Joe Biden, who was too stubborn to drop out before the 2024 primary. Then, let’s move on to his aides, who kept his declining cognitive abilities from the public. Then let’s move on to any Democratic Party members who met with Biden before the 2024 election and were aware of his diminished capacity. Then let’s move on to the members of the DNC who decided to protect Biden from real primary challengers (they drove Dean Phillips out of politics for trying to run, by the way), despite the fact that 60% of Democrats wanted a different candidate.
Once we’re done blaming those people, let’s move on to blaming Harris, who did nothing to distance herself from Biden on Gaza despite knowing that it was polling very poorly with a base she needed to motivate. Then let’s blame her for adopting a flacid, middle-class oriented economic policy and abandoning the economic populism that worked in 2020. Let’s also blame Harris’ top strategists, Jen O’Malley Dillon, David Plouffe, Quentin Fulks, and Stephanie Cutter, who ran the same strategy of trying to flip moderate Republicans that lost in 2020.
Anyway, once we’ve held all those people accountable for letting Trump win, then maybe we can see if there’s any blame left for protesting leftists or apathetic working-class voters. And before you ask, yes, I voted for Harris. I just don’t hold the powerless accountable for the powerfuls’ mistakes.
I just don’t hold the powerless accountable for the powerfuls’ mistakes.
…So you agree advocating against Harris was a mistake? The thing that everyone else said would be a mistake?
How are these people any different than “I care about the economy” voters who never verified any of Trumps claims? Just a little mistake, nothing to hold against them.
…So you agree advocating against Harris was a mistake? The thing that everyone else said would be a mistake?
What the ever loving fuck are you talking about? You think when I said the powerful, i meant Muslims and anti-war protesters who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Harris? Or working-class voters who decided Harris’ shitty economic plan wasn’t worth standing in a poll line? And I guess you must have thought the powerless were the people who spent over a billion dollars campaigning with Mark Cuban? Is that how broken your brain is?
What the ever loving fuck are you talking about? You think when I said the powerful, i meant Muslims and anti-war protesters who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Harris?
It would seem that they felt that punishing the powerless for Harris’s mistakes was okay.
Seriously Pug? You think that Muslims watching their people get ethnically cleansed aren’t powerless? You think college students getting beaten by cops and accused of antisemitism for protesting a genocide aren’t the powerless? You think people exercising the tiniest amount of control they have over their democracy by withholding their vote means their not the powerless ones? How many groups are willing to scapegoat before you start holding people with actual institutional power accountable?
Seriously Pug? You think that Muslims watching their people get ethnically cleansed aren’t powerless? You think college students getting beaten by cops and accused of antisemitism for protesting a genocide aren’t the powerless? You think people exercising the tiniest amount of control they have over their democracy by withholding their vote means their not the powerless ones?
Your argument is that the powerless shouldn’t be held accountable for the sins of the powerful. Yet simultaneously, you claim that voters punishing American minorities with genocide and a fascist regime is justified, because of the sins of the Dem elite.
Sorry that you think that welcoming genocide is only bad when Dem elites do it, and not when voters ushering in fascism do it.
We’re talking voters, dude. No idea why you keep bringing up POWER as if people are incapable of blaming two things at once. The Democrats blew it, no doubt about it.
But anyone that didn’t vote for Harris helped Trump win.
It’s literally the first comment, dude. I detail a huge fucking list of powerful people who fucked up so bad the Democrats lost to one of the least popular Presidents of all time, then ended it with, “Anyway, once we’ve held all those people accountable for letting Trump win, then maybe we can see if there’s any blame left for protesting leftists or apathetic working-class voters.” It’s literally a politicians job to win elections, but this community is full of memes blaming the left because the Democrats suck at their job.
The existence of people more deserving of blame doesn’t absolve the people less deserving of blame for their faults. Stein voters/non-voters are not blameless here.
I despise the Democratic Party. That doesn’t make me less pissed off at the voters who campaigned against her
I voted against Trump. Voting for Trump wouldn’t be a vote against Biden. Reading further down thread with the attacks you have against another commenter, I don’t think you’re terribly literate at understanding people who disagree with you. It’s either that or disingenuous because you want to fight. Your pick.
I’ve been loudly and proudly critical of the democrats while also voting for Harris and urging others to do so. The democratic presidential campaign in 16 and 24 amounted to: you should vote for us because the other guy sucks. We can get into a lot more details than that, particularly on the shortcomings of the policy plank and messaging, but that’s the gist. It didn’t work in '16, there was ZERO reason to think it would work in '24, but fuck it, we can always blame the voters.
Unrelated story time, after I got my driver’s license, my alcoholic dad would get hammered and then demand that I drive him to the liquor store to buy more liquor, and if I didn’t, then I would be responsible when he crashed into someone and killed them while trying to drive himself. It was just a strategy to get me somewhere where I had to listen to him tell me what a piece of shit I was for about an hour, of course, but before I knew any better, I would comply. Eventually I just told him that he was welcome to drive himself, but I’d be letting the state patrol know how to find him.
Dunno why I remembered that story just now. Huh.
there was ZERO reason to think it would work in '24
Aside from the fact that it worked in 2020, you mean?
They did do some of it in 20, but Biden actually brought some stuff to the table; two things that spring to mind are student loan forgiveness and national passenger rail revitalization, there’s probably some others I can’t think of ATM. Yeah, in hindsight, the loan forgiveness ended up not being much to write home about, and the rail revitalization might be getting derailed, but at least he had some actually useful and interesting policy planks besides “not Trump” and “look, it’s [celebrity]!”
You’re underselling it. They had Bernie Sanders help them write an economically-populist platform in 2020. For all of Biden’s many, many faults, he saw which way the wind was blowing in 2020 and leaned into it. Then, in 2024, they decided it was safe to move back to a middle-class centric, moderate economic message, and boy, was that a bad idea.
Well, they were correct that right-wing rhetoric was popular. Diet Republican will just never beat the real thing.
I’m sure if they just go little further right they’ll get 'em next time.
Not only that, but many (but not all) of the implementations of those policies were either middling or incomplete, and there was still so much further to go on progressive economic policies, that it was truly baffling to me that they basically rolled out the “mission accomplished” banner on the economy when the 2024 campaigns were asked about it. Democrats seem terminally terrified of casting stones within the party, to the point of refusing to acknowledge the reality that voters are experiencing because it might make the guys not seeking election look bad. It was frustrating to see that while I was financially worse off then when Biden took office, as was almost everyone else I knew, the democrats were crowing about how great the economy was and essentially declaring economic victory for Biden. I remember getting banned by more than one Mastodon account and labelled a Trump supporter when I raised concerns that this messaging was going to fail to resonate.
It’s similarly frustrating now to see the Democratic party leadership and presidential campaign staff saying “well, yes, that makes twice we’ve lost what should have been the easiest election ever, but we made no mistakes and have nothing to learn here except that we need to be more like Republicans.” Likewise, it’s concerning to see Democrats legitimizing this administration and already announcing that they’re eager to work with them where their priorities align. It makes me think a lot about how back in the 30s, the capitalists were all too ready to align with the Nazis, and a big chunk of the democrats are occupied by the crony capitalist block. I really hope the democrats as a party can get their shit together on a national level, but I’m not counting on it. I’m expecting a lot of lip service about resistance as 96% of them fall in line.
100% spot on, although I will say this; it’s not that Democrats are too scared of casting stones within their party. It’s that they’re too terrified of displaying behavior that would displease donors. They’re happy to throw Jamaal Bowman or Rashida Tlaib under the bus if AIPAC is displeased. They’ll sideline AOC if her rhetoric makes one of their, “good,” billionaires nervous. They’ve been trying to find a balance between making their wealthy benefactors and their working class base happy for years now, and they still haven’t figured out that those goals are antithetical.
Biden ran a much different campaign.
Harris ran a much more progressive yet inclusive campaign then Biden but I don’t think people were ready to vote for a Black Indian woman.
You can’t be serious with this more progressive than Biden bullshit?
Harris had Cheney and corporations cozying up to her. She acted like she was going to be progressive at first and then she decided to go after those moderate voters. If she was a little bit progressive then she would have allowed the Palestinian to speak at the DNC. Instead she let some right wingers and a billionaire.
People who called themselves progressives had more and more strict purity tests on what actually makes someone progressive until they decided to support the Republicans.
Progressive for who? Not the workers. Not for unions . Not for regulation. Who was it Progressive for? There’s this myth that she was super Progressive but I didn’t see any evidence of it anywhere. The few Progressive movements of the Biden White House we’re on the chopping block for Harris. She nominated a great vice president choice and then she put them in the closet so no he couldn’t spread the message. Her intentions were very clear she was running well to the right of Joe Biden’s campaign.
She was very clearly for big business and for this mythical middle class that doesn’t even exist anymore. She could give a shit about the working class. A sentiment that was being shared by the way in interviews of potential voters which is how you knew she was about to lose.
The few progressive movements of the Biden White House were on the chopping block for Harris.
Which ones?
So Harris was so far right you all flocked to Trump or didn’t vote to send a message that you’d go further right?
And there it is. The old Hillary Clinton that’s all I fucking have campaign in a nutshell. Immediately accuse them of liking Donald Trump. Because the only thing they are is not Trump. Lost them two elections. It’s going to lose them every other election ever to come if we even get any. Cuz these fucking neoliberals have nothing for us. They can’t run on their Promises to the voters because they don’t have any. Every freaking time.
…and they won’t court the leftist because they don’t/won’t vote so it’s just going to go further right.
The democratic presidential campaign in 16 and 24 amounted to: you should vote for us because the other guy sucks…It didn’t work in '16, there was ZERO reason to think it would work in '24, but fuck it, we can always blame the voters.
It wasn’t just the same strategy. It was a lot of the same people who worked on Hillary’s campaign, as well a bunch of Obama flunkies pushing the, “demographics are destiny,” narrative that keeps convincing the party they can safely ignore the working class and focus on, “moderate,” Republicans. A bunch or them went on Pod Save America to explain what happened with the Harris Campaign, and (Spoiler Alert) turns out they did everything right, the campaign was great, and everything that went wrong was someone else’s fault.
Anyway, I’m sure the OP is right, and the protest voters are why she lost. It’s definitely not the fault of the Democratic Party elites who keep re-hiring the same strategist despite their catastrophic failures. I’m gonna get a head start on making memes blaming the left for Hillary’s 2028 loss to Trump because no one learns anything and we live in hell.
Is that sarcastic nonsense at the end of your rhetoric you admitting that your protest was ineffective and a waste of time?
Because if so- then all those non-voters and third party protest votes got trump elected.
I VOTED FOR HER. But thanks for ignoring every substantive argument made about how the Dems fucked this up. It’s super fun seeing people like you learn nothing from these defeats! Can’t wait to watch this happen again in 2028 because you guys refuse to hold Democrats accountable for campaigns designed to appeal donors and consultants instead of voters! Keep enabling them, it’s going great!
You voted for her while explaining how awful you thought she was, which put other voters off voting for her. The election was won for Donald “ethnic cleansing” Trump by people staying home because Harris was so flawed, a point made by republicans and useful left wing idiots alike.
“Yes, you voted for her, but you vocally criticized her. You’re not allowed to speak out against the party like that.” Do you fucking hear yourself yet? Do you still not understand why people call you Blue MAGA?
“Yes, you voted for her, but you vocally criticized her. You’re not allowed to speak out against the party like that.”
Do you not think campaigning has an effect?
If all it took was people on social grumbling about their terrible policy plank to sink the campaign, maybe, just maybe, they ran a shit campaign and there’s lessons to be learned.
You’re right, Pug, a billion dollars in direct spending was derailed by people pointing out the bad things they were seeing. It definitely wasn’t the bad things that cost her the election, just the people acknowledging that the bad things existed and suggesting she do something different. I forgot, if you’re in a car with someone who is about to drive or a cliff, the best thing you can do is remain quiet; you wouldn’t want to distract the driver with your negativity. Once again, Pug, your brilliant insights have saved the day.
Great analogy.
Not really.
If you wanna compare, the Trump version would be the alcoholic father purposely running into people on the way to the liquor store. While blaming it on somebody else.
Removed by mod
A “state patrol” would be nice about now. Know where to find one?
I was alluding to a higher jurisdictional authority which could help in this particular instance.
Ahhh, okay! Got it. Well, in this case, we might not be able to go to the authorities, given that the authorities are kinda the problem. There’s really only two things you can do when that’s the case: give up, or organize within your community to build resilience. I mean, for all the jokes about violence, Trump and Elon are symptoms as well as causes. If someone redacted them, we’d still be stuck in the same causes and conditions that led us here, so it’s not a fix. The best cure for what we have is building resilience as much as we can where we can.
It is never about winning the election. Or voting in a third party.
What the radical left are doing is sitting out in protest of a broken system. Over here in the UK we had the lowest voter any living generation would have witnessed. The reason why is we are disenfranchised and won’t support the elites.
This is the kindling of a revolution.
Anyone who doesn’t understand this should school themselves on historic materialism. No amount of wining will change how large swafts of people react to their material condition.
What the radical left are doing is sitting out in protest of a broken system.
There has never, ever been anything approaching a protest that starts with the words “sitting out”.
That’s not revolution, that’s apathy and disinterest. That’s what the people in power want.
Don’t sit out. Stand up. Do something. Or don’t. But don’t lie to yourself and others and say that sitting out of the problem makes it any better.
There has never, ever been anything approaching a protest that starts with the words “sitting out”.
In a sense you’re right, but it seems like a lot of people participating in this discussion may have a misunderstanding of the history of disagreements about electoralism on the revolutionary left.
Historically, some members of the left don’t want to waste time and resources participating in electoralism that could be spent doing other things that contribute to the revolution that will happen when the Bourgeois electoral system inevitably collapses.
Others want to participate to signal the point when that collapse has inevitably occurred because the corruption will have become blatantly obvious.
Personally, I don’t think just going in and voting counts as the kind of participation that theory is describing (that is, running in elections, participating in campaigns, etc.)
On the other hand, it has also become blatantly obvious to me, personally, at this point that on a national level my vote just doesn’t count. My vote is dictated by the capitalist class owned and controlled media telling everyone which states will vote which way. The puppet politicians aren’t vying for popular support, they’re vying for oligarch support and the media they control to sway that population. It’s voter manipulation on an unbelievable scale that sounds like a conspiracy theory, but I can’t ignore that it has become blatantly obvious to me that the system is rigged by the capitalist class, and participation in it (at higher levels) is pointless.
when the Bourgeois electoral system inevitably collapses.
What you guys don’t get is that when the electoral system eventually collapses it will be far too late, and any chance of your revolution ever happening will be long gone.
What do you think a revolution is if not a collapse of the previous system?
Edit: also, it has already collapsed. That should have been evident in the 2016 primaries.
Just so I understand, you’d rather wait around until the complete collapse of society rather than take five minutes to go vote, is that right? Because what, a democrat might accidently get elected and give you healthcare, but he might get some money from a corporation or something to do it so fuck that, right?
You understand that if things ever got bad enough for the system to collapse it would not be a communist paradise that arises from the ashes, right?
I seriously don’t understand you people. This is like chopping your whole hand off because your fingernails need trimming.Edit: also, it has already collapsed. That should have been evident in the 2016 primaries.
You don’t actually own anything of value, like a house or a car, I take it.
Just so I understand, you’d rather wait around until the complete collapse of society rather than take five minutes to go vote, is that right?
Given this response, I’m guessing you read less than a paragraph in to my original response and decided you needed to wield your superior intellect and values and produce a “gotcha” response while not actually understanding what you were reading.
You don’t actually own anything of value, like a house or a car, I take it.
I own a relatively large house and multiple cars. I have a wife and a dog and a daughter and a granddaughter. I have lots of completely unnecessary consumer goods. Likely I’m more well off than you. Just because I can play and succeed in the capitalist game doesn’t mean I don’t recognize it for the oppressive system that it is and sympathize with the people that didn’t get as lucky as me.
You so badly want to pounce you have to build a straw man to dislike instead of trying to understand a perspective different from your own. You are a petty person.
Given this response, I’m guessing you read less than a paragraph in to my original response and decided you needed to wield your superior intellect and values and produce a “gotcha” response while not actually understanding what you were reading.
Couldn’t think of a witty comeback, huh?
I own a relatively large house and multiple cars. I have a wife and a dog and a daughter and a granddaughter.
You obviously don’t seem to care about the kind of country they grow up in, since you’re too lazy to do the absolute minimum required to prevent them from growing up in a fascist hellhole.
You so badly want to pounce you have to build a straw man to dislike instead of trying to understand a perspective different from your own. You are a petty person.
All I’m saying is that fascism is here, which side are you on? Because if you’re just going to sit this one out, then you’re on the side of the fascists.
This is a great point. I am a paying member of the SP. I attend major demos across the southwest. Currently building housing unions in my city.
Voting in neo-librisism I won’t do.
You’re not engaging with the challenge to your original statement.
You don’t protest by sitting out. So what are you doing?
Sitting out has definitely been a form of protest. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_bus_boycott
Hell democracy is measured by political votes, a nation with low voter turn out are considered non democratic.
There has never, ever been anything approaching a protest that starts with the words "sitting out”.
Sitting out has definitely been a form of protest. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_bus_boycott
The Montgomery bus boycott didn’t start with sitting out. It started with Rosa Parks sitting in.
Not to mention the easily understood fact that an economic boycott - one which causes direct material consequences - has absolutely no relation to some sort of “political boycott”, which causes zero consequences against anyone in power.
Hell democracy is measured by political votes, a nation with low voter turn out are considered non democratic.
Yes? Congratulations, you are therefore contributing to our continued democratic decline.
This same argument can be used with electoral protest. It would be disingenuous to say none voting in protest materialised from nothing.
Yes? Congratulations, you are therefore contributing to our continued democratic decline.
I don’t see your point. If people aren’t voting then that is a symptom and not a cause. I think also a nuanced lens helps with this. People not voting isn’t binary. some knowingly protest, some are seeing the slow encroachment of inequality and just couldn’t care less which leader will continue to fuck them over.
Not voting is absolutely both a symptom and a cause. How do you think we got here, if not by voting for the people who won the elections for the past century, and by not voting for the people who lost the elections?
This is not a good counterexample. A boycott has immediate financial consequences for the boycotted company/industry. No such pressure is generated by sitting out an election.
In fact, a central strategy of the right wing in the United States is to reduce overall voter turnout, which is achieved either by restricting access to voting or by discouraging voter participation. By sitting out the vote you did exactly what the right wing wanted you to do.
I’m not speaking for the person you’re replying to, nor do I necessarily approve of the actions of what I’m about to share, but I certainly know someone who doesn’t vote but does go to rallies and very often writes/calls their representative and senators. (Though I do think they voted this election cycle for Harris, which was extremely rare for them.)
I’m not questioning the value of non-electoral political action. That is just as - if not more - important. Get involved. Use your voice. Donate. Rally. Please.
I am only challenging this naive idea that “not voting” = “protesting”. You cannot protest by staying home. You cannot protest by sitting out. Not voting isn’t action, it’s inaction and no revolution will ever, ever start with inaction.
Very fair point.
Voting in neo-librisism I won’t do.
Yeah, we get it, you won’t vote against fascism and genocide. You’re too pure for that.
Let the suffering of minorities sanctify your cause.
Scratch a liberal a fascist bleeds.
Scratch a liberal a fascist bleeds.
“Letting people be genocided is bad” is apparently a liberal take now, and liberalism is, of course, fascism.
How curious.
It is never about winning the election. Or voting in a third party.
Thank you for admitting it. Many of us poors and minorities will die, but that is a sacrifice you are oh-so-nobly willing to make.
You are missing the point, voting in a party that has been moving slowly right isn’t a way to fix it.
Oh, I’m missing the point, of course, sending the disadvantaged to their deaths by a reactionary fascist regime is a small detail when you have the Upcoming Revolution™.
I mean, it’s been Upcoming™ for decades now, but THIS time, with no organization, it’ll happen; definitely, you guys! THIS time the blood of minorities will sanctify your efforts!
The genocidaires will make every move of any revolutionary more difficult and more costly by their control over the levers of power. It would have cost you next to nothing to help avert a genocide. And allowing the genocide will gain the revolution nothing.
And yet, here it is, ushered in primarily by the apathy of the American electorate; an apathy embraced and celebrated by would-be revolutionaries.
News flash: you were going to be sacrificed by the corporations anyway. Voting blue or red legitimizes the system, so if anything, you’re the one elongating the struggle.
Voting blue or red legitimizes the system, so if anything, you’re the one elongating the struggle.
“Elongating the struggle”? What, do you want minorities to kill ourselves as fast as we can and get it over with, in the hopes that once we’re dead, that tragedy will Inspire The Masses to give you your deeply desired revolution?
And you don’t think this is already happening. Look at our prison systems, the wars we fund, the number of homeless people on our streets. Things are rotten to the core and good for you in your unbridled support of neo-librisism but I’m out, I will be active in meaningful political action at demos, door to door but I won’t be pointing fingers playing this sad blame game you guys enjoy so dearly. Keep towing the line and see where you end up.
And portraying this as me killing disadvantage people is so fucking rotten you should be ashamed. I know what its like to be homeless. How it feels for the education system to fail. The brutality of job security. The none existent programmes for mental health in the UK.
But again keep towing the line that allows this broken system to produce fascism.
And you don’t think this is already happening.
Ultra-privileged shite. Jesus fucking Christ. Sorry that the lives of minorities aren’t worth anything to you, I know posing online with your buddies is much more important.
Not a lot to work with Pug.
Yeah, if your response to looking at the Trump administration’s openly declared desires and, even now, a fucking WEEK into this hell, already-passed executive orders, is to declare “Well this was already happening”, there’s not much to fucking talk about. Some of us are going to have our already-hard lives get significantly worse, and quite possibly end.
Every fucking day is a struggle, and seeing people who proclaim themselves as allies of the disadvantaged help flush what little we have down the fucking shitter? And then say that it doesn’t matter?
There’s not a lot to be said except that it’s ultra-privileged shite.
You are missing the point, voting in a party that has been moving slowly right isn’t a way to fix it.
Most of us are well aware voting them in wasn’t going to fix the core problems of the United States.
However, most of us are also well aware that voting them out is making the core problems worse. One need only apply a blindfold and throw a dart at any of the executive decisions made over the last week to find incontrovertible evidence of that.
Accelerationism is nothing but supporting facism. There is no magical moment where fascists run a nation into the ground, the system collapses, and somehow you get to decide what happens after.
What comes after can be just as bad - if not worse - than what came before. And you will do nothing - less than nothing - to stop it by choosing not to vote.
I don’t believe in accelerationism either, the USSR went from shit to worse with no sign of changing. But I recognise that fascism is on the rise, and no amount of finger pointing will stop it. People need to radicalise and actually do something. Voting won’t fix the ruin that is the neo liberal project and the debt its forced us into.
Voting won’t fix the ruin that is the neo liberal project and the debt its forced us into.
Again, almost everyone knows that. For most “radicalized” people that are actually doing things, voting is openly acknowledged as a stalling tactic designed to give us more time to do what must be done for real change.
What exactly will not voting do? Who will face the consequences of not voting? Who will be helped? Who will be harmed? Do you honestly think the wealthy will be harmed by you not voting?
Not voting discredits the allusion of democracy. I’m all for voting within ones own interest. But I won’t treat someone with hostility for they’re choice.
I don’t believe I have treated you with hostility, but please forgive me if I have.
But I must ask - does “not voting” discredit the illusion of democracy? To who? How?
Do you think there is a meaningful number of people who currently believe the statement “American democracy is working” but would cease to believe that when faced with voter turnout statistics?
By doing so they’re allowing fascists to take over. Isn’t it in your best interest, as a leftist, to prevent the fascist take over of your country?
And before you say “The country is already run by fascists,” over here our immigration dept. is now starting to detain Native Americans. The president is deporting school children. Even other American citizens who aren’t white are being detained. That simply was not happening under the previous president.Fascism is born from economic issues and tention usually created by rich people to move the blame. We have a labour party in place in the UK, Elon Musk has already involved himself in our politics. Reform uk is poling 25% and labour 26%. labour hasn’t even been in for half a year.
Fascism is battled in the streets and unions, historically this is what has happened.
Fascism can be seen as the endpoint of capitalism, when a system predicated on infinite growth hits the ceiling. While yes vote in your interest I wouldn’t depend on politicians to fix the systemic issue that is capitalism.
Edit for clarification: Reform UK are a nationalist party. Labour were a socialist party for workers, now they are liberals willing to sell whatever isn’t strapped down.
None of this changes the fact that by not voting against the fascists, you’re doing nothing to prevent them from taking control of the government.
I struggle to see a direction capitalism can go after topping out.
I struggle to see why it’s such a hard thing for people to do the absolute minimum required to prevent fascists from taking power. Why is it like pulling teeth to get leftists to be civically engaged?
Why are y’all so obsessed with third party voters lmao
If they can blame the voters then the DNC doesn’t need to change.
Sounds true… but if you remove one excuse, they will find another. They would rather go down with the ship than change.
After all, changing means losing thier cash flow and influence. Letting the reps win means they can probably keep those things for the rest of their personal lives. They’ll be dead before we become a true one party system.
It lets them ignore the responsibility of running a bad campaign with a failed strategy.
OP has lost their shit over third party voters every day since the election.
Because it would be the solution to a better voting system
More parties are better, because there is never just black or wait (or better said just blue and red)
The world is more nuanced than that, but sadly this is already too complex for too many people.
I voted 3rd party in the last UK election, it probably helps that our system is 650 elections at once across the country. You are only voting for your local representative. But it is still FPTP which is pretty bad as a system, it’s still less shit than the US system though.
My thinking is that sure they won’t win this time but if support for them starts to increase (it is doing so) then the party may at some point put more focus on this area for a future election and win. This is how they have now got some influence and also if you look at the local level it takes even less. Most local council elections where I live are won with less than 1000 total votes because they cover pretty small areas. There are of course also cases where a party loses narrowly because of a 3rd party, a local one here had the minor parties fighting between each other and the incumbent national party came dead last with 5%.
I am so tired of strategic voting
Unfortunately, that’s the only kind of voting there is, so long as there are factions and negotiations (ie always, realistically speaking).
People think of voting at the polls like an opinion poll, but it’s not, or shouldn’t be treated as such. We are the equivalent of electors in a college or legislators in a parliament. What we wield is not our opinion, it is our political power, what little sliver of it we have in the great mass of the electorate. If Senator John Q. RealtivelyLeft abstained on a bill for universal healthcare tomorrow because the wording displeased him, we wouldn’t say “Well, that’s just his opinion”, we’d lambast him for forsaking a chance to make this fucking country a little less miserable for his own petty partiality. Same with voting.
Look to your left and to your right. Your fellow voters are there, and it’s only by majority vote that anything gets passed.
Be strategic. And also, be loud and unafraid of your own position; it’s the only way the calculus on strategies changes.
And vote for ranked voting when it comes up in local elections.
Or approval voting
Yes, and that is why you have to have a mechanism to trigger a national vote to cancel any new written law before it takes effect
It is called a referendum
As well as a way that anyone can issue a change of the constitution by triggering a so called initiative which than has to win vote to get through
And of course, make sure nothing disturbs separation of powers like a pardon law or president setting judges without a vote.
Just one more time bro! Just vote for the Dems one more time bro, and they’ll definitely stop being a lesser evil. I know they’ve never done anything to actually obstruct America’s slide to fascism, but just vote blue no matter who one more time bro I’m sure this is the time!
First pass the post suuuuucks. Literally anything else is at least slightly better.
Alaska actually had ranked choice this last election. No green candidate in a state they could have done the most good in though
Well apart from outright vanguard single party rule or dictatorship. Absolutely.
aren’t you enjoying your pseudo-democracy?
Have a look at the swiss voting system 😇 hope you see the way for improvement 😁
But first kill this stupid pardon right of president making all courts a fucking joke and waste of money
This comment section gave me acute radiation syndrome.
Yeah man
The best part ? They really think that, like 3 people on Lemmy swayed the election towards Trump lmao
Next thing they’ll say, Trump actually lost and Kamala is the actual president of the United States of America.
They will just keep on blaming the voters.
I’m sure it will work wonders
Then they will keep asking themselves why they lost the election LMAO 🤣
and this is just week 1 of episode 2. it’s gonna get a lot worse and they won’t waste any time. they have to shovel all the shit they have planned before midterms while they still have congress.
if congress doesn’t flip and flip hard–like impeachment-ready and veto-proof hard, it’s ‘game over’. instead of a few decades to fix episode 1, it will take generations, if it is even possible to recover completely at all.
It’s cute you think there will be a real midterm election
I would say, prepare yourself to free your country from Nazis…
There is nearly 0 chance of flipping to veto proof. But flip it probably will.
Still thinking the people to blame are the DNC elites that went on to run on a right platform, even inviting fucking war criminal mass murderer Dick Cheney to advocate for them.
Also Trump is not something that just happened. The US is an empire in decline and Trump is a symptom of that. The conditions of decline are maintained by the Republicans and Democrats and voting either won’t be enough to turn things around.
Its been time to fundamentally reform the political system at the very least since 2016.
Its been time to fundamentally reform the political system at the very least since 2016.
Yea, it was happening, not very fast but RCV or other FPTP alternatives were spreading. Now it’s probably going to take a back seat now that Trump and Co has returned to power. Yet another consequence of the short sighted bLuEmAGa folk
As I said in another thread elsewhere on the same subject:
The Protest Vote Paradox™
As we’ve all read time after time in the months leading up to the election, the Protest Vote™ simply states states that:
“We refuse to vote against a Tyrant-Felon in order to send a clear and concise message that we will not stand for [roll D20 for random popular single issue], and alongside our refusal to vote against the Tyrant-Felon, is a collective hope that the aforementioned clear and concise message- if ignored, is received under unmitigated duress!”
-Cut to Tyrant-Felon’s win, and the aftermath:
Whether observed or not, the behavior of the Protest Voter will attempt to achieve the following:
• Obnoxiously tell everyone: “We told you all what would happen!”
• Onnoxiously claim there is: “No way protest voting could cause trump to win.”As both of these options cannot simultaneously be true in the same reality without breaking important time-space things that we would probably prefer not be broken- we are left with only a few logical conclusions:
- Protest voters have no idea what they’re talking about.
- Protest voters don’t understand the concept of hypocrisy.
- Protest voters have somehow learned to defy reality and become exempt from the concept of paradoxes, thus creating an entirely new study of theoretical science, known as Bulletproof Symbiotic Hypocrisy Theory, or BLsHt.
Something, something, something Ted Talk.
- Protest voters fell for a propaganda campaign (maybe by the republicans, maybe by Russia or China trying to destabilise the USA).
all of the above, plus perhaps iran, dprk…
Occam’s razor that versus the campaign was SO POORLY RAN that it didn’t inspire people to vote against a literal dictator.
As both of these options cannot simultaneously be true
They absolutely can. Protest voters not voting don’t encompass every democrat vote lost, there are simply many unconvinced people who became apathetic and didn’t vote despite having nothing to do with protest voters, with the latter being a minority. Stop your logical fallacies based on false premises.
So, you’re claiming that the protest both worked to help elect trump, and simultaneously didn’t work to help elect trump……
Gotcha.
I’m claiming that protest voting wasn’t a significant factor in trump being elected, unlike democrats running on having the, I quote, “most lethal army in the world” during an ongoing genocide, bringing the Cheney, and a myriad of other problems. The dems only have themselves to blame for being incapable of offering a better, more desirable option than Donald J fucking Trump
Sooooooo…. All the people saying “you should have listened to us!” and, “We told you this would happen!”
Liars?
Because a LOT of you seem to think that your little protest was a clear message sent and received.
All the people saying “you should have listened to us!” and, “We told you this would happen!”
Liars?
Not liars, just unaware that, outwards (i.e. internationally), there is no difference in policy between democrats and republicans. Now, what are you gonna do, bash to the left of you (the ones who actually organise to fight against fascism), or join us?
Okay, so-
It DID work and you all successfully got trump elected?
You’re kind of making my point for me here. Pick a lane and stick with it. Either your protest was effective and you take credit for where we are now, or it was a waste of time and effort.
Removed by mod
I see democrats are already doing their best to blame everyone but themselves. Can’t wait to see who you run against him for his third term. I’m sure whoever they are, they’ll be a carbon copy of Obama, like the last three elections you ran against Trump.
You guys just really fucking love losing.
Translation: “I did everything I could to usher the fat orange fascist into power, but the DEMOCRATS are the ones to blame!!!”
Removed by mod
I’m sure whoever they are, they’ll be a carbon copy of Obama…
You think Clinton, Biden and Harris are carbon copies of Obama?
You’re right, Obama could articulate a sentence.
Based
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
