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What I've seen so many people not understand with the situation we are in right now, is that we can't fix our current situation in one election. Everything is far to tucked up for that, so the best that can be done is vote for the least fucked up option and work to improve things. People refusing to participate or vote for the candidate who is unfortunately our best option currently (biden) are doing more damage than the people voting for the fascist party. The perfect candidate/option does not exist and never will (obviously not saying everything biden has done has been good).
People do understand that concept, but it's literally what Democrats have been doing for the past 40 years and it has put us right here where we are right now. The "lesser of two evils" thing just has no propellant left, no one is buying that line anymore. Neoliberalism needs to go before Democrats can start winning again.
You need to understand that people have been saying "just put the neolibs in power again and we'll work to improve things" every election cycle, and now we are closer to fascism than we've literally ever been. You at least understand why people see that strategy as a failure, right? Like, you understand why no one believes it anymore?
A vote for neoliberals is a vote to not have fascism for four more years. America's voting system doesn't allow the never-have-fascism votes to be pooled with the delay-fascism votes, so unless there's a decent chance for a mass swing of voters from delay-fascism to never-have-fascism, trying to encourage a small-scale swing only makes immediate fascism more likely by weakening the only thing with a chance to delay it.
If the plan is to try and encourage the Democrats to have primaries that actually have the power to move the party left, now is not the time to withhold a vote in protest as there's a good chance that even if it did convince them, there'd never be another election that wasn't rigged so they'd lose it no matter how popular they were.
A vote for neoliberals is a vote to not have fascism for four more years.
That's an extremely hard case to make at this point though when the "not" fascist guy is funding a genocide and refusing to entertain the measures we'd need to take to actually take the fight to the fascists (ex. Championing an effort to pack the supreme court). Neoliberals are not truly acting like democracy is on the line, they say it a lot but it's not what their actions communicate, which makes it difficult to believe they'd ever stop obstructing progress.
Neoliberals don't stop or stall fascists by getting into power -- they just soft sell it and give the general public time to acclimate to the slipping of the Overton window. They do this in service of corporate interests rather than theocracy the way the far-right does but it ends us up in the same place.
If the plan is to try and encourage the Democrats to have primaries that actually have the power to move the party left, now is not the time to withhold a vote in protest as there’s a good chance that even if it did convince them, there’d never be another election that wasn’t rigged so they’d lose it no matter how popular they were.
Now is the time that the Democratic establishment chooses to try to strong arm the left into voting for them, they do this every election; claim the sky is falling and that we must vote for them or else. So I guess my view is, if they have assessed that they can risk playing a game of chicken, so can voters.
I understand Project 2025 and its seriousness, but that problem is going to be there every election from here until such a time that the GOP dissolves. I'm skeptical that 4 years will allow them to achieve everything they want to without sweeping the house and senate too. The president cannot legally be crowned king, and if they try to do that perhaps that is what it will take to actually radicalize the self-sedated upper middle-class liberals and political fence-sitters.
I'm sick of defensive leadership, and any offensive needs to start with attacking the Democratic structure that's making the party so ineffectual and complicit. More time is not enough in my opinion, people were talking about GOP plans to capture the supreme court as far back as Bush Jr. and giving Democrats wins achieved nothing. They need to be forced to take it seriously and I just don't see that happening without some pain (for them and, unfortunately, us).
Forget a perfect candidate. Just go back and watch the 2012 debate and both Obama and Mitt Romney were infinitely better than Joe Biden or Trump.
But they never told me which of them was the better golfer.
God it feels stupid to write that and it being an actual argument during a presidential debate.
I mean all the concerned people could take to the streets right now.
The DNC wants you to believe that all you can do is cast your vote for something every other year and just take the options presented. In that sense they are worse than the Reps who encourage their base to be active for more than just the ballots and it is working.
Especially now the Dems give me huge 1984 vibes in how the individual should handle politics relative to the party.
so the best that can be done is vote for the least fucked up option and work to improve things.
Democrats were good at the first part, but not the second. I remember lots of Dems saying "Vote for Biden, and then we'll hold his feet to the fire!" Well, there was no "holding his feet to the fire", because that's seen as enabling Trump.
The perfect candidate/option does not exist and never will
Yes, but there are candidates who are better, such as Jill Stein and Cornel West. You can't vote for a perfect candidate, but you can vote for the best candidate.
You might as well vote for Barney the dinosaur for all the good it will do.
A vote for a candidate who cannot win is wasted.
No candidate can win, unless you vote for them. That's the entire point of voting.
A vote for a candidate who cannot win is wasted.
Then it sounds like moderates need to be convinced a vote for a pro-corporate, genocide supporting, establishment geriatric is a waste of a vote.
wait, that is both of them! So, the felon adulterer serial liar narcissist one or the one that is older by two years and doesn't know where he is or what he is saying sometimes?
Right? Everything you can say negative about Biden can be said about Trump and Trump will be the worse offender of the two. Biden does have positive qualities, which I honestly cannot think can be said about Trump. He is a sushi roll consisting entirely of turd.
And you are happily imprisoning yourself into believing that the system is right to only offer you these two as candidates. If everyone that was progressive and unhappy with Biden would vote for Stein, then she could win. It is the mere talk about her having no chance of winning and the vote being wasted that keeps people in line to take the system as is.
I see the same arguments made against voting for smaller parties in my country where there is a minimum % they need to achieve before getting parliament seats. It is a system designed to preserve the current political elites with their network to the economic and cultural elites against ideas and movements taking a foothold.
Everyone sees what Biden is and what he stands for. If everyone who disagrees with that would take to the streets and demand the DNC to hold a real primary, or better yet demand fundamental changes to the political system, you would be surprised what is possible.
Stein isn't in the ballot in enough states to win the electoral college. She literally cannot win.
The difference being people voted for Biden in the 2020 primaries over much better people. I'm not going to reward that behavior again.
You need to also vote for someone who actually has a chance to win. Voting for a better candidate who realistically can't win in elections like this were someone like Trump could win is basically handing Trump the win. His base doesn't think for themselves, and would vote for him if he killed their family in front of them. I wish to God we had Bernie instead of Biden, but Bernie wouldn't have won.
I live in a blue state, so using that logic, I shouldn't vote at all. Voting for Trump or Biden is a waste of time, because the state will go blue regardless.
His base doesn’t think for themselves, and would vote for him if he killed their family in front of them.
If Biden killed your family in front of you, would you still vote for him?
I wish to God we had Bernie instead of Biden, but Bernie wouldn’t have won.
What convinced you of this?
Biden is simply not our best option.
What exactly makes a geriatric 81 year old the most fit person for the job?
There is plenty of time to get a new candidate.
Not having enough time and voting for the least fucked candidate is old and tired. How long do we vote for the Turd over the Douche instead of voting for someone that we actually believe in?
Also, I can't justify genocide.
are doing more damage than the people voting for the fascist party.
Hooooooly fuck this gets 27 upvotes? There it is folks. Leftists are doing more damage by refusing to vote than the people who stormed the capitol. This hot take brought to you by lemmy.
1000 people stormed the capitol. Allowing trump to win is far far far worse. Federal judge appointments alone are worth far more.
Yes, Hillary and the DNC allowed Trump to win by ignoring their base and chasing imaginary "swing" voters. And now they're doing it again.
The Republican party wouldn't exist if everybody voted. That is a straight up fact. As fucked as our election system is, they are far enough the minority that if everyone got out, the EC wouldn't matter.
You want a "left light" and a "true left", you aren't going to get it by abstaining, or by voting for nonviable moonshot third-party candidates. You are going to get it by abolishing the far right party and making that tiny sliver of the whole population realize that their antiquated views aren't welcome here.
They need to be crushed.
They only exist because people don't want to vote for the lesser of two evils, so instead they just don't vote. And what do you know, a -1 for the less evil is just as effective as a +1 for the more evil.
All of their success is brought on by feeding apathy in their opposition, making it more difficult to vote, destroying any faith in the system, and gerrymandering.
So yes, in my opinion, the far left refusing to hold their nose for a few minutes may as well be voting for the insurrectionist.
So this happened under Obama. People voted blue no matter who, gave Dems a super majority and they used it to pass a GOP-crafted bill that forced people to pay for useless private insurance.
The party itself needs to change and the types of candidates that the establishment supports needs to change. That doesn't happen when they can do their pied piper thing and keep winning. And no "just one last hit" won't let them overcome the addiction to corporate conservativism.
In a two party system the only way to "crush" the extreme right is by establishing another party to take the spot in the two party system. And you know what will happen then? The Dems will move from being the far right party with gay rights to being the extreme right party. Because they already are far right by any sensible measure.
I’ll let Lawrence O’Donnell, MSNBC host and Democratic insider explain.
They need to be crushed.
Then the way to do that is find a candidate in the primaries who appeals to everyone you need to make that happen. It was never a secret Biden was not that person.
It's a free country though. Feel free to go with whatever pitiful strategy you want. But you won't get the pro-corporate genocide supporting brain dead geriatric with my help. Let me know when you're ready to negotiate.
And if the Republicans get power this time around with a plan to remove all of our rights to hold even fair elections (project 2025) there won't be any negotiating. I'm a white cis male and it seems like you are too. We'll be fine either way. It's minorities and vulnerable classes that will get hit the most, like always. Women lost rights this last time around, it worries me how much more worse it will get.
Do I want Joe? Hell no, but I'll vote D for the rest of my days and walk through glass to do it. Once there's no more Rs then we can argue between Joe Biden and AOC. Still ain't perfect but a lot better than what we have.
It's a free country for now, feel free to sit this one out.
And if the Republicans get power this time around with a plan to remove all of our rights to hold even fair elections (project 2025) there won’t be any negotiating.
Sounds like the 2020 primaries were pretty important.
33 after I just upvoted. Vote for the Joe.
Who said that? No one said that refusing to vote is doing more damage than storming the Capitol.
You quoted it. Weird starting point to gaslight people.
we can’t fix our current situation in one election.
We can never fix the current situation in one election. Fixing the American system, within the parameters set forth by that system, requires a dedicated voting bloc that lasts multiple elections refusing to vote for the Dems until they shift far enough left to appease that bloc. As long as you are focused on the next election, your prescription for fixing American politics is just as unrealistic as a random Twitter tankie declaring a general strike.
If Project 2025 is successful, we won't ever have another democratic election. Our election is going to work like Russia's does after that point, and we will have a dictator of some kind that pretends to hold elections.
So, unfortunately, this is not the way.
Our election is going to work like Russia’s does
We already have sham elections, ours just pretends to have two democratic parties instead of one.
You are very right, and I feel your pain. I'm not judging you for feeling that way, at all.
I just don't think that abstaining from voting is going to work in favor of fixing this issue. If anything we need to keep voting to keep the country as left as it can be for now, until we can shift the two parties we are forced to pick from farther to the left.
As I said in another comment, this mode of thought is completely defeatist. If you rule out the possibility of a violent uprising and look at how to change our system from within the system itself, the ONLY way to push the country left is for a dedicated bloc of people to refuse to vote for centrist Democrats for multiple elections in a row until the party center aligns with that bloc. That's the reason why every one of the last few elections has been "the most important election in history" and all the other crap.
Perfect! Don't vote for the dems for several elections. I'm certain this plan will usher in a new era of progressive politics. Well done. You idiot.
To push the Dems left you can either a) reward them for moving left or b) punish them for moving right. Continuing to vote for them year after year as they continually move to the right accomplishes neither of these things.
you can either a) reward them for moving left or b) punish them for moving right
You're talking about the political will of a nation as you would training a puppy. It's incredibly reductive and simply not how the overton window works.
If the republicans win the next several elections the democrats will move further to the right to try to steal votes off them. The republicans will have to move further to the right to differentiate themselves from the democrats.
Not surprisingly, the more republicans win elections the further right everything moves.
Your position is exactly where the conservatives would have you. They can't win your vote so their best outcome is to convince you not to vote.
This is naiive accelerationist nonsense.
You do not fix systems by ignoring them and letting badgers tear them apart for years in your absence.
The vast majority of the time, actual change comes from people engaging with the system and slowly pushing it in the right direction.
If every single incentive structure rewards the Democrats for shifting to the right, please tell me how on earth they are under any pressure at all to shift back to the left. The answer is that they're not, and the people who believe that they're engaging in the system and pushing it in the right direction are simply fooling themselves as they take part in the system's unstoppable rightward movement.
Why you gotta smoke the UAW president, Shawn Fain?
People refusing to participate or vote for the candidate who is unfortunately our best option currently (biden) are doing more damage than the people voting for the fascist party.
Incredible take. "Say what you will about fascists, at least they support the two party system."
Right? Who knew refusing to vote for someone you don't support is more damaging than storming the capitol.
These people have truly gone off the deep end. I don't even know what to say. How do you reason with that? I can barely even comprehend it.