- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16451158
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Now the question is which is easier, convincing millions of people to vote for “anyone not a republican” or convincing a candidate to be more than “not republican”
Hey, primaries are around now. It’s a great time for that!
Participate in primaries. THIS is the election you want for that.
Depends on where you are. My state doesn’t have primaries till August and by then it’s basically already decided.
Same here, most primary candidate drop out before I even get my mail in ballot. Also there hasnt been a fair primary in 12 years so like so for over a decade party direction has been at the mercy of quid pro quo backroom deals, or straight up just appointing a candidate. Why would the next one suddenly be a fair representation of the will of voters?
What DNC did to Bernie caused Trump.
Why not both?
Because that is not the reality of what is currently going on.
it doesn’t really matter - regardless of how difficult it is, we should be doing both
Perhaps we could focus on promoting the dangers that fascism is currently presenting to the United States.
Yeah, it appears that Americans aren’t getting the education they need regarding the horrors of fascism. Apparently the largest war in history happening less than a century ago due to fascism isn’t enough. A war that was very well documented, including photographic and video evidence.
Dude, we can’t even come to agreement on the real actual truth about our own civil war when it comes to education.
No the real question is: which is easier, bitching online or running for office. I wish 1 in a million people who whinge about lack of candidates would actually go run for something. I’ll vote for you.
It depends. What it means to be “more than “not Republican”” is different for different people. Some will never be satisfied, and others are just plain wolves in sheep’s clothing trying to drive down Democratic turnout so the fascists can hold power.
While yes, those groups certainly exist, the majority of people just truly need help from someone who actually cares to help them, and not someone who says they do, but abandons the idea when it turns out to be difficult to supply that help because it never meant that much to them in the first place, if it was ever anything more than talk to begin with.
Pointing out the tiny problematic groups without even mentioning the much larger legitimate group reminds me of people who complain about welfare because of the tiny group of people that exploit it, completely ignoring the huge amount of people that just need help.
Every time the welfare thing comes up I respond, so what? Who fucking cares if some tiny minority of people abuse the system if it means the people who really need it have easier access, or access at all? No one abusing welfare is so rich you would argue they don’t need help anyway, unless there’s some sort of corruption going on. Big companies take way more in handouts from the government than people on welfare. Why can’t the big powerful successful corporations pull themselves up by their bootstraps?
If you are form the US, you are having your primaries by now.
Those are the ones where good people appear and need your vote to stay on the race. Go participate there, instead of complaining about the main election.
This is the correct answer.
The people who support the “both sides bad” argument and the “protest non-voters” are children who still need their parents to order their tendies for them at Chili’s.
- Get involved.
- Understand the actual candidates.
- Vote in the primaries.
The general election should be the last step in executing your civic duties and by that time you should be voting for your team.
the primaries are rigged, did you learn nothing from bernie in iowa?
Get enough people on your side to un-rig them then.
Bernie should have been the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee against the most easily beatable GOP nominee in recent history, but at the time I was a smug centrist and registered independent and could not vote in the primaries in my state.
I also voted third party in the 2016 general election because there was no way I was going to vote for Trump or Hillary. So 2016 was my fault. I did this.
Don’t be me.
are you a superdelegate or something? you sound like your individual vote is super important
“But they’ll steal the elections!!!”
Oh yeah? Just like all those state and special elections they’ve been losing by double-digit electorate shifts for the last 18 months? Including the one covering FUCKING MAR-A-LAGO???
Grow the fuck up. Get registered to vote, and when elections come round, VOTE, DAMN IT. Fascism only wins if you just give up and let it.
Exactly. I personally believe the election is going to be stolen, but nobody should fucking do the job FOR them. Voting MIGHT work, and you can still prepare for ridiculous, shortsighted guerilla fantasies after taking a day to go TRY the easy solution.
What are these gorilla fantasies?
You know, living in the jungle with your favorite apes
Harambe.
They’ll try to shove you off the platform with constant negativity and trying to act like Trump is just a continuation of all the same. If you didn’t care before, why do you care now?
It’s not. It’s different.
Both parties have the identical end goal in mind. One is just slower at it.
So for fucks sake pick the one that’s slower at it so you have more time to do something about it. It’s not like voting locks you out of any other actions.
It’s no use asking these people to do any kind of direct action. They think abstaining once every four years will bring an end to capitalism. They’ll never attend a protest or vote in a primary, much less pick up a gun for the revolution.
more time to do something about it
Do what about it exactly?
How the fuck does voting for slow burn help?
Whatever you think needs to be done; absolutely anything ranging from peaceful protest to violent uprising. What exactly are you arguing, that it’s best to sit back and take it? That it’s better to put you face in the mouth of the leopard eating you rather than your arm so that at least you have a chance of fighting back? Even if one is an accelerationist (a profoundly naive position in my opinion, but that’s another discussion) willfully not voting is the intellectually cowardly option, justifying inaction rather than sticking to your ideals and actively voting for the option you believe will accelerate the most. The point is that voting is not a mutually exclusive action to take like so many people on Lemmy seem to act like it is.
Its not about not voting. For a start, there’s dozens of things to vote on than just one. Its about being shamed into voting for a bad option and not giving into that pressure tactic, and changing the narrative to making better choices
But Americans aren’t doing anything about it except voting.
The ones who are going to do more are already doing more, and both-sidesing the ones who aren’t is just going to make them do even less. Just let them help with slowing the descent down a bit, that’s the most they’re going to do anyway. It buys time for the ones who are doing something to do something.
I hate this take, because it ignores the reality that this isn’t Europe and that you can’t even get sick in this country without health insurance with risking homelessness, let alone any massive coordinated action.
Like around here they’re always posting pictures of protests and you look at the people at the protests and it’s all retirees and college kids. Why? Because everyone else is at fucking work because if they’re not at work they miss a mortgage/rent payment and end up living in their car. The majority of US states have at will employment laws meaning they can and will fire you with no notice or even need to provide justification beyond the performative “this termination not due to you being a member of a legally protected class”.
Wage slaves are still slaves, and telling people today that their inaction means they’re complicit is no different then going back in time 200 years and telling the slaves on the plantations that they’re just as responsible for their bondage as the people that put them in chains. Fuck that nonsense.
Wrong
The left and the right.
Of the Overton Window.
So absolute reactionary and slightly less reactionary
As a non US citizen I’ll say it again: you factually only have right.
The day most realize this will be the start of change.
“Keep doing the same thing over and over again, and each time, expect a different outcome. It is the smart intelligent sane thing to do.” – Einstein, probably
You mean like rolling dice?
Lol.
More “bOtH sIdEz” idiocy.
I’m just sad that more than zero people have upvoted that idiocy. Guess I’ll just take solace in the fact that more than twice as many people have downvoted it.
“I don’t have anything of substance to add so I’ll just call you an idiot”
See, you’re already acting like a MAGA. Whee.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you dumb fuck Americans should have voted for Vermin Supreme.
I’ll say it again, you dumb fuck Americans should have voted
Ftfy lol
Lol yeah, also that.
Seriously, though, he’s as qualified as almost any US President during my lifetime, and more intelligent than most of them. Vote Vermin.
I want to preface this by saying that I do vote in every election, and I think everyone should exercise their right to vote.
That being said, both parties are bad. We’re in a class war, and the Democrats are just as beholden/part of the oligarchy as the Republicans are.
The Republicans are definitely worse than the Democrats. There’s no question there, but what we really need is a fucking revolution.
both sides are pretty bad, but you still gotta get on the bus
I mean, both sides DO suck. But the decision being made boils down to which side you think has the best chance of leading to an eventual outcome that doesn’t suck. I’m not voting for a party I like, because frankly that doesn’t exist as a viable option, but I’m not going to not vote just because neither side is better than a 3/10. I’d rather the 3/10 than the 1/10.
I think there’s real value in being honest about your feelings. The people who represent us need to know we think they suck. The people around us need to feel like others have the same struggles we do. The space for nuance does exist.
Your frequent reminder from the local queer, leftist furry that if “voting didn’t work,” Republicans and billionaires wouldn’t spend billions of dollars on voter suppression and propaganda telling you that your vote doesn’t matter.
Do your part, waste billionaire money by voting anyway, by any means necessary~
Imagine the hammer is the polling box and all your solutions look like voting when see all your problems as nails.
Everyone should vote. Absolutely. Go out, do it, cast that ballot.
Voting won’t solve all of our problems. We need to go beyond just voting.
Voting won’t solve all of our problems.
Absolutely, but not voting will make solving all of those problems more difficult, not easier.
I think everyone on Lemmy knows that?
The bigger problem is people who think withholding their vote is a form of direct action, and means they don’t have to go out and protest against the oligarchs.
One should vote, it simply shouldn’t be the end of it.
If you voted Democrat and thought you made your part, wrong. You barely made one shift towards one slightly less terrible group. This is not victory. A part of what you should do, yes. All you should do - not.
Republicans also really love when you vote third party.
Did I ever mention voting for third party?
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I’m not voting for liberal zionists under any circumstances. Your candidates and party suck and deserve to eat shit
…And that is how Trump became President.
Really is that so
That’s true, but I think neutral voters need to be told to do direct action a lot more than left voters. Everyone I know who does direct action voted Democrat. But I know lots of people who didn’t vote and don’t do direct action.
To only have two sides is the problem.
Sure, but as far as what we can control right now, let’s elect some fucking Democrats please
How much longer will this be a cookie cutter answer?
Until there are enough grassroots progressive candidates to take over the democratic party the same way the tea party movement took over the republican party, and finally some progressive initiatives can pass into law, such as eliminating FPTP.
Please don’t take the “just vote democrats into office” answer to mean “sit tight and do nothing but vote” when voting is really the bare minimum activism you should be doing to preserve a democratic system.
I just wonder how patient US voters are, for the changes you project.
Does it matter? Most voters have no attention span. They aren’t revolutionaries. They aren’t going to take to the streets no matter how bad things get. Stop trying to change people who aren’t going to change when you lack the influence to change them in the first place, and focus on trying to leverage what you’ve got as productively as you can.
Build your cadres, make the change you can, and make lemonade from the lemons you’ve got.
Let’s get Democrats controlling all three branches of government for more than 30 seconds to start.
And by “controlling” we mean “supermajority” thanks to the veto and filibuster.
And will things magically be better? Well, better, yes, good, no. First, it takes a lot of time to undo the harm fascists have done. And second, our oligarchs would still be in control, pushing for their needs above ours.
So we need to… solve… our oligarch problem AND win a supermajority AND then We the People need to push that Overton window back to the left, forcing our politicians to serve our needs.
…which is why I say we’re pretty fucked. But that’s what needs to happen, anyway.
Until Americans learn how to vote for 3rd parties in local/state elections and get more than ZERO 3rd party representatives in Congress.
Yeah, we need more John Fettermans and Joe Manchins and Krysten Cinemenmas.
Right. So the alternative to those is more Marco Rubios, Mike Johnsons, MTG, etc etc etc etc. All of whom are much worse.
We need better people running for office that get financial support from the people, but when it comes down to the general election, whatever addhats made it that far, the Democrat is going to be BY FAR the better pick 99.9% of the time. And if the Republican is truly better, sure, vote for them, but remember that at the party level, Republicans are the ones bringing us fascism.
The point - the entire fucking point - is people saying “Don’t vote for the Fetterman/Manchin/etc in the general election” help the fascists win. Of course it’s shitty options, but you want to pick the LESS. FUCKING. SHITTY. OPTIONS.
It’s going to be an even bigger problem when it drops down to only having one side.
The Red Army is not coming to the rescue.
It’s one of many parts of the problem.
Only two sides stand a chance of winning a presidential election. No amount of whining about the 2-party system changes that.
Stop whining everybody. Act like you are able to change something. I know you can do it!
I refuse to stop shit talking democrats, if they weren’t absolutely complicit warmongers we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.
Nobody is saying not to shit talking them, people are saying that nuance is needed. We need to push for better representatives. BUT. When the general election happens, we need to vote Democrat because REPUBLICANS ARE FUCKING FASCISTS. Because while both sides suck, both sides do not suck equally. So shit talk your Democrats, as long as you shit talk your Republicans even more. Or do they get a pass because you write them off as evil?
Does your shit talking drive people away from voting for Democrats when the vote is Dem vs Repub? If so, you support fascism. Plain and simple.
Put your energy into change where it matters: Primaries, other offices, pushing society back to the left away from fascism. Make sure you’re not helping the fascists win.
The OP meme is not calling for nuance, it’s saying that if you’re shittalking democrats you’re helping Republicans win.
My democrat state rep sucks and is in practice a thinly-veiled Republican coasting on incumbency and people not investigating beyond the ‘D’
My federal rep (D) has been actively complicit in perpetuating the genocide in Palestine and allowing Trump to walk all over Venezuela. I actually put in a lot of effort with antiwar groups to try to sway them in the past. What I learned is that when it comes to war and empire if they want to climb the ranks in DC they’re going to tow the line.
Open Republicans are obviously worse, but theyre also a non factor in my state, they just run for ‘nonpartisan’ seats or pose as democrats. This is also why i chaff at vote-bluers, they will act like challenging an incumbent ‘democrat’ who sucks is somehow helping Republicans
How so?
What do you mean how so?
The democrats are prolific warmongers, they just think they’re smarter about it than Republicans.
Oh I’m not arguing that, I’m just asking how that would have kept us out of this mess.
If they weren’t prolific warmongers and instead did things that were actually popular at home then they would probably be seen as more trustworthy and not lost to Trump repeatedly, idk how more to spell it out for you
Maybe, but then they would’ve been buried by AIPAC money, as we’ve repeatedly seen. They’ve done plenty of positive things at home, or at least tried to, but all that gets ignored. Sure, I’d love to see a positive change, but we have to acknowledge the reality of the political landscape, and opposing Israel is political suicide with current campaign finance influences.
They didn’t oppose Israel at all and they ate complete shit anyways.
they may have ‘tried’ to do positive things at home, but they also spent billions arming a genocide which triggered a blockade of the red sea and disrupted supply chains. Failing to negotiate a settlement with russia didn’t do energy markets any favors, the blowback from sanctions and energy prices absolutely contributed to inflation that people felt, and then blamed on democrats. ‘brandonflation’
Like you can make excuses about AIPAC or whatever, but the people who felt the consequences of these wars voted accordingly. It sucks that there was no left candidate to vote for and that resulted in republicans winning. However that’s also the democrats fault for not running a real primary and ignoring all the people voting uncommitted.
There were plenty of warnings, they were just ignored.
Sure, but Democratic voters are not democratic leadership. If you have a problem with Democratic leadership, tell it to them. Voters don’t benefit from Democrats losing to Republicans.
Beyond the more general point, a concrete example - if the Biden admin didn’t supply unlimited bombs to Israel, they would not have lost to Trump. There’s enough numbers to support this claim.
A lack of good options in the general is a sign of poor turnout in primaries.
Exactly. And a two party system basically ensures that.
There haven’t been fair primaries in three presidential cycles. The DNC is a business and the primaries are entirely up to them and they have sucessfully argued in courts they have no duty to not medel in them any way they see fit. If primary turnout is low, the DNC owns a big share of why too.
That’s why ranked choice voting is needed
Ah america. The ‘do nothing and hope for the best’ system of election.
Dear Americans, voting for Democrats will get you nowhere, too. I know this is hard, but you will have to start a revolution or vote for a third party in an unprecedented coordinated effort.
