Former democratic party activists are organizing Muslims and Arab-Americans in Swing states to vote against Biden with the demand that he support a ceasefire in Gaza.
I’ll allow them a little bit of electoralism this time.
I can tell ya that my DSA chapter says voting for Biden is a vote for democracy
Mine is discussing only voting for candidates who publicly and unequivocally support ceasefire and ending military support for Israel, down to local officials.
My area has a large Arab & Muslim population though. Local Muslim organizers have been very clear on this stance already. At one rally, an iman said there was only one elected worth voting for in the whole county
That’s a good idea.
Lot of disagreement over it, so I don’t think we’ll have chapter wide consensus. However, the majority of active members seem swayed by the argument.
That’s great.
We haven’t even talked about what’s going on in Isn’treal
democracy is euphemism for something else at this point
every politician (lol Cornel West) agrees that we must imitate ancient Greek/Roman society
…wasn’t Sparta like 90% chattel slavery?
I thought that’s what freedom was the euphemism for but same difference
This. Is. An. Investment. In. Democracy.
Oof, my DSA are half fucking MLs with a spattering of communists and anarchists and Tony, fuck you Tony you know what you did(be a liberal)
Better than voting against Biden lol
a vote for democracy
The democracy:
keeping creationists out of your local school board is a great example of your point 3 exception.
There’s probably even some population size where local politics aren’t totally inbred but aren’t prohibitively big where a small group of invested leftists could elect a city counselor or county clerk, or bully an entrenched liberal into doing good things but you have to do a bunch of non-electoral organizing to get to that point.
This is where I’m at. I’m in rural New York so unless I ball my ballot up and throw it at Joe Biden so hard he dies my vote WILL NOT have any effect on national elections.
But the only reason we dont have a school board that wants to replace math and history with Bible study and Introduction to Respecting the Troops is because the 30 people in town who aren’t willfully ignorant bigots organize to vote for somebody who believes public education is a good thing.
Nothing to do but prepare for the maoist uprising against New York’s landlords
Hear hear!
Why I Won’t Vote by W. E. B. DuBois, The Nation, 20 October 1956
This is dumb.
From my understanding of the CPUSA’s program the reason to be willing to collaborate with Democrats and endorse voooooting is because the Dems and more importantly their base represent one of the only nationally viable venues for the kind of progressive coalitional politics we’re trying to do with working class and otherwise oppressed people against american fascism and towards socialism.
Reading the link I’m really not getting ultraleftist denunciation of voting and electoral politics entirely, it reads more like a member of one part of the Dem’s progressive base who’s been burned by the centrist right collaborationist wing of the Dems supporting genocide and hate towards their people to hilt. I can understand allying with Dems and participating in electoralism because communism is about power to the people and right now the people are still trying to exercise their power within the Democratic party, but if we’re here for the people shouldn’t we be there for them when the Dems fuck them over? Why call this dumb?
Believe me I’m annoyed too when leftists go on about refusing to vote for Democrats as if it’s a revolutionary act, but how is this that? Like there’s a pretty clear call for change on the Dem’s part, and I don’t see why a constituency being abandoned like this shouldn’t speak out and make it clear what the Dems are doing.
Wait a second, voting for the Democrats is not revolutionary. Watchu talkin’ bout
Not sure where you’re getting that, I said refusing to ever vote for them isn’t revolutionary. It’s exactly as non-revolutionary as voting blue no matter who. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
You also mentioned CPUSA, which had nothing to do with the convo.
Also, I agree.
I mentioned CPUSA because I know you’re a pretty visible member on here, and I’m trying to square your behavior in these comments with what I know of the CPUSA’s politics and I’m assuming your politics.
Fair, but it seemed like you were pigeon-holing me into “CPUSA member.” I’m more than that and my politics isn’t just informed by the organization I’m in. The last time someone did that, it was to deflect from my actual positions and arguments.
And usually, people who talk smack about the CPUSA haven’t even been in the organization or were only tangentially involved at best. Not all, but a lot.
Not that you were necessarily doing that, of course.
Sorry that I jumped to conclusions.
Ever since I came here, people (including the previous Lemmygrad mods) bring up my membership like it’s an argument against me. Not all, you’re mostly good, just some people.
Not that you’re doing that.
Gah!
Sorry for over-reacting, is what I’m saying.
ya maybe I should’ve brought up that I’m also a CPUSA member but that felt a little cheap at the time. I think we broadly agree on voting on electoralism and going off your one “confession post” so it was a little disappointing do see you calling a perspective that’s pretty important right now stupid and going after people who’re saying they don’t want to vote for a guy actively enabling genocide at this very moment.
Like joining the CPUSA and talking abt it with comrades there helped me move past being a “there’s no difference and engaging with electoralism is a waste of time because it’s not immediate armed insurrection” mindset. IMO the voting question is really a pretty simple problem with a simple answer, and getting so heated over it to the point of defending views most of us don’t even really hold isn’t helping the problem of the entire american left having a meltdown over elections every few years.
Why relitigate if voting is good or bad right now, when a sizable contingent of people are getting fed up with the Dems, and not even the most progressive elements of the Dems are stepping up to back them? If we’re trying to build a mass movement, isn’t this a golden opportunity to weaken the hold of a liberal capitalist party on that mass movement?
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Could you elaborate?
Voting for Trump is not the answer.
Voting
for Trumpis not the answer.there all better
I know right? The Democratic Party really expects us to vote for a literal actual segregationist, pioneer of the devastating crime bill, anti LGBTQ+ rights voter, war hawk, and current supporter of genocide! That’s dumb! That’s what you mean, right?
No.
Whatcha mean by that
It’s a rad lib
CPUSA truly has a solid messaging front
I don’t care about optics.
It’s not optics, it’s lockstep strategy behind the democrats. Ironclad
But there is none.
You sound like Joe Sims got a hexbear account tbh
Voting for Trump is not the answer.
? Nobody was talking about that
Good.
“When you vote for the lesser of two evils what happens? You always get evil, and you always get less” - who knows but I heard it somewhere
I remember reading something like that from one of the Witcher books from that one Pole writer.
Edit:
“Evil is Evil. Lesser, greater, middling… Makes no difference. The degree is arbitary. The definition’s blurred. If I’m to choose between one evil and another… I’d rather not choose at all.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, The Last Wish
there’s naked boobie in that clip, YouTube has fallen
I’ve only read the books.
well a part of the first book
The point of this quote by Geralt in the story is that Geralt is wrong and using it as an excuse to avoid taking action to protect innocent lives. The result of this stance of his is that he butchers several people in a public square and gets driven out of town and forever labeled “The Butcher of Blaviken.” Only a couple pages after this ‘evil is evil’ monologue he says, verbatim, “We have to choose the lesser evil!”
lol. lmao even
Genocide Joe vs Trump is a debate over whether to drive off a cliff while following the speed limit or at 120 MPH.
The best possible argument you can make for Biden is that the left isn’t organized enough to be endorsing accelerationism
It’s not a real good one
From a purely tactical electoralist perspective, you are better off showing up to vote for down-ballot state and local officials and leaving national ones blank. It’s the opposite of what people normally do, which is just not show up if they don’t like the national candidates. The parties look at the difference in votes both between candidates and in terms of the overall number cast.
Yeah that’s probably the best approach.
Accelerationism is when you spend the first Tuesday ocurring after a Monday in November gooning on your couch instead of voting to re-elect the guy who’s arming genocidaires and spreading blood libel in addresses to the nation.
perfect analogy
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It’s also important to remember that the president isn’t truly selected by votes - it’s very possible to get the most votes and still lose.
Good lord, so the plan is to vote for Trump? The guy who has a pattern of simping for right wing authoritarian fuckheads like Nettanyahu?
Honestly, their efforts would be much better spent trying to get election reform like ranked choice voting up as local election issues in order to break the two party system’s kneecaps.
Honestly, their efforts would be much better spent trying to get election reform like ranked choice voting up as local election issues in order to break the two party system’s kneecaps.
Congratulations on telling the uppity muslims how to best proceed with their struggle
Get fucked lib
did you miss last week where Biden/Dems were “simping for rightwing authoritarian fuckheads like Nettanyahu?”
everyone at any level of politics in the US does that tho
Read the fucking article mf
Biden’s former chief of staff, Ron Klain, said on Sunday: “Trump voters going to do Trump” in response to a story about how Muslims and Arab Americans were angry at Biden’s response. I can say this with a hand on my heart: I have and will never vote for Trump, and unless he changes course drastically, I have no intention of voting for Biden ever again.
How do you interpret “I have and will never vote for Trump” to be an endorsement of voting for Trump? this is just someone refusing to vote for anyone but a third party unless the democrats put forward a candidate who isn’t Genocide Joe or Kamala Harris
As though not voting, or voting for some third party pumped full of far right donor money, is anything other than a default vote for trump.
If voting for someone who is not Trump is by default a vote for Trump, then is voting for Trump equal to 2 votes for Trump?
We’re reaching areas of mathematics never dreamed before!
By not voting for Biden you are voting for Trump. But, because of symmetry, by not voting for Trump you are voting for Biden.
Therefore, by not voting for either you are voting for both and committing voter fraud, which is cool and good
“Yes Biden may be bathing in the blood of the innocent, but at least he’s not Orange Man. This is what the adults in the room do sweaty.”
You’re asking people to vote for a guy that is actively supporting an oppressive apartheid state in carrying out what may very well turn into a full on genocide.
Does this really not make you pause?
ppbAttn shitlib, this will be news to you but guess what? Neoliberals like Biden are fucking right wing. That’s what makes them NEOLIBERALS.
Weird how you choose to endorse them, curious even, while asserting that choosing to support only actually leftist candidates is, somehow, a right wing thing to do.
According to you we have to abandon our principles and support for people whose policies would actually help things and support your right wing candidates or else we’re “far right.” Either way we’d still have a fucking right wing government!
Well if Genocide Joe wants to not throw away the election then he’d better stop supporting the Israeli military in its ethnic cleansing.
Like I cannot believe the level of pure fucking entitlement to claim that a man who’s been actively campaigning for the democrats since 2008 is a stupid trump supporter when finally, after 15 years of supporting the democrats under the promise of “the lesser evil” and then watching them repeatedly commit horrific crimes against the Arab world, he says he won’t vote for the democrats until they change how they act after the president announced that he proudly endorses the apartheid state of israel while, under his watch, the US is funding an active genocide against the Palestinian people.
To give a sense of scale, the Israeli government has killed 2,360 children in the last 3 weeks in gaza, the Russian government has killed 1,700 in the last 2 years in Ukraine. Biden is endorsing a far right fascistic murderer who’s easily outpaced Putin in just a few weeks and you’re sitting there pearl clutching that Muslim democrat voters are turned off by Biden when he’s been pretty much making it clear that the lives of Muslim children from Gaza are worth less to him than white European children from Ukraine.
And like, the author of the article’s not even refusing to vote for the democrats again, not even point blank saying he won’t vote for biden again, all he’s saying is that either the democrats need a new candidate or Biden needs to change his stance if they want his vote and the vote of many other Arab American democrats who swung the election for Biden back in 2020.
Like this is the textbook purpose of democracy, that if Biden wants to win then he has to oppose fascism, and if he refuses to do that then what the fuck where so many Americans turning up to vote for in 2020?
"In North Korea you have to vote for one party, if anything bad happens they blame you and tell you fascism is your fault. This is what they mean by democracy. "
I can rank my choice of genocidal leaders. This is a civil society.
Exactly. Libs love to feel like they can just fix a rule and be saved.
Ranked choice won’t matter if the bourgeois still control the choices
You can just vote away their power. I don’t think them literally owning the means of production will be a problem.
Read the article.
Yeah, I fucked up.
No you didn’t. We all saw where not voting and voting for “independents” got us in 2016.
No kidding! When Trump was in charge, we had complete legislative gridlock, a nonfunctional administrative state, kids in cages, accelerating environmental destruction, and support for genocidal dictators. Thank god we’ve been able to vote him out of office and restore complete legislative gridlock, a nonfunctional administrative state, kids in cages, accelerating environmental destruction, and support for genocidal dictators.
Damn, it sounds like the DNC should try harder in 2024 then.
It’s cool, I fucked up once too. Horrible creature…
I asked this question and apparently now vote for genocidal maniacs. It was a weird experience.
I don’t think that the people here plan to vote for genocidal maniac Joe Biden
I live in an urban center and do not have a single GOP official as a representative for any level of government whatsoever; my election is the primary. Go pester the shitty suburbanites with your, “A vote for third party is a vote for Trump!”. They’re the ones that need to hear it.
Yes. All of us communists are really into Trump.
the plan is not to vote at all.
I’m failing to understand this POV. Even if you think neither outcome is good why wouldn’t you do what minimal thing you can to keep the worse option from happening?
Look if Genocide Joe wants my vote, he could try doing something to earn it instead of just saying “I’m not Trump”.
I can agree Joe is a genocider and still vote for him instead of trump*.
Trump is happy to apply his genocidal ideals to his own countrymen. Biden, less so - mostly directed outward/foreign. If my vote has influence on this matter, even slightly, who am I going to choose?
Moreover, I’m not pretending my vote is some sacred gift I can only give to the most perfect candidate. Rather, I am happy if my trash vote can negate a even more-trash vote.
* I predict being the_dunk_tank material and I accept my fate.
Also I want to say, I am really trying to understand this. even if I say wierd/bad faith/something stuff it’s an accident and I want to understand the point of view of “anti electoralism” – if that’s the right term.
I can agree Joe is a genocider and still vote for him instead of trump
I can’t. It should be an easy red line to have
Maybe this is what’s hard for me to understand about the anti-electoral stance. From what I’ve gathered in this thread, my vote is simultaneously completely worthless and inffective, yet also the most precious thing I should only give to the most worthy.
I’m having a hard time figuring out how to word this comment to sound less snarky, but I am legitimately interested in your thoughts on this dichotomy. Or if you think this is not a good interpretation of your+other commenter’s comments, I’ll be happy to be corrected. Thanks.
It’s pretty simple, if your vote is for a ‘lesser evil’ that is a negative choice proposition, hardly worthy of the word ‘choice’ or ‘democracy’. Two bad choices are still two bad choices, even if one is marketed as slightly less bad. The entire Dem strategy for like decades now has been this prisoners dilemma proposition. They never provide federal protection enshrined in law because that would take away the leverage of this strategy. The only way to break out of this pattern is to really threaten it directly by not acquiescing to it like good little liberals. That is why you have cognitive dissonance over this topic. The social pressure of ‘lesser evil’ is so deeply embedded in the liberal worldview that any questioning of it is adjacent to being a terrible right-winger.
The cultural war divide benefits Dems, so they do everything to perpetuate it instead of reconciling it. You need to comprehend this to have a realistic understanding of US political economy.
From what I’ve gathered in this thread, my vote is simultaneously completely worthless and inffective, yet also the most precious thing I should only give to the most worthy.
I think of it like this. In an ideal society (or at least vaguely functional political system), your vote would and should be precious. Yet in our shithole nation, this precious thing of yours is forced to be given to one of two genocidal evils.
is the face of a party who pretends like they’ll take your vote and do something useful. Stand up for minorities, do something about climate change, maybe reduce the mass social murder in this country, or just do fucking anything at all. Yet time and again, they only make things worse. If your vote is precious and should only be given to the most worthy, why give it to a racist, senile, sex offending, warhawk?And we all know that to vote for anyone other than the two candidates is a useless gesture, accomplishing nothing. So in practical terms, voting in this nation is voting for one of
this guy’s two masks. Why fucking bother?Edit to add-
I can agree Joe is a genocider and still vote for him instead of trump
Why? Why the shitting fuck would you decide “This genocider is deserving of my vote”. That is a physical manifestation of your thought that this man should lead our country. You’re not just passively thinking it, you’re taking an active step to make sure that happens. If a daycare was trying to choose between John Wayne Gacy or Albert Fisch to be its director, it would be fucking insane to give it serious thought and then vote on one of them. You should demand to know why this is the choice in the first place, and not shrug and vote for one of them like a browbeaten little b----
I want to understand the point of view of “anti electoralism” – if that’s the right term.
That’s relatively straightforward. Elections are a distraction, they redirect energy into a form the political order can digest without changing. The more you invest in them the less you are putting into alternatives that are more useful. Vote, if you want, it might do marginal good in an infinitesimal scale, but agonizing over voting is playing into a system that exists to funnel all your energy into itself.
Vote, if you want, it might do marginal good in an infinitesimal scale, but agonizing over voting is playing into a system that exists to funnel all your energy into itself.
I guess this is where I’m lost. They mail me ballots, I fill them out and mail them back. It’s almost the least I can do. If every person opposed to fascism did the same, I believe fascism’s encroachment would be slowed.
I don’t know what you mean. Democrats keep winning by the numbers. Fascism is still encroaching. It’s been encroaching my entire life, and Republicans have won the popular vote once in that time. People do vote. And this still happens.
I’m not telling you not to, I keep saying it’s fine to do if you feel like it. So is watching a movie or getting a snack at 3 in the morning. You do you. But don’t act like it’s fixing anything. It clearly isn’t. That’s why you get to keep doing it.
As we all know, power comes from the barrel of a vote.
If every person opposed to fascism did the same, I believe fascism’s encroachment would be slowed.
That should be true. Its totally sound reasoning. Except the system in the US is designed to frustrate popular will and facilitate minority rule. Individuals simply voting their conscious will never solve anything within this system.
Liberal democracy and the spectacle of the election, is a perfect vehicle for the rise of fascism, but it actively hinders what is needed to stop it
Trump is happy to apply his genocidal ideals to his own countrymen. Biden, less so - mostly directed outward/foreign. If my vote has influence on this matter, even slightly, who am I going to choose?
Biden has Trump beat on deportations, police funding, military funding, and he’s completely unwilling to stand for abortion right, trans rights, and debt forgiveness
And now he’s a genocider, so what actually are we supposed to be afraid of from Trump? At least with Trump most of the media and 50% of the establishment will oppose him, unlike with Biden where the 90% of the media backs him and 80% of the establishment cosigns his genocidal ideals
I fear Biden and his ilk more than I fear Trump and his incompetent clown show, because at least with Trump I can be confident most of the country will oppose him
I can’t even be confident that so-called “leftists” will oppose Biden, because here you are arguing we should vote for a man who’s committing genocide
I’m not going to defend Biden or dems in general, but part of your point that I want to address directly is this:
completely unwilling to stand for abortion right, trans rights, and debt forgiveness
While he and other dems are “unwilling to stand”, they are also not actively working against those or certain other causes. If everyone who believes in these causes chooses to not vote because they’re not being addressed, republicans will win and do their damndest to stomp all over marginalized groups even more. This is why I vote (against them).
at least with Trump I can be confident most of the country will oppose him
Oppose him verbally, sure. But that has no effect, and actually sometimes emboldens him and other R’s as they do stuff to “own the libs”. Why is opposing him like this good, but opposing him with my vote bad?
I think my stumbling block in trying to understand this POV is that I do believe there is inherently a difference between voting for someone and voting against someone else. I’d rather not freely cede anything to those I consider to be worse. I understand you may see the outcome as “the same” and for some people, it is. But I do believe that there are people where a difference between the parties exists and is important in their lives.
To address your last point, I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything, certainly not against their conscience. I’m trying to understand why walking away from elections is (or at least seems to be) the general consensus amongst this community.
Thanks for your thoughts.
While he and other dems are “unwilling to stand”, they are also not actively working against those or certain other causes. If everyone who believes in these causes chooses to not vote because they’re not being addressed, republicans will win and do their damndest to stomp all over marginalized groups even more. This is why I vote (against them).
Why did you zoom in on the “completely unwilling to stand for abortion right, trans rights, and debt forgiveness” part, but completely ignore the “Biden has Trump beat on deportations, police funding, military funding” part? BIDEN IS DOING his damndest to stomp all over marginalized groups, even more then Trump when it comes to those specific areas of contention
Also not being willing to stand up to republicans in terms of abortion rights IS the same thing as “actively working against those or certain other causes”, in fact false alliance is worse than outright hostility, because it confuses and disarms marginalized people who look for allies
Oppose him verbally, sure. But that has no effect
Really? An entire country with every liberal and leftist org united against Trump and the only opposition would be verbal? And I thought I was a doomer
Why is opposing him like this good, but opposing him with my vote bad?
Because your vote strengthens the Ratchet Effect, as we’ve seen with Biden’s rightward shift
I think my stumbling block in trying to understand this POV is that I do believe there is inherently a difference between voting for someone and voting against someone else
If the person you’re voting FOR is doing the same or worse things than the person you’re voting AGAINST, then your politics are frankly incoherent and insincere, and you’ll end up valuing the lives of certain people over the lives of others, and at that point you might as well just become a republican
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/298.html
Linked elsewhere in the thread, but W.E.B. Dubois explains it here, in ways that still ring clearly today.
So the part of this that stood out to me the most is this:
Is the refusal to vote in this phony election a counsel of despair? No, it is dogged hope. It is hope that if twenty-five million voters refrain from voting in 1956 because of their own accord and not because of a sly wink from Khrushchev, this might make the American people ask how much longer this dumb farce can proceed without even a whimper of protest.
Now we have ~80 million people abstaining in the 2020 elections (per NPR: https://www.npr.org/2020/12/15/945031391/poll-despite-record-turnout-80-million-americans-didnt-vote-heres-why), and yet the dumb farce goes on. If people continue removing themselves from the voter pool, it’ll still continue on. I’m failing to see the hope here. Maybe that’s why I’m having a hard time understanding this point of view.
Thanks again for pointing me to that link.
The problem here is that enabling violence in any form outside, leaks right back in. You don’t think the Anti-China rhetoric ramped up Anti-Asian violence in the United States? The Dems’ unconditional backing of the Israeli “human animals” treatment got a Palestinian boy and his mother stabbed to death in Chicago. Your vote is the ONLY bargaining chip you have in this “democracy” in North America. If you fail to apply conditions, you’re just rubber stamping any horrific policy that the administration enacts.
Materially all you are doing is helping the Democrats keep being shit because they believe they are entitled to the vote of every decent person on the basis of this lesser evilism. Breaking their base, even if it lets the Republicans win one cycle, would actually pressure concessions out of them.
Breaking their base, even if it lets the Republicans win one cycle
I appreciate what you’re saying, but its not resonating with me.
“This is the most important election of our lifetime” – yes, I know you all make fun of people for saying that, and I am mostly quoting it because I know I’ll get called out if I try to dance around the wording. But, that sentiment seems true to me based on what R’s have been getting up to lately. They seem poised to take over if they win one more cycle.
This is the most important election of our lifetime yes, I know you all make fun of people for saying that
We make fun of it because its been an excuse for like 40 years if not more
I appreciate your attempting to exercise self-awareness, but I am again asking you to step back and look at the bigger picture: Let’s say there is validity to the claim “This is the most important election of our lifetime.” I reject that claim, it seems to have no material basis, but let’s say it is real. What is this really saying? “This is the most important election you have encountered yet” This is a critical distinction that is never articulated because the simple fact of the matter is that what you are saying didn’t become a meme this cycle, it became a meme – being generous – in 2016 (less generous would put it in the mid-20th century). 2016 got this treatment, 2020 got this treatment, 2024 is getting this treatment, and can you tell me with a straight face that 2028 won’t be treated the same way?
So we have a pattern of crisis being proclaimed, where each one is said to be worse than the previous crises, and there is absolutely no model to stop it except by being so myopic you can’t see the future 3 inches past your nose. Let us say that it is “the most important election of our lifetimes [so far],” that’s because it beat out the previous crises, but the ones after will surely be worse. Even giving what I view as an unreasonable amount of leeway to your hypothesis, the calculus of risking Trump winning in order to actually make positive change and develop a means to break this vicious cycle of ever-greater threat of catastrophe. You are sinking and debating that we should spend forever slowing how quickly we sink instead of trying to get out of the water.
I appreciate your attempting to exercise self-awareness
Lol! I appreciate your well-crafted backhanded compliment :)
To lay it bare, why do I think this election (and the previous two, and the next) are so important? I think there are two major crises facing us simultaneously. One is the climate crisis. The other is the web of corruption, subversion of truth, weaponization and/or crippling of institutions, and legalized bribery – a nebulous but worsening condition that I believe started with Reagan but has continued relatively unabated for 50 years and took off like a rocket under Trump and has metastasized to all levels of government, and shows no signs of stopping.
In the case of climate, every year that passes without remediation is bringing us closer to hell on earth and there may be no going back. In the case of corruption etc - US democracy is eroded faster and faster if unaddressed and it might already be too late to save it. You might even agree with me there – except on the point that it makes each upcoming election “important”, of course.
IMO these are two different forms of existential crisis and until they are addressed – seriously addressed, not just assuaged out of the public consciousness – the conditions are getting worse and worse and the possibility of resolving them shrinks. Every other problem we face takes a back seat to these order-of-magnitude-larger issues, and no meaningful progress can be made on the lesser issues.
So I don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration to say each election is the “most important of our lifetime”. With the magnitude of these crises, why wouldn’t the importance of these choices be outsized compared to other points in recent history?
In all honesty, I think the most important presidential election of my life was 2000. Not only do I believe that the country could have been a leader on climate issues under Gore, Bush’s War on Terror response would’ve been different/less-bad (maybe not, I’m sure folks around here will argue), we also would’ve had a completely different supreme court and all that comes with that.
I probably have a few more things I could add to that paragraph but to continue with my attempted self-awareness, I realize now that I’m probably just spewing standard lib talking points that don’t bear repeating, so I’ll knock it off.
You are sinking and debating that we should spend forever slowing how quickly we sink instead of trying to get out of the water.
Good analogy, and you’re 100% right. I won’t deny it because that is exactly what I am arguing for and I’m trying to understand the other viewpoint(s). IMO the longer we have (i.e. the slower we sink), the more time we have to figure out how to get out of the water, or how to execute the get-out-of-the-water plan. But also, the impression that I get from this community - the one I’m trying to get clarity on throughout this discussion - is that we should stop treading water and get on with the sinking already. Or, that shouting “get out of the water” constitutes a plan of action. (Note: this sounds overly dismissive, and I don’t mean it that way - following along the analogy brought me here)
After a few mishaps I’ve now learned to write my responses in a different editor so lemmy-web doesn’t eat them, and when I pasted this from my text editor into lemmy I realized this is my longest response yet. So, I want to say thank you again for the spirited discussion and your patience with me throughout. Hope you’re having a good day despite (what I assume is) an exasperating online discussion!
Your example of the 2000 presidential election should give you a bit of insight into why voting at a presidential level is pointless. Gore won, but the Supreme Court interfered and put the guy they wanted in place.
There will always be some equivalent force to prevent any real change at the presidential level. See also the DNC rat-fucking Bernie in 2016 and 2020 and the DNC pied-pipering in trump in 2016
The other is the web of corruption, subversion of truth, weaponization and/or crippling of institutions, and legalized bribery – a nebulous but worsening condition that I believe started with Reagan but has continued relatively unabated for 50 years and took off like a rocket under Trump
This web of corruption you are refering to is capitalism and liberal democracy itself. It did not begin with Reagan, its always been this way. What you view as it “starting” with Reagan is the ascendence of neoliberalism which is still just capitalism and liberal democracy.
The idea that any of this became worse with Trump is ludicrous and massively ahistorical. You could say it became more visible because libs chose to examine it more closely and because Trump is more transparently corrupt. But its hard to argue he’s more corrupt than other admins lor politicians. The main reason Trump was not impeached on emoluments was because congressional dems are guilty of the same shit.
IMO the longer we have (i.e. the slower we sink), the more time we have to figure out how to get out of the water, or how to execute the get-out-of-the-water plan.
I think this is your stumbling block to understanding our position. Sink-more-slowly by unconditionally voting for one of the people pushing you into the water is not a plan. We already know how to get out of the water. Other people have done it, other countries are not in the water because they’ve had revolutions against liberal democracy. And that is the problem - liberal democracy can not stop this, because liberal democracy is the sustem which maintains capitalism and the oppression of the ruling class.
Since I have been procrastinating on giving you a proper response, I will point you to a thread full of people discussing the issue who hopefully won’t bite your head off. Feel free to tag or dm me or whatever.
If neither party represents your interests, what’s your vote doing? Making sure that they can both ignore your interests even more?
The US two-party system is a complete and abject failure of democracy.
If a fascist finds it important to vote, I intend my vote to counteract theirs.
It’s less important that someone “represents my interests” than it is that overall suffrage and equity is reduced at a slower rate. It’s sad, but that’s what it seems we’re up against in the modern republican party.
The two party system IS a failure, and I have a laundry list(*) of electoral changes I want throughout the country, some of which are already in place in a few voting districts including my own. How is not voting going to improve any of that?
(* If you’re interested I can add them tomorrow when I’m more sober and at a keyboard)
If you’re forced to vote for a party to avoid the collapse of your democracy, that’s no longer a democracy. That’s a one-party state with a few more steps.
That’s a fair point - in that event, is it still not an improvement to keep that bare-bones separation from a one-party state rather than run headlong into it? Worded differently- if there is ostensibly a revolution brewing, would the revolutionaries benefit from the additional time granted by the dysfunction of the almost-one-party ? Or are we talking accelerationism?
I guess I’ll also ask, at what point of a democracy-in-decline is it “ok” to vote for a person or party en masse to turn that decline around? As an analogy I’m thinking of like, a car teetering on a cliff. This sounds like sitting in the car with arms crossed saying “you’re just a few steps from falling to your death, no point in getting out of the car now”. Sorry if that’s hyperbolic; I’m trying to give a clear example and that’s the first thing that came to mind.
Or are we talking accelerationism?
This is, in my view, the real issue. Statistically, anti-electoralism is in no way functionally different than accelerationism. Both have the exact same outcomes as right-wingers, especially the far-right vote consistently and toe the line.
I’ve not seen an ounce of evidence that accelerationism actually works to achieve its stated goal, which on some level makes me suspect that the whole lot of anti-electoralism and accelerationism is encouraged by authoritarians on the far-right to further disenfranchise any ideas left of center from having representation. That and there’s real harm to LGBTQ+ folks, indigenous peoples, minorities, and their allies caused by empowering the far-right more.
Might that lead to an actual revolution at some point? Maybe. There’s not yet any evidence to say that it will that I’ve seen in historical data, however. And I cannot ethically agree with “end justifies the means” thinking as it nearly always results in increased suffering for workers and “common” people to whom I owe my allegiance.
Now to wait for my anarchist self to be flamed as a “shitlib”. (I hope not because this is supposed to be a leftist unity instance but, it’s happened to me before over misunderstandings).
overall suffrage and equity is reduced at a slower rate.
If you are doing this at the expense of not taking even a chance at stopping the reduction of equity, you are in fact helping the reduction of equity even as you are slowing it.
Maybe this is a disconnect in the conversation. It’m not considering this at the expense of other actions – I am very much in favor of other activities besides voting as well; I am not saying voting is the silver bullet to bring us all to a just society.
We probably have other disagreements as to what those other activities are or should be (…we probably have a few agreements too!). In this conversation I am specifically trying to understand the rejection of voting. Though as you pointed out elsewhere, it is not all-encompassing, often only in regards to the establishment parties.
BTW as I’m trying to give all comments the attention they deserve I see you all over the thread and have replied to you a few times already (and probably some more I haven’t gotten around to yet!). Thank you for participating and trying to help me understand better.
I am probably being inadequately explicit at some points. Voting unconditionally for the Democrats definitionally comes at the expense of extracting concessions from them by withholding your vote from them on some grounds (e.g. reversing their stance on Palestine). To support the Dems on the basis of lesser-evilism is to directly undermine any possibility of getting something out of them beyond them not being identical to Republicans.
Thanks for sharing in good faith.
I think it boils down to a few factors.
- The difference is marginal. It’s not worth getting too worked up about.
- Your impact is marginal, it’s not a good idea to get an inflated sense of the value of casting a ballot. Your influence is immaterial in virtually all cases.
- Voting is fine if you have the time and nothing to do, its like any opportunity cost. If you are busy or it’s raining or whatever weight that against the actual weight of what you would be doing going to cast a ballot and make a calculation about what’s reasonable. Maybe there’s a downballot issue you actually can affect or that matters more. But Sleepy Joe doesn’t need you or, if you want good things, even want your support.
- I think it’s okay to decide, in light of the above, that you dislike genocide enough that you won’t vote for a geriatric who doesn’t like you. It seems like all things considered it doesn’t really matter much and obsessing over this guy is probably counterproductive.
It’s a pressure campaign. They’re offering to stop if Biden backs a ceasefire.
I don’t follow - this seems to be about a very specific thing; I was speaking very generally trying to understand the anti electoral stance.
Maybe I missed the demonstrative nature of your example - if you’re willing to explain further, I’m happy to read/learn.
Thanks for your perspective and time.
Sorry, I assumed you were talking about the article. I’m not anti voting, I’m against using running for office as a strategy for social change.
No worries, that’s a reasonable assumption. My apologies for being off on a tangent here in the comments :)
Thanks for inspiring me to be conversational
Why would they ever change if people keep supporting them?
It seems to me that when it comes to the late late late point of who to vote for president, the time to change them has passed.
I’m my mind, the time for a “change” vote comes during primaries. When it comes to the official vote (especially presidential), I vote for the least fascist candidate… who has a chance at winning, I suppose.
And there lies the rub. Bernie was ratfucked during the primaries so that Joe could get the nomination. The machine would rather be in control and lose than let the popular candidate win.
Yes, I voted for Bernie in the primaries and then Biden in the general. I’m pissed about how Biden became the candidate. I still voted to negate a Trump vote. What am I missing?
That your unconditional support is the sort of thing that makes the ratfucking a viable strategy. Just look at that fucking interview where a reporter points out that most voters don’t want Biden to run again and he counters that they also said they would vote for him if he was the general candidate. This whipped attitude is openly being cited by these monsters as being what enables them even among populations that hate them. They have long given the game away and you keep fucking falling for it irrespective!
If they want my vote they’ve got to do something to earn it
I was willing to vote for Bernie Sanders in 2020 for harm reduction reasons. He was the compromise. Dems rejected it.
The vote is performative.
At this point, you’re voting for the window dressing.
-
Which bill was it where dems legalized gay marriage?
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Which bill was it where they protected abortion rights?
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Which bill was it where they protected the right to marry other races?
etc.
Basing your record on a few supreme court decisions, which can (and have) get overturned is fatuous.
Aside from taking a slightly less shitty stance on things, you’ll find that for the most part, the dems, when they had full government control, did fuck all to enshrine minority rights, provide a living wage, or make steps towards universal healthcare.
I used to think like this, I’m 50 and voted like my life depended on it since '92. All I’ve seen since then, are conditions getting worse and worse, regardless of who was in office. I bought Obama’s schtick and watched as he did half assed measures and frittered a majority away.
And by the way “b-b-but conservative democrats” line has been used as far back as I can remember. If you consistently see members of a party blocking vital legislation over and over and over again. Maybe that shit is performative too.
This country needs a reset.
Which bill was it where they protected the right to marry other races?
Shit, is this not actually the law, just another SC ruling?
Loving v Virginia
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Reddit ass comment.
“Fight the two party system” “No, not like that”
Maine has RCV and just suffered a mass shooting because the Democrats and Republicans are one party.
i cant wait to not vote
The guy who has a pattern of simping for right wing authoritarian fuckheads like Nettanyahu?
This guy?
holy shit when did we get this?
Good lord, so the plan is to vote for Trump? The guy who has a pattern of simping for right wing authoritarian fuckheads like Nettanyahu?
Biden has given Netanyahu and Zelensky countless billions of dollars. Trump would not have done anything differently.
Honestly, their efforts would be much better spent trying to get election reform like ranked choice voting up as local election issues in order to break the two party system’s kneecaps.
There is no “reform” to be had; the Democrats will never peaceably give up their power over the US and the world as a whole.
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If he sided with Russia would have faced pushback from many directions, and I’m not convinced he would have cared enough to fight them on it
I’m gonna vote for Trump 5 times with my fake voter ID’s Soros gave me.
Me when I think I have the right to speak without investigating first
Did you read the article? They specifically say they won’t vote for him and would organize for a candidate that was willing to stand up to US Islamophobia. He’s not gonna vote for Trump.
And who exactly is simping for who? At least Donny and Bibi liked each other, Joe is the one pathetically prostrating himself for a guy who openly dislikes him.
Fucking Biden is hugging Netanyahu what the fuck are you ranting about?
DAE BUT WHAT ABOUT TURMP?
I was this way last time. Not doing this shit again.
Same here.
Which way? Genuinely curious here…
Lusten here corn pop, back in my day the good jews (white) were being killed by the bad white guys (krauts), so we made sure the bad guys (brown people) were all fit and tidy to donate thejr land to the good jews, now they wanna go back on their deal because they are dastardly brown moslems
B-BUT PROJECT 2025. THE REPUBLICANS ARE GOING TO ERADICATE 95% OF THE US POPULATION AND PUSH THE HANDMAIDENS TALE BUTTON. I’VE WATCHED OVER 2600 HOURS OF THIS ON YOUTUBE BY THE MOST ACADEMICALLY RIGOROUS BREADTUBERS SO I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT.
I’ll have you know, my favorite breadtuber who makes 2 videos a year and $3 million/year said that you have to vote for Biden
great I will know who to blame and constantly badger them about it.
The lesser evil argument for Biden is very weird to me because as a non-American it doesn’t materially seem better than Trump. Objectively it’s been equally bad if not worse, and while not all of that is due to particular features of Trump or the Dems, a think a decent amount is due to how viciously hawkish and shamelessly imperialist the Biden regime has been, from Ukraine to Israel and a lot more in between. Like on the international level I’d argue that Biden has been demonstrably more destructive.
The most convincing ‘lesser-evil’ argument seems to me to basically be that a Trump presidency would be worse for minorities, for immigrants, non-white people, and LGBT people. Now I agree that they would be more likely to introduce federal-level legislation if they could, but I also haven’t seen any real effort by the Biden gov to combat transphobic legislation by fascistic Republicans at the state or local level, or to do anything real for them for that matter. Again LGBT folks and racial minorities are a woke virtue-signalling marketing asset to be invested in for the Dems, as they base their electoral campaigns now no longer on class points, no longer appealing to working class interests (whereas the Republicans have positioned themselves as doing so), but instead appealing to those with college educations. I have comrades who argue that Trump would crack down harder on the left and make it more difficult to organize, but I’m not completely convinced by this. It’s not become easier under Biden.
In any event, I don’t know how people can make a non-nationalist lesser-evil argument once you’ve seen Biden literally go on stage with Bibi and give unconditional support to apartheid, settler-colonialism and ethinic cleansing.
Legitimately think it’s worse under Biden.
Stopped labor strikes, stopped covid relief (motherfucker still owes me $600), student debt relief is gone, roe is gone, anti Trans laws are way worse, inflation is slowing down but everything’s still twice what it cost 2 years ago.
Literally the only difference is when there’s a republican president republicans don’t do as much to actively pass speople off and dems pretend to care about progressive issues.
When there’s a dem president liberals just tell minorities and poor people ro stop complaining because it’s making them look bad and republicans do shit to whip up their base that democrats are completely unwilling to oppose.
roe is gone,
Ignoring all the other bullshit in your comment, I’m wondering what Biden had to do with a supreme court decision made by judges nominated by the former administration, when scotus decisions can’t be appealed or challenged? I’ll wait.
Lol 'I have no argument against anything else and I don’t actually understand how U.S. politics work, but I’m actually completely right and justified at being a snot-nosed little shit about it ’
Biden had half a dozen good options for stopping this and did none of them. Restructuring the court, bullying the dems in Congress into passing a roe codifying law, declare a public health emergency, or open abortion clinics on federal lands. He did none of these, sadly, because Dems see Roe being overturned as a fundraising opportunity. All the women and children being harmed in the interim by government getting between them and their doctors be damned.
Perhaps the most frustrating attribute of the Dems is when they do control the majority of governmental branches, they still do nothing, complaining all the while that republicans will yell at them if they do, or the senate parliamentarian won’t let them, or whatever bs excuse to not fight for their voters. However, someone dares to challenge the status quo, you’ll never see a dem more vicious. It’s pathetic, gross, and disheartening.
my personal favorite is whenever the dems have a majority a group of conservatives sprout up in the ranks of the party to vote down laws with any degree of progressive policy
judges nominated by the former administration,
nice try, but everyone knows the Democrats strategy chose Trump (and other more fascistic right wing capitalists) because they can only get votes by showing off how they’re a “lesser evil” like you believe:
2018: https://observer.com/2017/10/democrats-revive-failed-pied-piper-strategy-for-2018/
2022: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/19/opinion/democrats-far-right-midterms.html “The Republican Party isn’t capable of governing a democracy. And yet Democrats keep helping some of its most unhinged candidates.”
Agreed on everything. Especially student loans. It takes forever to get disability and Biden has put a time limit on how long you can go without a job. I dont think this was a thing before.
The lesser evil argument for Biden is very weird to me because as a non-American it doesn’t materially seem better than Trump. Objectively it’s been equally bad if not worse
Anyone who thinks this is just buying into (or creating and spreading…) a different kind of propaganda.
Every moron in this comment section is a trump supporter, including the people in the article.
If you all can’t understand the lesser evil argument, then you should go back to college because you all need some help.
Only took about 5 months for lemmy to get filled with far right assholes, covert ads, and foreign election propaganda. Good job everybody.
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It’s always the lemmings
oppa gangnam style
Do you think Biden was powerless in the overturn of Roe v Wade?
hello u r clearly very smart perhaps the smartest person in the world can u plz tell me which crypto memecoin I should invest in to become rich so I can go to college and bcum as smart as u r? thank u so much god bless
boot taste so good yumyumyum
low effort 2016 bait. please return to
you shameless treat demonliteral Qanon levels of mental gymnastics to claim that everyone who feels burnt and betrayed by the democrats repeatedly failing (all while Joe Biden is proudly funding a war criminal whos committed crimes worse than putin has in just a few weeks*) is actually a paid shill posting propaganda for Trump
*Serious question, if Joe Biden started sending Putin military aid to kill ukrainian children with would you continue going “vote blue no matter who”?
I’m not voting for genocide Joe.
Democrats were never the lesser evil, I’m also not American but it doesn’t even take more than a simple look to understand this
Bush 1 Iraq war
Clinton Yugoslavia
Bush 2 Iraq-Afghanistan
Obama- More Afghanistan, drone campaign, Syria etc
Trump - Syria, almost Iran, China
Biden - Russia, Palestine
If you want to add Bernie - anti-Cuban statements, pro-Israel statements, pro-Ukraine statements etc. Fucking loser is just another FP ghoul too.
Meanwhile economically and socially the US continues to deteriorate since the beginning of the current neoliberal era(late 80s-90s) as you noticed and maybe Bernie gets a honorable mention for being just a bump on the steep downhill road, nothing more.
Heck we noticed and commented some time now since the beginning of the Ukraine war that current FP is in some ways even more deranged than even what Kissinger would do. Indeed some would even say current policy makes Kissinger look competent in comparison. That’s how bad it is. And to be honest some argument does mention that Kissinger was from an era where the US actualy somewhat respected their peer adversaries, these days its all end of history BS.
good post, I’d also add Palestine '08 and '14 under Obama where Israel committed a lot of the same crimes as today, and Obama gave them his full unconditional support and said they have a right to defend themself.
and maybe Bernie gets a honorable mention for being just a bump on the steep downhill road, nothing more.
reminds me of Labour, where Corbyn was really only an a strange anomaly. Stürmer’s the real continuation of Labour - saying cutting off water, food, fuel to Gaza is cool and good (human rights lawyer btw).
Heck we noticed and commented some time now since the beginning of the Ukraine war that current FP is in some ways even more deranged than even what Kissinger would do. Indeed some would even say current policy makes Kissinger look competent in comparison. That’s how bad it is. And to be honest some argument does mention that Kissinger was from an era where the US actualy somewhat respected their peer adversaries, these days its all end of history BS.
the Kissinger era ghouls seemed to have a strategy they were following. I have no clue what the US is doing now. they’re rapidly getting rid of any credibility they had, alienating allies in the area, etc. the empire is deteriorating fast.
Biden was much more a hawk on China than Trump. Trump talked shit, Biden drastically escalated the trade war.
Deep state counter-revolution against Trump’s anti-fed program
I’m not praising Trump, if you somehow don’t understand that. Trump is just too much of an arrogant moron who acts with little direction beyond merely saying things that appeal to his base and sometimes calling for such-and-such person to be killed.
he also campaigned as such - I will be tougher on china was a focus of his campaign in summer 2020
In terms of foreign policy democrats have been dogshit, and as BynarsAreOk pointed out this isn’t new. I think it’s worth giving context why even a number of leftists are saying that Biden is the lesser of two evils with regards to FP, which really boils down to the fact that Trump’s more heavily genocidal policy aspirations were heavily dampened by resistance from dems and dissenting republicans. He basically called for BLM protestors to be massacred, he would be even more dogmatically in support of the Palestinian genocide based on what I know of him (and accordingly zionists love him), he started and popularized the sinophobic rhetoric and really ramped up anti Chinese FP in a way no other president that I know of has. Now, Biden hs continued many of these problems but a pattern seems to be established that the far right normalizes these things and the right (“moderate” republicans) and center right (dems) continue them. One of the major fears is that another term with Trump at the helm, especially if he has a republican majority in congress, the political ratchet will keep moving further at a much faster pace.
He basically called for BLM protestors to be massacred, he would be even more dogmatically in support of the Palestinian genocide based on what I know of him (and accordingly zionists love him), he started and popularized the sinophobic rhetoric and really ramped up anti Chinese FP in a way no other president that I know of has.
He also went from some concrete steps towards normalizing relations with Iran under Obama to an actual exchange of fire with them. An attack on Iran is one of the more realistic imperialist ambitions and it would kill the most people of anything short of a nuclear exchange. He also stepped backwards on Cuba, though not to anywhere near the same degree.
I think you can make a case that Republicans do worse things abroad in general, but that is quickly undercut by libs abandoning any sort of anti-imperialist sentiment whenever their guy is in the White House.
…the problem with that point is that libs railing against wars under a Republican president does not result in a Democratic president meaningfully changing anything. Where something approaching meaningful change has happened under a Democrat (the withdrawal from Afghanistan) libs have panned or ignored it, too (and of course Biden is sanctioning the hell out of Afghanistan now and I’m sure we’re still fucning around with some version of the Islamic extremists we’ve bankrolled for the last half century, see the ETIM and Pakistan, generally).
“Trump and Republicans are bad because he nearly started a war with Iran”
Biden: hold my beer
Liberals put money before morals, conservative-liberals put evil before money. Liberals go a lot less out of their way to be evil, while conservative-liberals will give up tons of free money in order to be evil. This is one reason to vote Dem.
Secondly, America/NATO is getting its ass handed to itself, which is a good thing. I don’t want them to try switching it up last minute. I want them to continue getting fucked in the ass. This is another reason to vote Biden.
China’s growing, India’s growing, NATO is not getting back the land from Russia, African nations are kicking out France and other westoids from their territory. The current status quo honestly seems good (apart from the ecocide but Rs will only make this worse), and having an incompetent geezer in the white house trying all the same old tricks and not switching up the playbook is a good thing IMO
In right wing, wignat circles, there’s a lot of mental gymnastics they go through in order to avoid facing the elephant that wealth produces culture and innovation, rather than the other way around. One such trapeze routine is the “cold winters theory”. Which holds that animals in cold climates evolve"smarter" because they have to “plan for the winter”. Of course, this ignores the fact that plenty of tropical places have a dry season in place of a cold season, which requires just as much planning. More importantly, it ignores the very, very, very basic and fundamental truth that good things are good.
Having warmth and rain year round (up to a point) is good. Having food is good. Having wealth is good. Having people in power who want to kill you less, is objectively a good thing. Don’t be a chud, good things are good
No, Trump was bad.
Obviously. Who’s claiming otherwise?
Just making sure…
Votecels seething and typing essays ITT. Everyone point and laugh.
where do you come from?
where do you go?
I’ll never vote for Genocide Joe
