The tea party was just billionaires covered in AstroTurf. They bought the Republican party. It’s asymmetrical warfare, because the left doesn’t have billionaires that profit from our policy goals.
Not to be a doomer, I do think Democrats can be pulled left (kicking and screaming) but I’m not sure how though.
Tea party was partially real. But it was basically petite bourgeois: car dealership owners and the like. This was also the main component of Jan 6th. These people aren’t a huge constituency but there are a lot more of them than billionaires.
Then you get what we got last time: the fascists gain power and make things worse for the masses, the Dem politicians continue being rich and are shielded from the consequences. You only benefit the fascists and hurt yourself if you don’t vote for the lesser of two evils.
I think people who are informed but specifically stay home because of Democratic policy positions or vote third party is a relatively small number of people.
It seems to me like far more people just sit out because the Dems are useless. When Harris said the economy was good, people wrote her off as out of touch.
We can argue about whether people should vote for harm reduction all day everyday (like we have been doing). But the fact remains that if Dems don’t present a vision for the future that excites people to come out for them, fascists gain power.
You’re correct. But if someone doesn’t support the fascists and says they’re not voting for harm reduction, they should be called out for it. Don’t help the fascists and then complain when they win.
Let’s say Gavin Newsome runs in 2028 and he supports a Federal law banning trans people from playing sports. That’s “better than the Republicans”, right? So you’d still vote for him? So what reason does he have to support trans people if they won’t lose any votes for not doing so?
How about instead of Gavin Newsome, why not run Mitt Romney? All the pundits are talking about appealing to “moderates”. When you pledge to vote Blue no matter who, that tells the Democrats to go as far right as they can, which means the Republicans can move even further right.
You say people who didn’t vote are helping fascists, but I’d rather call out the powerful people who are doing nothing (or worse).
Yes, I’d still vote for him because it’s better than the Republicans. Harm reduction. Once you have these shitty-but-not-fascist people in power, you do exactly what you said and call them out on their bullshit, call your Congressperson to apply political pressure, primary them, protest, whatever you can. Because now that the fascists are in power, they can and will do whatever they want and you have even less agency to do anything about it than when they’re not controlling the government.
When you pledge to vote Blue no matter who, that tells the Democrats to go as far right as they can, which means the Republicans can move even further right.
And when you don’t vote against Republicans, they can completely take over the government and do whatever the fuck they want. What is that accomplishing?
I have been voting Blue No Matter Who for 20 years, and that has brought us to Trump.
No, it didn’t. People NOT voting Blue No Matter Who did. That’s why he won.
My understanding is that the counter argument is that Democrats should be the kinds of people that people want to vote for, not just the lesser evil. That would be ideal, but it’s not the reality we live in. Similarly, the reality is that people of all political leanings will usually not vote for the most practical outcome that benefits them, but with emotion. For conservatives, that means their team regardless of anything else - “Red No Matter Who.” For people who are farther left than center-right, that means becoming disillusioned with how poorly Democrats represent them and not voting, even if they are still better than their opponents. Hence, the fascists win.
No, it didn’t. People NOT voting Blue No Matter Who did. That’s why he won.
people of all political leanings will usually not vote for the most practical outcome that benefits them
You can’t act like people don’t vote for the lesser evil, or that it hasn’t been responsible for every Dem victory since Clinton.
Democrats need to face the reality that “better than Republicans” is not a good motto and they can’t win without presenting a better vision for how to improve people’s lives. Yelling “Blue No Matter Who” at people online won’t win elections.
The DNC won’t improve things because…[bunch of nonsense]
Why the fuck would you think that the DNC has the power to “improve things”? The DNC is no different from the RNC. Neither of them have any power at all over any branch of government. The 2 Dem organizations with 100% of the actual power to make laws are the HDC and the SDC.
I agree. We need time to build a leftist party or to fundamentally change the Democratic party. I’m not opposed to completely rewiring the Republican party if it’s a faster option.
We can get more time by voting for the least fascist option. That way we won’t be sent off El Salvador while we’re trying to fix things.
There have been such attempts over the previous 120 years. They were all failures because of structural reasons.
or to fundamentally change the Democratic party
Yes that would be fantastic and definitely needs to happen. And it will happen sooner or later. The problem is that we need much more “sooner” and much less “later”. We only have so many years to live.
That’s your problem, thinking you’re rewarding Democrats somehow by voting for them rather than doing damage mitigation for the country. They’re rich and will be fine regardless of who you vote for - you’re only making things worse for yourself by not voting for the lesser of two evils.
You say “Thats your problem” like you think the DNC can win without these people you talk down to.
It is our problem. You and me and everybody. Because we are the primary losers whenever the GOP wins elections. Not well to do politicians. They are going to be fine either way.
We’ve voted blue no matter who for decades and look where it got us.
30 million more people with health insurance? Raising taxes on billionaires instead of cutting them?
Maybe democrats should do something to earn our votes.
Nobody who voted for Harris were trying to do a f*cking personal favor for her. We were all trying to do ourselves and the country a favor. Some other person has to earn your right to permit you to do yourself a personal favor? The rest of us are simply claiming that right for ourselves because we would be fools not to.
Health insurance isn’t health care. It’s a swindle literally concocted by the Heritage Institution to shovel government money to private insurers in exchange for crap insurance. Yes, Project 2025 Heritage Institute.
What a bright, shining example of progress.
Do you get it yet? Democrats are doing republicans’ work for them and holding their hands out to billionaires.
It’s more likely to be than letting fascists win, although a lot of work would have to be done primarying the corpos and getting progressives in there. That’s not even a possibility when the GOP has power.
The thing about voting for the “least fascist” is you’re still voting for a fascist.
The energy is better spent preparing to remove the fascists. Get a gun, get organized with your community, build up shared resources, and prepare for the shoe to drop.
The thing about voting for the “least fascist” is you’re still voting for a fascist.
Good thing I’m voting for a democrat and not a fascist then.
Get a gun, get organized with your community, build up shared resources, and prepare for the shoe to drop.
The thing about supporting a Communist overthrow of democracy is that you’re still supporting a Fascist overthrow of democracy with the same end result.
For a capitalist party? Absolutely not. You’re giving them consent to govern on your behalf, and reinforcing their legitimacy.
I am glad you agree that consent is important. The Communists ruled Russia for 74 years without anybody’s consent, so I will assume you understand as all of us do that they are every bit as bad as their Fascist allies.
It grants you slower fascism rather than fast fascism.
One day of voting for Democrats seems like it could prevent a lot of bad from happening. It’s a pretty good bang for your buck in terms of time spent organizing.
As far as consent and legitimacy goes, that’s more of a media thing, not a voting thing.
No, that’s a reflection of the privilege you enjoy personally under Democrats. There are many, many people who have suffered and died under the fascism of Democrats as well.
Once you’re advocating for voting for a genocidal party as ‘harm reduction’, it’s very clearly just an argument of maintaining personal privilege.
Also, the harm reduction argument is made up. Once you compare their actual policies, and not what they campaign on, you’ll see the difference between the two parties is nonexistent. Which is as expected from two parties accepting money from the same oligarchs.
Once you’re advocating for voting for a genocidal party as ‘harm reduction’,
Oh hey I’m glad you brought up “genocide”. You remind me very much of Trump and his whoppers. But this gives us an opportunity to review Lenin and Stalin’s genocide.
I agree they both are fed by the same oligarchs. And I agree that the fascism of the Democrats have killed people.
But you can’t say the difference is non-existent. Was Biden or Kamala going to start shipping citizens over El Salvador? I think not and arguing that the two parties are the same is very silly.
Also thanks to first pass the post not voting for Democrats is giving more power to Republicans. Whose fascism will kill way more than the Democratic fascism.
You need to find a local socialist group to get involved with. Hopefully that will help deprogram you of the Democrat propaganda you’ve absorbed.
If you get more involved, you’ll quickly realize that the Democrats are more active villains than you currently realize, and are the primary party we’re having to battle.
you’ll quickly realize that the Democrats are more active villains than you currently realize, and are the primary party we’re having to battle.
Wow you guys haven’t changed at all since 1917. This is a remarkable consistency for 108 years. Lenin and Stalin also saw their primary enemies as the other leftwing parties instead of the conservatives. They killed and/or imprisoned literally every member of Russia’s other 2 socialist parties, the Menshiviks and the Socialist Revolutionary Party.
Already in the social labor party, but the restrictions of a 527 organization seem so… broken? The political party can’t endorse any specifc candidates, pay for campaign expenses, etc. You’d need a PAC for that.
After all of those hurdles, the idea of a third party being viable across all states seem very far away, and with FPTP systems it is very unlikely that it would be able to do anything before people are put in camps for being LGBTQ+ or calling out fascists for what they are.
Considering the Democrats are moving even further to the right, I don’t understand your logic in thinking that continuing to vote for Democrats will solve any of those problems. As we’ve already seen, voting for Democrats isn’t even harm reduction. Biden armed a genocide, and deported 250% more people than Trump.
Neoliberals are neither progressive nor leftist. They are protectors of right-wing ur-fascist policy. It’s past time we accept that the DNC is owned and operated by self-serving, rich neoliberal scum and start finding actual progressive, leftist alternatives.
I don’t disagree with anything there. I still don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to slow fascism down as much as possible. One day of voting seems like a pretty good deal for the outcome.
It doesn’t matter if the party doesn’t change. We can keep sleepwalking into it or crash into it, the result will be the same. We must change the Democratic party to avoid disaster.
Primary them sure. Try and snag it back. But you won’t turn your next vote red. You know that. And they know that. And I sure as fuck won’t do it either. The DNC can rot. But…
You can and should blame the two party system sure. But if you don’t primary and win. Well. We’ve seen that before again and again.
I’m a progressive that will vote blue again. Reluctantly. Emphatically so. But I will.
The posturing of principals means nothing in our political reality. And it pisses me off. But reality doesn’t care about your feelings.
I don’t think so. There’s a reason the democratic party is polling worse than Trump. They’re snakebit, even their own voters are disgusted with them. They’ve decided that their optimal strategy for winning national elections is pointing out (accurately) that the other guy is a Nazi and literally nothing else, and they’re still losing, that’s how fucking snakebit they are. There’s nowhere left to go at this point, the plan seems to still be “ratchet right to peel off two more moderate republicans and ask people to be satisfied with just voting against the Nazis for the rest of their lives”, which is a plan that has now failed 2/3 times.
Vote blue no matter who, think about that phrase for a second. That’s basically saying “shut up, don’t think, just do vote for any POS we put out and be happy about it”. Doesn’t seem like very good marketing to me. Do you think the Republicans have to tell their voters to hold their nose, suck it up, and vote no matter how much they hate the candidate? This is investing in loser energy, it’s a shit strategy that’s basically engineered from the ground up to lose.
Nope. We are basically saying “Think about how if Trump and the depraved corrupt Republicans win, Israel will implement a full scale food embargo on Gaza, and Traitorapist Trump will give gigantic tax cuts to billionaires, decree massive new tariff taxes on the middle class, turn the entire government into total shit, take health insurance away from 9.7 million Americans, and turn our entire economy into shit.”
Do you think the Republicans have to tell their voters to hold their nose, suck it up, and vote no matter how much they hate the candidate?
They don’t even need to do that because all Republicans already know that’s how they win elections.
Yeah, all the maga people really don’t seem like they’re holding their nose to me.
Nope. We are basically saying “Think about how if Trump and the depraved corrupt Republicans win, Israel will implement a full scale food embargo on Gaza, and Traitorapist Trump will give gigantic tax cuts to billionaires, decree massive new tariff taxes on the middle class, turn the entire government into total shit, take health insurance away from 9.7 million Americans, and turn our entire economy into shit.”
As opposed to the democrats, who will do fuck all until the Republicans win the next election and do all that shit anyway.
They suck, no doubt about it, but fascists suck way, way more. “Vote blue no matter who” is effectively what you have to do in a two-party system, but in reality not voting red is what’s important. And yes, “Vote for the guys who are less bad” is a terrible message and contributes to the fascists winning. But voting is vital (even now, if only at a more local level), and not voting for fascists is extremely important.
Voting for whoever will cause the least harm to the country is the right thing to do. “I won’t vote for the lesser evil!” does not accomplish this and actually goes in the opposite direction. But people are emotional and not practical beings overall, so the guys who are better at appealing to emotions win and we all suffer for it.
Fine, then say “vote against red.” It’s what I’m actually doing, anyway. The system is fucked, but when you allow fascists in power you have even less agency to do anything about it. You ALSO have to hold Democrats in power accountable when they’re in office via calls to your Representatives, protesting, primarying, etc. If you choose to do nothing but vote, you are indeed giving them no accountability.
Fine, then say “vote against red.” It’s what I’m actually doing, anyway.
The important thing is that the centrists who run the party keep running the party forever.
The system is fucked, but when you allow fascists in power you have even less agency to do anything about it.
You’re trying to convince someone who voted for harris to vote for her long after the election is over. Continuing to carry water for her is pointless.
calls to your Representatives
My representative is a republican who doesn’t care what I think. My senators are both republicans who don’t care what I think. My party is run by people who care only what republicans and netanyahu think.
protesting
Champions of the status quo don’t have to protest, but they get to act like they got what they wanted by protesting instead of just enjoying things as they are. Perhaps you can afford the time off to protest, the time off to get arrested, and the medical bills from being beaten by police, or perhaps you have no need of protest as you have at least one party that represents you.
primarying
This thread is about what the party does whenever people try to primary their republican-adjacent ghouls. They’re treating David Hogg like they would have treated dick cheney if they disagreed with him on anything.
If you choose to do nothing but vote, you are indeed giving them no accountability.
Other routes are not available to me, and I already vote like you want.
Because if you vote and willingly participate in a corrupt system, you are giving legitimacy to the system. The only way you can say this system is illegitimate and refuse to be bound by it is to refuse to participate and vote
By “end the Duopoly” you just mean "help billionaires get gigantic GOP tax cuts’. We’ve had dozens of 3rd parties and they have all been failures. The system has structural forces in place to prevent them from being successful. Nobody alive today created this system. We are all stuck with it same as you. But we recognize the reality that millions will die or become impoverished every time someone like Traitorapist Trump gets elected from his party of corrupt decadents. And we recognize the reality that when the GOP wins it is us who loses, not politicians.
Yeah so… uh… That kinda goes both ways. I’ve made this argument before so I’m just gonna copy paste it, but lemme just…
Have you ever heard of gambler’s ruin? It’s the name of a few different results in statistics, but the one we want is this:
In statistics, gambler’s ruin is the fact that a gambler playing a game with negative expected value will eventually go bankrupt, regardless of their betting system.
Now in modern US elections, does your bet have a positive or negative expected value for democracy? Is America becoming more or less of a democracy every election on average? Apply the theorem above to your answer and see what you get.
To change the inevitable result, which is fascism in the United States, you have to change the game in some way, and primarying incumbents and voting blue no matter who is what progressives are already doing.
Your metaphor is flawed. Opting out does not save you anything because voting doesn’t cost you anything in the first place. If you got a free bet, why wouldn’t you take it?
It’s more like we’re on a sinking ship and bailing water. The ship is going down if we don’t patch the hole, but bailing water still buys us time so that we can make more attempts to patch the hole. Except in this metaphor, bailing is something that takes maybe an hour of your time once every two years.
Dems aren’t helping the ship stay afloat. They’re stopping the people from patching the hole because they’re “powerless”. Dems and Reps aren’t the same because they’re equally as bad, they’re the same because they’re on the same team. They’re both shameless fascists.
They are doing that. They’re on the same team. Biden didn’t stop any of this. Lol. They’re literally the same team, not figuratively, but they are literally working together to push the same agenda.
Opting out does not save you anything because voting doesn’t cost you anything in the first place.
The bet here isn’t voting; it’s elections. An election is an essentially random process where depending on the result things change either for the best or for the worst. If you somehow quantify how far America is from fascism (say, in terms of how many Republican terms it would take to go from the situation at hand to full-blown fascism) then you can model elections as a bet where you’re forced to participate and don’t get to choose your stake. Again, under this model (which should be accurate since the conditions for its application are all there) you will end up at fascism unless you change the game you’re being forced to play so the odds are in your favor rather than the fascists’. I also want to point out that this isn’t an analogy; it’s a model. I’m simply taking a principle that exists in one field, making some simplifying assumptions and applying it in another. What I outlined here isn’t a “what if” analogy; it’s one step removed from a mathematical certainty.
It’s more like we’re on a sinking ship and bailing water. The ship is going down if we don’t patch the hole, but bailing water still buys us time so that we can make more attempts to patch the hole. Except in this metaphor, bailing is something that takes maybe an hour of your time once every two years.
I have no problem with the act of voting itself. My problem is with… everything else that happens during election season. The whole idea of unity with liberals (aka Democrats) against the right is evidently a failed preposition, and the reason for that failure is specifically that the Democratic Party is invested in the game’s present state and will force you (or, more accurately, already forces you) to cooperate with them to maintain the game before you’re allowed to be “united” with them. To borrow your analogy, the Democrats are the ship’s captain, who is helping you bail water but only on the condition that you don’t patch the holes (and yes, there’s more than one). You’re not even supposed to point out that neither you nor him are patching the holes. Instead, you and the rest of the crew are supposed to just keep bailing and ignore the rising water level. And to be clear, the bailing isn’t just one thing you do every two years; that doesn’t begin to capture the opportunity cost involved. Your bailing in this analogy is voting drives, canvassing and other outreach on behalf of the Democrats; it’s political donations; it’s suppressing criticism of the DNC (attempts to get the captain to patch the damn hole) in the name of unity against the far-right. The actual voting is only the end of this long string of actions that sap energy, money and credibility from the people who would otherwise be out there actually patching the damn holes.
Okay analogy over, back to the real world. The DNC should’ve been fucking flayed alive when they tried to push a pro-genocide ex-DA on Americans, and instead all they got was progressives hushing down other progressives in the name of “unity”. I’m sure you can think of all sorts of examples of this in action, but here’s one to drive the point: the progressive reaction to the Uncommitted Movement. This was a large movement that had gained momentum in an attempt to push the DNC from proto-fascism and into the sanity, and what did they get from not even liberals, but progressives who should have been their most ardent supporters? “Hold your nose and vote for her.” Not a nationwide solidarity to force the Democrats to back down on their most unpopular policies, not even tepid support or apathy, but active, emphatic opposition. That’s not the stuff of democracy; that’s a dictatorship where you roll a dice every four years to find out which boot will step on your neck until the next election.
I should note: I’m not advocating for passivity or apathy here. This shouldn’t be a reason for you or anyone else to stay home and give up; it should be an impetus to organize, embrace solidarity between workers and take on the capitalists and their supporters. Act, but act according to your own conscience, not according to the DNC’s agenda. This is especially important right now because the Democrats won’t save you from fascism even if they wanted to, but even if democracy and the DNC both survive Trump, next time you be on the side doing the flaying and not the side practicing cannibalism on behalf of your blue donkey overlords.
Did you not know that “liberal” is literally a synonym of “progressive”. Moderate Dems (there are not moderate Republicans) are not liberals and don’t call themselves liberals.
You should learn what the word liberal actually means. Liberalism is a center-center right ideology and has both historically and now been at odds with progressive politics, up to and including aligning with fascists over leftists. It’s been marketed as “everyone left of center” these days, but that’s just not what the word means as a term. Think of the word "neoliberal ", and remember that neoliberalism is explicitly a return of the laissez-faire ideas of classical liberalism. Regardless, I said “aka democrats” specifically so people who aren’t neck-deep in leftwing politics know what I’m talking about.
Moderate Dems (there are not moderate Republicans) are not liberals and don’t call themselves liberals.
I mean they don’t call themselves liberals, but according to what the term actually means in political science they’re liberals (well, sort of, some are conservatives).
Okay so, given complicated the differences between variations of liberalism are, Merriam Webster is really not a good source here. That’s not what liberalism means in most of the world. That said, the Democratic Party is definitely classical liberal (also known as neoliberal), rather than social liberal, which is what you’re talking about, and that also exists so I wasn’t 100% correct either, but either way “liberal” is absolutely not a synonym with “progressive”.
This exactly. I have voted for every progressive candidate that has come up on the ballot. And yet every single time the middle of the road Democrat wins. Because that’s where the DNC puts the money. And in the general I always vote for whatever Democrat has won the primary. And quite frankly I always feel sick that I voted for somebody that I wouldn’t vote for if I had a better choice.
So I think I’m going to choose not to vote in the general if the progressive I vote for doesn’t win. I’m tired of a democratic party that is more interested in protecting their position than actually doing their job.
And yet every single time the middle of the road Democrat wins.
It couldn’t be that the middle of the road Democrat is simply popular among the majority of the voting population? Nah couldn’t be. Everybody in my family loves when I rant about the benefits of communism at Thanksgiving.
You know what’s funnier, and not in a ha ha funny way. The way I bring up progressive candidates to people and they have no idea who it is. It’s not about popularity. It’s about how the media, that is controlled by both parties, only seems to report on the chosen few.
I think you should still vote just to show you’re an active voter that they failed to court, but vote for independents, 3rd party, write in, whatever.
Honestly, I think the only solution for progressives is to elect enough independents that mathematically, while a minority, MUST be courted by the establishment parties in order to secure their legislation. Though that won’t do anything for legislation that both establishment parties fully agree on, that’ll still get rammed through.
But what are we even talking about? These are all legal constructs. We’re living post rule of law now. Dictator just flat ignoring courts.
Yeah, that’s basically the situation in Australia. The crossbench is needed to pass anything in the Senate, but Liberals and Labour routinely join forces to pass some truly disgusting shit (most recently an election reform that would reduce funding to the smaller parties, and a takeover of one of the biggest unions in the country).
Exactly this. Stop giving the DNC money. Whenever you can send the message to the officials. No progressive platform and change? No removal of incumbents? No money. No vote.
It isn’t _just _ on us to do something. If they too don’t wanna see the fascists win, then it’s time for them to eat humble pie and realize their policies and their positions for the past 30-40 years brought this pig to prom. They have to pass the torch.
Fascism might be defeated again but it will come at the cost of neoliberalism finally dying as well. There’s very little options of anything else working.
Nobody here gives the DNC any money. I agree that would be stupid because there are much better choices. Most of us don’t give much money to politicians and usually only to a specific candidate. But if I was going to right now, I would funnel that money thru people like Sanders or AOC or Hoggs.
I think we need a different color to vote for. Definitely not green, because that party is for shit. But Democrats are functionally useless at this point.
I think I would rather throw my vote away on somebody who challenges the status quo in a progressive way under the Democratic socialist party (or just the plain socialist party) rather than vote for some goddamn Democrat who’s going to uselessly wring their hands and then go home to their million dollar mansion and cry about how unfair people are being to their useless ass.
Voting blue hasn’t helped cause they think it’s your only option so they don’t have to actually do anything to earn your vote other than being “not a Republican”.
If the fascism is going to happen anyway, which it will under the current democratic strategy, I would rather it happen now while I’m young enough to fight and not 10 years from now while I’m old and decrepit. (Well, more old and decrepit.)
If the fascism is going to happen anyway, which it will under the current democratic strategy, I would rather it happen now while I’m young enough to fight and not 10 years from now while I’m old and decrepit. (Well, more old and decrepit.)
LMFAO. Do you have any idea how naive this sounds? More likely than not you would be living under Fascism for the entire remainder of your life. The Germans who voted for Hitler in 1933 and were in East Germany had to wait 66 years until the year 1989 before they were allowed to choose their own leaders again. The people who supported the Communists in China who came to power in 1949 were all fucked for the entire remainder of their lives. And now their descendants 76 years later are still fucked in 2025 because of the foolishness of the people in 1949.
This is just about the dumbest argument I’ve ever heard. There is a VAST cultural difference between the US and China and the East Germans were actually screwed by us making a bullshit deal with the USSR.
This is also the same shite argument centrist democrats have been using for the last 25 years. “Vote for us if you don’t want something worse!”
Guess what, I voted for them and something worse happened anyway. So I am done voting for the middle of the road. Because all it has gotten us is the mess we are in right now.
No where they sit their ass at home so the red hats don’t come for us for voting for dems who won’t even do a fucking thing to combat this. If I’m going to go on record as being against the regime it better be for a good reason, and this ain’t it
Don’t ever ask for progressives’ vote again. We’re done voting blue no matter who.
I’ve been saying that for 10 years and being called a Russian agent and anti-American and MAGA
Screw choosing the lesser of two evils. You have to give me someone to vote for
I really like the idea of a tea party style takeover. That seems much more actionable and realistic.
I’m going to assign you a book:
Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals by Saul Alinsky
Do you remember when the right-wing dummies were all shrieking about this book, and how Hillary Clinton was mentored by Alinsky?
It’s because they were following the damn advice in that book - it’s like a checklist of what to do to take over locally, then statewide, etc
No such thing.
The tea party was just billionaires covered in AstroTurf. They bought the Republican party. It’s asymmetrical warfare, because the left doesn’t have billionaires that profit from our policy goals.
Not to be a doomer, I do think Democrats can be pulled left (kicking and screaming) but I’m not sure how though.
Tea party was partially real. But it was basically petite bourgeois: car dealership owners and the like. This was also the main component of Jan 6th. These people aren’t a huge constituency but there are a lot more of them than billionaires.
Then you get what we got last time: the fascists gain power and make things worse for the masses, the Dem politicians continue being rich and are shielded from the consequences. You only benefit the fascists and hurt yourself if you don’t vote for the lesser of two evils.
I think people who are informed but specifically stay home because of Democratic policy positions or vote third party is a relatively small number of people.
It seems to me like far more people just sit out because the Dems are useless. When Harris said the economy was good, people wrote her off as out of touch.
We can argue about whether people should vote for harm reduction all day everyday (like we have been doing). But the fact remains that if Dems don’t present a vision for the future that excites people to come out for them, fascists gain power.
You’re correct. But if someone doesn’t support the fascists and says they’re not voting for harm reduction, they should be called out for it. Don’t help the fascists and then complain when they win.
Let’s say Gavin Newsome runs in 2028 and he supports a Federal law banning trans people from playing sports. That’s “better than the Republicans”, right? So you’d still vote for him? So what reason does he have to support trans people if they won’t lose any votes for not doing so?
How about instead of Gavin Newsome, why not run Mitt Romney? All the pundits are talking about appealing to “moderates”. When you pledge to vote Blue no matter who, that tells the Democrats to go as far right as they can, which means the Republicans can move even further right.
You say people who didn’t vote are helping fascists, but I’d rather call out the powerful people who are doing nothing (or worse).
Yes, I’d still vote for him because it’s better than the Republicans. Harm reduction. Once you have these shitty-but-not-fascist people in power, you do exactly what you said and call them out on their bullshit, call your Congressperson to apply political pressure, primary them, protest, whatever you can. Because now that the fascists are in power, they can and will do whatever they want and you have even less agency to do anything about it than when they’re not controlling the government.
And when you don’t vote against Republicans, they can completely take over the government and do whatever the fuck they want. What is that accomplishing?
I have been voting Blue No Matter Who for 20 years, and that has brought us to Trump.
I can’t help but note that you didn’t actually respond to any of my concerns. I understand what you’re saying. Do you understand the counter argument?
No, it didn’t. People NOT voting Blue No Matter Who did. That’s why he won.
My understanding is that the counter argument is that Democrats should be the kinds of people that people want to vote for, not just the lesser evil. That would be ideal, but it’s not the reality we live in. Similarly, the reality is that people of all political leanings will usually not vote for the most practical outcome that benefits them, but with emotion. For conservatives, that means their team regardless of anything else - “Red No Matter Who.” For people who are farther left than center-right, that means becoming disillusioned with how poorly Democrats represent them and not voting, even if they are still better than their opponents. Hence, the fascists win.
You can’t act like people don’t vote for the lesser evil, or that it hasn’t been responsible for every Dem victory since Clinton.
Democrats need to face the reality that “better than Republicans” is not a good motto and they can’t win without presenting a better vision for how to improve people’s lives. Yelling “Blue No Matter Who” at people online won’t win elections.
Why wouldn’t a progressive want to vote blue though? Of the two most likely candidates, they are the least fascist.
Unless you’re going the accelerationist route, it makes sense to Vote blue.
The DNC won’t improve things because their goal is to maintain the status quo
With these actions they prove their goal is stagnation, not progress.
Why the fuck would you think that the DNC has the power to “improve things”? The DNC is no different from the RNC. Neither of them have any power at all over any branch of government. The 2 Dem organizations with 100% of the actual power to make laws are the HDC and the SDC.
Why do I think a political party should do things to improve our lives?
Are you seriously asking me that?
Because the Democrats hold a lot of power that they use to keep everything the same.
Why do you expect anyone to believe they have the willingness to?
I agree, but they are less fascist than the Republicans. So why not vote for them?
Because they have proven they aren’t interested in meaningfully improving things…
I want an option besides collapse and slow collapse lol
I agree. We need time to build a leftist party or to fundamentally change the Democratic party. I’m not opposed to completely rewiring the Republican party if it’s a faster option.
We can get more time by voting for the least fascist option. That way we won’t be sent off El Salvador while we’re trying to fix things.
There have been such attempts over the previous 120 years. They were all failures because of structural reasons.
Yes that would be fantastic and definitely needs to happen. And it will happen sooner or later. The problem is that we need much more “sooner” and much less “later”. We only have so many years to live.
So, in the remaining years of our lives, political we… What? Give up because we can’t organize?
I think the brands are too toxic at this point.
Like 70% of people say they want more third parties that actually care about the things they do and don’t like the Duopoly.
Yeah, I agree. I think first past the post has not been good. That’s what forces us into this two-party system.
I would vote for a third party if it became more popular than the Democrats or the Republicans, and it was progressive/ leftist.
The problem is getting it over that hump.
Why should we reward democrats for taking our votes and betraying us?
That’s your problem, thinking you’re rewarding Democrats somehow by voting for them rather than doing damage mitigation for the country. They’re rich and will be fine regardless of who you vote for - you’re only making things worse for yourself by not voting for the lesser of two evils.
You say “Thats your problem” like you think the DNC can win without these people you talk down to.
It is our problem. You and me and everybody. Because we are the primary losers whenever the GOP wins elections. Not well to do politicians. They are going to be fine either way.
They can’t. But the fascists sure did thanks to their help.
How? We’ve voted blue no matter who for decades and look where it got us.
Maybe democrats should do something to earn our votes.
30 million more people with health insurance? Raising taxes on billionaires instead of cutting them?
Nobody who voted for Harris were trying to do a f*cking personal favor for her. We were all trying to do ourselves and the country a favor. Some other person has to earn your right to permit you to do yourself a personal favor? The rest of us are simply claiming that right for ourselves because we would be fools not to.
Health insurance isn’t health care. It’s a swindle literally concocted by the Heritage Institution to shovel government money to private insurers in exchange for crap insurance. Yes, Project 2025 Heritage Institute.
What a bright, shining example of progress.
Do you get it yet? Democrats are doing republicans’ work for them and holding their hands out to billionaires.
And if they don’t, who will be the ones suffering for it? It won’t be them.
Oh, okay, you win. Voting blue no matter who is obviously the path to a progressive utopia.
It’s more likely to be than letting fascists win, although a lot of work would have to be done primarying the corpos and getting progressives in there. That’s not even a possibility when the GOP has power.
You don’t get it. YOU’RE letting the fascists win.
Progressive policies are broadly popular. Corporate democrats are less popular than the least popular president in American history.
The thing about voting for the “least fascist” is you’re still voting for a fascist.
The energy is better spent preparing to remove the fascists. Get a gun, get organized with your community, build up shared resources, and prepare for the shoe to drop.
Good thing I’m voting for a democrat and not a fascist then.
The thing about supporting a Communist overthrow of democracy is that you’re still supporting a Fascist overthrow of democracy with the same end result.
But like, you should still vote while you’re doing all that
For a capitalist party? Absolutely not. You’re giving them consent to govern on your behalf, and reinforcing their legitimacy.
I am glad you agree that consent is important. The Communists ruled Russia for 74 years without anybody’s consent, so I will assume you understand as all of us do that they are every bit as bad as their Fascist allies.
Conservatives have never forgiven Communists for the fall of Berlin.
It grants you slower fascism rather than fast fascism.
One day of voting for Democrats seems like it could prevent a lot of bad from happening. It’s a pretty good bang for your buck in terms of time spent organizing.
As far as consent and legitimacy goes, that’s more of a media thing, not a voting thing.
No, that’s a reflection of the privilege you enjoy personally under Democrats. There are many, many people who have suffered and died under the fascism of Democrats as well.
Once you’re advocating for voting for a genocidal party as ‘harm reduction’, it’s very clearly just an argument of maintaining personal privilege.
Also, the harm reduction argument is made up. Once you compare their actual policies, and not what they campaign on, you’ll see the difference between the two parties is nonexistent. Which is as expected from two parties accepting money from the same oligarchs.
Oh hey I’m glad you brought up “genocide”. You remind me very much of Trump and his whoppers. But this gives us an opportunity to review Lenin and Stalin’s genocide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0967067X97000111
https://www.chinafile.com/library/nyrb-china-archive/who-killed-more-hitler-stalin-or-mao
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2010/09/naimark-stalin-genocide-092310
https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/ezpp8k/how_many_people_did_stalin_actually_kill/
https://allthatsinteresting.com/how-many-people-did-stalin-kill
https://www.britannica.com/place/Soviet-Union/The-U-S-S-R-from-the-death-of-Lenin-to-the-death-of-Stalin
Genocide in scare quotes?
netanyahu is committing genocide. No quotes. Genocide deniers are gross.
netanyahu is alive and actively committing genocide. Stalin died in 1953. He’s not in the room with us right now.
I agree they both are fed by the same oligarchs. And I agree that the fascism of the Democrats have killed people.
But you can’t say the difference is non-existent. Was Biden or Kamala going to start shipping citizens over El Salvador? I think not and arguing that the two parties are the same is very silly.
Also thanks to first pass the post not voting for Democrats is giving more power to Republicans. Whose fascism will kill way more than the Democratic fascism.
I’m begging you to question what you’ve been led to believe are fundamental truths.
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO00/20200109/110349/HHRG-116-GO00-20200109-SD007.pdf
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c36e41dx425o.amp
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-set-broaden-arrests-deportation-routes-expand-immigration-crackdown-2025-02-21/
https://www.aclu.org/news/smart-justice/how-can-3-year-old-represent-himself-court
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You need to find a local socialist group to get involved with. Hopefully that will help deprogram you of the Democrat propaganda you’ve absorbed.
If you get more involved, you’ll quickly realize that the Democrats are more active villains than you currently realize, and are the primary party we’re having to battle.
Wow you guys haven’t changed at all since 1917. This is a remarkable consistency for 108 years. Lenin and Stalin also saw their primary enemies as the other leftwing parties instead of the conservatives. They killed and/or imprisoned literally every member of Russia’s other 2 socialist parties, the Menshiviks and the Socialist Revolutionary Party.
Already in the social labor party, but the restrictions of a 527 organization seem so… broken? The political party can’t endorse any specifc candidates, pay for campaign expenses, etc. You’d need a PAC for that.
After all of those hurdles, the idea of a third party being viable across all states seem very far away, and with FPTP systems it is very unlikely that it would be able to do anything before people are put in camps for being LGBTQ+ or calling out fascists for what they are.
Considering the Democrats are moving even further to the right, I don’t understand your logic in thinking that continuing to vote for Democrats will solve any of those problems. As we’ve already seen, voting for Democrats isn’t even harm reduction. Biden armed a genocide, and deported 250% more people than Trump.
Neoliberals are neither progressive nor leftist. They are protectors of right-wing ur-fascist policy. It’s past time we accept that the DNC is owned and operated by self-serving, rich neoliberal scum and start finding actual progressive, leftist alternatives.
I don’t disagree with anything there. I still don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to slow fascism down as much as possible. One day of voting seems like a pretty good deal for the outcome.
You can both organize and vote.
By not fighting the fascists they allow them to run rampant. This is accelerationism.
It doesn’t matter if the party doesn’t change. We can keep sleepwalking into it or crash into it, the result will be the same. We must change the Democratic party to avoid disaster.
I agree, but why not disempower the fascist as much as possible while rebuilding the Democratic party?
So where, pray tell, do the progressive votes go?
Primary them sure. Try and snag it back. But you won’t turn your next vote red. You know that. And they know that. And I sure as fuck won’t do it either. The DNC can rot. But…
You can and should blame the two party system sure. But if you don’t primary and win. Well. We’ve seen that before again and again.
I’m a progressive that will vote blue again. Reluctantly. Emphatically so. But I will.
The posturing of principals means nothing in our political reality. And it pisses me off. But reality doesn’t care about your feelings.
The dnc are trying to be “business folk” when their constituents want them to be rebels
I no longer vote for neoliberals or for folks who receive aipac money.
Period.
I won’t vote for a republican either.
If they want my vote they have to support policies that I do.
Period.
Blue no matter who is how we got here.
No, because Trump wouldn’t have won if that were the case.
I don’t think so. There’s a reason the democratic party is polling worse than Trump. They’re snakebit, even their own voters are disgusted with them. They’ve decided that their optimal strategy for winning national elections is pointing out (accurately) that the other guy is a Nazi and literally nothing else, and they’re still losing, that’s how fucking snakebit they are. There’s nowhere left to go at this point, the plan seems to still be “ratchet right to peel off two more moderate republicans and ask people to be satisfied with just voting against the Nazis for the rest of their lives”, which is a plan that has now failed 2/3 times.
Vote blue no matter who, think about that phrase for a second. That’s basically saying “shut up, don’t think, just do vote for any POS we put out and be happy about it”. Doesn’t seem like very good marketing to me. Do you think the Republicans have to tell their voters to hold their nose, suck it up, and vote no matter how much they hate the candidate? This is investing in loser energy, it’s a shit strategy that’s basically engineered from the ground up to lose.
Nope. We are basically saying “Think about how if Trump and the depraved corrupt Republicans win, Israel will implement a full scale food embargo on Gaza, and Traitorapist Trump will give gigantic tax cuts to billionaires, decree massive new tariff taxes on the middle class, turn the entire government into total shit, take health insurance away from 9.7 million Americans, and turn our entire economy into shit.”
They don’t even need to do that because all Republicans already know that’s how they win elections.
Yeah, all the maga people really don’t seem like they’re holding their nose to me.
As opposed to the democrats, who will do fuck all until the Republicans win the next election and do all that shit anyway.
They suck, no doubt about it, but fascists suck way, way more. “Vote blue no matter who” is effectively what you have to do in a two-party system, but in reality not voting red is what’s important. And yes, “Vote for the guys who are less bad” is a terrible message and contributes to the fascists winning. But voting is vital (even now, if only at a more local level), and not voting for fascists is extremely important.
Voting for whoever will cause the least harm to the country is the right thing to do. “I won’t vote for the lesser evil!” does not accomplish this and actually goes in the opposite direction. But people are emotional and not practical beings overall, so the guys who are better at appealing to emotions win and we all suffer for it.
“no matter who” means “no accountability.”
Fine, then say “vote against red.” It’s what I’m actually doing, anyway. The system is fucked, but when you allow fascists in power you have even less agency to do anything about it. You ALSO have to hold Democrats in power accountable when they’re in office via calls to your Representatives, protesting, primarying, etc. If you choose to do nothing but vote, you are indeed giving them no accountability.
The important thing is that the centrists who run the party keep running the party forever.
You’re trying to convince someone who voted for harris to vote for her long after the election is over. Continuing to carry water for her is pointless.
My representative is a republican who doesn’t care what I think. My senators are both republicans who don’t care what I think. My party is run by people who care only what republicans and netanyahu think.
Champions of the status quo don’t have to protest, but they get to act like they got what they wanted by protesting instead of just enjoying things as they are. Perhaps you can afford the time off to protest, the time off to get arrested, and the medical bills from being beaten by police, or perhaps you have no need of protest as you have at least one party that represents you.
This thread is about what the party does whenever people try to primary their republican-adjacent ghouls. They’re treating David Hogg like they would have treated dick cheney if they disagreed with him on anything.
Other routes are not available to me, and I already vote like you want.
you wait around until next election and wait for the PR firm that republicans hired to sway you not to vote for anyone. EZPZ
[citation needed]
Insane that this is news to people. With everything we know. That you need this to be cited. It’s why we’re fucked.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/01/908386613/facebook-and-twitter-remove-russia-backed-accounts-targeting-left-leaning-voters
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/voter-suppression-has-gone-digital
https://www.wired.com/story/how-russia-pushed-our-buttons-with-fake-online-ads/
Honestly, maybe it’s time for progressives to take over the Republican party primary and start moving them left .
They basically were until the tea party came in and yanked them back
I’m down with this. Let progressives fuck up another party for a change.
How do progressives fuck up the democratic party?
I thought progressives didn’t vote.
They don’t. And then they go around trying to convince everyone else not to vote also.
Because if you vote and willingly participate in a corrupt system, you are giving legitimacy to the system. The only way you can say this system is illegitimate and refuse to be bound by it is to refuse to participate and vote
This is the exact energy you should go and bring to the Republican party and stop bothering us with. I’m certain they will welcome you.
Vote third party, it’s the only way to end the Duopoly.
By “end the Duopoly” you just mean "help billionaires get gigantic GOP tax cuts’. We’ve had dozens of 3rd parties and they have all been failures. The system has structural forces in place to prevent them from being successful. Nobody alive today created this system. We are all stuck with it same as you. But we recognize the reality that millions will die or become impoverished every time someone like Traitorapist Trump gets elected from his party of corrupt decadents. And we recognize the reality that when the GOP wins it is us who loses, not politicians.
Nah, shaming sensible people into voting blue no matter who has lost the Dems 2/3 of the last elections.
Now it’s time for you to suck it up and vote with leftists
Or do you hate democracy? Because voting for Democrats is just voting for more bIlliONairE tAx cuTs
Democratic primaries are kabuki. Trying to oust Hogg is just the latest demonstration.
Yeah so… uh… That kinda goes both ways. I’ve made this argument before so I’m just gonna copy paste it, but lemme just…
To change the inevitable result, which is fascism in the United States, you have to change the game in some way, and primarying incumbents and voting blue no matter who is what progressives are already doing.
The DNC needs to get edgier
Your metaphor is flawed. Opting out does not save you anything because voting doesn’t cost you anything in the first place. If you got a free bet, why wouldn’t you take it?
It’s more like we’re on a sinking ship and bailing water. The ship is going down if we don’t patch the hole, but bailing water still buys us time so that we can make more attempts to patch the hole. Except in this metaphor, bailing is something that takes maybe an hour of your time once every two years.
Dems aren’t helping the ship stay afloat. They’re stopping the people from patching the hole because they’re “powerless”. Dems and Reps aren’t the same because they’re equally as bad, they’re the same because they’re on the same team. They’re both shameless fascists.
ok but one of the shameless fascists isn’t deporting innocent people to a prison in el salvador or denying women healthcare
They are doing that. They’re on the same team. Biden didn’t stop any of this. Lol. They’re literally the same team, not figuratively, but they are literally working together to push the same agenda.
The bet here isn’t voting; it’s elections. An election is an essentially random process where depending on the result things change either for the best or for the worst. If you somehow quantify how far America is from fascism (say, in terms of how many Republican terms it would take to go from the situation at hand to full-blown fascism) then you can model elections as a bet where you’re forced to participate and don’t get to choose your stake. Again, under this model (which should be accurate since the conditions for its application are all there) you will end up at fascism unless you change the game you’re being forced to play so the odds are in your favor rather than the fascists’. I also want to point out that this isn’t an analogy; it’s a model. I’m simply taking a principle that exists in one field, making some simplifying assumptions and applying it in another. What I outlined here isn’t a “what if” analogy; it’s one step removed from a mathematical certainty.
I have no problem with the act of voting itself. My problem is with… everything else that happens during election season. The whole idea of unity with liberals (aka Democrats) against the right is evidently a failed preposition, and the reason for that failure is specifically that the Democratic Party is invested in the game’s present state and will force you (or, more accurately, already forces you) to cooperate with them to maintain the game before you’re allowed to be “united” with them. To borrow your analogy, the Democrats are the ship’s captain, who is helping you bail water but only on the condition that you don’t patch the holes (and yes, there’s more than one). You’re not even supposed to point out that neither you nor him are patching the holes. Instead, you and the rest of the crew are supposed to just keep bailing and ignore the rising water level. And to be clear, the bailing isn’t just one thing you do every two years; that doesn’t begin to capture the opportunity cost involved. Your bailing in this analogy is voting drives, canvassing and other outreach on behalf of the Democrats; it’s political donations; it’s suppressing criticism of the DNC (attempts to get the captain to patch the damn hole) in the name of unity against the far-right. The actual voting is only the end of this long string of actions that sap energy, money and credibility from the people who would otherwise be out there actually patching the damn holes.
Okay analogy over, back to the real world. The DNC should’ve been fucking flayed alive when they tried to push a pro-genocide ex-DA on Americans, and instead all they got was progressives hushing down other progressives in the name of “unity”. I’m sure you can think of all sorts of examples of this in action, but here’s one to drive the point: the progressive reaction to the Uncommitted Movement. This was a large movement that had gained momentum in an attempt to push the DNC from proto-fascism and into the sanity, and what did they get from not even liberals, but progressives who should have been their most ardent supporters? “Hold your nose and vote for her.” Not a nationwide solidarity to force the Democrats to back down on their most unpopular policies, not even tepid support or apathy, but active, emphatic opposition. That’s not the stuff of democracy; that’s a dictatorship where you roll a dice every four years to find out which boot will step on your neck until the next election.
I should note: I’m not advocating for passivity or apathy here. This shouldn’t be a reason for you or anyone else to stay home and give up; it should be an impetus to organize, embrace solidarity between workers and take on the capitalists and their supporters. Act, but act according to your own conscience, not according to the DNC’s agenda. This is especially important right now because the Democrats won’t save you from fascism even if they wanted to, but even if democracy and the DNC both survive Trump, next time you be on the side doing the flaying and not the side practicing cannibalism on behalf of your blue donkey overlords.
Did you not know that “liberal” is literally a synonym of “progressive”. Moderate Dems (there are not moderate Republicans) are not liberals and don’t call themselves liberals.
You should learn what the word liberal actually means. Liberalism is a center-center right ideology and has both historically and now been at odds with progressive politics, up to and including aligning with fascists over leftists. It’s been marketed as “everyone left of center” these days, but that’s just not what the word means as a term. Think of the word "neoliberal ", and remember that neoliberalism is explicitly a return of the laissez-faire ideas of classical liberalism. Regardless, I said “aka democrats” specifically so people who aren’t neck-deep in leftwing politics know what I’m talking about.
I mean they don’t call themselves liberals, but according to what the term actually means in political science they’re liberals (well, sort of, some are conservatives).
Yes you should.
[Used politically, it means “a person who believes that government should be active in supporting social and political change.”]
https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/liberal-meaning-origin-history
Okay so, given complicated the differences between variations of liberalism are, Merriam Webster is really not a good source here. That’s not what liberalism means in most of the world. That said, the Democratic Party is definitely classical liberal (also known as neoliberal), rather than social liberal, which is what you’re talking about, and that also exists so I wasn’t 100% correct either, but either way “liberal” is absolutely not a synonym with “progressive”.
This exactly. I have voted for every progressive candidate that has come up on the ballot. And yet every single time the middle of the road Democrat wins. Because that’s where the DNC puts the money. And in the general I always vote for whatever Democrat has won the primary. And quite frankly I always feel sick that I voted for somebody that I wouldn’t vote for if I had a better choice.
So I think I’m going to choose not to vote in the general if the progressive I vote for doesn’t win. I’m tired of a democratic party that is more interested in protecting their position than actually doing their job.
You are going to help billionaires get gigantic GOP tax cuts and increase wealth inequality. Got it.
They’re already getting this. There’s nothing in their way and the current democrats are even helping them do it.
What the fuck is even your point?
It couldn’t be that the middle of the road Democrat is simply popular among the majority of the voting population? Nah couldn’t be. Everybody in my family loves when I rant about the benefits of communism at Thanksgiving.
That’s funny.
You know what’s funnier, and not in a ha ha funny way. The way I bring up progressive candidates to people and they have no idea who it is. It’s not about popularity. It’s about how the media, that is controlled by both parties, only seems to report on the chosen few.
I think you should still vote just to show you’re an active voter that they failed to court, but vote for independents, 3rd party, write in, whatever.
Honestly, I think the only solution for progressives is to elect enough independents that mathematically, while a minority, MUST be courted by the establishment parties in order to secure their legislation. Though that won’t do anything for legislation that both establishment parties fully agree on, that’ll still get rammed through.
But what are we even talking about? These are all legal constructs. We’re living post rule of law now. Dictator just flat ignoring courts.
Yeah, that’s basically the situation in Australia. The crossbench is needed to pass anything in the Senate, but Liberals and Labour routinely join forces to pass some truly disgusting shit (most recently an election reform that would reduce funding to the smaller parties, and a takeover of one of the biggest unions in the country).
Like another poster said casting a blank ballet sends much more of a message than not voting at all.
the message:
Make America Corrupt Again
https://www.thefp.com/p/how-qatar-bought-america
Exactly this. Stop giving the DNC money. Whenever you can send the message to the officials. No progressive platform and change? No removal of incumbents? No money. No vote.
It isn’t _just _ on us to do something. If they too don’t wanna see the fascists win, then it’s time for them to eat humble pie and realize their policies and their positions for the past 30-40 years brought this pig to prom. They have to pass the torch.
Fascism might be defeated again but it will come at the cost of neoliberalism finally dying as well. There’s very little options of anything else working.
Nobody here gives the DNC any money. I agree that would be stupid because there are much better choices. Most of us don’t give much money to politicians and usually only to a specific candidate. But if I was going to right now, I would funnel that money thru people like Sanders or AOC or Hoggs.
If democrats want our votes, it’s time for them to start earning them.
The fewer MAGAs that vote the better IMO, democratic candidates shouldn’t make concessions to people like you.
“Concessions to people like me”:
I’m not in dire need of any of those. But I’m not a selfish dickhead.
“if i dont get my twains then i wont stop trans ppl from losing their healthcare”
good thing you’re obv too young to vote anyway
Trans people lost healthcare under Biden, and Harris said she would “follow the laws” on trans people in red states.
So that argument is null.
I’m advocating for basic things people need to survive (not for myself) and you’re treating it like I want a pony.
Oh, and what an excellent example. Newsom and other corpo dems are abandoning the trans cause to (try to) woo centrists. Progressives aren’t.
What planet do you live on?
Yeah, it’s what centrists do.
Silly wabbit. Progressives don’t vote.
I think we need a different color to vote for. Definitely not green, because that party is for shit. But Democrats are functionally useless at this point.
I think I would rather throw my vote away on somebody who challenges the status quo in a progressive way under the Democratic socialist party (or just the plain socialist party) rather than vote for some goddamn Democrat who’s going to uselessly wring their hands and then go home to their million dollar mansion and cry about how unfair people are being to their useless ass.
Voting blue hasn’t helped cause they think it’s your only option so they don’t have to actually do anything to earn your vote other than being “not a Republican”.
FUCK THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
I’M NOT VOTING FOR ANOTHER MODERATE ASSHOLE
Your maga friends thank you for your service 🙏
If the fascism is going to happen anyway, which it will under the current democratic strategy, I would rather it happen now while I’m young enough to fight and not 10 years from now while I’m old and decrepit. (Well, more old and decrepit.)
LMFAO. Do you have any idea how naive this sounds? More likely than not you would be living under Fascism for the entire remainder of your life. The Germans who voted for Hitler in 1933 and were in East Germany had to wait 66 years until the year 1989 before they were allowed to choose their own leaders again. The people who supported the Communists in China who came to power in 1949 were all fucked for the entire remainder of their lives. And now their descendants 76 years later are still fucked in 2025 because of the foolishness of the people in 1949.
This is just about the dumbest argument I’ve ever heard. There is a VAST cultural difference between the US and China and the East Germans were actually screwed by us making a bullshit deal with the USSR.
This is also the same shite argument centrist democrats have been using for the last 25 years. “Vote for us if you don’t want something worse!”
Guess what, I voted for them and something worse happened anyway. So I am done voting for the middle of the road. Because all it has gotten us is the mess we are in right now.
No where they sit their ass at home so the red hats don’t come for us for voting for dems who won’t even do a fucking thing to combat this. If I’m going to go on record as being against the regime it better be for a good reason, and this ain’t it