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.
Then you’re not the type of person I’m referring to, who doesn’t vote because Democrats aren’t progressive enough, thereby allowing fascists into power and contributing to things becoming even worse. Complaining that Democrats suck is fine, because they do. Making things worse by allowing the greater evil to get into power is not.
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
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.
Then you’re not the type of person I’m referring to, who doesn’t vote because Democrats aren’t progressive enough, thereby allowing fascists into power and contributing to things becoming even worse. Complaining that Democrats suck is fine, because they do. Making things worse by allowing the greater evil to get into power is not.
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.
Democratic primaries are kabuki. Trying to oust Hogg is just the latest demonstration.
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
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).
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.
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
Silly wabbit. Progressives don’t vote.
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.
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