Now Gaza burns faster. Congrats 3rd party fuckers.

Consider how you’d go about exploiting the opposite case.

If people will always vote for the slightly-less-worse candidate, then you only ever have to be slightly-less-worse than the opposition. You can sleaze right up to them and be almost as corrupt and evil as they are, so long as there’s just a little bit of extra sleaze sticking out that you can point to as the worse alternative. And you can farm the shit out of that, because then the other side never has to improve either - it’s an anti-competitive duopoly, where they both agree to only compete over surface details, not their overall horribleness, leaving them free to sleaze right up to the fucking-monster end of the spectrum.

Presumably a percentage of people refused to enable that behaviour, and said that slightly-less-genocide is a bridge too fucking far.

They made it plain from the outset that if the dems wanted to play chicken on this, the dems would lose. That they were not to big to fail, that daddy wouldn’t bail them out this time; put down the bombs or you’re getting kicked out for real.

The morally-correct choice would have been for the dems to stop supporting genocide, especially with so much at stake.

There’s this huge narrative that’s been consistently pushed that the actions of politicians are beyond accountability, sent down from on high like acts of god, and that moral responsibility lies only with the voters; that it’s meaningless even imagine any obligation for the ruling class to try and be good enough to vote for.

You know, the way the fossil fuel lobby found ways to shift the blame onto the consumer instead of themselves. The way the opioid manufacturers did the same. The way the gun manufacturers did the same. The way plastic manufacturers did the same fucking thing as well. We’ll act however we fucking well want to, and if you don’t like it, that’s literally your problem.

Oh no, you can’t hold us accountable now, it’s the worst possible time. It’s too soon to have this conversation, how can you be so insensitive, can’t you see there’s a highschool full of dead kids?

Somewhere, sometime, people have to say enough. And they did.

It’s simple, for a voter that doesn’t have other important things or believes the candidates to be equal in other things, like the economy, it becomes a moral choice to not vote for genocide.

If they believe there will be human rights violations elsewhere, like in the US, but one candidate and not the other, then the moral choice becomes to limit harm.

Much of this argument stems from different base assumptions, as follows-

• Neither Trump nor Harris will commit other human rights violations, and they are materially the same to my family; staying home is the moral action.

• Trump will commit human rights violations, voting for Harris is the moral action.

• They will both commit more human rights violations; staying home is the moral action.

The people who were saying to stay home and not vote fell into camps 1 or 3. If you’re unsure of why someone would believe in number 3 you should know we have illegal debtor’s prisons that are ignored by the federal government, LGBTQ abuse that has gone unchecked by the federal government, illegal denial of asylum directly by the federal government, … the list goes on. But rest assured there are reasons people would see them both as committing human rights violations in the US. This is not some Russian info op like the DNC fanboys would have you believe.

Steelman:

The US is currently a fascist, imperialist state. It has brutalized the global south, indigenous people, and POCs generally since its founding and will continue to do so unless the status quo is disrupted and changed significantly.

The Democratic party supports the same militaristic policies and the same neoliberal economic system that the Republicans do. The primary difference between the parties are various social issues that may make life somewhat better or worse for US citizens, but will never address the core problems of fascism, imperialism, and capitalism. Both parties support and protect the status quo. This status quo only benefits the bourgeois class and rich white people and harms literally hundreds of millions of others around the world.

The Democratic party is the only one of the two major parties that the Left has any degree of leverage over since the Democrats want the Left to vote for them. So, organizing to essentially boycott the Democratic party is a powerful method of protest that could effect real policy change. It is possibly the only effective method of protest left since the US police & surveilance state is cracking down on protests and the Left has no chance protesting violently against the most powerful military the world has ever seen.

The only way to make that threat matter to the Democratic party is to follow through if the demands aren’t met, even - or especially - if it means a second Trump term.

The liberal establishment has ignored and abandoned the working class for decades while dangling the carrot of milktoast social democratic reforms that rarely come to pass, but they blame the same people they abandoned for not energetically voting for them. They say it is a moral imperative to vote for them, but they are incapable of bettering the lives of working class people.

Strawman:

It would hurt my feelings too much to vote for COPmala Harm-us. Plus, Trump would let Putin annex Ukraine. Also, I’d risk touching grass if I went outside to participate in bourgeois electoralism. Gross.

Reality:

You can, and should, do more than one thing. Voting for Kamala is effectively playing defense against outright, full-throated fascism a la Mussolini even if you’d still consider the US fascist - it is clearly worse under Republicans. So vote, play defense, AND organize to raise class consciousness, provide mutual aid, protest when possible, and contribute to socialist causes. Letting Trump win would be a bad move. But, ultimately it is not the Left’s fault that he won. He won the popular vole and the electoral college vote by a large margin - larger than all third party socialist/socialist-adjacent candidates’ votes combined.

Naïve/entitled people fail to grasp the concept of compromise.

Trump is no worse on Gaza than Harris/Biden. Biden/Harris have not really done anything to stop the war and instead keep letting Israel getting away with it, then encouraging it by giving them more money. Trump and Kamala are basically the same on Israel

However at least Democrats voice support for Gaza, as long as they are not in power (executive branch) at least someone will be fighting for Gaza.

In other words, a Democrat house will posture alot and slow down Israeli aid and try to push for more concessions. A Democrat executive and legislative branch will continue steamrolling without resistance

this was a Russian troll campaign, in every tankie on Twitter that fell for it is a moron

They believe it because that’s what people have been told to believe.

It should be glaringly obvious that trump’s implied policy that he will let Israel “finish the job” is far worse than the dems poor attempts at negotiating cease-fires or any other moderation on Israel’s aggression.

All the propaganda has focused on the democrat (in)action regarding Israel. Zero on trump’s plans.

That’s what the propaganda machine has been pushing.

🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺 🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺 🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺

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Because the standard for Democrats is perfectionism, but the standard for Republicans is “That’s just Trump being Trump.”

In other words, they didn’t think it through, they got suckered by propaganda.

People are tired of voting for the lesser evil. So now big evil won, and the idea is that that will teach little evil to stop being at all evil.

On a more serious note, I think for a lot of people Gaza was the drop that spilled the glass rather than THE reason they didn’t support Harris.

My own argument to these people has been that I’d prefer they go out and cast their (wasted) votes for a third party, rather than simply stay home. A lot of Lemmy disagrees with me on that, focusing on the (true) realization that their third parties won’t get elected.

In this election’s current aftermath, much of the blame has been stating that voters were just lazy or unmotivated. The only thing this message encourages is to repeat more rallies, make more promises by demographics and region so people know to get out and vote.

If you vote third party, it sends a message that you are motivated to vote, but you are not pleased with the current messages of the party. That results in a very different change of action.

Unfortunately, this whole practice is extremely long-term-focused. Many people in this election have been desperate for short-term solutions, like the Ukraine/Gaza wars. Ideally, this kind of reaction would have started in 2016/2020 - but third-party votes have been miniscule in those elections too.

Maybe if they are young. Its comes up again and again. I voted for ross perot but was lucky it did not effect the election. I mean just the 50 cent gas tax would have been great for the environment given it would have gone into effect in the 90’s as a federal tax. Electronic direct democracy. Increase in education and infrastructure. It was hard not to like his proposals.

You actively participate in the murder of people.

If enough people did not participate the murder would simply not happen.