What difference does it make which form of government is fucking you over?
Democrats wanted to incrementally improve things. Republicans wanted to round us up into camps.
Voters had an opportunity to prevent a christo-fascist dictatorship and they didn’t take it. Moving things to the left in this country has always involved voting. Losing our democracy doesn’t improve the Democratic Party. If there is another election, which we can’t count on, Democrats are going to learn that they need to move further to the right to pick up votes. They’ve done it before, and they will do it again. They will look at the conservatives who voted and tailor a party platform for them.
Democrats could not care less about appealing to nonvoters or third party voters. They only care about winning, which is probably part of why they suck at it.
Voting should be a mechanical choice during elections. If people want better candidates, organize, and do the work to get grassroots movements off the ground between elections.
Instead of picking a strategy based on a subjective morality people should consider analyzing strategies based on their utility.
If a strategy advances a goal it’s useful. If it doesn’t, it’s not. Voting for the Democrats demonstrates a wider voting base for them to move to the left. Moving Democrats to the left is the goal so this strategy is useful. Protest voting takes votes away from the Democrats so they look for voters on the right. This accomplishes the opposite of the goal so this strategy is not useful.
Democrats wanted to incrementally improve things.
They’ve had four years to, and to the average American, they didn’t. They improved things, but not enough for the average American to notice, or care.
In comparison, regardless of how he did it, Trump got things done that his base wanted.
Democrats are going to learn that they need to move further to the right to pick up votes. They’ve done it before, and they will do it again. They will look at the conservatives who voted and tailor a party platform for them.
They did that this time and lost. They did it in 2016 and lost. The Democrats want a return to the status quo, and nothing else. Americans want change, the status quo is not working for them, but the Democrat party will not try to rally the vote. They scream about Republicans and voter suppression, but where’s the law mandating voting? Or making it a federal holiday? Or requiring paid time off to vote for essential employees?
You’re talking about strategy, well, progressives want to align with the Democrats, right? The FPTP system only allows for two viable parties, right, because winner takes all, and third parties can’t compete? Therefore, progressive third party candidates, under the current system, can’t gain any political power because the system is broken, right?
Ok, so let’s work within the system we have. Republicans are fascist, not very progressive, guess that leaves the Democrats. And they seem open to it! But they keep telling us no, now’s not the right time for XYZ, we don’t have the support, we have to stop/prevent XYZ. We keep voicing concerns and want our issues addressed, and we keep being ignored, told we have to get back to normal before we can move forward, condescended to, or outright dismissed.
You keep saying the Democrats will just keep moving right, and that’s exactly the point I’m making, and the reason people didn’t go out in droves for Harris. You keep saying the Democrats will just try to keep stealing Republican voters, well, then they deserve to lose. 37% of eligible voters vote, and instead of trying to garner that other 63% of the voters to come out, they’ll cut off their nose to spite their face and refuse to adopt progressive, populist policies?
You’re basically telling me the Democrat’s strategy is, “Do what we say or we’ll become more like the fascists.” Cool, so delayed fascism versus fascism… Hence “what difference does it make if our wants don’t matter.”
No, voting is part of how we move the Overton window to the left. If we don’t vote, it moves to the right.
The parties are not the same. Democrats passed the infrastructure bill, cancelled student load debt, and appointed judges to the courts that uphold our rights. They did those things in response to pressure from grassroots movements that showed the viability of progressive causes. Republicans separated immigrant families, took reproductive freedom away from Americans, and led an insurrection against our country. People who aren’t watching Fox News or otherwise trapped in right-wing information silo can tell them apart.
There’s no way to argue you out of a con. You’ve been duped and we need people like you to realize it. Or things will not get better. The people who sold you the both sides narrative are gone. They spread their misinformation, tanked American democracy, and now you are still parroting their talking points.
I am begging you. You have been fooled. Please believe me. Again, it is not possible for me to argue you out of this. You have to trust someone. If you can’t trust me or any of the other people on lemmy saying the same thing, find someone irl you can trust. That’s the only way you can get better.
First of all, do not tell me that I’ve been “duped” or don’t understand the situation, because I could say the exact same of you thinking the parties are not the same. And to be clear, I did not claim they’re both the same side, in fact, if you go back and look at a lot of my comments from the last week (excluding today), I actually explicitly point out that I encourage everyone to vote for Harris.
But she is not a progressive candidate, and she never ran as a progressice candidate. Everyone here is always screaming about “When someone shows you who they are, believe them” about Trump and his ilk, but none of you will apply the same scrutiny to the Democrats and their party leadership.
As the campaign went on, Harris moved further to the right, and that is evident by her adopting some of Biden’s policies (Biden, btw, is still detaining immigrants at the border and doing all of the things we criticize the Republicans for, in fact, his administration actually helped pass a more strict immigration policy for the border). She garnered as much former Republican support as she could (no Palestinians were allowed to speak at the DNC, but they had how many Republicans parade across the stage).
I am begging you. You have been fooled. Please believe me. Again, it is not possible for me to argue you out of this. You have to trust someone. If you can’t trust me or any of the other people on lemmy saying the same thing, find someone irl you can trust. That’s the only way you can get better.
This is the kind of shit I would expect to hear from a cult, not someone trying to have a rational discussion about the failings of a political party. She showed us she cared more about garnering the votes of Republicans than she did trying to win over progressive non-voters within her own party. Biden has shown us he’s made progress, but not to the average American, and not in any meaningful way.
And y’all need to stop acting like Harris got on stage and by virtue of not being Trump was going to save this country. She’s a career centrist Democrat who ran on a centrist platform, promising a centrist return to the status quo that centrist Joe Biden has been leading us through for four years.
Y’all keep trying to get your party on board with incremental change while they witness landfall change coming from the other party. Maybe the Democrats need to adopt more progressive policies and run candidates voters want to vote for for fucking once, instead of counting in someone to vote against.
Or they can keep screaming that our voices, concerns, and wants don’t matter, and they can keep trying to pander votes from a demographic (Republicans) that will never fucking support them. And, just like in 2016, they care more about the support of people who would never support them.
They lost because of it, and that’s on them. The Democrats need to win voters to their party, and this bullshit Republican-lite “we’re not fascist and we totally promise this time we’ll actually make progress for realsies” isn’t working anymore. I hope they choose to go progressive, but looks more like the Democrats will just shift further right, alienating more progressive voters and giving fascism a stronger foothold next election (assuming we have one).
You’re basically telling me the Democrat’s strategy is, “Do what we say or we’ll become more like the fascists.”
It’s not much different than all of you saying, “Do what we say or we will allow democracy to die. All because of a single issue in a country we didn’t know existed a year ago!”
Oh and also, “Do as we say, or the LGBTQ, and women in America will suffer! We don’t really give a shit about the hardships they’ll now face because you didn’t cave in and do shit we don’t even understand!”
It’s not much different than all of you saying
Wow… So the constituents of a political party wanting their concerns and issues addressed and taken seriously, otherwise they just won’t vote for a party that doesn’t represent them…
Is the same thing as the political party, who is supposed to represent the interests of their constituents, telling their constituents to tow the line or they’ll become more fascist.
Constituents: We want our concerns addressed and progress made for the working people.
Democrats: Support us unconditionally or we’ll just become more like the fascists to win their support, since our actions show winning is all that matters.
You: These are literally the same argument, but the constituents are the wronger ones.
All because of a single issue in a country we didn’t know existed a year ago!”
This right here is what I’ve been pointing out for the last week: Democrats lose because the party is condescending, dismissive, and insulting to anyone who dares voice criticism. So those 100,000 protest votes organized by Muslim and Arab Americans, the same amount that Harris is currently losing Michigan by, yeah, that’s just a single issue voter who hasn’t even heard of Palestine until a year ago.
How incredibly insulting to people you’re supposedly trying to win over while completely dismissing their concerns. Would you like to join the Palestinian speakers at the DNC on stage so you can insult them to their faces? Just kidding, the DNC chose to parade a bunch of Republicans across the stage rather than let a Palestinian speak.
We don’t really give a shit
The DNC to every progressive voter every voting day.
about the hardships they’ll now face because you didn’t cave in and do shit we don’t even understand!”
What shit were Democrat voters asking for that they didn’t understand? Seriously, I want you to explain that to me, because from my understanding:
- They wanted positive climate initiatives, and two weeks into the campaign Harris went pro-fracking despite initially being anti-fracking.
- They want the Palestinian genocide to stop, Biden has put no contingencies on weapons transfers to Israel, Harris signalled she only wanted to stop the war. Again, the DNC completely ignored the Arab/Muslim voices protesting this entire election
- They want progress that is actually meaningful and impactful, not these half-assed decades-late measures like the $15/hr minimum wage (should he $26/hr now with inflation), or only expanding Medicare for specific services rather than Medicare4All
- They want an economy that actually reflects their struggles instead of being fed the same metrics that only effect millionaires
- They wanted a candidate they could see positive change in, and Harris returned to the typical Status-Quo Democrat playbook that keeps costing them elections
Those don’t seem like things Americans don’t understand, maybe you and the Democratic leadership need to get off your high horses and maybe acknowledge that people want to see actionable change and not just election cycle after election cycle of excuses and empty promises.
And just a reminder, Democrats had decades to enshrine Roe into law, and didn’t do so the few opportunities they had because it was more useful as a campaign device.
