We knew who the Democrats and Republicans are. The Democrats are neoliberals. The Republicans are fascists. We have a democracy as long as we can keep it. If we lose our democracy we have no one to blame but ourselves. We elected Biden last cycle. We could have elected Harris this cycle. We failed to do so.
The Democrats were never going to spontaneously become populist this cycle. Harris’ campaign was at least progressive leaning before DNC consultants ran into the ground. Our job was to spread the word to vote for Harris and how it would be useful for advancing progressive and socialist causes over time.
Instead accelerations spread the propaganda that Harris and Trump were the same on Israel’s genocide and that people needed to protest vote. Not enough people voted this election in part because of that. We failed to use our tool, the Democratic Party, to prevent fascism.
It’s not lazy to think voting was sufficient. The only way to win was to get enough votes. That’s how democracy works. People spread pro-democracy messages as best we could. We lost the election to fascism. Now we need to organize, because there isn’t necessarily going to be a next election. Hopefully there will, but we may need mass protests if we even want a shot at another election.
Also, Trump threatened to arrest top Democrats. It seems like the Democratic Party could be dead by the next presidential election.
We have a democracy as long as we can keep it. If we lose our democracy we have no one to blame but ourselves.
The purpose of a system is what it does, and America has never done Democracy. Our government is designed to limit choice to only those candidates that the owners of this country find acceptable, and this system is not threatened by the electoral failure of the Democrats, or even the loss of an entire major party, so long as the capitalists own any new party that rises to replace it.
Electoralism is a trap. Voting won’t save us. We have to save us, and we aren’t all going to make it unless we can start working together outside of the existing political establishment.
The purpose of a system is what it does
The electoral college and our first-past-the-post system is a huge part of the problem. With ranked choice voting we would have more choices for candidates and progressives and socialists would have a better shot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo
and America has never done Democracy.
We have been a democracy since the founding of our country. Consider reading a US history book to learn more. Our democracy is flawed. Fascists leveraged the flaws in our democracy to take it away. That’s why Republican voters had to actually vote to take our democracy away, but of course the capture of our democracy has been happening slowly before that. Hopefully fascist incompetence means this isn’t the end for democracy, but we can’t count on that.
Our government is designed to limit choice to only those candidates that the owners of this country find acceptable, and this system is not threatened by the electoral failure of the Democrats, or even the loss of an entire major party, so long as the capitalists own any new party that rises to replace it.
Since Citizens United v. FEC corporations have had an outsized influence in our elections with unrestricted independent expenditures. But even before that, since Regan we’ve collectively adopted neoliberalism as a country. We’ve prioritized markets being free over people being free and all but the rich are worse off because of it. Late-stage capitalism has led us straight to an oligarchy of billionaires pledging fealty to a dictator.
It didn’t have to be this way. We could have chosen socialism, changed to worker ownership of corporations, and levied wealth taxes on the rich. The issue was that we failed to get neoliberalism out of the minds of the population. People say something along of the lines of ‘socialism doesn’t work’ and maybe even ‘the soviet union collapsed’ reflexively when they hear the word socialism.
Part of what we need to do is teach people that neoliberalism is scam and that socialism is the answer to their problems. In the coming years we are going to have a lot evidence that we can show people. But there is no sense in waiting. We can start on that now.
Electoralism is a trap. Voting won’t save us. We have to save us, and we aren’t all going to make it unless we can start working together outside of the existing political establishment.
Democracy is the best system we have for inclusive political institutions. If you know a better one that is more inclusive please share it. We of course need to organize between elections, now more than ever. But if you never vote when you get the chance, and we will be lucky if we ever do, all that organization goes to waste.
The electoral college and our first-past-the-post system is a huge part of the problem. With ranked choice voting we would have more choices for candidates and progressives and socialists would have a better shot.
You’re not wrong, but it’s irrelevant so long as we live under parties that benefit from this status quo. There’s no way to get ranked choice voting without overthrowing the two-party system first. Things will have to get worse before they can get better.
We have been a democracy since the founding of our country. Consider reading a US history book to learn more. Our democracy is flawed.
You seem to have contradicted yourself. Are we a democracy or are we flawed? If the system is structured so badly that fascists can claim totalizing power, can you really call the system democratic?
It didn’t have to be this way. We could have chosen socialism
“We” don’t get to make that choice. The choices available are selected by capitalists and it has been that way since this country was founded.
