The ice cream no longer exists. It hasn’t existed for a long time, and no amount of wishing will bring it back.
I want ice cream, too. But before we can have ice cream again, we need to not die.
That’s QUITTER talk! I’m voting for Rocky Road.
So the cliff?
Brick on the pedal.
I LOVE Rocky Road
Really? Because Scandinavia has really nice ice cream. Europe too, with some problems.
Some of the people refuse to believe that the accelerator and steering wheel do anything, even though the pro-cliff people are clearly steering and accelerating.
Some people think we’ve already gone over the cliff, and thus trying to drive the bus is meaningless.
They’re wrong, but they believe it, and people’s beliefs are sometimes too precious to let go.
And some people aren’t on the bus, just on video chat, but for some reason are still arguing to drive off the cliff.
Honestly, seriously. Would harm reduction have happened if Kamala was elected. Yes. Did I personally core for her? Yes.
Did this get them elected? No? Shut the fuck up and stop blaming voters because the Democrats don’t know how to do politics on purpose so they don’t lose their bribes.
Want a better analogy? There’s a bus driving for a cliff and one group votes to minimize the impact of driving off the cliff while another group says please please drive faster off the cliff and do a backflip. A third group says guys, can we perhaps maybe not drive off the cliffd? And the rest call them insane and drive off the cliff
I blame both. The Democratic Party and everybody who did not vote for them. My heart is big, there is enough room to hate everyone!
That’s the spirit!
Bad ice ream is still better than driving off a cliff. You can tell me all day how bad the ice cream is and how shitty the place is because they don’t even try to make good ice cream, they don’t even try to get customers or do a good job. It’s still better than driving off a cliff. I wouldn’t blame the ice cream store for making shitty when people choose not to vote for it. They knew the alternative and still decided to leave it up to fate.
Sure, a nice ice cream shop is easier to get people to vote on, but when the alternative is going off a cliff, the ice cream is kind of a moot point. But sure, let’s blame the ice cream shop for not being attractive enough when anything but going off the cliff should be the obvious choice. Yes, the ice cream shop could have made it easier, but any sane person can see she obvious choice.
Let’s put it this way. If one side is saying they will kill everyone who isn’t straight and white, and the other side says they want to ban gay marriage. Now I think queer rights is really important but I would vote for the second to prevent the firsr. But people seem to be screaming “I’m never voting against gay rights!” Cool, so when the other guy wins and it’s way worse, at least you feel good.
I keep voting for ice cream and I get told “we can’t get ice cream because we have to vote to not go off a cliff again”
Yeah, I think not going off a cliff is pretty important though.
Right, but eventually the cliff guys win and we go off the cliff anyway, and even if they never win we don’t ever get ice cream.
The solution seems we kick them out of the car.
But that’s not how voting for a direction works. I think this analogy is just starting to fall apart after this much discussion, we’ve taken it too far haha.
Listen, I’m all for taking out the trash and not just taking small wins to survive, but I just don’t see the path. I might be missing it, there’s plenty I don’t know, but survival at least would have let us survive a little longer.
I don’t see the path out of just surviving either.
Except maybe jumping out of the car.
Tuck and roll, brother
You get ice cream, just not as much as you want because some people refuse to vote.
Honestly, seriously. Would harm reduction have happened if Kamala was elected. Yes. Did I personally core for her? Yes.
Did this get them elected? No?
What’s the relevance of this inane statement, again?
The Democrats aren’t the ice cream party. They are the “drive off the cliff slowly party” and spent most of their efforts on attacking people who didn’t want to drive off the cliff at all. Driving off the cliff is what both the Republicans and Democrats stand for and it is only “harm reduction” in the framework that people have to accept that the oligarchy will harm them and gives them the illusion of choice how they want to be harmed, rather than a democratic choice between being harmed and not being harmed.
The Democrats aren’t the ice cream party. They are the “drive off the cliff slowly party” and spent most of their efforts on attacking people who didn’t want to drive off the cliff at all. Driving off the cliff is what both the Republicans and Democrats stand for and it is only “harm reduction” in the framework that people have to accept that the oligarchy will harm them and gives them the illusion of choice how they want to be harmed, rather than a democratic choice between being harmed and not being harmed.
The point of the term ‘harm reduction’ is that it is acknowledging that participation in bourgeois democracy is buying time rather than fundamentally reforming the system, I can’t believe how many fucking times and in how many fucking ways I have to explain this to a community that is purportedly leftist.
So what do you do with that time? Hillary was buying time, Biden was buying time, Biden/Harris was buying time…
Instead what happened in these times was things to get worse, the “buying time” party bragging about its exploits in mass deportations, wall building and bombing abroad and ferociously fighting anyone that wanted to bring improvements. Even now we see the exact same thing with Mamdani. The DNC has “learned” absolutely nothing, because everything is going according to plan. Mamdani is threatening the plan. Tump is not.
When people decided to prevent ICE gestapo abducting people in their communities in California, Democratic mayors had the police crack down on them.
Your strategy is all messed up and it didn’t lead you anywhere. With another four years of far right DNC politics as “harm reduction” you would have only fostered liberal complacency and ignorance and on top of it created the economic conditions for the next iteration of Fascism to hit back even harder. There is no fighting with the US political establishment. There is only fighting against it, if you ever want to see the US become a reasonably okay country.
This guy gets it, if the opposition party cares more about maintaining their legal bribes than punishing those doing the bribing and accepting the bribes then they bear an equal responsibility to the destination that those in the car are driven to.
It sounds like the problem is you don’t have enough allies in the fight against either, and your strategy is to bank on getting more allies in a fight against fascists than you would against democrats.
Good luck with that, sincerely; but I think it sounds like a bit of a gamble. Fascists are quite good at terrorising moderates into compliance and killing or imprisoning their opponents.
Well said. I tried to make this point elsewhere in the thread and got showered with downvoted, so it’s nice to see there’s still some sanity left in the world.
Fucking fantastic that Thalmann is making a comeback.
The amazing thing is that there is no Thalmann. Our Hindenburg is so disliked that nobody has to split the vote for him to lose.
I laugh but I cry. But yes.
My point was more about the attitude of “Let fascism come, it will lead to Better Things™” though.
This is why I voted for Kamala, as it would’ve reduced harm for a little while…Long enough to figure out an effective counter. Right now, I am using my voice as best as possible to reduce further harm (with the Big Bad Bill coming into effect soon) I dread losing my insurance and wasting away because untreated it’s a guarantee. Given that I live in a mostly Red State, I could be one of the 17 million affected, or spared because I work part-time… If there are elections in the future, I will be voting with harm reduction in mind every time. Unless America becomes a doomed Fascist Nation which devours itself from within.
Stay strong, talk to your neighbours if feasible where you live, work together locally. Every major catastrophe in my area of the world, even ones which totally upended my country (Romania) for a generation, my family survived via community and friend groups.
In a collapsed or collapsing state, mutual aid is mandatory for survival.
survived via community and friend groups.
People often downplay associativity and are often encouraged to because power to the people scares the oligarchs. You’re easier to subdue if you’re alone.
Join your local community in any ways you can.As I am socially anxious; it’s rough to interact with others. However, I will stay strong and try to participate when possible. As, communities do survive if they actually work with one another despite their differences. We can survive Trump’s cursed presidency through working together. The rich fear that shit, this is why the policies Republicans are pushing are so disruptive for the working class. To reduce the odds of them being able to work communally to fight against oligarchs and their mouthpiece Republicans/MAGA sympathizers.
You just had 4 years of Biden “reducing harm”. How did that work out?
You just had 4 years of Biden “reducing harm”. How did that work out?
Has ‘harm reduction’ not been explained to you in simple enough terms yet, or are you just pretending to be incapable of digesting simple concepts?
This is just a troll, clearly wants to argue unnecessarily.
This one’s much simpler than that; one party will throw people I love into a concentration camp in the next four years, one party will not. I will vote for those who will not. The rest is just bullshit.
You sound like one of those dangerous shitlibs, not wanting people to be thrown into concentration camps. Don’t you know that the lives of the likes of you and me are acceptable sacrifices so that the wannabe revolutionaries can (checks notes) do nothing but feel really smug about how superior they are to The Establishment?
There’s a part of me that thinks these people fell for very well crafted propaganda that kept them away from the voting booth and, like Magats, they keep doubling down instead of admitting they got duped and moving on.
In a binary system where my choices are Nazis or not Nazis, anyone who comes along and tells me not voting is the best option is my fucking enemy.
I had people unironically tell me that Kamala Harris was no better than Hitler, and that she & Trump were the same but just did the exact same harm in “different areas,” which is why it looked like they were any different policy-wise. 💀
Yeah the genocide angle is just “both sides” with sprinkles. It’s a really effective misdirection.
Since both support Genocide I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s nazis vs non-nazis. It’s more like genocide over there vs genocide maybe here and there. That’s assuming that the Republicans will actually go full authoritarian dictatorship which isn’t necessarily going to happen. A lot of people are speculating that things will happen that didn’t last time Trump was in charge. It definitely could happen, but I don’t think it’s as likely as people are making out. Trump would have to convince all of the keys to power to abandon democracy, and that hasn’t happened yet. He is already getting push back for certain things, not to mention braking up with Elon.
Anyway I sure am glad I don’t live in the USA. Although honestly my own country is having its own issues. The supposedly left wing party seem to have decided they have the same level of support for trans people that the right wing one does, or at least their leader is willing to follow the conservatives on that issue. I almost regret voting for him now.
That’s assuming that the Republicans will actually go full authoritarian dictatorship which isn’t necessarily going to happen.
It has happened, is continuing to happen, and will get worse. ICE now has a large budget than most militaries and Trump is exploring ways to “deport” American citizens (probably to concentration camps). They’re exploring ways to essentially make migrant farm workers slaves. The supreme Court just made it harder for judges to pause executive orders. The US (of which I’m a citizen) is fucked.
That’s assuming that the Republicans will actually go full authoritarian dictatorship which isn’t necessarily going to happen.
Wtf? They already have. They’ve ballooned ICE’s budget to more than that of the marines. They want to deport 65 million latinos. That’s all the Latinos. They’ve already gone full authoritarian dictatorship while you were watching
I also have extensive thoughts about a political system and electorate of which I know very little about.
They did. They were dumb enough to fall for it and now we have concentration camps.
Pretty accurate portrayal.
Time to stop thinking this will end in 4 years with an election. American democracy died on January 20th.
The delusion that democrats don’t also put many people in cages is a huge part of how we got here.
Meanwhile both parties massacre people in other countries by the tens of thousands, sometimes by the millions.
If caring about that is bullshit to you, i find it rich that you expect anyone to care about the life of you or the people you care about.
We need a “neither” option. If that one wins neither candiate gets to be president and the parties have to pick someone else. Not voting counts as neither.
If only.
Every time I see people complaining about 3rd party voters all I can picture is the “Am I so out of touch?” meme. Like, y’all already shot yourselves in the face 3 times in a row and it surprisingly didn’t fail 1/3 times, but you’ll blame literally anyone but yourselves. Run a candidate people want, run policies people want, and support that candidate and those policies instead of throwing everything you can against them because you like money, and we would not be anywhere near where we are now. People vote for trump because they don’t want another fucking “nothing will fundamentally change” politician. The country is already shit. It needs to change. But dems are happy with it how it is. They don’t care about immigrants, or poor people, or social security, or women’s rights, or whatever. They just hold onto those as carrots on a stick. They just want to keep making millions, and would rather trump win so they don’t have to actually embrace populist policy. That’s why people don’t vote. The choice isn’t ice cream or drive off a cliff. Its do we drive into a wall and die now, or drive off a cliff so it takes slightly longer to die, the drive off a cliff people shot the 2 people who asked if they could vote for ice cream and that’s why the others didn’t vote.
Run a candidate people want, run policies people want, and support that candidate and those policies instead of throwing everything you can against them because you like money
Their absolutely pathetic response to Mamdani’s victory in the primary was so flagrant, I’m not even sure how to react to the Democratic party going forward. Not only did they try to stack the deck in Cuomo’s favor, but then they threw a fucking tantrum when Cuomo still lost despite their efforts. They just don’t seem credible to me anymore.
I’m starting to wonder if there isn’t a concerted op going on to whip people into believing in an unending two party system forever.
Run a candidate people want, run policies people want, and support that candidate and those policies instead of throwing everything you can against them because you like money
Golly gee, if only there were some way that parties decided what candidates they were going to run, and what policies that candidate supported.
Unfortunately, as we all know, such decisions are made by The Secret Cabal and us lowly voters have no part in it.
Signed, someone who had a fever dream in 2016 and 2020 and remembered voting in something called a ‘primary’ for some ‘Bernie Sanders’ guy.
Sure dude, keep pretending the DNC doesn’t run anything and that they have zero influence or agenda and it’s all the perfect will of the people. You’re right, the people with billions of dollars in charge of the party are really just chill dudes who listen to what people really want.
Sorry for not thinking that every public poll was rigged by The Shadow Elite and that Bernie actually won the primaries by millions of votes which were shredded without a single hint of evidence left behind by the Puppetmasters of the DNC.
Maybe people are voting for what they want, and the issue is a lack of education…?
No, no, it must be the Shadow Cabal sabotaging all the polls. I’m SURE of it!
My brother in christ, could you strawman any harder?
NOBODY thinks bernie ‘actually won’. Pretty much everyone who saw the 2016 election knows that Hillary won the primary, due to smear campaigns against bernie backed by establishment democrats. You know, the EXACT same thing that’s going on with Zohran Mamdani RIGHT FUCKING NOW. He WON the primary, and not by some secret cabal type shit but by the will of the voters by running gasp populist policies that actually help out the working class. And the establishment DNC is doing everything they can to smear him even AFTER getting the will of the voters, in favor of Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams.
“If liberals are so fucking smart then why do they lose so god damn always?”
Instead of blaming the leftists who may or may not have voted (which for what it’s worth, I have never met a leftist irl who abstained voting even in a ruby red state) why don’t you fucking blame the people who are actively driving the bus off the cliff?
Or how about you LEARN from the last decade?
Because this right here is why establishment dems AND republicans ain’t doing too hot. You look at Trump’s victories and never ask ‘why did all these people vote for this fucking asshole?’. Instead, you write everyone who voted Trump as a racist or a sexist or a NAZI and while they’re perfectly willing to associate with NAZIs, it’s important to fucking learn why the fuck they voted for that asshole. And yeah, some of them definitely voted for racism or sexism reasons, but you’re absolutely braindead if you think the fact that he ran on eliminating corruption (‘drain the swamp’) and ran on making things better for the working class (‘price of eggs’). Was he lying? Yup. Is he a corrupt fascist? 100%, but unlike literally everyone else in the 3 presidential campaigns he ran in (excluding bernie ofc) absolutely NOBODY was speaking to the working class or populist policies. It was ‘I’m with her’ or ‘Trump bad’ or ‘It’s my turn’.
So, feel free sitting on your high horse saying ‘oh, well if the voters weren’t so dumb we would be at brunch’ instead of focusing on the people whose entire job it was to inspire people to vote for them, and keep dividing the working class more and more. You’re only playing into their hands, and yes I am talking about the billionaires that you’re sucking off rn.
NOBODY thinks bernie ‘actually won’
HA! Hahahaha! My dude, just sit here. They will be by. They usually ramp up around elections and the cause of Bernie not being in charge of all things is always DWS and the DNC. He actually won but they stole it by not letting people see how awesome he was. Yes, literally. Yes, a lot of them. Yes, every goddamned time.
unlike literally everyone else in the 3 presidential campaigns he ran in (excluding bernie ofc) absolutely NOBODY was speaking to the working class or populist policies.
Bullshit. 100% pure, uncut, arrogant “leftist” bullshit. No, I will not google it for you. PoliSci 101 is over, fascism is in place and it’s time to learn how difficult it is to get three progressives to agree on anything in actual, real-life, not-the-internet practice.
This fucked up “take” is the exact same since NADER and what have you got? A party? A name? A fucking t-shirt slogan ffs? No. Nothing.
Beyond worthless. Actively cancerous to actual progress. It’s painful because everyone goes through it and no one listens to the people with experience and the fascists vote in lock-step and we lose again.
Politics is stuck in a time loop.
Both can be true. The major US parties are both rotten to the core and as such the leadership of the democrats has much of the responsibility for this, but people not voting are still fascism enablers, albeit to a lesser degree than those voting for trump for non-fascism reasons.
Voting third party is one thing, it’s the only way outside of revolution you’re going to escape from the established two parties. Not voting only signals apathy and the only explicit statement is “I’m ok with whoever wins, including the raping racist hitler v2”.
Do me a favor pal: show me proof that it was leftists who didn’t vote this time. In fact, show me proof that the people who didn’t vote were against harm reduction. Show me any proof any evidence from ANYWHERE that the people who refused to vote… were refusing to vote? Show me any evidence that says that says anything with any certainty about ANYONE who did not vote?
Oh, you can’t? Well that makes sense, because we don’t actually KNOW who left the electorial arean. We don’t know WHY they left the electorial arena, and we don’t know WHAT they were thinking. So, I’d love to know why everyone seems so certain that it was the left who stopped voting entirely as opposed to the non-MAGA right or even the liberal center. And the reseaon everyone is CERTAIN it’s the left if because that’s been the reused talking point that’s been dragged out every time there’s been a lull in the insanity since Jan 20th. Almost like somebody doesn’t want the subject to die. Almost like someone profits off of the left and the center fighting each other instead of fighting the 1%.
People who stopped voting entirely may be facism enablers, I’m not disagreeing. But, there’s no actual, solid evidence to blame that shit on any one group in particular. And even despite that, it’s absolutely INSANE that we’re hyper focused on the imagined people we THINK didn’t vote for the reasons we think they didn’t vote, and yet IGNORE the people we KNOW voted for this and IGNORE the reasons they’re telling us they voted for this.
Like tf? Thinking billionaires have been and are continuing to demonize any actual progressive candidate and are propagandizing broad swaths of the electoral is an inane conspircay theory when it’s something we have seen evidence of time and time and time again, and in the same breath saying that people who voted for trump are lying about why they voted for trump based on ‘just trust me bro’ is absolutely ludicrous.
Do me a favor pal: show me proof that it was leftists who didn’t vote this time. In fact, show me proof that the people who didn’t vote were against harm reduction. Show me any proof any evidence from ANYWHERE that the people who refused to vote… were refusing to vote? Show me any evidence that says that says anything with any certainty about ANYONE who did not vote?
Oh, you can’t? Well that makes sense, because we don’t actually KNOW who left the electorial arean. We don’t know WHY they left the electorial arena, and we don’t know WHAT they were thinking.
If there’s one thing that Lemmy has taught me, it’s that people on the left aren’t any smarter than those on the right. Just less vile.
I never said it was the left lol, everything I said applies regardless of political leanings. Though in all likelihood there were at least some leftists that didn’t.
Also the commenters that were saying as much on this extremely left leaning platform are probably the ones mainly adressed by OP.
…people not voting is a failure of coalition-building, full-stop…
…meanwhile, a successful coalition is now calling the shots instead; that’s american democracy in action, like it or not…
NOBODY thinks bernie ‘actually won’.
I have seen numerous people on here say that Bernie actually won.
Pretty much everyone who saw the 2016 election knows that Hillary won the primary, due to smear campaigns against bernie backed by establishment democrats.
Oh goodness, I’m glad nothing like that would happen in the general election! If only the Dems had played fair, the GOP certainly would have!
Also, would you like to remind me what a smear campaign does? Does it alter the brainwaves of the hapless Moderate Voter™ to obeying their DNC masters or something?
… or does it appeal to their pre-existing ideas and prejudices to sway them towards a candidate?
No, that sounds too much like voters having agency, and not being mere conduits for the Will Of The Proletariat™. It must be the brainwave altering thing.
And the establishment DNC is doing everything they can to smear him even AFTER getting the will of the voters, in favor of Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams.
… okay?
He WON the primary, and not by some secret cabal type shit but by the will of the voters by running gasp populist policies that actually help out the working class. And
Yeah, he won in the primary for NYC. Which is good. Great, in fact! But New York City is not all of America, and it’s really quite worrying that so many people here think it is.
“If liberals are so fucking smart then why do they lose so god damn always?”
What does that say, then, if socialists are constantly losing to liberals in this environment?
If we’re using success as a measure of intelligence or correctness, that would lead to some… very concerning conclusions that I would not buy into. But I’m also not the one connecting intelligence and electoral success.
Instead of blaming the leftists who may or may not have voted (which for what it’s worth, I have never met a leftist irl who abstained voting even in a ruby red state) why don’t you fucking blame the people who are actively driving the bus off the cliff?
Bruh, in the past few days alone, on this very comm, there have been numerous, highly upvoted memes and comments in which liberals are blamed for the current state of fascism in this country. I don’t think “Antifascist unity, but only for anti-electoralists ^.^” is all that compelling.
And for the record, I do fucking blame the people who are actively driving the bus off the cliff. And I have done so vocally and repeatedly. But for some reason, many online leftists prefer a circlejerk to examining whether advocating against electoral participation may have helped the literal fucking fascist get elected by a single goddamn percentage point.
Because this right here is why establishment dems AND republicans ain’t doing too hot. You look at Trump’s victories and never ask ‘why did all these people vote for this fucking asshole?’. Instead, you write everyone who voted Trump as a racist or a sexist or a NAZI and while they’re perfectly willing to associate with NAZIs, it’s important to fucking learn why the fuck they voted for that asshole. And yeah, some of them definitely voted for racism or sexism reasons, but you’re absolutely braindead if you think the fact that he ran on eliminating corruption (‘drain the swamp’) and ran on making things better for the working class (‘price of eggs’).
Jesus fucking Christ.
The fact that you fell for that shit - that people are just deeply ‘economically anxious’ or ‘anti-corruption’ goes to show how little you’ve spoken with conservative and swing voters in your lifetime.
Was he lying? Yup. Is he a corrupt fascist? 100%, but unlike literally everyone else in the 3 presidential campaigns he ran in (excluding bernie ofc) absolutely NOBODY was speaking to the working class or populist policies. It was ‘I’m with her’ or ‘Trump bad’ or ‘It’s my turn’.
Yeah, no one was running on a campaign of increasing the minimum wage, a national ban on price gouging, lowering the cost of living, increasing corporate taxes while reducing taxes on small businesses, legalizing marijuana, forgiving student loan debt, increasing child tax credits, and expanding public healthcare systems.
Imagine if someone did that? It’d be wild. They’d probably get incredible support, especially from leftists, and win in a landslide.
I mean, imagine if one of the major party candidates ran with that platform, and was still smeared as a neoliberal shill by self-proclaimed leftists who treated a Trump victory as a defeat for the dreaded shitlib menace? That would be absolutely ghoulish if people who claimed to be leftists were that dedicated to a Trump victory so they could continue to feel good and pure about being against The Man and The System. They’d have literal blood on their hands.
Good thing nothing of the sort happened, and certainly useful low-information idiots didn’t pass that around, engaging in a level of coprophagic propaganda that would embarrass anyone with a hint of basic decency.
You’re only playing into their hands, and yes I am talking about the billionaires that you’re sucking off rn.
“When you don’t think everyone is secretly a socialist at heart, you’re sucking off the billionaires!”
I’m so sorry for not spending all of my time circlejerking with other leftists. I have the deep and abiding misfortune of actually living in the USA.
Lmao. You might live in the USA but your posting history tells me exactly what I need to know about how much you actually talk to IRL people. Dude you moderate like 20 communities and spend your days posting on HERE. You don’t actually speak to irl people. And yes, as someone living in a ruby red state, volunteering with mutual aid groups and political action groups in a ruby red state, yes I HAVE actually spoken to conservatives lately, along with liberals, leftists, and people who have showered since this election. Get off the computer every minute of every day, actually go out and touch grass and DO something material in your life, because you look like a rage-bait bot with control issues who hasn’t spoken to another living human person before. Assuming, ofcourse, that you’re not just a shill account meant to spread propaganda.
Dude you moderate like 20 communities and spend your days posting on HERE.
Yeah, I take like an hour out of my day before work to make one whole post in each of the ~10 communities I mod. Clearly I’m out of control.
The urge to reply back to people who haven’t the first goddamn clue what they’re talking about is more damning and time-consuming, but I make room for it, out of miserable compulsion to not let idiocy go unchallenged in the comment sections I frequent, if nothing else.
yes I HAVE actually spoken to conservatives lately,
And you still believe that they’re just anti-corruption and economically anxious, like some Very Serious Liberal Writer ready to write his sixth consecutive election column about having pancakes with them good holsum country folk?
That’s disturbingly naive that you’d still fall for that. But considering what you’ve said in this comment thread, unsurprising.
Pug. Long time fan here but I’m curious if you’ve read “Shattered” yet? It is a well researched book about the inner machinations of the Hillary campaign and goes into depth as to what / how things went horribly wrong. I used to think like you, but the reality is it’s a bit of column A and a bit of column B.
Tl;dr: even if Bernie had polled well among mainstream voters, it would have taken mountains to move the whale that is Hillary. She had ties to every corner of the DNC. It’s not totally that she had to rig the primary, but it was a fools errand to run against someone as powerful and well connected as her.
I mean, my argument isn’t that Hillary didn’t have deep ties to the DNC, or that the DNC didn’t want a coronation in 2016, but that the bias of the DNC and the influence of Hillary’s campaign on the primary beyond that of a normal candidate was not significant enough to create the massive amount we lost by. If we’d lost by 1-2%, or even as high as 4-5%, maybe there’d be a stronger argument, but at 12%, without evidence of serious malfeasance beyond favoritism, it’s pretty clear that… Bernie was just not the more popular candidate. While frustrating, the core problem was not Hillary being well-connected - it’s the US still being an immensely right-wing country.
That Bernie polled even lower in 2020 against Biden, losing many of the areas he carried in 2016, also shows that a non-neglible proportion of the votes Bernie did get were from anti-Hillary votes, rather than pro-socialist sentiment.
Fair point. I do agree that the mainstream electorate skews skews further right than terminally ill online leftists. I just think running a robot over a populist against another populist was a severe miscalculation by the DNC, regardless of how well he polled. Hillary had the charisma of a wooden board and a lot of baggage. Polls are useful to getting a pulse of the people at a moment in time. Many polls showed Bernie outperforming Hillary against Trump. The context matters. But I hear you.
Yeah, the DNC is just a long string of unforced errors. I just don’t want people to think that there’s an easy solution that’s been denied them, because… there isn’t.
I can count on one finger the times that the person I voted for in a primary went on to win the general election.
And then he got brain damage and became a Republican.
Voting in the primaries doesn’t appear to do anything.
You’re on a bus with 9 people. 1 guy takes up 2/3rds of the bus by himself. 3 people take up 90% of what remains, and the last 5 are stacked on top of each other on the last remaining seat.
The one guy with 2/3 of the bus says he wants to throw two of the other passengers off a cliff at random so he can have their seats. 2 of the 3 in the next segment think this is a terrible idea and say we should keep things as they are, with one voting for it because he thinks somehow everyone will benefit from the top guy having more space. The bottom segment votes 3-2 in favor of the idea, because they hate the people in the second group for taking up space they could use, and like the idea of possibly throwing them off a cliff.
Fully agree with Nina Turner. If you don’t wanna do politics, you blindly leave major decisions over your life to others, who - as we can see world-wide - don’t necessarily have your interest at heart. Democracy, human rights, freedom or any other such ideas require a populace to vigilantly fight for them and not let those with opposed agendas undermine them.
But that analogy afterwards is simply dishonest on many levels.
Firstly, if you are talking about “harm reduction” or the “lesser of two evils”, ice cream is hardly a fair representation of the lesser evil.
Secondly this mixes in non-political people, who do not participate in the democratic process with moral objectors and the duped.
Thirdly: It diverts equal blame (literally in the response) to those groups and to the voters, who actually want the bigger evil or the powerful actors enacting it. This presupposes some moral value on active vs. passive behavior, which can be argued.
And lastly: Even if we find a fitting ice-cream substitute like throwing one of the passengers under the still moving bus, or - how another user suggested - braking before driving off the same cliff: The two who voted for that lesser evil also fight the four voters who are against evil harder, than they are fighting the ones who want the bigger evil. Why? Because they’d rather still drive off the cliff than not. And then they turn around and dishonestly shame the anti-driving-off the-cliff crowd for wanting to speed up instead. That is not a very good strategy.
Are they the same? No. But please keep your arguments honest, or you might get the exact opposite reaction from people, than you are hoping.
Even if you engage in politics you have such a small amount of power that it’s effectively the same as letting other people make decisions for you.
Republicans in Congress just made a bunch of decisions for me that I had no influence over despite having voted every time for the past quarter century.
Although I understand your point and would want to add that something like the Citizens United decision further diminishes power of the people without immense funds, I would like to point out, that participating in a democratic process doesn’t merely mean drawing a cross onto a piece of paper every 2 or 4 years. Much more is possible and in fact necessary.
As an example and can be witnessed right now, there is a severe lack of organizing of pro democratic forces. Which is also the result of a decades-long campaign by the capital-interest-serving political establishment to delegitimize or outright destroy such movements and organizations, from worker’s unions to independant media to the “Bernie Bros”.
Make no mistake though. They did this, because they know, that this type of collective political actions bare real power. It is upon each one of us wanting to defend democracy, basic rights and the rule of law to do our part to take back that power. Voting is but a small part of that, if you don’t have the people you need actually running, because they can’t afford to and you cannot seriously pressure those elected like the donor-class does.
It felt the same way before Citizens United. I vote and write letters and organize and the government does what it wants.
I’m sorry you feel that way and I find myself having the same thoughts from time to time. I have to concede though, that the US is in fact the center of modern Neoliberalism and legal bribery.
Yet… You know who the lobbyists and donors don’t bother talking to? Bernie Sanders (and Ron Paul when he was still in office). Why? Because they know that they have core principles. Then the question becomes: How do we organize (meaning financial resources, outreach, strategy, know-how, recruitment, analysis, policy creation, media and many more) to get more of these people into office? And how can we put pressure on elected officials to enact “our” policies?
Agenda 2025, or the decades long judicial take-over did not come from Trump, but from such organizations like the Heritage Foundation. Which of course are funded by billionaires like Peter Thiel. These people and organizations have huge advantages over the rest, that is clear. But they need more than just money to be able to put public pressure on elected officials, to the point where 25% of voters are ride-or-die with that program and a further 25% are at least ok with it or were duped.
And yes, I am well aware it is an uphill fight. But please: Don’t let bad experiences doom you to inaction. Especially when this very moment, with the daily over-reach of the republican regime, there is real potential to galvanize an effective resistance.
Too late. I hate this country and the people in it too much to care anymore.
I’ve been doing the organize thing and the pressuring thing and nothing works and things are worse than they’ve ever been.
Being made aware I’m lashed to a bunch of psychotic apes is terrifying and makes me want to kill the rest of the people on the bus and take control myself.
People are the absolute worst.
If you don’t have ranked choice voting you do not live in a democracy
Til that only Australians and the Irish live in democracy. It’s used in other places, ofc, but on smaller scales.
Not to say I’m against it or anything, I’m all for it, but your statement is a bit exaggerated.
Many countries claim to be democracies but if the available choices are only x, y or z. The people are not truly expressing their will, 30% could like x, 30% could like y, they could all hate z but z gets elected because 40% like z.
That’s not democracy.
Dunno, the most recent example was Romania. In the first round, 40% voted for the far right cunt and all the others had 20% or less. In the second round where there were only 2 candidates left, Nicușor Dan won with 53% and the far right cunt got 46%. So… Z doesn’t always win.
Ranked choice means it’s easier for voters, but when it’s not available voters are capable of understanding the scenario you describe and voting accordingly.
Many times I haven’t voted for my preferred candidate and instead voted for the candidate most likely to defeat the candidate I couldn’t stomach getting into power. Here in Canada we call it voting strategically and if you look at the polling data it definitely happened last election (and in many others in the past).
I’d like to have ranked choice, but it’s insane to say it’s not a democracy without it. But multiple rounds of voting (like France has) is better than ranked choice as it gives a clear choice to voters in the final round. But having multiple voting rounds is expensive and people might prefer to just vote once and have it done with, so ranked choice may be preferable for many people.
…how’s that working out for australia?..legitmate question; last i heard they were nearly as fascist as we are stateside…
Wow. Really? Preferential voting should absolutely be more common.
It’s not bad to have high standards, as long as they don’t get in the way of making things better
So you’d let the bus drive off the cliff because non-vegan ice cream doesn’t fulfill your standards for ice cream?
No, I’d rather vote for vegan ice cream first, then vote against driving off a cliff.
Unfortunately our current system doesn’t allow for that, so obviously I vote against driving off a cliff, but it feels so stagnating.
You will be please to hear that we are currently driving off the cliff. No more stagnation, isn’t this great?
I’m referring to / summarizing the Ratchet Effect.
Obviously movement for the sake of movement is not inherently good. But when our only allowed form of action is to vote and we see that voting has no or negative effect, it seems fruitless.
Because a slightly more realistic scenario is that the Dems vote to just throw some people off the cliff, and that’s agreed between the two parties.
False analogy. The actual choice was had in 2024 was “drive of the cliff at 40 mph, or drive off a cliff at 38 mph.”
And you’d choose 40?
The problem is you only look one election ahead. You’re myopia is what made you drive off a cliff in the first place.
Yes, you do. Just a shit one. I hope I don’t have to explain how that it still a lot better than fascism.
It just puts you on the top of the slide towards fascism
Even if you have ranked choice voting, you probably still do not live in a democracy.
Chuck Schumer: we beat them at their own game and got them to agree to only drive the buss halfway off the cliff as long as we all stand at the front.
clapclapclapclapclapclapclapclapclapclap
Its more like 9 people on a bus, 3 vote to drive off a cliff, 2 vote for a break to get ice ream and then continue driving towards the edge of the cliff after, 2 scream why the fuck are we continuing to drive towards the edge of the cliff, the other two believe things will just be the same regardless if they vote or not. Meanwhile the people who want other people to vote for a pitstop on the way to impending doom and death are complaining that the people with the most realistic assessment of the situation are being unreasonable, unrealistic and and/ or unwilling to compromise and if we are going to die anyway we might as well have some icecream (delay the inevitable and hope we can fix things before we get to the edge of the cliff but at this rate it looks like it’ll only get worse because one side turns the mechanism as far as they can get away with and the other ratchets back into a convenient position for the other side to turn the mechanism to their advantage again) this is the more accurate assessment and it’s because education standards were destroyed and the ego’s of people who are too gullible for their own good and don’t understand the scope of the corporate apparatus/ system where the ultra rich all collude and work together because they have like interests and the people who don’t want to understand this, or can’t because they are naive just keep telling us we need to continue to participate in a system that disenfranchises us not because its been temporarily broken and needs fixing through participation but instead because the entire purpose of the system is to disenfranchise us and the only solution is to implement democratic representation that addresses the economic issues being manipulated without our input or consent. Any system of democratic representation that aims to exclude economically democratic governance is nothing but a class dictatorship.
this sounds very utilitarian. you known who else was utilitarian? thanos!
Who let Tim Pool in here
A world with half as many people in it would be so nice. Thanos had the right idea.
What everyone forgets is that the actual voting already happened. The bus company, Cliff driving Committee, voted before the bus embarked. They voted for the bus driver to drive off the cliff to cut spending to maintenance and health insurance to the driver and bus. There only so much the riders can say at that point
