These people sound like exact copies of the people saying voting in 2000 didn’t matter, and that turned out to be the most politically consequential of my lifetime. Gore was imperfect as they all are, but holy fuck did Dubya fuck up literally everything he touched.
Among many, many, many things, Dubya started forever wars killing untold hundreds of thousands of people. He accelerated oil and gas production, absolutely setting the Climate Change world on a pace for disaster. He seated Alito, unquestionably the biggest monster currently on the Supreme Court. And he passed a monster tax cut for the rich that set us on this path of unrestrained deficit spending.
And that’s just the headlines. Remember when he tried to put his personal lawyer on the Supreme Court? lol
Gen X already tried this 25 years ago and it fucked the world up so badly that we need to be saved by the future generations. Imagine not learning that lesson and doing it again.
W was catastrophic. Honestly him and Reagan are the cause of most of our issues.
Nixon deserves a mention there too.
What really gets my goat is how some people now act like George W Bush is this respectable elder statesman that only did his best and oh, how cute, he’s friends with Michelle Obama. Like, sure, next to Trump he looks like a political savant, but come on, he still was a total piece of shit that did lasting damage.
True story. If Gen X didn’t vote they literally died. /s
Be boring somewhere else.
Don’t forget in his first week or so he passed No Child Left Behind, which has irreparably damaged the education of children in this country.
https://www.epi.org/publication/what_went_wrong_with_no_child_left_behind/
Man, what I would do to have an unabashed giant nerd for president. I forget what people’s issue with Gore even was.
Gore was the watershed moment of the white left deciding no progress is allowed to happen unless it’s by their hands and they get all the credit.
Nader fired up his campaign in swing states as an act of retaliation against Gore posing himself as the climate candidate.
That’s it.
The Greens had a meltdown that the thing that usually happens to third parties in this country, that is having their platforms become the mainstream if they make enough noise, was happening to them, and they decided we’re not allowed to make any progress on climate unless we do it through them so fuck Gore and fuck anyone who’d dare support that disgusting “mOdErAtE!”
Al Gore won the popular vote, but there was some sketchiness down in Florida. During a recount, Roger Stone rallied the troops (Brooks Brothers riot) which caused the counting to be stopped, due to threats of violence. Setting up the supreme Court to decide Bush won Florida.
During a recount, Roger Stone rallied the troops (Brooks Brothers riot) which caused the counting to be stopped, due to threats of violence.
In other words, the 2000 coup succeeded.
It’s why they project so hard about Democrats cheating elections.
The Republicans have been for decades. And can’t stand sometimes enough people show up that they still lose.
Damn that sounds really really familiar. Almost like it happened just a couple years ago.
I, personally sat out that election because I didn’t like Al’s wife, Tipper Gore. She led the charge in a bunch of manufactured outrage about obscenity in music. I was also a jaded, cynical gen-xer who’d been hearing the importance of voting as long as I could remember, but every election was just choosing between a douchbag and a turd sandwich.
Looking back on everything that happened after that election, it’s insane to imagine how different things would be now if Gore had been in office instead of the criminal enterprise that we ended up with.
Though the Bush presidency lead to Cheney’s wife taking up that mantle anyways.
He literally lost the popular vote, how does “vote more” mean anything
Protest voters who supported Stein alone would have flipped every single rust belt state had they decided on the country over feeling validated in wanting to vote “for” someone, and Zoomers and Millenials simply matching their share of the population in turnout could have propelled Bernie to the front of the primaries and over the finish line.
Nevermind how not voting let trump happen, not voting let clinton happen.
I always wonder how Gore might have acted in response to 9/11.
Probably a similar initial response, but no Iraq War two years later. Which would make a… massive (and positive, in case that wasn’t clear) change in the direction and concerns of American foreign policy.
He wouldn’t have suspended civil rights, permitted torture and made a mockery of the rule of law.
We think that yes. I’m a gore fan.
But remember there were 100s of people driving towards those topics. Career defense and security types making their damnedest case that they needed those tools to avoid 9/11 2.0.
I hope gore, and the staff he surrounded himself with would have had the vision to avoid all that, despite the pressure.
Never forget. If you want an even crazier mindfuck, watch the original “Utopia”, the original 2013 British version. For real.
Based on after-the-fact reports, it may never have happened.
Maybe that’s just exposure to all the conspiracy theories, though, I dunno if he would have acted any differently than Bush did to the intelligence reports.
They had intelligence that terrorists from Al-Queda were training and planning for an attack, hijacking commercial planes.
Bush et al did next to nothing with that intel, at best.
It’s questionable if it’d have even happened had gore been at the desk, y’know, because he’d have probably actually read the imminent attack report about the plot before it happened.
True dat. He wasn’t part of the cabal. That’s also why he wasn’t elected, in spite of winning. Just like Hillary.
And what did Marx think about voting for the lesser evil:
Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers’ candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled. The progress which the proletarian party will make by operating independently in this way is infinitely more important than the disadvantages resulting from the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body.
Trump and his cult will be a little more than “a few reactionaries in the representative body”.
And Marx is talking about Parliamentary systems here, which may color the analysis.
Maybe an American opinion:
I will be no party to it and that will make little difference. You will take large part and bravely march to the polls, and that also will make no difference. Stop running Russia and giving Chinese advice when we cannot rule ourselves decently. Stop yelling about a democracy we do not have. Democracy is dead in the United States. Yet there is still nothing to replace real democracy. Drop the chains, then, that bind our brains. Drive the money-changers from the seats of the Cabinet and the halls of Congress. Call back some faint spirit of Jefferson and Lincoln,and when again we can hold a fair election on real issues, let’s vote, and not till then. Is this impossible? Then democracy in America is impossible.
lovely
bravo
just perfect
would that we could hear it in his own voice
Most people are trying to bring in social programs, not communism. The Democrats can do social programs, and they can do them better when we move the Overton window left by continually voting in Democrats
The Democrats can do social programs,
But won’t.
Obamacare. Try voting and moving the Overton window and they can do more.
I do vote. The window keeps moving to the right. To the point where a handout to the insurance industry is considered a social program.
Just think about how much worse it could be.
Oh, I’ll just have to wait. The overton window isn’t going to move to the left. It’s already so far to the right that the “left” party supports genocide.
Do you honestly think it hasn’t moved right because Trump won? Now think what will happen if he wins again.
Ps you’re what the meme is about. Except the meme is wrong, didn’t save anything because Trump would escalate it.
hey do you have a Mastodon or anything? a peertube channel? time for new friends?
Reading these comments, it feels people are having a giant trolley problem moment. Do I vote for Biden and throw the switch so fewer people die, or do I not do it and let more people die, but at least I’m not complicit then?
Do you think people think about their culpability?
I mean, the argument “I don’t want to vote for Biden since he’s supporting a genocide, despite the fact my apathy may cause another person to get elected instead that supports more genocide” kinda sounds like that, yeah.
I am on the other side of the pond, so I have no vote there, but I don’t know what I’d be doing. I voted in elections where the best idea I had was a protest vote. I voted for joke parties as well. I never voted for someone who openly supported genocide though. Feels like a deal with the devil at least, like allying yourself with Stalin to fight Hitler.
American here. It sucks. We often have a lesser of evil vote. I don’t see an alternative. I’d vote for someone that ran on a platform of unfucking our elections / political parties. I have ill will toward both parties. It used to be very near equal, 15 or so years ago but through the tea party movement, into Trumpism, watching them ratfuck Obama out of 2 Supreme Court picks, then Jan6, smfh. I’ve lost all respect for Republicans. Dems have me in that respect because i have no other choice. That needs to change. That said…
I will go vote for Biden (and feel fine with it) because he’s trying. He’s pushing policy forward, even trying to reach across the aisle on important things. The other side of the aisle are clowns though and are doing some kind of performance art for their base rather than keeping the country running. Biden deserves my vote here. I don’t see evidence of anything other than him trying to unfuck the nation and return stability. More of that please.
Also, he’s not Trump. Fuck that traitor.
But choosing not to vote is also an action with consequences. It doesn’t absolve anyone.
I would assume that’s second option above and kind of the entire point of the trolley problem.
Do I vote for Biden and throw the switch so fewer people die
I can’t stand Trump but the past 4 years have not convinced me this is the case. Under Biden the US is actively bombing civilians, supporting apartheid, disrupting global trade, and still imprisoning human beings at the mexican border.
Trump was ineffectual and isolationist - he could be the actual harm reduction choice through sheer incompetence.
BRUH, Trump formally recgonized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and not Tel Aviv.
Thinking he’s gonna not give isreal anything they want. Evangelicals love to support israel because they think it’ll help lead to rapture/end of the world where they’ll be saved by god.
I don’t think you have as good of a grasp on the nuances of trumps supporter base as you think.
Don’t worry I won’t be voting for Trump. My take on trump supporter base is they’re typically older lazy boomers who want to yell at their TVs as trump “owns the libs.” Look at january 6th his base literally had to be invited inside to invade the capital and they just stood around gawking lol. Utterly inept.
Recognizing Jerusalem didn’t kill 25,000 Palestinians, but Biden has given unconditional support to civilian bombing in the middle east.
Neither candidate has done anything to convince me to vote for them. The sooner we all figure out voting isn’t going to fix things, the better.
Recognizing Jerusalem didn’t kill 25,000 Palestinians
Didn’t it? It seems very plausible that Israel’s most powerful ally taking this huge step that no previous president was willing to take could have easily galvanized Hamas’s resolve and fanned the flames leading up to the recent attacks and resulting Israeli siege.
This shit has been going on for decades. It’s foolish to treat the recent events as an isolated incident, or to compartmentalize the repercussions of US foreign policy to individual presidential administrations.
Recognizing Jerusalem didn’t kill 25,000 Palestinians
Didn’t it?
No, people firing rockets and bullets killed 25,000 people. This is the real world where real things impact real lives, and Biden shipping billions of dollars worth of weapons enables them to continue killing, not names or lines on a map.
This shit has been going on for decades. It’s foolish to treat the recent events as an isolated incident
Definitely agree with you there, I think it’s important for all of us to be educated about the history of American support for this cycle of abuse. I don’t plan to vote for any person who continues to support the killing of innocent people suffering under an apartheid regime.
Why do Americans only have these two candidate choices in the presidential election? They seem so diametrically opposed, it is difficult to fathom how a majority of Americans could think either align with them politically.
It’s a natural result of their election system. First-past-the-post strongly disincentivizes third parties from running due to the “spoiler effect” - say there was a similar candidate to Biden that was pro-Palestine, any votes for this candidate take away votes from Biden thus making it easier for Trump to win. Most people don’t align with either party, but they don’t get much of a choice.
Unless you guys are ready to have the revolution today, you need to vote Biden if you don’t want Trump to win. Period.
This should be a lovely comment section… I’ll have to return with some nice warm dinner and a drink later.
Didn’t exist something called primaries?
Primaries just started, but so far the majority has voted for these two.
Got taken away, how odd isnt.
Not sure what you’re on, primaries just started.
Seriously. I have a hunch that if Trump were president this would be happening regardless except he would be saying how people should be assaulting Palestinians or something like that.
Instead Palestinians have huge support from U.S. citizens, the non/anti-Zionist ones anyway.
I’m convinced if it wasn’t the conflict in Palestine it would be some other issue that would prevent them from being able to “morally” support Biden.
Yes the conflict in Palestine is terrible, yes there are atrocities occuring, no I don’t have any of the solutions.
There seem to be a subset of people that only want to see the negative in every aspect of life and this carries over to politicians/politics in general. The grass is forever more green elsewhere.
I recently asked a friend trapped in this bubble if they had seen the new Mario movie, as I attempt to avoid politics with them at this point in time, and I received the answer, “No, fuck Chris Pratt.” I didn’t bother asking why, but it seems that nearly ever aspect of life, except the ones they choose to conveniently ignore is reason for social outrage and some how it is “Biden’s Fault,” with complete disregard to what the alternative looks like.
But 3rd parties!!! Oh yes, because statistically splitting your vote between the only two groups with a chance of being elected to office is the “moral solution.”
I don’t ever want to hear about “harm reduction” from them again, when their “moral” decision results in women’s healthcare being a literal afterthought and rights for a variety of marginalized communities being stripped away. 1,500 people a week are still dying from COVID in the U.S., but hey, let’s help elect the party that wants to continue erroding any remaining social safety nets, because you know, people who get sick don’t matter as much as this months zeitgeist of social outrage.
I’m a Palestinian American and honestly I feel fucking violated by how these people have been using the tragedy in Gaza to serve their ends.
They love us as corpses, because corpses don’t have any expectations of them for them to get away with pretending they’re allies.
I was having the same conversation with people in 2016. In fact, for every election since 2000. Yes democrats often suck. But at least they believe in consensus based governance and the rule of law. The modern GOP (since the civil rights era) has been firmly authoritarian and anti-democratic. Unfortunately your choices are between “lackluster” and “truly horrifying.” Changing that will take a generation but if you don’t participate now and vote against the GOP, things will be far worse far more quickly than if Democrats just disappoint you.
Very much how I feel. One path gives us the opportunity to improve our situation eventually, the other wishes to burn it all down and create a religious dictatorship, or whatever the hell you’d call the Trump/MAGA/right wing of the U.S.’ ideal version of government.
Some people can’t separate the ideal from the actual. Yeah the process sucks and we should demand better. Yeah we should demonstrate, protest, and riot. But we still have to fucking vote, and at the end of the day we have to win. In politics, you can’t play if you don’t win.
People who try to skip voting to go do the rest of the fun stuff should frankly get put in stockades at those riots and pelted.
Fuck these aesthetic allies, do the work or don’t show up. Price of admittance to the instagramable protest march is the most recent “I Voted” sticker.
Well shit I’m not really in favor of stockades lol
That was such a a wandering comment that idk how to respond, aside from: there are plenty of reasons why Biden is not as progressive as the world is moving. The way he handled Ukraine and Russia was amazing. He just backed the “Russia” in the Israeli/Palestine version. And I personally don’t like that. And if I can’t voice my displeasure with an elected official, then what are we doing here?
You can voice your displeasure while also making sure the world slides a little more slowly down the shithole (and potentionally has a chance to crawl back out). Voting for the president is important, but it’s far from the only thing that is. Hedging everything you believe in on a single office is far more damaging than a single vote for Biden could ever be.
We’ve been living through at least 40+ years of “Vote for 20% more evil instead of 40% more evil” and wouldn’t you know it we’re at a substantial higher level of evil.
Everyone loves screeching about leftists/3rd party types being silly stupid babies, but yall are the ones who keep telling us the only way to less evil is by adding more evil. 🤷
We’re at least trying. If everyone who was a little piss baby whenever third parties came up voted for one we’d have a few by now.
Seeing as the post limits itself to the presidency, my response was about the presidency. If you’d like to talk about how lower ballot initiatives are important in different ways, I’m in board to listen. But these a different conversation.
No one says you can’t vote, or think how you want to think, by all means this is a free country.
The issue I run into is that everyone is being purity tested to an extent that no individual who is at least somewhat tolerable to much of the political middle in the U.S., is acceptable to a specific subset of people who are constantly outraged by something.
Many of these same people complain endlessly about many of the issues a Trump presidency is going to greatly exacerbate, and don’t seem to understand, none of us get what we want, but helping to elect him by not voting for the only real alternative seems insanely illogical in my mind. Much like the post states.
It makes no sense to me, “this person is going to burn everything down, but I’m not going to support the only alternative who does things that aren’t nearly as bad…”
I feel like these “people” in your examples are simply scarecrows in your head.
You’re running full on through a straw man argument, dude.
I don’t have to scarecrow people I know, who are examples of this exact behavior. If I didn’t know people like this why would I bring it up?
Because you are taking these ideas and applying them to a large swath of people, and then fighting that idea. “Everybody” isn’t doing what you are saying. A few people you know MIGHT be somewhat doing something that you are saying.
You are fighting a straw man
Edit for clarity:
The issue I run into is that everyone is being purity tested to an extent that no individual who is at least somewhat…
They aren’t. You’re ignoring what we are talking about to throw gas on the fire, which hurts us all.
You don’t agree that, speaking in generalities, people with more progressive values (obviously everything is a spectrum), are more likely to purity test their candidate than people with more conservative ideologies?
Speaking, again in generalities, the people I know that vote for conservative candidates do not seem to care what candidates do, no matter how much it runs counter to their core beliefs systems. Look how many, what I would consider abhorrent individuals are elected simply because they are a means to whatever end they are looking for.
Look around on political comments, especially on Lemmy, I see the exact behavior/thought process I’m speaking of on a very regular basis, and I truthfully only check in on this app when I have a client out or maybe before bed.
I’m not ignoring anything, I understand there are a variety of significant concerns about many candidates and processes within the Democratic party, especially when it comes to addressing the concerns of the more progressive issues. However; I think that many on the outer edges of the progressive spectrum over estimate how progressive the average American is, and often fail to consider just how disastrous a second Trump presidency would be for many many people.
So I’m a bit drunk right now and I will happily respond tomorrow. My rough read through here makes me think we are close to being on the same page though. People live and die in the details
Because we all know you’re not asking why you can’t criticise him, you’re asking why you’re not allowed to keep calling yourself our ally at pride when you use this as an excuse to not vote for him.
Well that’s quite aggressive and absolutely not what I’m saying
Re: Chris Pratt He’s a member of an anti-LGBT church and has tried to deny that his church isn’t anti-LGBT. (Chad Veach is the pastor)
I literally can’t keep up with every individuals flaws, or perceived flaws from a public eye.
The fact that those are your choices should be enough to alert you to the reality - that voting is a charade to make you feel “heard” and to keep you from turning on your overlords, who will continue to wage war for profit (be it on Palestine or on their own poor and marginalised) no matter what.
Sadly the propaganda is so strong that most people can’t see beyond the pretend field laid out in front of them and the “blue vs red” mentality that is enforced along with it, so focused on this artificial division that they don’t see that the real “teams” are society and those who exploit it for profit and power (and who control the media and the education system, ensuring you’re indoctrinated this way from birth).
By all means, vote for the lesser (but still) evil (I’m in the UK, we are able to vote “none” which I will be doing if there is no one on the ballot who represents me), but you don’t get to pat yourself on the back for it as if you’ve just stormed the beach on D day and singlehandedly defeated fascism, because that’s nowhere near the truth, which is that you’ve just participated in a bit of theatre where you were given an illusion of choice. You being uncomfortable doesn’t change that.
It could change you, if you decide to engage the discomfort instead of ignoring it, you can start here:https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/14/liberalism-and-fascism-partners-in-crime/
I don’t think anybody is legitimately saying that voting blue is the end of the matter. Activism is way more than that–it’s attending local board meetings and making yourself heard, getting involved with your local/state parties to push for change, communicating with your elected representative (even, and especially if, they disagree with your position), attending donstrations and protests, volunteering for your preferred candidate’s campaign, voting, and most importantly–never giving up, even if it takes decades. If your preferred candidate loses in the primary, you immediately switch to the next closest candidate and start campaigning for them and pushing them towards your preferred policies. If a referendum you support loses, immediately start pushing for a similar referendum in the next election that tweaks the wording to avoid the reason why it lost last time. And so on, and so forth, across all the various levels of government.
This exact playbook is what got Roe overturned. Religious mutters pushed, and pushed, and pushed. They voted in lockstep for the farthest-right candidate in the primary, and if they lost in the primary they voted for the farthest right candidate in the general. They protested outside abortion clinics daily. They pushed and pushed, and over the course of 50 years they gradually transformed an entire political party from having roughly equal representation of pro-choice and anti-choice candidates to one where supporting a nationwide 15-week abortion ban with no exceptions is considered “moderate.”
I think a lot of people actually are saying that voting blue is the end of the matter. When you ask people who hate leftists what they are doing besides voting for Biden, most have no answer.
Yeah, because they’re lazy, and/or don’t have the ability to wage a sustained campaign. That’s the vast majority of voters on both sides–myself included, sadly, though in my case it’s largely because I’m afraid that a furry getting involved in a campaign would do more harm than good. Did you think every (or even a majority) of single-issue pro-birth voters were on the picket lines? Hell no. Most voters cast a vote, maybe in the primary (but usually just the general election, and only in the presidential elections) and that’s pretty much it.
And for the record, I absolutely don’t hate leftists, I agree with the vast majority of leftist positions, and I think protesting and advocating like this is a critical part of creating change. I just feel like it’s just as important to practice harm reduction and push from the inside, too.
I would be happy if folks just stopped mindlessly repeating cnn msnbc npr neoliberal talking points as though it’s some kind of gotcha! Lol. Is that too much to fucking ask!
People who think voting doesn’t matter are the ones that make it a reality. Everyone who shows up to not vote, or throw a protest vote, make it that much easier for the fanatics who do show up to get their way.
It’s not a perfect system, but refusing to participate doesn’t make it better. And “patting yourself on the back” because you decided you’d rather support your pride and ego instead of change (imperfect as it always is) is no less a sign of delusion than believing one election for one position is all that matters.
Every election matters. From local dog-catcher to state reps to president.
but refusing to participate
Who said anything about not participating. All anarchists I know are at most lukewarm on voting but put more effort into political change by organizing that all the votes in all the elections of a lifetime combined.
The election system doesn’t really change anything and makes people complicit by giving them the illusion of a democratic process that’s actually worth a damn.
It doesn’t change anything because people of action don’t participate. Voter participation is shockingly low for a supposedly “free” population. It’s not the only thing that matters, but it does a whole lot more than screaming from the rooftops about how much of a fool other people are for actually participating.
people of action don’t participate
Are you claiming that activists don’t vote? Or that being an activist isn’t participating in the democratic process?
I’d like a source if you meant the former and seriously question your idea of democracy if youmeant the latter.
Voter participation is shockingly low for a supposedly “free” population.
I’d claim that this is the output for a system which alienates so much of the people’s power in everyday concern. Not the reason why the system does that.
it does a whole lot more than screaming from the rooftops about how much of a fool other people are for actually participating.
- Protesting is an important part of any democratic process. That’s why freedom of speech is so paramount in (supposed) democracies.
- This depends on your perspective. If the system does work in your favour, you might be right. If the system doesn’t work in your favour, then agitating against it imho is more productive than participating.
Consider the french revolution. Was agitation against the aristrocracy more effective than praying and being sure that the people above did what was best for their country?
Those aren’t the folks that worry me. The folks that worry me are the ones that are voting Trump (as they put it) because “Biden is going to ban flavored cigarettes so no more Menthol”.
Those folks are just conservatives pretending that they would have ever voted for Biden in the first place.
they don’t give a shit if it makes any sense, they’re all running from reality
Sorry but trump is way funnier than Biden. I don’t make the rules.
You’re right but a bunch of people just don’t care anymore and I can’t totally blame them. I’ll be voting biden because I always vote, but this is on democrats 100% if they can’t motivate their base.
I can, some of us live this shit enough that being able to not care is a fucking privilege we don’t have.
I blame those backstabbing privileged twats all the way to my grave and then haunt their asses for being able to and choosing to not care.
Fuck your apathy, I want to live, and you shitbags owe it to me and those like me to do the literal minimum that helps achieve that if you want all the glitz and glam of marching alongside us at pride as if you are our allies.
Listen bro, im voting biden but im going to complain the whole damn time, you can take it or leave it.
I think the issue is more rooted in people like you. Spewing voter suppression rhetoric from somewhere but it’s rooted in propaganda. Rather than rallying people to help and pointing out the good, which is what gets people motivated, you instead choose to blame the people trying not to turn America into a neo-nazi fascist theocracy. Which is the root at which the meme is getting at lol.
Unless it’s simple cat and dog pics (even then sometimes) people on the internet just love to pretend they’re above the people who watch reality TV, when it’s just a different flavor of the same thing.
If you’re interested in convincing people to vote for Biden (which I think is the best option we’ll have this election) then I would urge you to talk about the contributions he’s made, and to stop telling people who don’t want to vote for him that they’re the reason the fascists might win. Even if it were true, telling them that will not convince anyone to vote for Biden.
It’s also misguided to blame voters for not voting the way you want. If you want a vote, you have to convince the voter! Oh, is the voter too stupid or evil to understand that the candidate is the best? That’s a candidate problem. It’s literally how democracy works.
But if they don’t vote for him, fascists WILL win. This is not an opinion. It’s a hard truth. And that should be motivation enough for one to hold their nose and vote- THEN make the decision to pay attention more than once every four years.
That same line gets thrown at leftists every election despite no concessions from liberals. Leftists are absolutely trying to make grassroots movement, but overcoming the liberal status quo and making positive change is tremendously difficult. Yes, leftists should vote for Biden, but the DNC should not be surprised that Leftists get desperate and can vote third party if the DNC continues to be a center-right Neoliberal mess.
If it’s not motivating people whose fault is that?
I voted for Biden before and I’ll do it again. I do think Trump is a threat to democracy. But if a restaurant goes out of business, is it reasonable or productive to say, “it’s the person who didn’t patronize our restaurant who did this”? “If it weren’t for the naysayers and people going to our competitors we would have stayed open!”
Maybe the restaurant should have changed the menu. Maybe it should have offered better prices. Maybe they should have made it more welcoming and marketed better.
For people who don’t want to eat shit, either don’t offer them shit, explain how it’s not shit, or make a pretty empathetic and convincing case why they’ve got to. My original point was that attempting to shame people and point the finger is not that winning case.
It’s entirely reasonable to blame review bombers for reducing business
It’s a convenient excuse to blame bad reviews for a restaurant closing. If the fundamentals of the business are good then bad reviews might hurt but aren’t a fatal blow. We can push any analogy until it breaks, but your example is a good case where blaming bad reviews is a convenient way for a restaurant owner to absolve themselves of responsibility or having to think introspectively about why they’re not doing well, similar to what Democratic leadership often does.
How about NO analogies.
Staying home instead of voting because one is too busy pouring over a single issue ideology easily the most of tent and foolish thing one can do. The majority of these kids suffering people do this, and/or stating that they themselves are doing this- maybe should place been paying attention the over the last 8-10 years and being active about making change instead of whining o line ever four years.
There. No analogies.
Except it isn’t a restaurant, it’s control of government, and a basic understanding of the rules of voting in the country shows that there are only two choices that have a reasonable chance of winning.
And? If you want people to vote for the candidate you support, you have to convince them to do it!
Yeah which takes ads, which require donations, and that is why politicians basically have to sell out in order to get votes.
EDIT: Everyone is right. The way the world works is that the Democratic candidate has to be a vaulted saint who single-handedly sheds decades old international alliances and ends all war and famine, is immune from money concerns, and disseminates his message via telepathy because traditional donations are beneath a being of his type…and he must be able to fully defeat a Republican demagogue who takes money from anyone, has the full support of Russia, and whose every utterance is covered in the press in addition to being a de-facto cult leader with a warchest of millions or even billions of dollars to be able to do traditional ad buys as well.
Completely reasonable 🙄
We’re past motivation. It’s fight for the existence of destruction of democracy. Vote now and worry about who’s to blame later.
If it’s as serious as you say, you might consider trying to sway people who don’t already agree with you instead of telling them they’re the reason the country is in trouble.
It’s amusing that you think I haven’t tried this already. I tried it in 2016 with the Bernie Bros, and again in 2020. This year, I say fuck them. I will be voting to save democracy, but I’m done trying to reason with unreasonable children and I’m not about to kiss their smug asses to get them to see part their own ignorance.
I try to think that hopefully Trump would get stonewalled enough that he wouldn’t be able to get any of this done.
Then I realize that he seriously does not care. He doesn’t give a shit about Congress, or checks and balances.
Who’s gonna stop him? His courts? An impeachment? Antifa gonna go out and storm Pennsylvania Ave and live up to their damn name, which somehow became an insult?
I try to think that hopefully Trump would get stonewalled enough that he wouldn’t be able to get any of this done.
Then I realize that he seriously does not care. He doesn’t give a shit about Congress, or checks and balances. He and his party have clearly demonstrated that they have no interest in the system of “law and order” that they cling so close to.
This cannot be understated enough. He will be a day one dictator. Then he’ll be a day two dictator, and day three and four. He won’t stop because he knows no one will stop him.
I think the most dissappointing is the current state of the Republican Party.
Seems like back in 2008, the Republican Party was a bit stubborn and stuck in the old days, but they were mostly harmless, like a grandpa who rattles his cane at “kids these days”. Endearing, but not crazy.
Then everything changed. They’ve gone full tilt crazy. They’ve actually managed to redeem 43 and make him look tame and competent (by comparison).
The nutter in me (what’s left of it, after /r/conspiracy got a cheeto mustache) is seriously starting to think that Reddits admiration of Ron Paul (that I very much got caught up in) was a practice run for some psyop astroturf shit that evolved into Trumps presidency.
I think they only get seen as harmless because they only had to perform small acts of violence to get their desired outcomes. They invaded a hotel to spy on their opponents, allied with people that murdered journalists and even in 2000 organized riots outside vote counting centers that gave fear of violence against arbiters of democracy. We cared a lot about the little things so they didn’t have to do as much.
But the world is more chaotic now and the big violent movements get way more sway and leaves even more room for bigger grabs of power. It’s just a progressing issue that came from us tolerating anything to keep status quo and let people make even more money regardless of how.
Did you hear of the robocalls in NH? Using a deepfaked Biden voice and the spoofed caller ID if someone from the state DNC, telling Democrats to “save their vote for November”?
Disgusting. And I wouldn’t be surprised if it played a hand in Haley’s surprisingly small loss in NH as undeclared voters are able to request either ballot.
Woah what the hell? No! I didn’t know about that!
What a weird concept. I’m not even entirely sure the desired outcome other than to see if it works and if they (the people doing this) could get away with it. I feel that it definitely sets dangerous precedent and makes it even muddier to have a well informed voter base.
You are thinking that people that would have voted for Biden then used their primary vote to go for Nikki Haley though?
No sense voting for Biden. He’s pretty much locked as the DNC candidate, the primary is really a formality (as often as it seems to be now).
No, NH has an open primary. Any undeclared voter can register for one party for the day to cast a primary ballot.
A lot of independents are undecided in these situations, since they can vote in either primary. Their vote is actually kind of especially powerful, since in this case they can use it to vote against someone in particular.
I live in MA which does the same. I am very left leaning but emphatically selected a republican ballot for the primaries.
Edit to add: this is also why Trumpists are lashing out against her, specifically in NH…they can’t fathom that voters can be independent. You’re either a modern republican or a librul.
What was it they used to say? Country before party? Facts not feelings? Law and order? Literally all of this shit is practically Orwellian. Ironically they really latch onto the “Ignorance is Strength” part.
