I mean, the DNC supports genocide. Trump is worse, which is really a testament to how phenomally bad he is for just about everyone on the planet. I want progressive democrats on the ballot, but I’m not holding my breath. I’m still going to vote, and I’m going to vote for the least bad option.
Thats precisely what the DNC counts on when they ratfuck progressives. The only reason we got Biden to step down and Kamala to pick Walz was the DNC couldn’t delude themselves into thinking they could win. Once Kamala’s popularity spiked and they told themselves the left, black people, and/or women would do as they are told, they went back to business as usual.
We need to be screaming from now to 2028 that any candidate who does not support free healthcare, abolition of ICE, and zero weapons for Israel is unelectable.
We need to be screaming from now to 2028 that any candidate who does not support free healthcare, abolition of ICE, and zero weapons for Israel is unelectable.
The DNC does not care if their candidate is electable. They only care that their candidate is not a progressive.
The only reason Biden stepped down when he did was that the DNC wanted to avoid a primary they knew Kamala wouldn’t win. They waited until she was the only viable candidate. It wasn’t delusion, it was strategy. It was terrible strategy, but I also think that’s part of the strategy. We didn’t “get” Biden to step down. We failed to get rid of him soon enough for it to matter.
The problem is that there aren’t enough voters who support free healthcare, abolition of ICE, and zero weapons for Israel. We need leadership to make the argument for those policies, and those leaders are simply lacking. There are more every day, and I will fight with everything I have to support them, but they are going to keep losing for a while. Our fight is long, and we plant the trees that will shade our decendents when we are long buried. And in the meantime, there will be an election, and you will make a choice. Choose something you can live with, because it will have an impact on the world. If you choose not to participate, you are still equally responsible for the outcome.
there aren’t enough voters who support free healthcare, abolition of ICE, and zero weapons for Israel
Nah, that requires intentionally misleading polls. Ask someone on the street “Do you think healthcare should be free” or even “should every single american have healthcare” and you will get overwhelming agreement. To get people to disagree you have to do bullshit like “Do you want the government to take away your health insurance” or something. Same with abolition of ICE and weapons for Israel. The only people who want ICE coming to their neighborhood and dragging off their neighbors or Israel bombing brown people are never going to vote dem.
There are no voters who will vote for means-tested subsidies for insurance companies that you buy through 1 of 50 online marketplaces or through your employer, but won’t vote for free healthcare.
There is a shitton of voters who will vote for free healthcare, but will assume whatever compromised centrist solution the neolibs come up with will not help them.
“Do you think healthcare should be free?” is not the same question as “Do you care enough about free healthcare to vote for a candidate who supports it?” Voters are largely uninformed, unengaged, and only rarely do more than show up to vote if they bother to do that.
The number of people who will show up for free healthcare is greater than the number who will show up for complicated tax credits for PEL grant recipients who operate a business in an under-served neighborhood for 5 years and were born on a prime numbered date, and make between 20 and 40K/year and submit 12 pages of paperwork.
Hell when I was phone-banking for Biden in 2020, half the people I was contacted listed free healthcare and freeing the ICE camps as reasons they were going to vote.
They thought they were voting for progressive policy, the opposite of that happened. Further disengagement is expected result of not doing everything in your power to help your base.
With our current voting system, you really don’t, and the third option is rarely a significant upgrade. Ironically, third party candidates have a better chance during midterms because of low voter turnout, especially in local elections. The focus on this particular midterm means it is even harder for downballot third party or independent candidates, because the rank and file are going to show up to the polls.
our voting system is a false dichotomy that’s been manufactured by both the republicans and democrats legally squeezing out alternatives as much as possible and socially manipulating our perceptions of a third option for decades.
As the US Empire continues to decay, and neither party is capable of rescuing it, support for abandoning the system altogether and adopting a new one will rise.
I would have thought you were right, but we’re eyebrow deep in this shit. The human capacity for ignoring a problem in favor of remaining comfortable has shaken my faith in humanity. I hope you’re right.
I feel like so many people aren’t necessarily ignorant to the problems, we just don’t know what to do about it. I keep seeing posts suggesting Americans are supposed to be uprising but by doing exactly what? I don’t want to be defeatist, but I legit don’t know what the plan is supposed to be. Voting doesn’t seem to be working, and apparently it’s going to be even less effective soon.
In order for an uprising to be long-lasting and survivable, it needs to be supplied, sustained and coordinated by dense mutual aid networks. Every participant needs to be clothed, fed, sheltered, trained, cared for and organized. The supplies and knowledge you need to do that, the institutionalized capacity, are the products of relationships. The big reason we currently have such a hard time helping each other is that all the relationships of production that have traditionally sustained human life, have been parisitized by capital. Rather than going down to see the medicine woman, we sell our labor to a boss for a wage, and use that wage to purchase medicine made by people who are doing the same thing to afford food and housing.
Essentially, the web of productive human relationships that make up society have been broken and reformed into a one-way connection between individuals and capital. Rather than a resilient web, we are each points on a wheel, with spokes that go inwards to capital and touch nothing else. All relationships have been subsumed in this way, all goods and services have been monetized, which makes it terrifyingly easy to cut off anyone by cutting off their relationships to capital (which is what every homeless person has experienced: banishment by lack of money).
The first necessary step in creating a movement capable of overthrowing capitlaism is to re-establish these old relationships, no matter how small or casual they may be at first. These tentative connections are like neurons that can later direct and support the development of true muscle. Start socialist groups in your community based around causes and/or skills, make connections with other groups, agitate for causes together, weave your organization into the greater musculature of proletarian power and self-suffieciency. The gardening/foraging club you start today will teach the revolutionaries of tomorrow how to feed themselves without a grocery store, and when you repeat that with everything, when you couple it with strong unions in a position to seize control of more complex production, you have something massive and organic that is beginning to detach itself from capitalist control.
And definitely learn to defend yourself. You don’t need to be John Wick, but if every member of a 10 person group becomes 5% less fuckwtihable, the whole group is 50% less fuckwithable.
Americans on average are far better off than is necessary for people to risk trying to overthrow their government. Most of them still have a place to sleep and food to eat. There’s no guarantee that will remain the case indefinitely.
Not voting for any candidate because none of them are progressive enough perpetuates the same system. How are you helping by not voting for the lesser evil?
No, I remember, and I’m fighting to remove evil from the next ballot. But I also know I’m not going to be successful, and I’m not naive enough to think that I can fix everything by myself. You can be mad about the choices and still choose.
Politics is a spectrum, and theoretically there is a candidate even for you that would still support genocide and also be progressive enough to earn your vote.
Edit: Yes, downvote me, but tell me who you voted for in the most recent election at any level, and I’ll point to the genocide they supported.
Edit 2: Lot of people telling me progressive candidates are on every ballot, but nobody has yet to name a single candidate. One person mentioned a party that fielded three total candidates nationwide in all races in the 2024 election, one of whom was a Presidential candidate that could not mathematically win because she wasn’t on enough ballots. Most Americans were unable to find her name on their ballot, and the overwhelming majority of Americans did not have any PSL representation on their ballots at any level.
Politics is a spectrum, and theoretically there is a candidate even for you that would still support genocide and also be progressive enough to earn your vote.
Theoretically there’s a progressive who supports genocide hard enough to get your vote.
I’m saying that I don’t believe your assertions that you’re a progressive because of all the simping for the genocidal you’re doing all over this thread.
There’s always actual progressives on the ballot. It’s just too many have fallen for the “lesser evil” brainwashing that they fail to see it. It’s no different than the red scare crap we’re still trying to kill.
As a lifelong progressive who has voted in every election in the past 26 years, no there are not always actual progressives on the ballot. But your point that we should support them when there is one progressive, even when they cannot hope to win, is also fallacious. Sometimes they could win with our support, and sometimes they could not. Vote accordingly.
I believe you can make the case for either option (lesser evil or third party) and either is definitely better than not voting, but I’m of the view that voting is a negligible part of our political involvement that gets too much attention, organizing is a lot more necessary and effective, otherwise things will never improve
Absolutely this is a critical point. If you want better candidates, create them. Forge them and support them. Attend townhalls and demand answers from candidates. That’s the time to shape the race. Once you enter the voting booth, it’s far too late to try to fix everything with one choice.
I like the quote from Gandhi, “Whatever you do in life will be insignificant but it is very important that you do it…” I think that applies to voting. One vote may be insignificant, or it may be everything. You won’t know, and you may never know for sure. But if you don’t vote, it is definitely nothing.
there’s always a progressive candidate and you should always vote; just be aware that both the republican and democratic parties are actively perpetuating this system.
I’m not just searching for them, I’m canvassing and donating to them, but there simply aren’t progressive options in every race in every district. And even some nominally progressive candidates will support genocide if it is politically expedient. Politics is the slow boring of hard boards, and one of those boards right now is global human rights, and we’re not even halfway through it. You get through with constant pressure and effort. You can’t always get what you want.
chess moves implies control and voting for the lesser evil isn’t a strategic move; it’s just hoping that the piece you think you’re forced to move does the least amount of damage.
the majority have been employing your chess strategy for decades and here we with so many people not voting that there aren’t enough 3rd party voters to make up the difference anymore.
end the game while there’s still time before climate change to fucks everyone.
@Salamence 100% accurate
I mean, the DNC supports genocide. Trump is worse, which is really a testament to how phenomally bad he is for just about everyone on the planet. I want progressive democrats on the ballot, but I’m not holding my breath. I’m still going to vote, and I’m going to vote for the least bad option.
Thats precisely what the DNC counts on when they ratfuck progressives. The only reason we got Biden to step down and Kamala to pick Walz was the DNC couldn’t delude themselves into thinking they could win. Once Kamala’s popularity spiked and they told themselves the left, black people, and/or women would do as they are told, they went back to business as usual.
We need to be screaming from now to 2028 that any candidate who does not support free healthcare, abolition of ICE, and zero weapons for Israel is unelectable.
The DNC does not care if their candidate is electable. They only care that their candidate is not a progressive.
The only reason Biden stepped down when he did was that the DNC wanted to avoid a primary they knew Kamala wouldn’t win. They waited until she was the only viable candidate. It wasn’t delusion, it was strategy. It was terrible strategy, but I also think that’s part of the strategy. We didn’t “get” Biden to step down. We failed to get rid of him soon enough for it to matter.
The problem is that there aren’t enough voters who support free healthcare, abolition of ICE, and zero weapons for Israel. We need leadership to make the argument for those policies, and those leaders are simply lacking. There are more every day, and I will fight with everything I have to support them, but they are going to keep losing for a while. Our fight is long, and we plant the trees that will shade our decendents when we are long buried. And in the meantime, there will be an election, and you will make a choice. Choose something you can live with, because it will have an impact on the world. If you choose not to participate, you are still equally responsible for the outcome.
Nah, that requires intentionally misleading polls. Ask someone on the street “Do you think healthcare should be free” or even “should every single american have healthcare” and you will get overwhelming agreement. To get people to disagree you have to do bullshit like “Do you want the government to take away your health insurance” or something. Same with abolition of ICE and weapons for Israel. The only people who want ICE coming to their neighborhood and dragging off their neighbors or Israel bombing brown people are never going to vote dem.
There are no voters who will vote for means-tested subsidies for insurance companies that you buy through 1 of 50 online marketplaces or through your employer, but won’t vote for free healthcare.
There is a shitton of voters who will vote for free healthcare, but will assume whatever compromised centrist solution the neolibs come up with will not help them.
“Do you think healthcare should be free?” is not the same question as “Do you care enough about free healthcare to vote for a candidate who supports it?” Voters are largely uninformed, unengaged, and only rarely do more than show up to vote if they bother to do that.
The number of people who will show up for free healthcare is greater than the number who will show up for complicated tax credits for PEL grant recipients who operate a business in an under-served neighborhood for 5 years and were born on a prime numbered date, and make between 20 and 40K/year and submit 12 pages of paperwork.
Hell when I was phone-banking for Biden in 2020, half the people I was contacted listed free healthcare and freeing the ICE camps as reasons they were going to vote.
They thought they were voting for progressive policy, the opposite of that happened. Further disengagement is expected result of not doing everything in your power to help your base.
The DNC thinks its base is netanyahu and two cheneys. Well, one cheney now.
be sure to remember that you always have more than 2 options.
With our current voting system, you really don’t, and the third option is rarely a significant upgrade. Ironically, third party candidates have a better chance during midterms because of low voter turnout, especially in local elections. The focus on this particular midterm means it is even harder for downballot third party or independent candidates, because the rank and file are going to show up to the polls.
our voting system is a false dichotomy that’s been manufactured by both the republicans and democrats legally squeezing out alternatives as much as possible and socially manipulating our perceptions of a third option for decades.
As the US Empire continues to decay, and neither party is capable of rescuing it, support for abandoning the system altogether and adopting a new one will rise.
I would have thought you were right, but we’re eyebrow deep in this shit. The human capacity for ignoring a problem in favor of remaining comfortable has shaken my faith in humanity. I hope you’re right.
I feel like so many people aren’t necessarily ignorant to the problems, we just don’t know what to do about it. I keep seeing posts suggesting Americans are supposed to be uprising but by doing exactly what? I don’t want to be defeatist, but I legit don’t know what the plan is supposed to be. Voting doesn’t seem to be working, and apparently it’s going to be even less effective soon.
In order for an uprising to be long-lasting and survivable, it needs to be supplied, sustained and coordinated by dense mutual aid networks. Every participant needs to be clothed, fed, sheltered, trained, cared for and organized. The supplies and knowledge you need to do that, the institutionalized capacity, are the products of relationships. The big reason we currently have such a hard time helping each other is that all the relationships of production that have traditionally sustained human life, have been parisitized by capital. Rather than going down to see the medicine woman, we sell our labor to a boss for a wage, and use that wage to purchase medicine made by people who are doing the same thing to afford food and housing.
Essentially, the web of productive human relationships that make up society have been broken and reformed into a one-way connection between individuals and capital. Rather than a resilient web, we are each points on a wheel, with spokes that go inwards to capital and touch nothing else. All relationships have been subsumed in this way, all goods and services have been monetized, which makes it terrifyingly easy to cut off anyone by cutting off their relationships to capital (which is what every homeless person has experienced: banishment by lack of money).
The first necessary step in creating a movement capable of overthrowing capitlaism is to re-establish these old relationships, no matter how small or casual they may be at first. These tentative connections are like neurons that can later direct and support the development of true muscle. Start socialist groups in your community based around causes and/or skills, make connections with other groups, agitate for causes together, weave your organization into the greater musculature of proletarian power and self-suffieciency. The gardening/foraging club you start today will teach the revolutionaries of tomorrow how to feed themselves without a grocery store, and when you repeat that with everything, when you couple it with strong unions in a position to seize control of more complex production, you have something massive and organic that is beginning to detach itself from capitalist control.
And definitely learn to defend yourself. You don’t need to be John Wick, but if every member of a 10 person group becomes 5% less fuckwtihable, the whole group is 50% less fuckwithable.
Americans on average are far better off than is necessary for people to risk trying to overthrow their government. Most of them still have a place to sleep and food to eat. There’s no guarantee that will remain the case indefinitely.
Water boils when you keep heating it. Quantity changes into quality.
voting for any non-progressive candidate perpetuates this system that’s controlled by baby raping/eating/killing oligarchic billionaires.
Not voting for any candidate because none of them are progressive enough perpetuates the same system. How are you helping by not voting for the lesser evil?
“Those who choose the lesser evil are all too quick to forget that they chose evil”
No, I remember, and I’m fighting to remove evil from the next ballot. But I also know I’m not going to be successful, and I’m not naive enough to think that I can fix everything by myself. You can be mad about the choices and still choose.
Explicitly describing genocide as “not progressive enough”
Politics is a spectrum, and theoretically there is a candidate even for you that would still support genocide and also be progressive enough to earn your vote.
Edit: Yes, downvote me, but tell me who you voted for in the most recent election at any level, and I’ll point to the genocide they supported.
Edit 2: Lot of people telling me progressive candidates are on every ballot, but nobody has yet to name a single candidate. One person mentioned a party that fielded three total candidates nationwide in all races in the 2024 election, one of whom was a Presidential candidate that could not mathematically win because she wasn’t on enough ballots. Most Americans were unable to find her name on their ballot, and the overwhelming majority of Americans did not have any PSL representation on their ballots at any level.
Theoretically there’s a progressive who supports genocide hard enough to get your vote.
What the fuck are you talking about?
I’m saying that I don’t believe your assertions that you’re a progressive because of all the simping for the genocidal you’re doing all over this thread.
No, there isn’t. What a fucking horrific thing to say.
You’re telling me you’ve never voted for a candidate that supports the current Israeli genocide? Are you not an American?
Yes I’m telling you that
I’m not an American but even i know there were candidates there who did not supported genocide.
That is a wild self-report
Scratch a liberal…
Seriously
Who did you vote for in the last election? Do you honestly believe you never voted for a candidate that has supported genocide?
PSL, baby😎
There’s always actual progressives on the ballot. It’s just too many have fallen for the “lesser evil” brainwashing that they fail to see it. It’s no different than the red scare crap we’re still trying to kill.
As a lifelong progressive who has voted in every election in the past 26 years, no there are not always actual progressives on the ballot. But your point that we should support them when there is one progressive, even when they cannot hope to win, is also fallacious. Sometimes they could win with our support, and sometimes they could not. Vote accordingly.
I believe you can make the case for either option (lesser evil or third party) and either is definitely better than not voting, but I’m of the view that voting is a negligible part of our political involvement that gets too much attention, organizing is a lot more necessary and effective, otherwise things will never improve
Absolutely this is a critical point. If you want better candidates, create them. Forge them and support them. Attend townhalls and demand answers from candidates. That’s the time to shape the race. Once you enter the voting booth, it’s far too late to try to fix everything with one choice.
I like the quote from Gandhi, “Whatever you do in life will be insignificant but it is very important that you do it…” I think that applies to voting. One vote may be insignificant, or it may be everything. You won’t know, and you may never know for sure. But if you don’t vote, it is definitely nothing.
there’s always a progressive candidate and you should always vote; just be aware that both the republican and democratic parties are actively perpetuating this system.
There is not always a progressive candidate.
there always is; it’s just that you’re not made aware of the progressive candidate’s existence.
in cases where it doesn’t seem like there’s one, you have to search for him/her/them yourself.
I’m not just searching for them, I’m canvassing and donating to them, but there simply aren’t progressive options in every race in every district. And even some nominally progressive candidates will support genocide if it is politically expedient. Politics is the slow boring of hard boards, and one of those boards right now is global human rights, and we’re not even halfway through it. You get through with constant pressure and effort. You can’t always get what you want.
@themeatbridge yep
voting is not a marriage proposal, it’s a chess move towards a better future.
I still want everyone at the DNC leadership to choke and die, soonest.
The expected move from progressives is always “forfeit.”
Given the last few decades, you clearly suck at chess
Removed by mod
Least deranged BlueMAGA
chess moves implies control and voting for the lesser evil isn’t a strategic move; it’s just hoping that the piece you think you’re forced to move does the least amount of damage.
@eldavi you likely don’t understand chess. Or what “strategic” means.
Stop gaslighting anyone who doesn’t immediately accept your pro-genocide-and-nothing-else-ever bullshit.
the majority have been employing your chess strategy for decades and here we with so many people not voting that there aren’t enough 3rd party voters to make up the difference anymore.
end the game while there’s still time before climate change to fucks everyone.