Ahh, yes. Just completely disregard any criticism of the Democratic Party as “right wing operatives.” It couldn’t possibly be that they abuse their position as the only other viable option in order to further their plutocratic goals, and the people who have been complaining about it for decades are simply tired of hearing “it’s not the right time” ad nauseum.
You know what will convince people who barely managed to vote for Hillary in 2016 and Biden in 2020 to vote against their conscience yet again? Knowing that they’ll be instantly blamed anyway when the majority doesn’t get their way? Insults and baseless accusations.
Criticize away. I’m no democrat and I have no love for them. I get into disagreements with those on the left about various things I disagree with. But at the end of the day I can work with democrats and I can’t with fascists. Defending freedom and the constitution against tyranny is something I swore an oath to do, and I will vote for nothing but democrats as long as fascism looms here.
If you’re advocating voting for anyone other than Biden, you are a de facto right wing operative. That may not be the intention, but that’s absolutely the result. It’s not an insult, it’s simply math.
There is no viable alternative to Biden for the 2024 election. Not a single one. Push Biden and the Democratic Party left, don’t campaign against them unless you want the GOP to gain more control. That’s unfortunately the reality of a FPTP system. Something like ranked choice voting would be a great way to change that. Guess which party is actively fighting against increasing representation and voting access? The very same people you’re electing when you sit out or vote 3rd party. If someone can explain to me how Biden losing the election is a net positive for the country I’m all ears.
See, the problem is that you and I disagree about the virtue of the Democratic Party. To me, they are an abusive bully who removes voices when it’s convenient (in their primaries), and then turns around and claims we must vote for them in order to preserve democracy. That rings hollow to those who have already had their voices muffled by the party itself. They’ve limited where I can express my voice to the very place that they have complete, unimpeachable control.
The only thing I have left is to express myself by refusing them a vote in the general. As you said, this is the unfortunate reality of the FPTP system. If they want my vote, they can implement a ranked choice system and I’ll happily put them on my list where they belong. Alternatively, they can run their primaries fairly and I’ll recognize the winner as legitimate.
I gave them my vote in 2016 literally only because of Trump and it nearly broke me. I gave them my vote in 2020 because of some specific promises the Biden campaign made that they then turned back on. In both cases the primaries were run in a specific way to engineer a win for their preferred candidate. Never explicitly against the rules because the party itself made the rules to allow it. And even then they were happy to break their charter’s promise to run primaries in a fair and even-handed way and argue in court they had no legal obligation to follow it.
In the case of Biden, I said in 2020 that that was my last free vote for the Democratic Party. They had 4 years to convince me they were willing to work with progressives, or else their vote from me would be contingent on them cleaning up their act. They have, on many occasions in the last 3 years, shown me that they have no intention of working in good faith with progressives.
I’m just done being abused. It’s time for them to actually follow their own empty words.
This is why the Democrats need to win, remove the Trump factor and try to either drag the Republican Party more to the center, or have the Democrats win in such a decisive way that it forces the Republicans to shift left. In the ideal world we don’t have FPTP, but all we can push for is a splitting of the Democrats so that folks like AOC and Biden aren’t considered part of the same party.
I don’t believe a Democratic win will push anyone left. The Republicans clearly have no interest in that, they’d rather get rid of democracy altogether. And the Democrats see any victory as a mandate for their centrism and any loss as a reason to move right.
If a Democratic win moves us left, why didn’t 2020 accomplish this? Why didn’t 2008 accomplish this? Why has every Democratic victory after FDR moved the party to the right?
And the solution is what? Vote Republican? Not vote (thereby essentially giving the Republicans a vote)? You can be damn sure that crazy racist uncle Bob isn’t going to skip voting for a wannabe-dictator
Voting third party, or if none are available that suit me, don’t vote for president. I’d still be filling out the rest of the ballot. I’d appear as an active voter who left the field blank, indicating my vote is up for grabs if someone actually earns it
That’s the only option available to me in the general that doesn’t implicitly endorse the current actions of the Democratic Party, actions that I believe are harmful to our country and will lead to our downfall just as surely as the explicit dismantling of the Republicans.
Can we stop this “a 3rd party vote is a vote for the opposition” nonsense? That completely ignores the entire reason for voting 3rd party and it’s mathematical bullshit. With Democratic votes on the left and Republican on the right, it is a 0/0 vote for each side. A Dem vote is a 1/0 vote and a Republican vote is a 0/1 vote. If you insist the two sides must add to one, then it’s a half vote for each side, 0.5/0.5.
The Dems have plenty of things they can do to earn my vote and they consistently choose not to do them. In response, I’m choosing not to give them my vote anymore. 2020 was the last time unless they can become a party that actually serves the people.
Results aren’t instant and we have moved left. Since 2016, Republicans have lost every single election. 2018, Dems gain the house removing the complete control R’s had in the house, senate and Executive. 2020, Trump loses his reelection (first time in like 20+ years that happens) D’s hold the house and gain a slime majority in the Senate. 2022, with a D president history shows D’s should lose seats in congress. D’s lose the house narrowly and gain seats in the senate, I think this the first time in 10ish years this happened.
When FDR was president, it was fine to be racist again minorities, be prejudiced against the LGBTQ+ community (as well as let them die of AIDS), and weed was bad. Those things have changed, and include the fact that every abortion restriction law has been denied by the voters of every state that has tried, including Kentucky.
The issue with the lack of a sharp turn left is that US politics doesn’t work that way. Actual movement is based on the mid point between both parties, and right now Republicans have been trying to move further and further right. In general shifts in politics are slow for the US, which is good for preventing bad things but not great for quickly encouraging the good. If R’s continue to screw up as they have, they will have to reevaluate their platform to stay relevant. Being homophobic, sexist and an ally of Nazis and white supremacists isn’t a winning ticket for a majority of voters.
Democrats winning seats doesn’t mean we’ve moved left. My point was the Democrats themselves have moved right. Pretty sharply around the Clinton administration, too.
Hi. So, your problem is that you didn’t get what you wanted, and now you’re going to throw a political temper tantrum and let the autocrat in. If gays and minorities are rounded up for concentration camps in the future, know that your letting ‘the perfect be the enemy of the good’ is why that happened. Hell, your posts on this very forum might be used to arrest and imprison you as a political subversive if Trump gets in, so you may well have skin in the game yourself. Something to think about.
No, my problem is that the Democratic party is corrupt, and continuing to prop it up will make the problem worse, not better.
I’m not letting perfect be the enemy of good. If the DNC can run fair primaries (which doesn’t mean my preferred candidate wins), I’ll recognize them as legitimate political contests. Until then, I’m simply tired of hearing “it’s not the right time” because it’s never the right time. If we keep waiting for the “right time,” then more people will die because we all refused to hold the Democratic Party responsible now.
And I do mean they are responsible. They gave us Trump very directly. They propped up his campaign to radicalize the right in order to shove an extraordinarily unpopular candidate through. That they now continue to use the same pied piper strategy only shows that they’ll continue to radicalize the right in order to coerce votes from people who don’t like them. Refusing to stand up to that makes you responsible for everything their pied pipers accomplish.
Because I believe that protecting democracy is a prerequisite to protecting citizens, especially marginalized groups. The Democratic Party, to me, is a threat to democracy. Different from the Republican party, yes. And much less severe. But a threat nonetheless.
This isn’t “both sides,” the Republicans have 0% chance of ever getting my vote, period. The Democrats can earn my vote but choose not to. In my opinion, they are an active participant in the erosion of democracy in this country. They just have the benefit of only having to do it within their own party.
The DNC has no interest in running an impartial and even-handed primary. It went so far as to argue in court that it was not bound by the language of its charter to run fair primaries. Since the Democratic primary is currently the only place that progressives can voice their political preferences, this practice effectively removes the right to political representation of anyone left of the party.
The Democratic Party engages in pied piper strategies, bolstering extremists within the Republican Party in order to increase their chances of winning the general (by promoting the “you have to vote D to avoid R” rhetoric that this thread started with). Specific to the current political climate, the DNC and the Hillary campaign promoted Trump in the 2016 Republican primary since they saw him as easier to beat than the rest of the field.
So they suppress voters to their left and intentionally radicalize the party and voters to their right.
You think those people will be better protected under a republican admin?
Do you think what those people will go through under republican leadership is worth it so that the DNC “learns its lesson” whatever the flying fuck that’s supposed to mean because people like you can’t even be bothered with the primaries you claim to be so incensed about when you turn your nose up at protecting other people’s rights.
Believe it or not democracy is actually not when the candidate with less votes gets forced into the nomination anyways because “trust me bro more people want him bro just ignore he got less votes bro!”
Believe it or not Vote Karen, us folks you’re threatening to send back to the Republicans to be rounded up and tormented if not killed for another 4 years are not able to bring you the party’s manager.
You believe “protecting democracy” whatever the fuck you think that means, comes ahead of protecting people’s lives, and that’s a position you can only have if it isn’t your life in danger.
You objectively prefer us as dead bodies you can gesture to and shout “SEE!” as if it was some nebulous elite’s fault that you refused to save us. You prefer us that way because dead bodies don’t expect you to actually show your solidarity even when it’s such a herculean strain as waiting in line for a day at most and filling some boxes out.
Be an ally, or quit moaning when the people you claim you’re trying to help point out that you’re trying to extort a negotiation out of them for something they have no control over because that seems more “revolutionary” to you than just being there to have it go your way in the first fucking place at the primary stage if you’re willing to turn us over to the fucking gestapo over it.
Followed up by you conjuring up all sorts of things you claim I believe to argue against strawmen.
And by the way, I phrase things as “I believe” because that’s what humans base their decisions on. None of us know anything 100%. I can recognize that we can work towards the same goal and have different beliefs about the best way to get there. I don’t automatically assume that everyone who disagrees with my methods also disagree with my goals.
Hey, guess what? You aren’t right about everything. Neither am I. I believe the system continuing as it is will result in more death and suffering than efforts to drag the Democrats left.
You need to learn to argue without accusing your opponent of ill intentions.
You need to shut the fuck up and listen to the people who’ll be doing the dying and suffering, because those folks are tired of you deciding you know better for them.
Don’t want to be called a priv, stop acting like a fuckin’ priv.
First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice
I strive for positive peace, which is not possible through the moderate Democratic party as it is. Voting for Biden simply because he isn’t Trump, and insisting that that is the only way forward because it is an absence of tension, is not a good long term strategy. I’m not interested in arguing further unless you can actually argue rather than just spew insults.
Ahh, yes. Just completely disregard any criticism of the Democratic Party as “right wing operatives.” It couldn’t possibly be that they abuse their position as the only other viable option in order to further their plutocratic goals, and the people who have been complaining about it for decades are simply tired of hearing “it’s not the right time” ad nauseum.
You know what will convince people who barely managed to vote for Hillary in 2016 and Biden in 2020 to vote against their conscience yet again? Knowing that they’ll be instantly blamed anyway when the majority doesn’t get their way? Insults and baseless accusations.
Criticize away. I’m no democrat and I have no love for them. I get into disagreements with those on the left about various things I disagree with. But at the end of the day I can work with democrats and I can’t with fascists. Defending freedom and the constitution against tyranny is something I swore an oath to do, and I will vote for nothing but democrats as long as fascism looms here.
If you’re advocating voting for anyone other than Biden, you are a de facto right wing operative. That may not be the intention, but that’s absolutely the result. It’s not an insult, it’s simply math.
There is no viable alternative to Biden for the 2024 election. Not a single one. Push Biden and the Democratic Party left, don’t campaign against them unless you want the GOP to gain more control. That’s unfortunately the reality of a FPTP system. Something like ranked choice voting would be a great way to change that. Guess which party is actively fighting against increasing representation and voting access? The very same people you’re electing when you sit out or vote 3rd party. If someone can explain to me how Biden losing the election is a net positive for the country I’m all ears.
See, the problem is that you and I disagree about the virtue of the Democratic Party. To me, they are an abusive bully who removes voices when it’s convenient (in their primaries), and then turns around and claims we must vote for them in order to preserve democracy. That rings hollow to those who have already had their voices muffled by the party itself. They’ve limited where I can express my voice to the very place that they have complete, unimpeachable control.
The only thing I have left is to express myself by refusing them a vote in the general. As you said, this is the unfortunate reality of the FPTP system. If they want my vote, they can implement a ranked choice system and I’ll happily put them on my list where they belong. Alternatively, they can run their primaries fairly and I’ll recognize the winner as legitimate.
I gave them my vote in 2016 literally only because of Trump and it nearly broke me. I gave them my vote in 2020 because of some specific promises the Biden campaign made that they then turned back on. In both cases the primaries were run in a specific way to engineer a win for their preferred candidate. Never explicitly against the rules because the party itself made the rules to allow it. And even then they were happy to break their charter’s promise to run primaries in a fair and even-handed way and argue in court they had no legal obligation to follow it.
In the case of Biden, I said in 2020 that that was my last free vote for the Democratic Party. They had 4 years to convince me they were willing to work with progressives, or else their vote from me would be contingent on them cleaning up their act. They have, on many occasions in the last 3 years, shown me that they have no intention of working in good faith with progressives.
I’m just done being abused. It’s time for them to actually follow their own empty words.
This is why the Democrats need to win, remove the Trump factor and try to either drag the Republican Party more to the center, or have the Democrats win in such a decisive way that it forces the Republicans to shift left. In the ideal world we don’t have FPTP, but all we can push for is a splitting of the Democrats so that folks like AOC and Biden aren’t considered part of the same party.
I don’t believe a Democratic win will push anyone left. The Republicans clearly have no interest in that, they’d rather get rid of democracy altogether. And the Democrats see any victory as a mandate for their centrism and any loss as a reason to move right.
If a Democratic win moves us left, why didn’t 2020 accomplish this? Why didn’t 2008 accomplish this? Why has every Democratic victory after FDR moved the party to the right?
To keep that ratchet spinning.
And the solution is what? Vote Republican? Not vote (thereby essentially giving the Republicans a vote)? You can be damn sure that crazy racist uncle Bob isn’t going to skip voting for a wannabe-dictator
Voting third party, or if none are available that suit me, don’t vote for president. I’d still be filling out the rest of the ballot. I’d appear as an active voter who left the field blank, indicating my vote is up for grabs if someone actually earns it
That’s the only option available to me in the general that doesn’t implicitly endorse the current actions of the Democratic Party, actions that I believe are harmful to our country and will lead to our downfall just as surely as the explicit dismantling of the Republicans.
Can we stop this “a 3rd party vote is a vote for the opposition” nonsense? That completely ignores the entire reason for voting 3rd party and it’s mathematical bullshit. With Democratic votes on the left and Republican on the right, it is a 0/0 vote for each side. A Dem vote is a 1/0 vote and a Republican vote is a 0/1 vote. If you insist the two sides must add to one, then it’s a half vote for each side, 0.5/0.5.
The Dems have plenty of things they can do to earn my vote and they consistently choose not to do them. In response, I’m choosing not to give them my vote anymore. 2020 was the last time unless they can become a party that actually serves the people.
Results aren’t instant and we have moved left. Since 2016, Republicans have lost every single election. 2018, Dems gain the house removing the complete control R’s had in the house, senate and Executive. 2020, Trump loses his reelection (first time in like 20+ years that happens) D’s hold the house and gain a slime majority in the Senate. 2022, with a D president history shows D’s should lose seats in congress. D’s lose the house narrowly and gain seats in the senate, I think this the first time in 10ish years this happened. When FDR was president, it was fine to be racist again minorities, be prejudiced against the LGBTQ+ community (as well as let them die of AIDS), and weed was bad. Those things have changed, and include the fact that every abortion restriction law has been denied by the voters of every state that has tried, including Kentucky. The issue with the lack of a sharp turn left is that US politics doesn’t work that way. Actual movement is based on the mid point between both parties, and right now Republicans have been trying to move further and further right. In general shifts in politics are slow for the US, which is good for preventing bad things but not great for quickly encouraging the good. If R’s continue to screw up as they have, they will have to reevaluate their platform to stay relevant. Being homophobic, sexist and an ally of Nazis and white supremacists isn’t a winning ticket for a majority of voters.
Democrats winning seats doesn’t mean we’ve moved left. My point was the Democrats themselves have moved right. Pretty sharply around the Clinton administration, too.
Hi. So, your problem is that you didn’t get what you wanted, and now you’re going to throw a political temper tantrum and let the autocrat in. If gays and minorities are rounded up for concentration camps in the future, know that your letting ‘the perfect be the enemy of the good’ is why that happened. Hell, your posts on this very forum might be used to arrest and imprison you as a political subversive if Trump gets in, so you may well have skin in the game yourself. Something to think about.
No, my problem is that the Democratic party is corrupt, and continuing to prop it up will make the problem worse, not better.
I’m not letting perfect be the enemy of good. If the DNC can run fair primaries (which doesn’t mean my preferred candidate wins), I’ll recognize them as legitimate political contests. Until then, I’m simply tired of hearing “it’s not the right time” because it’s never the right time. If we keep waiting for the “right time,” then more people will die because we all refused to hold the Democratic Party responsible now.
And I do mean they are responsible. They gave us Trump very directly. They propped up his campaign to radicalize the right in order to shove an extraordinarily unpopular candidate through. That they now continue to use the same pied piper strategy only shows that they’ll continue to radicalize the right in order to coerce votes from people who don’t like them. Refusing to stand up to that makes you responsible for everything their pied pipers accomplish.
How is protecting the queer community, women’s rights, and the civil rights of PoC, voting against your conscience exactly?
Because I believe that protecting democracy is a prerequisite to protecting citizens, especially marginalized groups. The Democratic Party, to me, is a threat to democracy. Different from the Republican party, yes. And much less severe. But a threat nonetheless.
This isn’t “both sides,” the Republicans have 0% chance of ever getting my vote, period. The Democrats can earn my vote but choose not to. In my opinion, they are an active participant in the erosion of democracy in this country. They just have the benefit of only having to do it within their own party.
Is this in the general sense or are there specific policies/actions you could point me to as examples?
Two in particular:
The DNC has no interest in running an impartial and even-handed primary. It went so far as to argue in court that it was not bound by the language of its charter to run fair primaries. Since the Democratic primary is currently the only place that progressives can voice their political preferences, this practice effectively removes the right to political representation of anyone left of the party.
The Democratic Party engages in pied piper strategies, bolstering extremists within the Republican Party in order to increase their chances of winning the general (by promoting the “you have to vote D to avoid R” rhetoric that this thread started with). Specific to the current political climate, the DNC and the Hillary campaign promoted Trump in the 2016 Republican primary since they saw him as easier to beat than the rest of the field.
So they suppress voters to their left and intentionally radicalize the party and voters to their right.
Hmm ok fair enough actually, thanks
You believe, because you don’t know for certain.
You think those people will be better protected under a republican admin?
Do you think what those people will go through under republican leadership is worth it so that the DNC “learns its lesson” whatever the flying fuck that’s supposed to mean because people like you can’t even be bothered with the primaries you claim to be so incensed about when you turn your nose up at protecting other people’s rights.
Believe it or not democracy is actually not when the candidate with less votes gets forced into the nomination anyways because “trust me bro more people want him bro just ignore he got less votes bro!”
Believe it or not Vote Karen, us folks you’re threatening to send back to the Republicans to be rounded up and tormented if not killed for another 4 years are not able to bring you the party’s manager.
You believe “protecting democracy” whatever the fuck you think that means, comes ahead of protecting people’s lives, and that’s a position you can only have if it isn’t your life in danger.
You objectively prefer us as dead bodies you can gesture to and shout “SEE!” as if it was some nebulous elite’s fault that you refused to save us. You prefer us that way because dead bodies don’t expect you to actually show your solidarity even when it’s such a herculean strain as waiting in line for a day at most and filling some boxes out.
Be an ally, or quit moaning when the people you claim you’re trying to help point out that you’re trying to extort a negotiation out of them for something they have no control over because that seems more “revolutionary” to you than just being there to have it go your way in the first fucking place at the primary stage if you’re willing to turn us over to the fucking gestapo over it.
Followed up by you conjuring up all sorts of things you claim I believe to argue against strawmen.
And by the way, I phrase things as “I believe” because that’s what humans base their decisions on. None of us know anything 100%. I can recognize that we can work towards the same goal and have different beliefs about the best way to get there. I don’t automatically assume that everyone who disagrees with my methods also disagree with my goals.
Yeah because you have the privilege to not be condemned to possible state sanctioned violence by that “difference in methods” fuckin’ priv.
Hey, guess what? You aren’t right about everything. Neither am I. I believe the system continuing as it is will result in more death and suffering than efforts to drag the Democrats left.
You need to learn to argue without accusing your opponent of ill intentions.
You need to shut the fuck up and listen to the people who’ll be doing the dying and suffering, because those folks are tired of you deciding you know better for them.
Don’t want to be called a priv, stop acting like a fuckin’ priv.
https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
I strive for positive peace, which is not possible through the moderate Democratic party as it is. Voting for Biden simply because he isn’t Trump, and insisting that that is the only way forward because it is an absence of tension, is not a good long term strategy. I’m not interested in arguing further unless you can actually argue rather than just spew insults.
Go ahead though, call MLK a “priv.”