• 420blazeit69 [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    There is absolutely zero "danger" from voting and also pursuing other organizing strategies.

    • SolidaritySplodarity [they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      There's the danger of massively wasting yours and others' time by getting them invested in Quixotic strategies. I can and (partially) already did expound on this at length.

      There's the blowback from tying socialists to liberal politicians, furthering the ubiquitous misunderstanding of what socialism is and why it's necessary and making socialism less palatable by association.

      There's the blowback from the inherent lack of control via the typical :vote:ing strategies, the unintended yet virtually guaranteed negative consequences of the compromises individuals going this route are willing to make. Organizing for and voting for Obama led fairly clearly to the current 6-3 Supreme Court, yet we all know the strategy was as simplistic as "Dems will appoint less bad justices so we should critically support them with :vote:ing". A :vote: is a very weak thing individually that gives you incredibly little power, not only in terms of your part in aggregate choice of representative, but in terms of what they can and will actually do to further the goals that you have in mind.

      There's the constant liberal sheepdogging that warps your priorities, making you consider incredibly terrible ghouls as needing critical support and the false pretense that your presidential vote matters. See: the many "I've gotta vote for Biden" threads in October. So many confused leftists who have fully bought into the "this is an important personal choice" paradigm, regardless of whether they thought it was a good idea to :vote: for Biden or not. Those are brain worms and you get them by default.

      I'm not against electoralism, I'm against vague calls for electoralism, particularly regarding the presidential election, because they're liberal and counterproductive by default. The elephant in the room is how you engage with it. In this thread, the idea of :vote:ing to influence the Supreme Court was absurd.

      • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        There’s the danger of massively wasting yours and others’ time

        So don't get invested in electoral politics. You can check in at the polls every year or two without obsessing over it. Tons of people do it.

        blowback from tying socialists to liberal politicians, furthering the ubiquitous misunderstanding of what socialism is

        At this point the priority is to de-stigmatize the concept of socialism, because we can't do anything until we do that. Elected officials calling for popular policies like Medicare for All and associating those policies with socialism is a big step in the right direction.

        Organizing for and voting for Obama led fairly clearly to the current 6-3 Supreme Court, yet we all know the strategy was as simplistic as “Dems will appoint less bad justices so we should critically support them

        Lol this doesn't make any sense. Did Obama appoint those conservative justices? If no one turned out to vote for Obama in 2008, would John McCain have appointed liberal or conservative justices? If Hillary had pulled it out in 2016, would she have appointed Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barrett? Democrats fuck up a lot of things, but they at least don't appoint complete shitheads to the Supreme Court.

        I’m not against electoralism, I’m against vague calls for electoralism

        The only vague thing here is "I'm not against electoralism despite mocking it constantly."

        • SolidaritySplodarity [they/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          So don’t get invested in electoral politics. You can check in at the polls every year or two without obsessing over it. Tons of people do it.

          Someone suggesting you :vote: to influence the Supreme Court is already "too invested in electoral politics". The full sentence was about Quixotic ventures, and that definitely is one.

          At this point the priority is to de-stigmatize the concept of socialism, because we can’t do anything until we do that. Elected officials calling for popular policies like Medicare for All and associating those policies with socialism is a big step in the right direction.

          There is no "we". This is bourgeois electoralism and as you're describing it it's someone who only checks in at the polls every few years. There can only be a "we" when we are organized together, when you and I have an apparatus that amplifies our voices and develops real leverage, not atomized personal choices at the :vote:ing booth that inevitably mean, particularly in the context of the SC, :vote:ing blue no matter who, i.e. loudly declaring that you hate having leverage and don't need to be considered at all by pols. Finally, the "we" is actually a top-down declaration by liberal socdems like Sanders misleading people about what socialism is, raising Denmark as the ideal. You can critically support that if you'd like, but there is no "we" having a priority in this situation, it's top-down messaging from liberals.

          I also disagree about this priority. My priority is to grow the ranks in socialist party membership and to push discipline and organization within them, including building dual power and engaging in direct action, along with strategic participation in electoralism to spread a very clear socialist (not socdem) message. Then there can actually be a "we" and we can begin to talk about wielding leverage and power and strategy.

          Lol this doesn’t make any sense. Did Obama appoint those conservative justices? If no one turned out to vote for Obama in 2008, would John McCain have appointed liberal or conservative justices? If Hillary had pulled it out in 2016, would she have appointed Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barrett? Democrats fuck up a lot of things, but they at least don’t appoint complete shitheads to the Supreme Court.

          It makes perfect sense and I explained why in my first post. Your intent would be "we can try to nudge the SC to be less horrible by voting in a Dem president". The reality is that this "worked" for two less-shit appointments, but you also elected a liberal who wouldn't actually fight for his third appointment, lost Congress via dismantling his electoral machine and promoting people like Rahm Emanuel, set up Clinton for a cleared-field 2016 run, and whose betrayal of normal working people created the conditions for a backlash and Trump, leading to the current 6-3 court. This highlights two uncontestable facts: (1) your intent in your :vote: is dramatically divorced from the realities of power over the SC and (2) there is very frequent blowback because of the monsters you end up helping rather than even doing a third (socialist) party vote.

          Perennial lesser-evilism also means you have zero leverage over how Obama decides to handle the SC, whether he promotes Clinton to a position in a lead-up to another presidential run, etc. etc. You have the exact opposite of leverage: your concerns as dismissable. You show up, if you show up at all, as a left-leaning person who always votes for the Dem candidate anyways no matter how much they fuck your preferred candidate.

          Finally, the connection between your vote and the SC is incredibly circuitous, as I mentioned in my first comment. There is not actually a meaningful direct connection between your atomized liberal vote for, say, Biden, and a Supreme Court nom.

          The only vague thing here is “I’m not against electoralism despite mocking it constantly.”

          Let me remind you of my very first sentence in my first comment: "Unless you’re ing as a block and are willing to withhold that as a bloc, you’re just playing a dumb little game with bourgeois democracy, especially with the presidential election.".

          I hope that this convinces you to actually read what people say before dismissing them.