My support obviously helped Biden and democrats win and 2020, but with Trump out of the white house, I see no reason to continue supporting democrats.
- Democrats have done nothing to address the growing homelessness problem. Many places, including liberal areas, seem to think scattering them into the woods is an acceptable solution. The solution is to house them. Simply giving them homes is surprisingly cost effective.
- Housing continues to become less affordable. Wall street mega landlords continues unabated. Coincidence?
- Democrats support the federal reserve's attempt to create a recession and unemployment to address inflation. Prices have gone up, profits have gone up, and wages haven't. Wealth inequality exploded during the pandemic and now the working class are being forced to take higher prices, higher unemployment, and lower real wages. Fuck off.
- Democrats have let unions die. Support for unions is up but unionization remains very low. Democrats are and have been interfering in strikes and collective bargaining for decades. Just another way democrats work to support high profits and low wages.
- The supreme court has overstepped many boundaries over the last decade (citizens united, overturning voting rights act, overturning Roe v Wade, limiting EPA's power to curb carbon emissions). Democrats complain about these things but have nothing to show but a record of broken promises. The voting rights act seems pretty essential to the survival of the party but instead you only vow to vote harder. Anyway, there's no difference between a 6-3 or 7-2 or 5-4 court at this point. There are 5 youngish conservative justices that we can expect to be on the court until at least 2030 or 2035. I legitimately doubt the US will be around that long at this point. Democrats won't pack the court or strip judicial review or ignore the court, so they're dead in the water anyway.
- EDIT: forgot about this. This is exactly the wrong position. He says we should fund the police because they have too many responsibilities, which is exactly the point of defunding them. Democrats are going along with the fully imaginary "crime wave" pro-police narrative. Absolutely terrible.
I, the leftist, am causing democrats to lose because they don't do anything about issues I am concerned about. I take full responsibility.
In the democrat mind, we're not a demographic that can deliver wins but we are still the only reason they lose. They're going to blame us for not voting for them and double down on radical centrism at the same time.
It's wild how my individual vote for Jill Stein in a deep red state had so much power that it caused Roe V Wade to be overturned. The decades long, highly engaged, billionaire funded political campaign was just what the right had to do to mimic a fraction of my power :think-mark::vote:
Roe V Wade was always going to fall with a conservative court.
Democrats had 40 years to codify abortion rights.
But if they only had 2 more years, they totally would have! This is all the fault of Susan Sarandon!
imagine what you can achieve if you write jill stein on every ballot. such disruption is bound to overflow back into communism
I’m thinking of that time Matt and Virgil went on some dipshit’s show and he asked Matt if he’d vote for Buttigieg and Matt just goes “I live in New York what difference does it make”
helping the democrats lose is helping the democrats do their job, because the job of the democrats is to lose :thinky-felix:
unironically the most compelling argument I've seen...vote lib to own the libs
Everyone on this site knows how bad the homeless situation is in San Francisco, Sacramento, and Los Angeles. Our ballot initiatives? Two on gambling and one each on vape, education , and abortion. Other than that you press the button for the same 3 shitheads and walkout. Nothing significant happens, ever. Keep in mind California has a democratic party super majority. They can do whatever the fuck they want and they do jack shit.
In LA there are more county/city measures. There is one for the city adding 5,000 more low income housing units, more funding for parks, tenant assistance programs (specifically for keepings rent cheaper and preventing people from being evicted and becoming unhoused). Not sure about SF but they likely have additional measures there
Nothing significant happens, ever
last election there were some much bigger ballot initiatives. Prop 22 made uber drivers contracters again, undoing a previous California law that made them employees. Unfortunately that passed
there's one initiative re: legalizing online gambling or something, right? Way to squeeze even more money out of poor people
there are two. Both have to do with sports betting at rez casinos and racetracks. Fan Duel et al. are trying to make sports betting legal outside of casinos. :citations-needed: did an episode about online sports betting that was really good (aren't they all) not sure which one though.
Don't worry we aren't getting away with anything. Just along for the ride
I'd still personally vote for locals if I was American, especially considering I got friends who're trans who live in deep red states, but I expect nothing and.. yeah.
Local politicians are just the democrats’ B-team. They are embarrassed that communists support them and do not give a shit about abortion or LGTBQ+ issues. What they care about is muh taxes, dumping more money on the police, and keeping property values up. They are republicans with college degrees. That’s it.
The Dem Stance is “we shouldn’t swerve to run over trans people, but you don’t need to hit the breaks or swerve to not run them over “
If you let someone who openly wants to swerve to run over trans people take over driving while you take a nap, you shouldn't be held responsible for what happens. Vote blue so we can share the driving with bipartisanship.
as a trans living in florida there was no one worth voting for, even on the local side of things
If someone is inclined to troll and bully libs on Twitter, tomorrow is going to be a good day to be alive.
"If you have a problem with how many homeless people there are, just vote."
"There's no measures pertaining to homelessness or public housing on the ballot, and both candidates want to criminalize being homeless even further."
"... ... ... ... JUST FUCKING VOTE"
So we still live in their heads?
Rent free? :mao-aggro-shining:
my ballot had worthwhile shit on it this time. a Bernie bro Dem, an off the rails "abolish the CIA" guy who sneakily won the Dem primary (libs seething), and a referendum on abobos plus a bunch of local shit.
pretty sure all the bad stuff is gonna win, but its novel to not have to hold my nose and vote for suckass establishment garbage. and I should have some laughs accusing the libs of being responsible for the left winger losing by focusing on their "purity politics" and "making perfect the enemy of the good" lol or just accusing them of being pro-death squad CIA bros and tutting at their lack of willingness to compromise.
oh fuck yeah, you got to vote for the “read settlers, abolish the cia” dude?
I don't really accept arguments about how Democrats are bad but at least they aren't accelerating us to fascism.
Mfers yes they are. That's how fascism works. It needs tepid liberalism in order to exist.
Okay you're not convinced by some axiomatic argument. Let's look at immigration. You have Republicans shooting people on the border via militias. But how did we get to that? Like what came before it? You had 8 years of Obama normalizing "sensible" immigration reform. Hey we have to lock up some people because there are rabid criminals coming over the border to threaten the suburbs. Sure the Republicans are being hyperbolic when they say every immigrant is a criminal but we Democrats believe that only some of the immigrants are criminals. Therefore we're going to ramp up border security to out-flank the Republicans on rhetoric.
What happens? Republicans don't care and go even harder. Democrats are left punishing immigrants. Then you have 4 years of Trump. As soon as a Democrat gets in, what happens? The fascist violence against immigrants is now okay because hand-wavy changing of terms. Remember forced hysterectomies under Trump? Did that really stop because Biden got in? Did he fire the entire CBP, DHS, ICE, etc and replace them with nice people?
Now take that example and extrapolate it to everything. Look at War. Look how Dems normalized war after Bush.
They are the ones with their foot on the pedal along with the fascists. They build the tools that fascists use.
I think it was the three Arrows guy on Youtube who made the point that in pretty much every fascist society, the actual function of the state is very rarely radically changed, but instead the dial is just turned higher up than in "good orderly liberal" society that preceded the fascist takeover. Since fascists don't really want to reinvent society, and just want to make it more cruel, the same procedures happen under both liberalism and fascism.
For people who so unquestionably love Democracy™, liberals absolutely fucking lose it when you tell them "I'm not going to spend my time voting for a candidate who actively opposes my interests". I'm not opposed to the idea of voting Democrat but I've literally never participated in an election where that is somehow going to change anything for the better
I might be a bad leftist but I vote for every election while also engaging in direct action at every opportunity. Republicans are turning into reconstruction-era Democrats and that is not something you want to have.
Voting isn't bad, it's just literally the least you can possibly do
Good on you for the rest :rat-salute-2:
I'm not vote-shaming or abstain-shaming. It's a personal decision and I think we all agree here that it's not enough. Republicans are worse but democrats don't own our votes and haven't earned them. The country is in real trouble and it's literally because they haven't done the least we leftists expected from them for decades.
consistently voting for politicians who don't do things you want also makes you an electoral segment it isn't worth attempting to win over. As a long term electoral strategy it's up there with never voting for anyone.
also abortion was inevitably going to be abolished for the simple reason that the Republicans only needed to get someone on the supreme court while the Democrats needed to hold it forever and only one of those plans was realistically possible
I live in a different country so it's a slightly different situation. Social Democrats are big in legislature but local elections are filled with libs. The URNG (communist party) does decently well here, but never wins. I've voted for them every time I go and got shamed for it.
Yes, it's not complicated.
- Preserve your credibility by disavowing centrist neoliberal politicians. Don't lie for them, don't present the socialist project as a wing of the democratic party.
- Vote for the crook, not the fascist. Just slow down the march of republican-driven social murder and eventual pogroms against minorities
It's not complicated.
Right, I care less about if you vote and more about if you organize. A wobbly who votes straight ticket dems is better in my book than an armchair socialist who abstains.
I've voted at every election, I've just never voted for a person or party that won.
I come from a demographic that traditionally leans republican so voting takes less time out of my day than ordering a cup of coffee.
Two things white people will never have to do thanks to existing power structures: stand in line for coffee and stand in line to vote.
The brilliance of the plan is that it makes white people think that voting really is this easy for everyone. I can see how a self-absorbed boomer could hear people talk about the long waits and think "what a bunch of whiners, it only took me about 15 minutes."
It's always funny when I tell libs "no, I am not voting" and see the indignation on their face.
It becomes less fun when I explain to them that I am actually not a citizen and then they be like "oh don't worry honey, when I cast my ballot I will be doing that for people like you!"
