Also Democrats: Ve shall round up und eradicate ze undesirables from society!!! Ve shall put zem into ze camps and ve shall enslave them to benefit ze superior class!!!
https://fxtwitter.com/lastreetcare/status/1806869510483476829
Also Democrats: Ve shall round up und eradicate ze undesirables from society!!! Ve shall put zem into ze camps and ve shall enslave them to benefit ze superior class!!!
https://fxtwitter.com/lastreetcare/status/1806869510483476829
It's the one saving grace of an electoral system. Politicians have to chase votes. If they don't, they don't get elected. Changing voters minds is the hard part, politicians follow along.
this is why the democrats non-stop browbeat and punch left instead of delivering on policy their constituents want
Where and when are enough people coming together to say they want something different? Bear in mind it'll have to be enough people to alter the balance of the next election, making themselves heard regularly.
The whole punching left thing is because they perceive that lots of voters don't want to go further left. If we want that to stop we need them to see that it's actually harming their chances of being elected. As I said, that's going to take a lot of people all saying it and making sure their representatives or hopefuls hear it, loud and clear.
So you agree, we need to threaten to withhold our vote for Biden, and follow through on the threat if he doesn't change course?
As I said before, that sort of change is going to take longer than the few months we have left before the election. Right now the choice is Biden or Trump for the next term. It sucks, but that is what it is. Don't forget the down-ticket elections too.
It'll do more good for you to stick your ballot up your ass. From a utilitarian perspective it will result in a higher net-gain of happiness.
Oww. Just think of the paper cuts! If that's your thing I'm certainly not going to kink shame, but it's not for me. ;)
Seriously though, yes I know that in a lot of places you're not going to achieve anything substantive by voting. What you do achieve though is keeping the numbers up. If the Dems get no votes in Republican leaning areas it doesn't tell them they're not left enough, it tells them they're not right enough as that's where the votes are. Does it make a big difference? Probably not, but it does make some difference, and that might be enough to start to swing things in future elections.
Oh no, the happiness wouldn't be yours, it would be mine, because you would be in pain.
You literally do not get it. It's literally confirmation bias for the Dems however you vote. If you give them votes they will think 'hey moving right is clearly working!' if you don't vote for them they think 'well dang we need to move more right!'. They've been doing this song and dance since the 60's, you cannot affect them by voting or participating in their electoral sham.
That's a fair point, which is why I keep saying that they actually need to hear people's voices. Enough people to affect the election need to be making a clear statement that they need to see things change in a particular way for parties to get their vote to make anything change. That needs to happen early enough to give the parties time to change their tune without scaring off the rest of their voters though, and I do not think there is time before November for the either party to reinvent themselves.
I can understand, and share, the anger at the Dems for how Biden's governed, though they currently control neither the legislative branch nor the judiciary. The question isn't whether they're good, it's whether the only other possible option is worse, and that sucks, but probably not as much as living through that other option.
This thinking has locked us in a rightward spiral for the last half century.
I trust you know the definition of insanity.
To be clear, I agree with the sentiment of your post, but that doesn't change what is in front of us. Yes, it's lamentable, yes it shouldn't need to be like this, and yes, it didn't need to be like this, but it is. As I've asked several of your fellow posters, given the reality in front of us, what would you personally suggest people do, and what do you anticipate the results being, both electorally and socially?
Democrats need to lose this election. There has to be an electoral consequence for openly supporting an active genocide. No, this doesn't mean supporting Trump -- his genocidal rhetoric should get the lowest amount of support possible.
I'm probably going to vote for some non-genocidal presidential candidate with no chance at winning, then vote for Democratic congresspeople. If enough people do this the message will be "the votes are here, but not if you're going to do all the things you say we should be terrified of Trump doing anyway." Democrats holding at least one house of Congress will also (minimally) impede Republicans and prevent idiot lib pundits from writing "maybe everybody just wants fascism?" articles.
Hopefully this will open space for a significantly more left candidate in 2028, the way Hillary eating shit in 2016 opened space for Bernie to be the plurality favorite in 2020. Between that and libs finally taking the bad stuff Biden is doing seriously once Trump is in office, maybe we'll shift a few things in a slightly better direction.
And that's just the electoral piece. Beyond that, working on genuine harm reduction projects, trying to unionize your workplace, joining political organizations left of the Democratic Party, and trying to persuade people that Democrats are a dead end are all good things to do.
This isn't a complete plan for getting to bare minimum improvements on issues like climate change, healthcare, imperialism, etc. (and note how that standard is never applied to Democrats), but my thinking is it can open up avenues to those improvements that aren't currently available.
That's possibly a reasonable approach, although I think the Dems would need a solid majority in both houses for a trump presidency to be even moderately safe. I do like it as a way to open up space in future, but as I said, it relies on the Dems controlling both houses or the republicans will end up just getting around them in some dubious manner. I haven't been able to find a prediction or polls for the congress though, so I don't really know how that's looking like it'll stack up.
What do you mean the next few months? Hasn't Biden been president for almost four years?
Yes, but I haven't seen much in the way of wide spread and coordinated campaigns to put issues that matter in front of him and other Dems until fairly recently. That's the issue, without a group of voters, large enough to change the outcome of elections, making their voices heard early enough for the parties to change their platforms without scaring off the rest of their voters little will change.
The uncommitted campaign was in April.
People have been protesting, organising, and in some cases taking legal action for ten months now since October 7th.
There's been an international protest, legal, and lobbying effort for Palestinian rights since the late 1940s.
But who swear infinite loyalty that they never actually will refuse to vote for said party, no matter what.
How do you force a party to do something it's diametrically opposed to while insisting you and everyone will always support them and obliterating even the mildest possible leverage you have?
Yes, which is 'fairly recently'. The good news is it did have some effect, which rather illustrates what I'm saying. Enough voters speaking in one voice, in a way that doesn't cause the republicans to have more power, works.
They have, yes, and I take my hat off to them for spending that energy doing it, but there aren't enough of them. Until there are enough that their numbers make an electoral difference, all the protesting achieves is 'awareness' amongst the electorate. Given enough time and dedication that might be enough to swell the numbers to the point they have an effect, but until that point politicians are going to carry on. As I mentioned to someone else, the opinion polls I've found regarding American's view of the conflict suggest about the same number of people see it as genocide as those who don't, which is utterly horrifying, but explains why politicians are sticking to their path. When those numbers change, so will the political response.
You don't. You, as a large enough group, make that support contingent on conditions being met. The issue is that if your group is too small, it has no effect, but if it's bigger than that, is ignored, and withholds its votes, it hands victory to the opposing party, which is likely to be detrimental to that group, so the group needs to be large enough that it can't be ignored. Gathering that size of group, coordinating them and getting the message across is a large undertaking, but without it you've got little chance of having an effect.
you need to practice silence, do not speak from ignorance. "Where and when are enough people coming together to say they want" through polls and protests it's very clear what people want, and elementary to demonstrate a lack of democrats' fulfillment. democrat voters want abortion legalized federally, they wanted it fucking decades ago, what have the democrats done besides let roe die during their control?
You're rather illustrating my point. Abortion should absolutely be legal, and the majority do seem to want it (though I fear that might be eroded as the hard-right brain rot spreads), but not enough people were making a fuss about it loudly enough until it was too late. By that I mean there needed to be massive protests about it from the moment people started caring about it to the moment the relevant legislation was passed. Continuous vigilance is also needed to avoid that being later eroded. Unfortunately none of that happened in sufficient numbers.
The difficulty is, of course, that most people don't care about this sort of thing until it affects them directly, and those who do care get exhausted trying to make it happen without the numbers needed.
Given the current reality though, what would you, personally suggest people should do, and what do you anticipate the result would be?
Well we've tried expressing our disapproval of the genocide on Palestine but the entire country basically called the cops on us. Apparently we have yet to reach a critical mass of people who are against mass murder and ethnic cleaning because the Democrats have made it clear they want a strong Israel, much like how they want there to be a strong Republican party.
This is the rather bleak and depressing crux of the matter. Nothing substantial will change until that, or at the very least, that appearance of that indifference changes.
And we should do this by strengthing the very power structures that destroy the movement, control the narrative against it, and continue to vote for those doing both those and the genocide at the same time? Does that sound like a winning strategy to you?
Ideally not strengthening the power structures (that would be what giving the republicans power would do), but not deliberately giving power to the more tyrannical and despotic presidential candidate and his party would seem like a sane approach. Given the reality we face, that either Biden or trump will be the next president and that each legislative houses will be controlled either by the Dems or republicans, what would you personally suggest people do, and what do you think the short and long term outcomes of that approach would be?
Nope. Both parties are the same power structure. Try again.
Organise in opposition, using any and all methods to produce results including but not limited to; protest, strike action, lawfare, self-governance, direct action, sabotage, and armed resistance.
The outcomes will be what they have always been, some losses and some victories, but history has proven these tactics and struggles to have produced great leaps forward and historic gains that have been very difficult to roll back. Including almost all of successes for the global working class, minority populations, and social progress for hundreds of years.
This is historical fact.
Now please provide some examples of historic postive change brought about purely by electoralism. And you can have extra points if you can name some brought about purely by electoralism that did not include either withholding or threatening to withold votes, since that's the hill you've decided to die on.
Sure, but one side is currently on a zealous charge trying to extend it far harder than the other.
Would be a fine idea if the party who would have power in the interim were not basically religious zealots hell bent on destroying everything that previous movements have built up. By the time the Dems had reorganised and rebuilt there would be little left for them to govern.
These are all good methods for getting noticed, yes. The question is, do you want to get your way because you made more noise than the other side, or because enough people believe in the same thing as you? The former is precarious, as it can be rolled back in the same way. the latter is more enduring. Maybe you can do the first and then back it up with the second, I'm not sure. Protests of various sorts can be useful to gain recognition and get people to think about your cause, but only up to the point you inconvenience them too much. After that you start to see opinions hardening against the cause.
I think I've been unclear somewhere, as withholding votes is what I've been saying everywhere, but do it in a coordinated and widespread way, not ad-hoc as people seem to be suggesting here. A small number of votes withheld without a clear explanation to the candidates as to why, and enough time for them to incorporate that into their strategy, says nothing to them and risks handing power to a worse and less controllable option. Get enough people together that their votes are actually consequential and have everyone contact the candidates explaining what they need to do to win their votes, then you'll have a reliable effect.
First of all, almost every single poll in history, across most of the planet, has had a majority favouring at least some policy that the bourgeois parties can not and will not accept.
Honest question... how do you possibly rationalise this circular logic to yourself that you absolutely have to vote for a particular party no matter what, whilst also saying that political parties have to chase votes and you can make them change their policies by 'showing them' you want something different (but not withdrawing you vote)? You do realise how totally contradictory and incompatible those two things are right?
The president is a bit of a special case, in that there's one of them, and of the two candidates one has said he wants to be a dictator, whilst also enthusiastically supporting all the worst positions the Dems have taken and wanting to make them more extreme. So, judged between those two one is clearly a less bad option. I'm certainly not saying either is a good option, but that's the current situation, and anything that increases the risk of trump getting in, especially with a republican majority in one or both houses, is surely a bad idea.
Down-ticket, individuals withholding their votes will have minimal effect teaching them anything. It has to be a large enough groundswell that it can't be ignored as it'll effect the outcome. Changes start with the electorate, not with politicians. Get enough people of one mind and then things will change. That is neither easy nor quick to do though, and I don't see it happening before November.
Nope. You've retreated into you endless loop of electoral hypothetical again, where only two things are ever possible and you have to do one of them anyway. Without addressing the contradication at the core of it, which is why I asked you how you rationalised it.
No it's not. There's more than two presidential candidates. And all elected positions are filled only by one eventual winner from the crop of candidates, just like literally every election. For someone preaching that the only possibility is electoralism in the narrowest term, you don't seem very knowledgable on, you know, actual elections, including the specific ones you're referencing.
And you can (and in some cases do) argue that anything short of voting for, capmapigning for, donating to, and never ever showing any disatisfaction with the Democrats qualifies as this. Why stop at withholding your vote? Or campaigning for change 'at the wrong time'? Have you been door knocking and phone banking for Biden? If not, why not? If you have, why aren't you doing it now, and in every spare moment, or quitting your job to do it full time? Have you donated every cent you own to the Democratic party? What about selling any property or other assets you have? Aren't you part of the problem?
(And that's just within your myopic electoral view, never mind non-electoral strategies from the common to the extreme)
Maybe I should have been clearer. There are only two candidates with any realistic prospect of winning the election, and only one position to fill. There are many representatives and senators, so their individual contribution to the whole is less. The president is the head of the executive and isn't diluted in the same way.
You're reading things I haven't said, so I can't really answer that.
Imagine still believing this
Lol no they don't. Rhetoric chases people's votes, the material outcomes are predetermined by the systems of capital ownership, because the solicitation of donations is still the largest determinate of election outcome (outside of incumbency). Regardless if you win or lose, you have to enact policies that benefit your donors, or potential future donors, and given that we are living in the largest historical wealth gap, the material interests of politicians is to rhetorically chase the populace, but actually enact policies that only benefit the wealthy.
As you have so aptly demonstrated, the absolutely piss-poor political education that people in the U.S. receive insures that we will continue to be taken on the ride again and again.
Also, we don't need to use any thought to reply to you, when you demonstrate so little insight.
Those 'donations' are then used to influence voters to vote for the candidate. Votes are the single largest determinate of the outcome of an election because that's what's counted. Voters opinions are swayed in a lot of different ways, but I doubt, for instance, a far-right thug, no matter how well funded, could earn your vote. If enough voters to affect the outcome of the election have firm enough convictions that a certain thing is wrong and will not vote for a candidate that supports it, then the candidates in that election will not support it. The difficult part is getting enough people to actually make their position known in a way that can't be overlooked.
Again, rhetoric is cheap. But access to spread rhetoric from the media requires money, Money requires you to do things that people with money like, which is at odds with your rhetoric. Rinse and fucking repeat. This isn't hard.
Correct, I will never vote for a far right 'thug' which is why I won't vote for Joe Biden.
You are right, money is required to spread rhetoric in the media, but the dominance of traditional large scale media seems to be waning somewhat as people consume more and more online the avenues to do so multiply, and the cost drops. Considering some of the weird advertising I see around the 'net the cost can't be all that high now, which hopefully opens up space in people's focus of attention to receive more diverse messages. This is what I mean by saying voters opinions are swayed in a lot of different ways. Voters, in general, may not entirely agree with you, but present a compelling enough case as to why one side is worth voting for, or the other side isn't, you do see a swing in voting. Populists exploit this very effectively because it's what they're good at. The rest of the political spectrum needs to wake up to it and make their case in ways that actually resonate with voters.
Motherfucker, it is hard enough to work and go to school. I don't have to build a fucking governing vision for people, as if Republicans or Democrats actually do that. All I ever ask for these days is some basic fucking stuff, like idk, stop giving weapons to aparthied governments to kill brown people? And you think you can combat the totalitarian privatized neoliberal system of government through votes?
The net cost of running electoral campaigns at a national or even state level is absolutely staggering, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, even for online advertising space. For me 25000 dollars would be a game changer, hell even a thousand dollars would improve my life significantly, millions is out of the question. And this is besides the point that organic online viral campaigns do not have a real statistical affect on American electoral politics, because all the places that used to cater towards that have been astroturfed all to hell. Reddit is basically bot-farmed for foreign affairs. The biggest online organic movement is literally Palestine, and the government reaction has been to BAN TIKTOK. You are acting like it's a level playing field. It is not. We are at a large, intentional, systemic disadvantage, and we don't even have the money to get the ball rolling in the right direction. Mostly we just piss people off who can only hear rhetoric, which, while funny, doesn't actually do anything.
There are no 'populists' you utterly contemptible moron. There are liars for capital and that is it. Stop lecturing me on things you don't even have a basic grasp on.
OK, ignoring the ire in you post:
As we saw with the uncommitted protests, change can happen with enough pressure. It wasn't much, but it was a noticeable change in tone. Now imagine that amount of targeted pressure had been, or is, kept up for an extended period of time. Changes would absolutely happen.
The thing is, they do present that vision, even if all that amounts to is "more of the same, with some differences that may or may not matter to you". Without a compelling alternative vision voters aren't going to turn away from that, because it's the only message they're getting. I didn't mean you personally when I talked about presenting such a case, but a cohesive enough group has to form to do so in order to give people that alternative. I'm not talking about running an electoral campaign, that is clearly out of reach, but finding ways of getting that vision out in other ways. As you say,places like reddit are bot-farmed, or they're astroturfed, but still huge numbers of people go there and are exposed to the messaging published on those platforms. Again, none of this is about you doing it personally, but about getting people together to do it collectively.
The more people who get to hear the message and align with it, the easier it is to collect that money, making it easier to get the message out further. As I said, it's not about an election campaign, it's about getting enough people to decide they will demand a specific change.
Correct. It's probably good stress relief, but it's not achieving much in the way of getting more people to come together.
I'm not going to argue with you there, I was just using the more common word for it.
they literally don't when all they have to say is "we are better than the other guys" and you morons lap it up and go "next election we will really pressure them for sure"
If there aren't enough people making a noise about what's happening, why would they change? Getting that critical mass is the hard part. Ultimately this system claims to be democratic, so outcomes only changes under sufficient electoral presure.
spoiler: it's not democratic and never has been
I did say 'claims'. The point is that unless a significant proportion of the electorate are demanding a specific change it's less likely to be made. If enough people demand it in exchange for votes a politician can't ignore the issue without losing their next election and being replaced.
So your arguement is that to change an undemocratic system you must only work within the boundries of the facade of that system (electorialism), whilst also not doing that (you must still vote for the party).
I'm not saying you must vote for the party, we were originially just talking about the presidential election. However, individuals choosing not to vote for the party does tend to give the benefit to the opponent, which may not be a good choice in the current political climate. To be effective it has to be a large enough movement, making it's requirements known clearly, for there to be a measurable effect. Without that there is no impetus for the system to change. Get enough people demanding better than FPTP voting and you'll find a candidate that supports it. Find enough candidates across the nation who support it and it can be made to happen. Fix that and other changes become easier to achieve.
Yes, you are. And the elected president is the head of the party. Again, for someone so hung up on it, you don't actually seem to know anything about how elections or electoral politics work.
Here you are saying it again, as you have dozens of times throughout this thread, as you well know.
Plenty of movements throughout history have done this. Polling data shows this. It has no effect without the threat of combined removal of votes and (at least the implicit threat of) violent opposition.
You assert this repeatedly but never offer what those requirements are or how to achieve them. Only methods that directly limit the ability to do that. So please quantify your assertion and your strategy.
But I can't vote for those candidates because I have to vote for the supposedly 'lesser evil' of the two parties that oppose it, right? That's your original premise here.
Also, FPTP has been used in the UK since the middle ages despite the fact that it's always faced opposition from voters. So what's your timeline for this reform via narrow electoralism?
The elected president is typically the head of one of the parties, yes, although I haven't seen anything saying they must be (please let me know if there is a rule about that). However, they are separate to the party, being the executive rather than legislative branch. The way I see it, this year's election is uniquely evil, in that on the one hand you have Biden and on the other hand you have trump, who has stated his desire to be a dictator, and who wants to take all the worst positions the current administration have taken and make them even more extreme, whilst also stripping even more rights. Neither option is good, one is worse. Given that one of the two will be the next president of the United States of America, I would advocate for the less extreme one.
Yes, that's what I am saying. Apologies if I wasn't clear this time. Without that, no matter how big a movement is it'll be ineffective. However unless it is large enough the removal of votes will either achieve nothing or be counter productive by letting a worse option in.
As I mentioned to someone else, look at the margin between the first and second place parties, and you probably need a movement of that order of magnitude to be able to swing the election. Then you need all of those people making contact with their representative or potential representative and laying out exactly what is needed to get their vote. It's not complicated, just tough to get enough people to agree with you.
As I said, initially we were talking about the presidential election, where I would say that ensuring trump doesn't get in is vital. Swinging one or both houses to the Dems would also derisk trump being president. If you support an issue, say voting systems, you need enough people with you to ensure you are heard. Deciding to withhold your vote at a late stage, without explaining to the candidates exactly why will achieve nothing.
No they fucking don't? You already admited that they will let the republicans do what ever they want and not fight back. Why the hell would they chase votes if you already "have" to vote for them "because there no other choice." What are you going to do? Vote for the republicans? You have no leverage and they own you.
The time to be making them start chasing is at the beginning of their term, not at the end, and there need to be enough people doing it to make a difference to the outcome for it to matter. A few people trying to change the direction of the main political parties is like someone in a kayak trying to redirect an oil tanker. First you need to change the captain's mind, or in this case the electorate's mind. Then you have the numbers to make it infeasible for politicians to ignore you.