The issue on here, on Lemmy, where we're speaking, is that many leftists don't care to make a strong distinction between 'flawed liberal moderates' and literal fascists. A constant refrain on here is the idea that things have been getting worse since, apparently, the inception of liberalism itself, and steadily spiraling towards fascism, so what does it matter if fascism happens today or twenty years from now? Electing non-fascists just puts off the inevitable. And, for reasons both personal and philosophical, I find that an immensely repugnant way of thinking, not to mention strategically and historically unsound. "Trump is worse than Harris - so what?" Fucking people suffer because of it, millions, including many whose lives will be ruined or ended, and for no gain to marginalized folk anywhere.
I came back from a family reunion discussing the very real threat of ICE against my relatives. I spent the past week struggling with my health insurance over recent policy changes (a dive I'll have to take again soon, since nothing was resolved, for better or worse - gotta love the run-around). I've had half-a-decade of mental health progress unraveled by six months of this administration, and all while I watch foreign affairs get worse and worse under the influence of the wannabe fascists who were elected. And then I come on here to blow off steam, and I find many people who claim to be leftists and who so 'boldly' stood against the anti-fascist coalition candidate in the name of 'solidarity' proceeding to express no solidarity with anyone who's suffering or going to suffer under this regime, either under the banner of "Things will get so bad that they'll HAVE to get better" (accelerationism) or "They're Americans mostly, so they deserve it anyway" (some weird form of campism).
I'm further left than 95% of Americans. I'm further left than 95% of Democrats. But because I have the audacity of regarding harm reduction as mandatory and not optional - a position which I take on abstract policy, but which is also strengthened by my own uncertain future under this fucking regime - I'm a turbolib, a shitlib, a moderate, a conservative, a fascist, a genocide supporter, and a Zionist.
Lemmy is the fringe, and while I definitely point to issues like Leftists choosing to abstain and let the greater evil win, I do so not because that's the biggest problem in society in general (in the broader situation, leftists could've saved us in 2024 - but so could a dozen other fucking groups that screwed the pooch in 2024, the DNC et co highest on that list second only to the actual, literal fascists), but because it's a problem that, on here, still meets with a resistance to acknowledge that it was a bad fucking move that millions of marginalized people are going to pay the price for - only a few of whom are those who fucking sat out and let fascism win in this country.
I find celebrations of that repugnant, and, for that matter, exhausting.
Aren't current affairs and the potential of being told to fuck off and die on my kitchen floor of a chronic disease exhausting enough without having to add people on my nominal left cheering the whole fucked situation on, because they bizarrely imagine the oppression of marginalized individuals as some kind of blow against the oppressors?
Fuck me. Guess this is really just a rant.
My point here is not to absolve liberal moderates of doing a dogshit job at fending off fascism. My point here is that between the two, it should be a no-brainer to anyone with a brain.
Liberals are bad. That's in the title. If we're checking out and leaving the task of fighting fascism to liberals, we're screwed. At the same time, refusing to work with liberals, especially in a context like the US where the electorate remains overwhelmingly right-wing, even in the Dem electorate, is nothing but a path straight into the gullet of fascism.
This is WW2. I don't know which side you want to regard as the Western Allies and which as the Soviet Union, but either way, in this analogy, we need each other to overcome the fucking Nazis.
I have to disagree with this - Mamdani's win is spectacular and encouraging, but attempting to extrapolate the primary of a city where liberalism has a pretty firm hold wherein the establishment Dem was a sexual predator to a national template is not the easy connection many try to make it seem.
I mean to emphasize here that I don't disagree that we should run left, nor that the 'triangulation' of Dem leadership saps enthusiasm rather than generates it. Only that Mamdani's win - like Bernie's generation of enthusiasm - does not necessarily extrapolate to progressive victories nationwide.
Look at previous national or even state Dem primaries, even in liberal strongholds like Maryland. "People want an actual program" is not high on the fucking agenda. People want someone who seems to stand for something, regardless of whether they know jack about shit. And even then, appearing too 'socialist' can still scare many voters off.
I've been a part of enough failed progressive campaigns to know that simple standing for left-wing ideals with a good and clearly expressed plan is very often not enough.
The problem with this is that there were extensive material promises by Harris in 2024 - and like Hillary in 2016, they didn't matter a single goddamn whit. For the record, I made the questionable decision (if in a safe state) to protest vote against Clinton in 2016 - something I moderately regret, but which reflects that, even then, before I really radicalized, I regarded Clinton as a do-nothing neolib. Yet she quite distinctly had an extensive program with very real and serious material promises to the electorate. I followed Hillary and her platform closely, and her reputation as a policy wonk was not undeserved - reading through her 2016 platform, it would be hard to argue that Obama, who was much more popular, had more extensive material promises to the electorate in '08 or '12. But those promises didn't matter, for two reasons.
One, because most of the electorate doesn't actually give a shit about plans. They don't want material promises. They want vibes - but they want good vibes. The Republicans asspat their electorate with identity politics - the Dems, as a demographically broader coalition, have less leeway with that. You are right that the electorate doesn't want to be guilted (though I would argue that for people who are politically involved enough to be discussing the relative merits of socialism and abstention online, questions of moral culpability are not amiss) - but they don't want policy discussion. They want to feel like heroes or martyrs. And they want candidates to give them that.
Second, because Hillary didn't 'appear' to stand for anything. This is a broader problem with the Dem mainstream - they think that because there is a position between two extremes where most people fall, the 'smart' thing to do is to 'triangulate' to that position. But people overwhelmingly don't vote based on actual policy positions, they vote on fucking vibes. If you 'vibe' like you're going to 'fix' things, it doesn't matter that you couldn't spell potato with unlimited time and a dictionary. What matters is that they're 'getting' that vibe from your pretty words.
Both of those problems were repeated, without imagination or, apparently, the capacity for pattern recognition, by the Harris campaign in 2024. But it wasn't a lack of promises made - it was the lack of passion they were delivered with. The electorate didn't want anodyne policy details regardless of how moderate or radical they were, they wanted a show. And Harris failed to deliver an entertaining show, unlike Obama - or unlike Trump.
You’re ducking the core point.
Fascism doesn’t just happen, it incubates inside a political ecosystem curated by “moderate, liberal pragmatists.” You keep pivoting to wartime-coalition metaphors, but you never touch the causal chain: these people manufacture the terrain fascism walks in on.
And let’s drop the misnomer. These aren’t “moderate liberals.” They’re pro-corporate Democrats with jobs inside the party: keep the donor class happy, keep the Overton window narrow, and dress it up as realism. Same template as the AIPAC slate. Functionally tasked with keeping the party pro-Israel. This isn’t liberalism; these corporatists have no political identity. They're job is to manage the party to support a very small number of very big dollar donors. It’s brand management and policy capture by the capitalist class.
Coalition with that bloc doesn’t beat fascism; it reproduces the conditions fascism feeds on, austerity, managed decline, means-tested crumbs, and endless “later.” Every cycle you call that “pragmatic,” and every cycle it demobilizes the people we actually need to win. (Side note on “pragmatism”: what exactly is pragmatic about choosing to lose to fascists in order to protect donors’ priorities? That's what 2024 was. That’s not pragmatism; that’s capitulation.)
Your approach has a clear, repeatable outcome: we lose the midterms and bleed the future. There is no path forward where “pro-corporate, pro-Israel Democrats” lead a winning coalition because their core function is to veto the material program that would bring disaffected voters back. If they stay in the cockpit, the plane keeps nosediving. If we don’t push them out, we don’t just lose leverage; we lose the election. Period.
How so?
That would raise the question of how fascism has also arisen in countries without a strong background of 'moderate liberal pragmatists'.
Liberals only 'manufacture the terrain fascism walks in on' insofar as liberalism is incapable of sating the demands of a population; fascism feeds off of dissatisfaction, which is possible with any ruling ideology. When the day comes that democratic socialists are well-established in this country (or any other country), we will still need constant vigilance in fighting off fascists. We'll just be less miserable as we do so.
... what do you think a liberal is, exactly?
Okay? There isn't another fucking coalition possible in the electorate in this country right now. If my choices are "Environment where fascism is insufficiently suppressed" and "Environment which is literally run by fascists, of fascists, for fascists", the choice is pretty fucking clear.
We put in the groundwork to change the electorate; in the meantime, each election we play the cards we have, not the cards we want.
See, the issue with that thinking is that the people you think we need in order to win don't seem to show up for progressive candidates when we, left-leaning voters, actually need them.
Pretending that it was a deliberate choice to lose 2024 is not in the realm of reality.
My approach to... force moderates out in primaries, but not let the literal fucking Nazis win in the general even if my attempts during the primary fail?
Okay, well, handing over all the keys of power to fascists isn't a better alternative. In fact, as the past six months alone have shown, it is a considerably worse one, which is the point of the OP, wherein, in the very fucking title, I emphasize that liberals are bad.
You stood here and defended Biden as the nominee until it was functionally too late to have anything resembling a real primary, then turned around and scolded voters when that malpractice blew up. You waved off legit critiques, like Harris refusing to platform a Gazan DNC rep, because your saw your role in these discussions as shielding Democrats from criqique: shield the worst, most self-defeating choices and pin the fallout on the electorate. Voters have shown up, Obama, Biden 2020, then watched Democrats squander the mandate with donor-safe half-measures and moral hedging. That’s not a voter problem. That’s a leadership problem.
Your whole approach is backwards. You treat the electorate like a fixed moral failing and party strategy like a sacred cow. “Pragmatism” becomes defending a losing plan until the buzzer (Again, what exactly is pragmatic about choosing to lose? Politicians have agency. And YES, how Harris campaigned in 2024 was a choice, and YES it was obviously going to lose. I, among others, told you that in real time in 2024). You keep laundering elite decisions, late candidate switch, Gaza triangulation, vibes-over-accountability, then blame the base when it backfires. That’s how we get the exact disaster you’re setting up now. If you won’t change course, you own the loss because it’s your defense of obviously failing strategy that keeps handing fascists the opening and then blames the public for walking through it.
... I'm sorry for 'scolding voters' on Lemmy for saying that fascism was an acceptable alternative to an old cretinous liberal, or his empty suit VP?
Some of us have to fucking live in this country when the election is over, you know. Or die in it, as the case increasingly seems like it might be.
... I beg your pardon? I don't remember wading into that discussion at all, precisely because I felt it was a bad move that the mood on Lemmy had already covered thoroughly. I might be wrong, since I comment a fucking lot, but I don't think I am in this case.
I saw my role in those discussions on an online site which was banging the 'both sides!' drum pretty hard to emphasize that fascism was not an acceptable alternative to the status quo, even though the status quo was bad.
This... this the same Biden whose control of the Senate was predicated on a literal 50/50 split?
... what.
"It was obviously going to lose" is a curious assertion considering that the 2024 election was decided, like most American presidential elections, on a razor-thin margin.
I have repeatedly said that the DNC is at the top of the list for whose mistakes caused this whole debacle. My blame on the electorate consists of the simple fact that allowing fascism to win was not a reasonable alternative to Dem ineptitude, but I guess I'm just not privileged enough to see that letting fascism win was actually an acceptable form of 4D chess.
The only strategy in this that you've pointed out that I actually consistently adhere to is the conviction that fascism is not an alternative to liberals when the choice is reduced to the two of them, which while a strategy of desperation, is not exactly one that I feel has a fundamental fucking flaw in it. Or, I suppose, the strategy that primary turnout is the best way to move the Dem Party left - not really sure why that would be objectionable, though.
And we’re at the crux of it.
The choice voters are faced with is not a binary.
This isn’t reality and you can’t make it reality by pretending that it is. Even if you keep pretending it is, that doesn’t matter, because voters obviously don’t think that. Case in point: when faced with a pro-genocide Kamala Harris and a pro-genocide Donald Trump, enough Democratic voters said “enough is enough” and chose neither. It doesn’t matter that you refuse to recognize the flaw in your strategy because we’re all living the consequences of it. Pretending voters had no other choice is precisely why Democrats lost.
And this is the point. What you’re selling as “pragmatism” is just handing more firepower to fascists. Develop some introspection and recognize that the rhetoric you’re pushing, “vote blue no matter who, criticize later”, is part of why fascists have been able to take over. Stop shielding bad Democratic strategy and start acknowledging criticism. Candidates at all levels need to be forced to meet voters where they are. Hiding them from accountability doesn’t help Democrats win; it sets them up to fail, and blaming the electorate papers over the real issue.
If you didn’t weigh in on the Gaza-rep decision, fine, then at least concede it was a self-inflicted wound that demobilized exactly the people you keep writing off as unreliable. That’s not a voter flaw; that’s an avoidable choice. Same with the late-cycle nominee mess: defending the status quo until a switch was nearly impossible, then demanding loyalty, is not “realism.” And no, “razor-thin margin” isn’t an excuse, it’s proof that strategy decides outcomes.
You keep saying there’s “no other coalition.” There isn’t if you grant the pro-corporate, pro-Israel bloc a permanent veto over the material program that would actually mobilize people. That isn’t pragmatism; it’s surrender dressed up as pragmatism. We've got two fucking years. Voters have already shown they’ll turn out for something they actually want; they won’t turn out for scolding plus donor-safe half-measures. That’s not an iron law of “the voters.” That’s the consequence of the coalition you keep defending.
Stop blaming voters. Fix the strategy. If you keep promoting this backwards approach, you own the disaster it produces, yet again.
It literally fucking was.
Oh, so we ended up with 'neither', then?
No?
We ended up with Donald fucking Trump?
Wow, it's almost like the choice was binary.
We literally didn't have any other choice, unless you had a near-majority support candidate to pull out of your hat at the last moment that you kept secret for some reason.
Fascists have been able to take over because...
... people at risk saying harm reduction is not optional... what? Annoys otherwise holsum leftists into abstaining and letting literal Nazis win?
Yes, it absolutely was. That they're an unreliable demographic does not mean that they're useless; it only means that building an electoral strategy on their backs is unwise. They should not have been unnecessarily agitated - speaking purely strategically, and aside from the fact that the Israeli genocide is morally repugnant and should have been repudiated by anyone paying attention (ie most-to-all national politicians) with a sliver of conscience (ie very few national politicians).
And I have repeatedly criticized Biden for just that.
"You can tell that it was bad strategy which caused this defeat, because it was extremely close, like numerous prior elections that did not involve bad strategy"
Uh.
What material program would 'actually mobilize people'?
The one Bernie championed? The one which failed to mobilize people?
Have you fucking talked to voters in this country? Even Dem voters? Talked, not preached at and taken acquiescence as a sign of agreement?
That's funny, because they turned out in two consecutive primaries for scolding plus donor-safe half-measures.
"Fix the strategy" is a very curious statement when coupled with the fact that I'm explicitly in favor of ousting the current DNC leadership and, indeed, most mainstream Dems in general, and stated that very fact in this conversation when discussing primaries.
How do you propose fixing the strategy, if not by replacing the people in charge? Electing fascists until mainstream Dems 'learn their lesson'?
Look, I've knocked you over the head with this enough times, that just because you don't get it, it doesn't mean everyone else is failing their lessons. You want it to have been a binary choice for voters, but for them, it wasn't. 6 million Democrats stayed home because of issues they took with the candidates and you blame them for the problem, instead of only candidate would possibly have been able to move. If you want to do politcal commentary in 2024 and provide strategy opinions you need to understand why they stayed home. And if you didn't know in advance that the approach Democrats and their apologists online and in social media was going to backfire, thats a serious strike against your qualifications. Voter did make a third choice, one you claim was impossible. Not recognizing that is at the very core of the issue. Until you, and all the other corporate controlled Democrats, who also rely on what amounts to basically the same thinking as yourself; until you move on this and change your mind, you shouldn't expect different results.
I'm telling you as a friend and someone deeply committed to unfucking the situation which strategy binary thinking has led to: Stop blaming the voters. They can make choices and you and other corporate democrats need to accept that. You have to meet them where they are at. You need to understand why they didn't show up, and then criticize politicians in a manner that addresses those issues, and drives them towards approaches that will get them the votes that they need to win.
Jesus fucking christ do you hear yourself? Its like arguing with someone from bizzaro world. Stop blaming the fucking left and focus your ire on the real problem at hand: the corporate establishment. Stop making posts like this one arguing we need to acquiesce to a "middle ground" with fascist enablers. You made all the wrong moves in your advocacy during 2024, so maybe you should challenge your ability to call balls and strikes when it comes to whats going to be effective strategy.
Also, with regards to Bernie and all the rest. Touch grass and see if that clears up your cynicism.
Really? Because it sure as fuck looks like a binary choice, with only two outcomes possible, and us sitting with the worse of the fucking two.
Just because people don't understand that the choice is binary doesn't make the choice nonbinary. We had two options. We got one. No amount of wringing your hands about how allowing literal fucking Nazis to take over the country was just a product of ~~economic anxiety~~ generic candidate dissatisfaction changes that fucking binary choice and outcome.
Yes, I outlined why. You made a counterclaim that it was actually because they were really concerned with the material plans and promises of Harris, which is why someone who made serious material plans and promises would win in a landslide - which is curious, considering the repeated failures of progressives in this country - both in primaries and in the general - to win in landslides.
The approach of... advocating against voting for the literal fucking Nazi or staying home?
Are you fucking kidding me?
The voters who abstained didn't make a 'third choice'. They acquiesced to whatever the rest of the fucking country picked - and it picked fascism. Great job on those voters, willingly sitting with their thumbs up their asses as literal Nazis waltz into power.
Clearly, those Nazi enablers are beyond any criticism.
Move on... what? That... in a FPTP system with two parties with near-majority support, national elections are going to be a binary fucking choice?
What the fuck is there to move on from?
Right, voters have no agency. Only our aristocratic overlords in the DNC have agency.
This might be radical, but more than one actor can have blame in a situation. Yes, really!
What fucking irony from someone whose entire argument is predicated on the idea that the voters have automatic absolution from their choice to enable the Nazis.
The problem is that your proposal for why they didn't show up, and your proposed solutions, have some rather severe problems with the course of elections in this country pretty decisively disproving the fundamental basis of your argument.
No one on fucking Lemmy doubts that the Dem establishment is fucked. Numerous people on Lemmy, yourself apparently included, seem to think that enabling Nazis is okay if you proclaim you're left-wing - or simply fail to declare how right-wing you are.
Fucking what.
I'm sorry for advocating for the Dem and not advocating for staying home, like all of those brave Nazi enablers?
When I get sent to RFK's Camp For Concentration, I'll write those brave non-voters a letter of thanks for their enabling of the Nazis. Maybe I can get the mail carrier to give them an asspat with it, so they feel really warm and fuzzy inside about their choice.
Are you fucking kidding me?
This is literally what you're talking about. Bernie is exactly the kind of 'material promises' guy you say should be moving voters. I voted for Bernie, twice. I adore Bernie. But do you remember what fucking vote percentages he pulled in during the primaries?
I'll give you a hint - it wasn't the landslide your arguments say it should've been.
This country is not as far left as you want it to be, and until you reconcile with that, all of your strategy proposals are masturbatory self-service, not serious suggestions.
You’re conflating choices and outcomes. Outcomes might be binary but choices are not. And if you aren't going to do the work of understanding why people think what they think and do what they do, stay far, far away from politics. Voters can abstain, skip the top of the ticket, write in, vote third party, or defect down ballot. And they did. And our job is to understand why. Your insistence on “there were only two options” is why you keep misreading the field. Until you drop that premise, you will keep getting the strategy wrong.
You're also wrong about "progressives failing to produce landslides. Voters have delivered material wins even in red and purple states: "Florida passed a $15 minimum wage in 2020", and "Nebraska approved $15 in 2022". Medicaid expansion passed at the ballot in "Oklahoma", "Missouri", and "South Dakota". Labor is winning: "UAW's 73% vote at Volkswagen Chattanooga in 2024", and "Starbucks workers have organized hundreds of stores". Housing reforms moved left: "Minneapolis ended single-family-only zoning and parking minimums under its 2040 plan", and "California's AB 2097 eliminated parking minimums near transit". Criminal-legal reform is real: "Illinois ended cash bail statewide in 2023". This is bottom-up material change that advanced despite donor-class resistance. And New York just elected a self described anti-zionist as Mayor.
And your hang up Bernie is super fucking weird. Did Bernie break your heart because they rigged the primary against him? Debate rules, superdelegates, fundraising structures, media gatekeeping: we literally had a supreme court decision in which the DNC acknowledged that they rigged the damn thing. The point is not “Bernie should have landslided.” The point is there is a durable base for material politics that keeps showing up even when the machine works against it. And it just upset the apple cart in NY. And yes, the country isn’t as far left as I want. But is also not a neat bell curve. It is multimodal. Treat it like a normal distribution and you will keep picking mush that excites no one.
Your two-options mind trap creates its own losses. If leadership believes voters “have no choice,” they stop earning votes. They assume the base is captive. They treat dissent as sabotage instead of guidance. They ignore the people who will sit out rather court them and bring them into the tent. Then they act shocked when the “other options” voters use show up in the results.
Stop telling people their other options do not exist when they do, because people know when you are gaslighting them. And it only further estranges the votes we need to in. Voters are already using other options. Build a strategy that competes for those choices or plan on losing and blaming the public again.
Love how he didn't respond to this but down voted you, because he has no response to someone documenting his love of capitalist imperialism.
Edit: notice how he didn't respond to this but to me. He still loves to stir shit but can't face the consequences of his actions. Does shit to be called out, doesn't like being called out. As seen by how much he loves to go through my profile about him. Very normal
My biggest fan showing up again, I see.
To some degree voters in red states are willing to back progressive economic policies when they're separated from progressive social policies. Look up support for racial justice or trans rights in those same places.
It's a quandry that the left, at large, needs to figure out. We can't throw vulnerable people under the bus, yet a large portion of the voting populace will choose harming (or declining to help) those vulnerable populations over their own material well-being.
That's how you get dumbass shit like members of a union mostly voting for candidates who promise to bust unions.