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.
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.