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this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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People who unironically belive that you can create real change by "voting harder" are the same people who think you can climb the economic ladder by "pulling yourself by the bootstrings"
You have to pull every lever of power or cede it to your enemies. Elections, media, violence, strikes, money, knowledge, power, everything.
Democrats agree with republicans on too many thing and will happily cede all of those things to them if they share a goal. That said, there's a reason republicans are trying to rig elections.
Which lever of power involves attacking transgender people in order to win Liz Cheney's vote?
I think you can leverage votes for change, but that also requires somebody negotiating with Democrats like a union boss.
Probably a good idea to really start putting together a platform for 3rd party candidates right now. I've seen ads for a few people running for the midterms and they are definitely not getting started too early.
A 3rd party candidate with enough name recognition could be a good bargaining chip to light a fire and finally scare Dems out of complacency. If not, they're probably beyond redemption and should be replaced anyway.
That's how the fringe voters of the right became the modern Republican party's base. Think about what you could actually achieve when your shared goal is to progress society towards a more equal and just future rather than to micromanage it back to the dark ages.
or bomb countries into democracy
The guy is still running and the people can still vote for him. I'm not even sure that this endorsement is that necessary for this position:
Whatever the feelings about the DFL and how they handled it, the power of the vote would seem to be intact. It's a bit premature to be fatalistic about voting in this particular scenario.
The Democrats who are refusing to respect "blue no matter who" as they support Cuomo anyway is worthy of criticism, but even then he is still the official candidate and the people can vote. The Cuomo supporters are acting poorly, but again, the vote at least still matters.
Raise awareness as well about these moves, but don't be dismissive of the voting.
Voting for Cuomo is literally worse than doing nothing and not voting at all in terms of defending this democracy.
You make some good points, but you can believe that voting isn't really going to change much but also practice harm reduction by voting. The two positions aren't mutually exclusive.
I don't believe for a second the ruling class would allow real change to happen through voting, but going into a voting booth once every couple of years is not that difficult and might keep actual fascists out of office.
If voting could change things, it would be illegal.
Soon, in the U. S . it will be illegal
idk if you know about this but there is a very long history of the establishment trying to make it harder to vote, so yeah I guess voting works
strange, the assholes voting for trump sure changed things.
Um, newsflash, things were already well on their way way before Trump.
oh so I have to enumerate for you everything wretched fucking thing you haven't paid attention to for the last 9 months huh?
get fucked.