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While Education and Organizing is building the parts for a new engine the rest of the year.
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this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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Political Memes
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Your vote matters.
If 100% of voters voted liberal in the upcoming election, the one after that would have way more left leaning candidates.
Your vote directly matters.
I don't honestly see why that would be the case. If they've already won, why bother changing?
If the right never wins, they move further left to collect more centrist votes. If the right moves more left, the left moves more left to differentiate themselves and appeal to the more progressive crowd that might otherwise vote green party or some other third party.
This has actually been happening for the last few decades but in the other direction. Left leaning voters not turning out for elections, partially because Dems have a history of suppressing exciting progressive candidates meant that Dems sought more centrists to compete with the right. Particularly after 5 of the 6 presidential elections went to Republicans between the late 60s and late 80s So they moved further right as a result. Both Clinton's, Obama and Biden are not progressive, they're barely left of center. The Democrat Party actively discourages progressivism, particularly in presidential candidates, to make them feel "safe" and "reasonable" to centrists. That shift to the right meant that the right has had to appeal more to the relative eccentrics on the right like anarcho-capitalist libertarians, the Christian nationalists, and the white nationalists. And not just at a presidential level but on every level even down to school boards. Thus our current status quo.
Not that Nixon, Reagan, or the Bushes were at all good people, but at the very least they didn't feel comfortable publically and openly appealing to bigotry and the dismantling of the federal government as a campaign tactic. That is no longer the case with the modern GOP.
That would be the theory, but it doesn’t seem to actually play out in practice. Look at the UK, where worsening performance in recent elections and drastically worse polling at present is leading to their right wing doubling down and being upset that their leader’s policies aren’t right-wing enough.
Or Australia, where at the last election our right-wing had its moderates absolutely wiped out by even more moderate independents (and in some cases, by proper progressives). There are no prominent moderates left in their parliamentary party. As a result, the people who are left are the right wing of the party, and they have selected as their leader a rabid tough-line conservative.
To move the Overton window.
Question on more left leaning candidates - do you think there's a possibility a progressive party can actually gain traction?
I like the thought of revamping the Green Party as it's goals seem more relevant than ever, though they have to shed the kooky perception they've gained.
If they aren't even winning in state elections, aren't even winning in house elections, aren't even winning in senate elections
They don't have the voting base for president.
except when I'm the minority in my area and my vote gets thrown in the trash
It still matters. It pushes candidates towards you ever so slightly.
The two party system isn’t good, but it works fine as long as people fucking vote.