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"If you didn't want fascism you should have voted!"
"If you didn't want fascism you should have voted!"
902 comments
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I'm not American but there's so many socialists on here refusing to vote for the lesser evil because they don't offer the right candidates and advocating revolution.
why not take a page from the right's clearly successful playbook and vote more in local politics and primaries. Maga managed to turn the republicans into exactly what they wanted this way, but the American left just sits there waiting for someone to start a revolution.
well I understand it might be late now and elections might not do much going forward, but jesus it's like the only option you guys saw is voting for whoever the parties put toward or revolution.
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why not take a page from the right’s clearly successful playbook and vote more in local politics and primaries.
I vote in primaries. I also see how, in local races, the party pulls out all the stops to stop progressive challengers to conservative incumbents, an advantage not afforded to progressive incumbents with conservative challengers.
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the party pulls out all the stops to stop progressive challengers to conservative incumbents
Progressives have won many local seats in places, so no they are not being stopped. At higher level offices yes of course they struggle to knock out funded, well known incumbents. But it's the pitiful turnout at these primaries is the real problem. If progressives even marginally increased turnout they'd win a lot more seats.
Like I also don't get this complaint on some level: Yes they lose to incumbents working against them. The progressive candidates are running against them and trying to take their seat. 90% of the time their rhetoric is antagonistic to the democratic party. Why would they expect a friendly, helping hand from an org they often paint as their opposition?
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Progressives have won many local seats in places, so no they are not being stopped.
centrists don't have to be 100% successful in their efforts to make sure that only republicans and centrists are allowed to run.
At higher level offices yes of course they struggle to knock out funded, well known incumbents.
So how low is the cutoff here? Where's the line that deliniates "where progressives can win" and "where putting our thumb on the scale against progressives is acceptable"?
But it’s the pitiful turnout at these primaries is the real problem.
Cuellar beat Cisneros by like 500 votes after the party put its full weight behind him. Of course, he was a high enough level to be worth protecting. At the same level, we had Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, who the party didn't want to protect because they were progressive incumbents.
Why would they expect a friendly, helping hand from an org they often paint as their opposition?
Because we've seen decades of the democratic party offering a friendly helping hand to republicans.
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You completely ignored the thrust of my argument. Why should progressives running against democrats while railing against the Democratic Party expect a helping hand from their opponent/the democratic party?
I have worked successful progressive campaigns and let me tell you, that’s not an expectation of winning candidates.
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Why should progressives running against democrats while railing against the Democratic Party expect a helping hand from their opponent/the democratic party?
Why should progressives get treated worse by democrats than republicans do? You're acting like progressives are instigating here.
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Where on earth are you getting that idea? They aren’t treated worse because that makes no sense. They are in a primary, they are direct competitors. There are no Republicans in the democratic primaries.
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In my city, we have a barely-there progressive, third party with a presence in the city and county government. It's all that remains of an attempt to in the 1990's to launch a Midwestern political party based on an electoral reform called "fusion voting," which would allow a candidate to get the endorsement of multiple parties, and appear on the ballot multiple times as a candidate under each of those party banners. That way, the candidate would know where their support came from, without the "spoiler effect." I learned from the Wikipedia page that it was an important tactic in the movement to abolish slavery.
But, in this case, the Democratic Party (technically, the Democratic Farm Labor Party) went to court to shoot down that idea, arguing that it was too confusing to voters. The American left isn't just sitting here waiting for someone to start a revolution, it has two major political parties actively suppressing it.
Amusingly, one tidbit of information that I just now learned from that Wikipedia article, presented without further comment:
In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during the heyday of the sewer socialists, the Republican and Democratic parties would agree not to run candidates against each other in some districts, concentrating instead on defeating the socialists. These candidates were usually called non-partisan, but sometimes were termed fusion candidates instead.
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Because it doesn't work. It will never work. There is no amount of voting in America will change the fact that it is and always has been ruled by the rich elites who maintain an socioeconomic system that prevents change.
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Your apathy and disillusionment is affecting the rest of the world now.
Is your system broken? Yes. Could it be fixed through slow progress if people cared enough to vote, it likely could have. Bernie would have tried at least. You’re probably too far gone now for this path, but you can still prevent human rights atrocities by voting, that is still within your power.
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Your belief in lies and propaganda and participation in a system that keeps you doing nothing while you are raped by the wealthy is affecting the rest of the world. Also the bombs you pay for to drop on my family. Maybe you should stand up and do something besides nothing for once in your life, voting this far has gotten the US a fascist country run by the wealthy which is exactly how it was started. I feel bad for you how deeply you fell for lies and stories for children.
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Naw it's valid anger in response to "surface civility" i see "pretend intellectuals" use when they speak.
Just... repeating what talking heads say, just deadass parroting some pundit on tv like it's gospel? Quite rage inducing.
Combined with lil comments assuming superiority? Haha of course OP got pissed. Arrogant + ignorant is a powerful combination
Enough about that.
Let's talk about you.
You need to tend your own garden. Fascism is on the rise worldwide, including wherever you are from. Stop wagging your finger and pick up a hoe.
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Using ablesist terms makes you look like a douchebag.
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Democracy has never done anything, not the creation of the Republican party, the abolition of slavery, the 19th amendment, the new deal, or the civil rights act.
Those were all conspiracies of the elites leadering the population kicking and screaming into modernity.
Edit/s
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The American left tried very hard to get representation within the Democratic party, and the Democratic party pulled out all the stops to prevent it, in a way they would never do to oppose the Republicans, and that the Republicans would never do to oppose MAGA.
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From what I remember, they repeatedly voted against anything left of what they considered centre in the primaries because they followed the theory that only centrists (or those as close to the other party as possible) win elections, by swaying swing voters in the middle. The other party had long abandoned the idea by this point however, because chasing what they considered centre often meant upsetting those finding themselves outside of that centre.
If the people voting in the primaries were more representative of those outside views, perhaps there could have been another outcome. However, not many of those people vote in primaries.
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Hard to win primaries when the party itself stacks the deck against you. Or just doesn't bother to have them at all
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True, although I believe things only got so bad after the party elite had became isolated from their base, and the above is how they initially became isolated from them in the first place.
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Maybe, but it happened decades ago, before most of the modern left were old enough to intervene.
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I suppose you're right. They'd been shifting for a long time.
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Yup, and now they're at the point of full on fascist genocide, and their base will engage in the most disgusting dishonesty to defend it.
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why not take a page from the right’s clearly successful playbook and vote more in local politics and primaries.
Because they're fucking lazy and would rather shitpost on Lemmy et al instead of doing something. Then they whine about how protests don't count, voting doesn't count, writing op eds don't count. Apparently nothing counts ever and they have some magical solution they refuse to do. Then they vaguely gesticulate to violent solutions as they ask why somebody else doesn't do it. It's so fucking predictable. Don't forget the obligatory mention of how a general strike will somehow solve it all and they're just - wait for it - waiting for someone else to put it together.
Change takes time and a lot of not-so-glamorous, grinding work. You can't sit around for 3.5 years waiting for the general with your thumb up your ass then go "wah wah wahhhhhhh no candidate represents me"
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902 comments