Leftists who don’t like Biden don’t want to see him in office again, so they don’t want to vote for him, or they want to withhold their vote until he changes course. Seems simple enough.
But that’s not how politics works.
So announcing that you'll vote for him no matter what he does will make him change course? Is that how politics works?
Never, in the history of this country, has there been a president who hasn’t engaged in what the left would regard as unforgivable crimes. This is the nature of presidents, and politicians in general. If you, like me, are on the far left, you should never fully trust or have faith in any elected official.
But when I look at the Biden administration, I see a group of people who can be bullied in a leftist direction on some policy priorities.
Can anyone today truly argue that the world wasn’t drastically changed by Gore’s loss in 2000? Even if you don’t accept the argument that Nader’s candidacy is what lost Gore the election, how can you argue that the world wouldn’t have been at least a little better if all of those Nader votes had gone to Gore and put the Dems over the top?
Democrats have held the presidency 50% of the time since 2000.
I find it fascinating how every 4 years major media makes the exact same Leftist case for voting, and it is literally never "Look at all of the wonderful progressive things the Dems have done!" and instead is always "well MAYBE you MIGHT get SOMETHING done with the Dems but you'll DEFINITELY get NOTHING done with the GOP!"
Interesting that they are completely incapable of making any other case.
We need to think about this election differently. Just ask Trotsky.
So the article is doing a Vote Blue No Matter Who Blue MAGA move, but also says you should vote for (and bully) your preferred enemy.
The point of electoral politics, as it is lived, is not to vote for a friend; it’s to vote for your preferred enemy. You will never find a morally pure candidate, or one whose positions perfectly align with your own preferences. So you must find one whom you can effectively bully.
That's what real leftists are doing right now! Trying to bully the Dems/Biden is what has been happening, and this dorks just tell us we are helping Trump.
Gore lost because he refused to fight even though he won the election.
Clinton lost because the Democrats refused to abolish the electoral college in the intervening years.
Biden will lose (among many other reasons) because he's refusing to "defend democracy" or whatever he said his must-pass (didn't-pass) voting reform bill was supposed to be.
They only care about lecturing people who won't vote for them, but they won't do anything for those votes and they won't do anything with those votes.
The most frustrating thing to me is that it’s not like they can’t do anything. When it comes to, say, orchestrating the primaries candidates to prevent Bernie from winning, they are incredibly efficient and ruthless. They just refuse to do anything about the slide into fascism
I love when these people bring up the Weimar Republic as a reason to vote for their guy. They always leave out that their guy is the stand in for Hindenburg.
In any other country, Trump would’ve been thrown in prison and every person who stepped foot inside the capitol would’ve been hanged. In America, Trump gets to play golf for three years while being protected by security paid by taxpayers, and after being convicted he still gets to run as president and the opposition legitimizes his campaign by treating him as a genuine political opponent instead of the rogue fascist threat they claim he is
straight up. Biden is Hindenburg, the verrrry left wing of the dems/squishy DSA types are at best kinda like the SPD, but they have no organization and little power. And Hindenburg was elected mostly by right wingers who hoped he would restore monarchy, plus the nazis themselves before they grew big enough to contend themselves. He presided over the rise of the nazis, repressed the KPD, got re-elected with the support of scared liberals, and then right at the end handed hitler the chancellorship, and within a month the KPD was outlawed and they were rounding up communists. More communists voting for Hindenburg doesn't solve this problem. And that's not addressing the earlier history of the SPD crushing left wing uprisings.
If you wanted to be really generous I guess you could claim Biden is Wilhelm Marx. A right wing establishment guy who's credited with Getting Things Done and holding the country together, but also gives the office of Chancellor executive emergency powers, setting precedent for Hitler to take even more. Maybe a splintered germany wouldn't have gone fascist. Maybe nationalism is fucking poison.
And in france, we will see how it goes, but that alliance is... an ALLIANCE, with concessions, not a capitulation.
I saw someone on a defedetated from hexbear instance state 'biden is a good man'...
Not only is genocide forgivable, but you can still be a good person while doing it
It's amazing how refusing to endorse Genocide Joe is breaking so many liberal brains.
If you, like me, are on the far left, you should never fully trust or have faith in any elected official.
If you have read ANY theory on electoralism, you will understand why this entire essay is a pile of stupidity. Lenin's thoughts on electoralism (from my understanding) were that it should be earnestly engaged in to show people the futility of it as a vehicle for meaningful change in a capitalist society.
This is some idiot that thinks voting for Bernie in a primary makes them a raging communist.
I wonder how much of an impact conservatives calling them commies for decades has had on their perception of where they actually are lol
These days when I meet someone and they say they're a 'leftist' without specifying anything else, I just immediately assume they're a very confused liberal.
To be fair, in America, voting for Biden makes you a socialist. And when you get too much Biden? Well, that's Bernie obviously- communism.
But in seriousness, as far as electoralism goes, I absolutely agree with that sentiment that socialists, etc. should engage with the system and do so to the fullest amount reasonable. Support liberals you disagree with who promise positive changes- the worst case outcome is they don't do the changes, they make things worse, then you get to say "Hey, I've been saying all along X wasn't gonna do anything. You see? They just made it worse!" In theory it will build "trust" if leaders on the left back candidates but always remain critical of them in a fair way, on the candidate's own terms.
Now the last sentence I wrote is important for my own mental health especially during the most magical time of every four years... right now. Presidential election season.
If you're far left, socialist, whatever, you are de facto left of every single candidate and elected official. You're further left than probably a solid 95% of the US population. Maybe even, who knows, maybe you're the top 1% full blown "I would literally give material aid to China and spy for Xi right now!" Although I don't suggest admitting that part... anywhere at any time. And more importantly you have an ideological backbone for your analysis and statements. Most liberals, most USAians, have absolutely no ideology. It's effectively team sports- nothing unique in that observation. "Trump is mean, so I vote not mean guy." "My wages are dogshit, I can't buy a house, and the TV told me Mexicans are doing this! I'm voting Trump." That's like... almost every voter. You can see all the interviews online (not the propaganda edited ones, I mean just normal focus groups and stuff) or simply chat for 5 minutes with anyone who cares enough to vote and it'll quickly be "Mexicans! Rapists! Crime! My wages!" or "Trump is an asshole and a fascist." Maybe you get people slightly more engaged who have more detailed critical views, but it's always gonna circle the cesspool of liberalism.
I wrote that unnecessarily long paragraph because I can't help myself, for one, once that addy hits, it's done. You fuckers are getting books. But also because I see people constantly having incredibly outside of reality expectations for politicians, and specific ones often get targeted. Partly because they ask for it; they did choose to be politicians and live public lives. Partly because maybe people think they're doing "accountability" (you aren't) by telling AOC she's a shill for not doing something she probably never really said she'd do anyway. I know people like AOC put off this aura, purposely, of "I will always be on the good side!" And my main issue is: why are you, hypothetical leftist person engaging in electoralism while also knowing the realities of how power operates, believing the hype? I think people really really need to be told like repeatedly, perhaps with the aid of physical blunt objects, AOC is not going to save you. She's hardly even your ally. She's in a group of the most left leaning elected US officials, she's closest to your ideology (in theory), but she disagrees with you on so many fundamental things and we can start with the basic one of she isn't an anti-capitalist. She's not going to become a leader of the proletarian and overthrow the evil US empire in a bloody coup. It won't happen! Even if it is entertaining to imagine. Her job is to show that even the best candidates, the best politicians, will never change things. They can't! And they also, most likely (I can't read minds), don't want to! Not in the ways you/we would like. She is confined by capitalism. She cannot leave that box. Maybe she really believes in capitalism, maybe she's chosen this strategy because it's necessary in order to be elected, it doesn't matter because she never promised anyone to argue against capitalism. Hey, that's your job! That is where the left is supposed to offer the fair criticism on the politician's terms. "Hey, you passed that IRA bill. You said it helps end climate change, but that seems like bullshit. Please explain." You support them, let them tie their own noose, let them hang themselves and then say "hey, that didn't work. Maybe it can never work within the confines politicians and the broader media apparatus are telling us is unquestionable? Maybe we have to question it?"
I don't know if my point is clear in that rambling, but basically you can't engage in electoralism, a system you know is doomed to never fix real problems, then get incredibly mad at the elected officials for basically doing what they said they'd do (or part of it). I mean, you can, but that's misdirecting the criticism from the system of capitalism, which is the problem, to the individual politicians and their individual reforms within capitalism, which can never solve the problem because they are just part of the problem. It's a subtle thing, and maybe it's especially bad in the US because we're all individually-minded slugs.
I think I get annoyed by people acting like she's really really gonna change things, or even that she can, on one hand and on the other hand you got the most black-pilled motherfuckers on earth, for many valid reasons!, just going on endlessly about how evil she is. Yeah dawg, she's a goddamn US elected official. You should already know that from the start. It's quite literally impossible for her to not be a force for evil ultimately to whatever degree. She works within the power system of the US empire. Like come on. She's doing her job though by proving the left correct that reforms aren't enough and actual full change cannot emerge from within the system. Instead of yelling at her all the time (and yeah she deserves it sometimes, but people lose sight of the goals) instead just use her as the proof that she is. Praise her when she does the right thing, but remain fair otherwise and don't hyperfocus on the human, the individual, but rather the fact that who she is doesn't matter. Because it doesn't. Just like criticism of capitalism shouldn't be based on the perceived (and of course real) evils of capitalists themselves, but rather the system that they benefit from and perpetuate, you have to take a systemic view of elected officials too. The irony is most liberals will critique Marx (incorrectly) by saying "oh, he just thinks capitalists are mean people who do mean things because they enjoy it to get rich." No, his criticism is that the system of capitalism is neutral on morals. The individual motivations of capitalists are irrelevant. Some may care about workers more, some might care about responsibility to their communities and nations, but it doesn't matter because the funnel of capitalism will crush them all in the end and force even the capitalists (kinda ironic) into submitting to the worst excesses of the system in order to maintain their class position. So you must take this view of politicians who oversee the government of the empire.
. . . Biden, who has been tepid (at best) on core left priorities like restraining state violence, defending abortion, enshrining trans rights, and—perhaps most importantly—stopping the carnage in Palestine.
No, no, you see, he hasn't been doing the genocide, he's tepidly not stopping the carnage.
Doesn't matter how emotionally charged the language they do use to describe the genocide is, if someone never calls it a genocide I feel like they quietly support it.
It feels intentional.
If you're downplaying it, you're protecting the perpetrators.
Leon Trotsky himself urged the German Communists to reconsider their foolish pride in 1931. “Should fascism come to power, it will ride over your skulls and spines like a terrific tank,” he declared, accurately. “Your salvation lies in merciless struggle. And only a fighting unity with the Social Democratic workers can bring victory. Make haste, worker-Communists, you have very little time left!”
Ah yes, because Nazis came into power because of communists, and not because social democrats sided with Nazis against communists
Same with basically everyone and every time, except yezhovshchina and Khrushchev purges. The famous and often cited purged people like Kamenev and Zinovev were given 20 years and multiple opportunities to improve and they had episodes like literally betraying the revolution shortly before it started which might as well led to its failure if Kerenski was a little faster and more decisive. Trotski himself rode the edge for like quarter of century.
I keep seeing this revisionism on Lemmy too. It's like, there was a coalition to defeat the Nazis, it was between the liberals and the social democrats, and then they appointed Hitler Chancellor.
Strongly agree, if you call it a genocide once, I don't care what synonym for "very very bad violence" you use later, but if you can't explicitly call it a genocide, you just look like you're running cover for the IDF and Biden.
Especially in the context of telling people they need to overlook it and vote for the genocidaire-in-chief.
i think this is something liberals genuinely have trouble with. they are so bought in to the idea that the u.s. is necessary that they can't conceptualize of a position that sincerely advocates for its dissolution (or at least not one that isn't coming from the mouth of a frothing stereotype they feel comfortable ignoring)
Never, in the history of this country, has there been a president who hasn’t engaged in what the left would regard as unforgivable crimes. This is the nature of presidents, and politicians in general
This is the nature of presidents, and politicians in general
I see a group of people who can be bullied in a leftist direction on some policy priorities.
So is it in the nature of politicians to be unforgivable forces of evil or are they able to be nudged in a direction
Leftists who don’t like Biden don’t want to see him in office again, so they don’t want to vote for him, or they want to withhold their vote until he changes course. Seems simple enough.
But that’s not how politics works.
The point of electoral politics, as it is lived, is not to vote for a friend; it’s to vote for your preferred enemy. You will never find a morally pure candidate, or one whose positions perfectly align with your own preferences.
By that reasoning I should vote for Trump because Trump is my preferred enemy. A Democratic fascist gets the complacent libs on board with fascism. A Republican fascist shakes the libs to a lower level of complacency and they'll at least do something, albeit ineffective, and then a few defect to the Left when they see that their pussycat pussyhat protests got nothing done.
So you must find one whom you can effectively bully.
Well that isn't Biden or any of the corporate Dems. The more we pressure them to stop being ghouls the more they double down. When pushed, they side with fascism instead of joining us in opposing fascism.
When I was 14 years old, I was a huge fan of Ralph Nader. As a teenage anti-sweatshop activist, I believed that he was the only candidate in the 2000 presidential election who was speaking the truth and advocating for my policy goals. I went to a Nader rally in my hometown of Chicago, where the great journalist Studs Terkel spoke. I’ll never forget what he said in his nasal bark: “Gore or Bush, what’s your choice? Influenza or pneumonia, what’s your choice?”
It all sounds like nonsense to me now. Can anyone today truly argue that the world wasn’t drastically changed by Gore’s loss in 2000? Even if you don’t accept the argument that Nader’s candidacy is what lost Gore the election, how can you argue that the world wouldn’t have been at least a little better if all of those Nader votes had gone to Gore and put the Dems over the top?
You know I had this conversation with my parents (who grew up outside the US and so got to watch it on the world stage from a third world perspective) around 2008. They swore Gore would have been as bad as Bush when it came to war because the US doesn't really change its foreign policy no matter which party is in charge, and that Obama was going to be more of the same. I couldn't wrap my head around it then but watching Obama continue the War on Terror despite campaigning on "Change" showed me they were right.
The author of this article was more mature as a 14-year old than she is now.
In Weimar Germany, where the German Communist Party was far more robust and ready to fight in the streets, the revolution-oriented strategy—allowing a fascist victory to raise urgency and bring about a more lasting leftist one—didn’t work. Infamously, in the fateful early years of the 1930s, the German Communists viciously opposed the governing center-left Social Democratic Party. Calling the centrists “Social Fascists,” they declared that there was no substantive difference between liberalism and Nazism. They refused to ally themselves with the center.
They didn't allow a fascist victory, the liberals did and in so doing proved the communists right
Leon Trotsky himself
God damn I try not to be sectarian but I don't think I have ever seen a good take from someone who respects Trotsky.
Workers of the world, unite with your liberal foes; if you do not, you have everything to lose
Oh how twee, how clever to co-opt a revolutionary communist slogan of liberation and funnel it into supporting the genocidal forces of capitalism. Anyway to address the substance of what she's saying, see the Weimar Republic when the liberals betrayed the Communists. See the 2016 election where even though so many Bernard (gender neutral) Brethren did end up voting for the Democrats' war criminal candidate that she won the popular vote, the liberals turned against the progressives and leftists and blamed them for their loss, when the liberals are the ones who chose to run one of the most uncharismatic and hated war criminals as their candidate. Liberals consistently snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, then blame it on the Left, then side with their fascist friends against the Left. If every leftist voted for Genocide Joe and he lost anyway, they'd do it to us again. If every leftist voted for Genocide Joe and he won because of it, they would still keep attacking us. You can't reason with these people; they don't want to be reasoned to, they don't want to look at truth or what's moral, they just want to keep going to brunch and repeatedly spread covid to the waitstaff.
You know I had this conversation with my parents (who grew up outside the US and so got to watch it on the world stage from a third world perspective) around 2008. They swore Gore would have been as bad as Bush when it came to war because the US doesn't really change its foreign policy no matter which party is in charge, and that Obama was going to be more of the same. I couldn't wrap my head around it then but watching Obama continue the War on Terror despite campaigning on "Change" showed me they were right.
This is something I’ve noticed with libs, they assume Democrats who lost their elections would’ve been ideal progressives if they had actually won. In reality, it’s extremely likely Gore would’ve done something stupid and destructive in order to look “tough on terror.”
Me Remembering: Contrapoints doing the "vote blue no matter who" voter shaming video back in 2020, using the argument for pushing biden left, and posting zero videos in 4 years to organize or agitate for any portion of her US audience to actually engage in activities to push biden to the left.
Their idea of bullying is also their idea of standing up against bullies: by being snarky and being the bigger man instead of slugging them across the skull
The sole purpose of this is so liberals that call themselves leftists can shame people into voting blue for another election cycle, then tune out of politics until the next reactionary steps up. When have any of these losers actually engaged with real life organizing?
But when I look at the Biden administration, I see a group of people who can be bullied in a leftist direction on some policy priorities.
Your vote is the only thing you as a citizen have that the Democrats need to get, there is literally nothing else you have that could make the Democrats care about your opinion because there is nothing else you have that they need. Which means that your vote is the only thing they will have to trade concessions against if enough peoples threaten to not give it to them. Knowing that, how the heck do you plan to "bully them in a leftist direction" without withholding your vote?
HOW DO YOU PLAN TO BULLY THEM IN A LEFTIST DIRECTION WITHOUT WITHHOLDING YOUR VOTE MOTHERFUCKER!!!
So announcing that you'll vote for him no matter what he does will make him change course? Is that how politics works?
No no no, how politics works is you never make any demands and just throw the lever for the "better" (on paper, in rhetoric) candidate once every 4 years. Actually expecting to achieve things? That's just idealistic wishful thinking
Buddy, he's committing a genocide in an election year and his response is to lie about it and help put those against it in jail.
Nevermind that even if you are incredibly cynical, you lose all credibility as a left advocate by in any way supporting him. Or that by vote shaming you are feeding into numerous falsehoods about effective political work that are in no way "leftist".
Anyways this is just a liberal trying to appeal to other liberals that can't stomach Biden. Be a good sheep. "Leftism" has nothing to do with it.
And trans people like me become illegal by our very existence.
My friend's sister is trans with trans partner and basically both are operating on nothing but frenzied fear that they're going to have to hide in an attic like Anne Frank
Of course their solution isn't to take up my friend's/her family's offer to arm them and train them, or to like coordinate with others doing the same to form self defense militia, no, they're going to VOTE SO HARD
I wish they were posters on here so yall could help deprogram them
Liberal trans people bum me out. like, I get it...but we deserve liberation instead of a life of voting for democrats out of fear that the other party will kill us (while the democrats keep making concessions to the republicans on trans rights in the background.)
The answer, of course, is that Trump becomes president again. And Project 2025 flies into effect. And the country goes mask-off fascist. And trans people like me become illegal by our very existence. And Israel “finishes the job” in Gaza with vocal cheering from the White House. And Trump has his enemies imprisoned or worse with impunity. And the world teeters on the brink. And so on.
Biden is doing nothing to stop Israel from finishing the job; once again, libs care more about the branding of the genocide than the genocide itself. For the other “points”: if Trump didn’t do all those things when he had a Republican majority in Congress during his first term, why would he do it in his second term when he has even less reason to throw a bone at the religious conservatives he clearly thinks are rubes?
Infamously, in the fateful early years of the 1930s, the German Communists viciously opposed the governing center-left Social Democratic Party. Calling the centrists “Social Fascists,” they declared that there was no substantive difference between liberalism and Nazism. They refused to ally themselves with the center.
And if they had, how would that have changed anything? It’s not like the centrists would suddenly have a change of heart about Communism and decide that they didn’t need Hitler to keep the left in check.
Instead of echoing the hardline leftists of 1931, the American left should look to their counterparts in France of 2024. The world has breathed a sigh of relief over the shocking upset against Marine Le Pen’s far-right party in the recent legislative elections there. The key to that victory was a last-minute alliance of the centrist liberals and the radical left. It worked.
The key difference being that France has actual left wing parties with the structure to force the sort of strategic round-two dropouts needed to thwart the National Rally. There are no such parties in America that can do that; the Greens, DSA, PSL, they’re all too small and too hampered by the two party system to make that effect. The Squad is not analogous to the Popular Front. Bullying works because the bully holds power over the bullied. There is no meaningful way for small leftist organizations, let alone leftists as an unstructured mass, to do that in America.
I've seen better whining by libs lecturing me personally in r/politics.
Leftists who don't like Biden don't want to see him in office again, so they don't want to vote for him, or they want to withhold their vote until he changes course. Seems simple enough. But that's not how politics works. The point of electoral politics, as it is lived, is not to vote for a friend; it's to vote for your preferred enemy. You will never find a morally pure candidate, or one whose positions perfectly align with your own preferences. So you must find one whom you can effectively bully.
In Weimar Germany...
In Weimar Germany, where the German Communist Party was far more robust and ready to fight in the streets, the revolution-oriented strategy—allowing a fascist victory to raise urgency and bring about a more lasting leftist one—didn't work. Infamously, in the fateful early years of the 1930s, the German Communists viciously opposed the governing center-left Social Democratic Party. Calling the centrists "Social Fascists," they declared that there was no substantive difference between liberalism and Nazism. They refused to ally themselves with the center.
"Hey leftists, we know you hate our guy and our establishment and we've done nothing but lecture and admonish you but pleeeeeeease vote for our guy? His brain is melting and we need your help!"
“You will never find a morally pure candidate, or one whose positions perfectly align with your own preferences. So you must find one whom you can effectively bully.” Put this quote on every billboard for the next 4 months.