"If you didn't want fascism you should have voted!"

Reminder that the Democrats would be considered even further right than the Conservative Party in Canada. And Canada itself is still considered pretty right wing with no big leftist parties (NDP is still center-right at best)

From an outsider's perspective it seems like the Democrats behave like that because the US electorate is genuinely right-wing and need pandered to.
- Our government behaves like that because it formally takes bribes.
  If you look at the real issues ~60% want homeless fed and to help people back on their feet, healthcare and school to be affordable to everyone.
  ~40% want all those things, but they only want them for themselves and their families.
  We're at about 60/40 POS.
- If you're getting your perspective from billionaire-owned news, (which no fault to you, is most major news-sources) it's no wonder that you'd think that. By the way, that's the exact same narrative the "billionaire-bullypulpit" push here in the States, even though it isn't so.
  These politicians and the media have the same lock step lie. They say they're moving to the right "because their voters are", but they're just gaslighting folks as cover for what they were doing anyway; whatever their rich donors tell them.
- Nope, when you poll on individual policies, they're way to the left of the democrats.
  The democrats showcase healthcare bill wasn't "subsidies for employer-based health insurance, that you have no idea what it's going to cost and have to buy at a specific time of year by going to one of 50 sites provided by your state at a specific time of year and filling out a bunch of forms or face a tax penalty, with a sliding scale based on income, marriage status, and other factors" because that's more popular than "free healthcare".
  Same if you ask americans about Biden (and Harris's) policies of "loan forgiveness for PELL grant recipients up to X dollars depending on age, loan repayment status, income, parent's income, and whether you were born on a prime-numbered date" vs "free college"
  The democrats compromise their bills, not because there's a bunch of "moderates" who are exactly between democrat and republican who will vote for democrats if they promote garbage versions of progressive bills that don't actually help anyone, but because they know those versions are less likely to pass and be easier to chip away at, and therefore won't piss off their billionaire patrons.
- It really isn't that right-wing, especially economically, but there's a lot of factors that make it seem that way. First is that it did go through a large, neoliberal shift in the 80s during the Regan years. When the economy crashed in the early 90s, the Democrats decided that, instead of returning to their New Deal roots, they would also run on neoliberal policies. The Republicans moved further right because of that, especially on social issues, and then the Rachet Effect described in the meme really started to ramp up.
  Couple this with a lot of political illiteracy among the public in general, and you get a lot of people who actually don't know what they believe and default to partisanship. If you poll people if they support gun control, you will get a very negative response, but if you break gun control into individual measures (longer waiting periods, mandatory background checks, magazine capacity limits, etc.) you get much more support. It's the same on almost every issue; people don't support a, "big government takeover," of the healthcare system, but they broadly support Medicare for all. There's a somewhat famous picture of a guy holding a sign that says something like, "Get Your Government Hands Off My Social Security," that I think sums up this ignorance pretty well.
  This attitude isn't limited to the right, either. If you asked a Democrat "Who deregulated Wall Street?" they'd probably tell you Regan, Bush, or the other Bush. In actuality, the most significant deregulation, which lead directly to the 2008 financial collapse, was Clinton's repeal of Glass-Steagal. Liberals think that Obama made significant progress on regulating Wall Street, but what he put in place was nothing compared to the deregulation that proceeded it.
  Citizens United and the rise of mega donors also plays a pretty significant role in moving the parties away from policies that the general population want and towards the goals of a few oligarchs, but this reply is already way too long, so TL;DR: the country got pretty right-wing under Regan, both parties became more right-wing as a result, the population has become much more left-leaning since income inequality/cost of living went way up, but the parties are still both right-wing and most people are too ignorant to understand that.
  
  Good comment, but this bugs me:
  *Reagan
  Regan was Reagan's chief of staff for his last couple of years in office.
- Pandering only works if you're delivering more of what your audience wants than your opponent. It yields no votes from right wingers when they can choose fascists and get more of what they want.
  But it does alienate people who would otherwise be your natural allies.
- Where do you get your opinion of Americans? The answer doesn't' matter because every media outlet, including social media, is owned by billionaires. Lemmy being the possible exception, but don't tell me you get the impression that Americans are right wing from here.
  Doesn't it seem weird how many think pieces about Trump voters there have been in the past decade? I've never seen an article about an Anarchist. Not a single article about someone who didn't vote. Meanwhile, every algorithm takes you to the furthest right content you'll accept.
  
  I'm mainly basing my opinion on my experiences living in the UK where everyone complains about "right-wing tabloids" but these newspapers enjoy huge sales figures.
  
  The majority voted for trump, a fascist. Idk.
  If you tell me you are a good person, I will require evidence. If you tell me you are a bad person, I will trust your word.
- About 40% of it is.

Neoconservatism ruled the last 40 years but it's not even a "conservative" doctrine. It's a bipartisan Zionist foreign policy. Trump is a knee jerk response to Dems alienating people with centrist social opinions, Republicans shipping jobs overseas and both of them sustaining pointless forever wars.

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.
- 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.
  
  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?
- 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.
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  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
- 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.
  
  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.
- 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"

That's right, everybody knows that the left and the right are perfectly equally bad, and the act of voting to stop the bleeding and starting a revolution are mutually exclusive /s
And then after years of this nonsense, people wonder how the poor voter turnout that got the fascist elected happened.
- who said anything about the left?
- The act of stabbing your artery in order to stop the gangrene you got from repeatedly stabbing your arteries is indeed just as bad as dipping your gangrenous tissue into your open wounds to spread it faster. Neither make you better. Neither is a true stopping point.
  Or in other words, Dems are the clutch and reps are the gas. You have no brakes. You might be able to stop without a brake, maybe even stay stopped. But shits going to get worse no matter which you choose since you're actively ignoring the brakes.
  
  I like the metaphor of a shipwrecked sailor clinging to a piece of flotsam in the cold water a mile from shore. He's losing body heat, and eventually hypothermia will set in and he will drown. But if he lets go and starts to swim for shore, he'll lose body heat even faster, use up his energy, and he probably won't make it. The "harm reduction" argument says that he should reduce his heat loss, and stay clinging to the flotsam. He's safe right now, while attempting to get to shore is difficult and dangerous.
  Of course, by the time that the fallacy of that strategy becomes apparent (gestures at current events), he's too cold and weak to even attempt the swim.
- 2024 election was second highest turnout in 20 years wasn't it?
  
  Since Nixon vs. Humphrey vs. Wallace back in 1968.
  In 2024 pproximately 59.0% of voting age population voted, which is 63.9% of voting eligible population.
  2020 was the only year to surpass with 62.8% VAP/65.3% VEP.
  3rd place is 2008 with 58.3% 61.6%.

This fact doesn't really invalidate the initial statement though.
We would not be experiencing what we are currently experiencing presently if the Dems won. This isn't an endorsement of the Dems, just reality
I view voting as a means to steer us to possibilities. Revolution and change won't come through the ballot box but who gets voted in can influence that one way or another.
- It's not even a fact.
  Conservatives could say the same thing.
- The thing about a party that does nothing but maintain the status quo is they will never make things better.
  I don't think it's healthy to feel morally superior for preventing progress.
  
  But that is literally superior to making things worse. It's not about feeling anything, it's about outcomes.
- yeah nice try, not working. deal with the consequences
- That’s just another way to admit you’re mainly upset about how it impacts you personally. Many, many people were already on the receiving end of US fascism and violence under Democrats.
  What you’re advocating for is your own protection, and pretending it’s concern for others.
  
  Interesting point but you're trying very hard to twist "I don't want any more people to get hurt" into a bad thing. I don't think these sorts of word games or speculation where you hammer someone's intentions into a mold that you can bash is healthy discussion.

Before you reply to me directly please understand:
The US overthrew democracy in the country I am from
The US installed a fascist king with secret police that terrorized my family
Once kicked out the US supported a dictator in the neighboring country where the other half of my family lived
The US funded both sides of a war between my country and the neighboring one that led to mass civilian deaths, one side directly by giving a dictator weapons and cash and the other side clandestinely thru laundering money by selling drugs in Latin America
Once they lost that war turned on the dictator in the neighboring country and invented reasons to illegally invade. Twice
Toppled the regime and left a power vacuum that consumed all my family that lived there for literally hundreds of years.
Created material conditions in the country my family is from that forced them to leave or die
You Americans are not the good guys, your country and government is evil to its core.
- i'm intrigued
  is this country Iran?
  who are the good guys?
- My best guess is that you are from Iran? If memory serves, this got kicked off via the Anglo-Persian oil company, 51% owned by the Brits. (They go by BP now.) The company was a private entity that was treating the Iranian workforce poorly in terms of qualify of life and profit sharing with workers. The ruler in Iran was tired of their country and land being used to generate profits for foreign entities. The profit sharing with the company was renegotiated in the somewhere in the 1930s. (my memory is a bit spotty on the exact date.) In Narrator voice: The company did not abide by that agreement. During world war 2, the allied forces basically occupied Iran to secure the oil fields to keep supply chains intact during the war; so this would have been happening in the 1940s. This created a push for nationalizing the company and supply of oil, leading up to the 1950s and in 1951 is when Iran nationalized it under prime minister Mossadegh. There was lots of back and forth between the Brits and Iran, and threats of going to international court. The Shah was a bit more friendly to how business was being done between Iran and the Birts. This led to an attempt by the Shah to replace Mossadegh in 1952, and led to riots against the Shah and perceived foreign intervention. This failed. Mossadegh was pissed and eventually Mossadegh expelled the British embassy in October 1952. The brits cried to the USA, which led to the CIA to depose Mossadegh via the Shah, using underhanded bribery and corruption type shenanigans. This led to another 2 decades of Iran getting fucked by the brits and the USA, which eventually was a factor in the hostage crisis in 1979. Yeah, America was pissed about that. I was born in 1979 and have very early memories of Reagan saying shit like we won't negotiate with terrorists. When Iraq went to war with Iran, the US was on the books as supporting Iraq. There was an embargo preventing the US from selling weapons to Iran. That didn't stop the USA. They funneled weapons and training to contras in Nicaragua who would then supply Iran, simply because the USA didn't want Iran to be influenced by the Russia and communism. This is not taught in American public schools at all. American history curriculum usually ends with the civil rights movement. This was all stuff I had to learn on my own after hearing about it first hand from my best friend who lived through the Iraq/Iran war in the 80s. Yes, we are the baddies.
- lol i can say almost all of this for myself, and it wouldn't narrow it down where i'm from. fuck the us empire and its apologists.
- Have you considered being born to a wealthy white family in the West? I hear it's much easier
  
  Yeah, like, come on! Being born in the Middle East? Rookie mistake!
- I would try to guess your country but there are too many that the US has done this to
  
  My guess is iran
  
  Point 1 definitely has some 50+ countries in it, but point 2 almost immediately leads to Iran, who suffered a coup in the 1950s because the then president wanted to nationalize the oil reserves.
  Point 3 is the rise of Saddam. Point 4 is the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and the Iran-Contra kerfuffle. Point 5 is the two invasions of Iraq by the USA, 1991 and 2003, the latter leading directly to point 6.
- Yeah, but you're a foreigner, so your life doesn't' matter.
  
  worse, they'll say that he's privileged for not being a gay in trump's america, since that's perhaps the worst thing that could happen to a human being.
- Agreed. I'm sorry all the good people in this country are drowned out by the bad ones and their useful idiots.
  Bernie losing the nomination twice should really show everyone where this nation's priorities lie. They only care about money and enriching themselves. Everyone else is just a stepping stone to that goal.
- you don't think Harris would have done a better job than Trump?

I try to remind people that we have no "Leftist" party or even a "Centre left" party anymore. We have Center right and far right now.
- Its far right and extreme right from a sensible European point of view
  
  we'll get it sorted just in time for the big populations declines... Or we won't

The absolute highest priority in American politics should be getting rid of the 2 party system. I’m not going to pretend to know how exactly, but I think a good step in the right direction would be some form of a ranked voting system.
- Ranked voting helps but won't solve the issue. Taking big money out of politics will help. End citizens united.
  MAGA might splinter after this Fanta facist is done, but most likely, they will just go back Republican.
  Nothing is more sheepish than a Republican.
  
  It can be more then one thing.
- I think Americans are just scared of things that are not American. And most of Europe has sane political systems.

Republicans aren't 100% gun ho about trumps recent (and easily foreseen) fuck ups.
If we replace First-past-the-post voting, we could easily see the republican party get replaced with a more reasonable conservative party like the democrats.
Plus, you know, screaming at people unrepresented in government to vote for your preferred political party isn't actually democracy.
If Alaska can do it, so can your state!
- Alaska is an interesting place, politically. Last I knew, the major parties there were Libertarian Republicans and the Green Party. I'm not surprised they have a different voting system.
  
  Prob because they were once Russian territory, they have Russian pluralism. Or maybe not.
- The electoral reforms would certainly help, but you risk the Trudeau effect of a candidate running on them, then getting in office and saying, "Well, it can't be that broken if I still managed to win."

The neat part about voting is that even if you do it you can get fascism if the rest of the country are a bunch of fucking idiots.
- Everyone is stupid except for me
  
  Everyone is stupid ~~except for me~~
  FTFY

As an lndian, l know to what kind of human beings we hand over our sovereignty.
- Modi?
  
  Meaning ?? Well, he's our PM...... Yes........

I keep saying this: if Democrats want me to vote for them, they need to run better candidates that represent my interests.
Why does 'falling in line' always have to be a one-way street? It's always the progressives' fault, never the centrists or neoliberals.
That's by design, because progressives actually want to reduce the disparity in wealth. The American 'left' is filled of greedy, entitled consumerists just like the right. It's why they want to squabble over the culture war while ignoring the class war.
- You don't seem to understand democracy IMO. If you want the Democrats to have better candidates then work to get them elected in primaries. If you don't think the primary candidates are good enough, find someone to run in them or run yourself.
  If you sit on the sidelines until the last stage of the process and just bitch about the results of the process, you are just part of the problem.
  
  Entryism doesn't work, the DNC colluded to kick even Bernie out, and he was a compromise.
  
  Oh it’s so simple! I just need to raise a few hundred million dollars and run myself! Why didn’t I think of that?!
  /s
  
  Tell me about Kamala Harris' primary performance.
  
  Your making too much sense. Your gonna upset someone.
- The Right votes in every election, every time. They vote in the primaries, the general elections,, and any special elections.
  If you don't vote, don't be surprised when they keep winning.
  
  Except I vote every time and I still feel like I lose every time regardless of who wins because I don't actually support the people I vote for.
  
  If you forced every non-voter to vote, plenty of them would vote Republican

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

Here is an example of a successful third party in a 2 party FPTP voting system that people keep insisting is impossible in the US because "muh RCV required"
- If the people who shill that change is impossible in a FPTP system could read anything that doesn't agree with the propaganda the state loves, they'd be very upset.
  Never forget that Republicans were a third party at one time. They weren't even on the ballot for most states in 1860, due to their abolitionist policies.
  It's 2025, no longer the Democrats vs the Whigs. But I guess no one has read history books either.
- Dang only 20 years to get elected is super good
  
  Speedrun any%
- I can't wait for the US socialist party to get ousted by a military coup in 2053
  
  PSL has already existed since 2004, so we should be closer!
  
  Is having a great depression/war a prerequisite?

The Democrats suck but there's a huge difference between voting for boring corporatists and 100% concentrated evil. Don't make me tap the chart.
- Pretending Democrats aren't corporatists is just dishonest at this point.
- "boring corporatists" are destroying our planet and making it unlivable.
  
  And the other side is rounding up people to be placed in a mega prison.
  I'll take protesting the boring corporations without fear of my life over the alternative.
  
  So do 100% concentrated evil, but they also wipe their arses with the constitution, set up concentration camps, and literally ruin the political and economic position of the US.
- And there's a huge difference between fifty degrees below zero and absolute zero. But both are lethal to humans if exposed to it for a night.
  
  You think you just said something wise, but there is a huge difference. One affords you more time, 2 or 3 hours don't matter much if you know you're dead.
  But you're not, you can act. Progress is haltingly slow because people do not want retroactive talking points. New and shiny is entertaining. Our worlds have grown too vast, too fast. Legislation cannot catch up with the world they have awakened upon the 1s and 0s.
  The 3rd party is you, you can act.
- Another reminder that BlueMaga don't consider Palestinians human; their complete extermination is just "boring corporatism"
- "We don't have to argue with Communists, we can just call them dirty commies and plug our ears"
  
  Sounds like someone who is really confident in the strength of their arguments and the courage of their convictions

What a shit show. (Not an American, btw)
I wonder, how many "both sides" Americans who didn't vote (or voted third party) expected Democrats to win anyway. This way they could feel smug for not "voting for genocide" while still getting the clearly better option.
Now they have to pretend they didn't fuck up and act as if having a "protect the status quo" democrat wouldn't have been any better.
- I vote 3rd party always have always will. Complaining about doing the thing we always do just doesn't make sense to me

You had a choice OP
Vote to maintain a bad status quo
Vote to make things a billion times worse via fascism
Start a revolution
Instead you chose secret option d. Make 'both sides equally bad' memes to justify the acceptance of fascism.
Always vote against the fascist. Or revolt.
- Who took away our option to vote to make things better?
  Oh yeah, the consumerist scumbags who kept voting against Bernie in the primaries.
  If they're mad now, I'm happy. I would've been mad at either outcome, but now the people who took away the good option can be upset too.
  Start running better candidates, guys! It's not that hard if you're not a greedy scumbag piece of shit or a useful idiot!
  (it turns out, neo-liberals are greedy scumbag pieces of shit)
  
  Who took away our option to vote to make things better?
  The first past the post election system did.
  If you want things to get better in elections, you need to get rid of primaries. Instead implement a voting scheme where you aren't punished for ranking your desires honestly.
  In the current system, the only votes that matter are the ones for the two leading candidates. Any other vote is equivalent to not voting.
- The economic system in the US guarantees fascism, the rules are made up and votes are don't matter.
  I didn't vote because I'm not American. They should revolt that is the only answer.
  
  I agree totally. All the upper-middle class socialists in this thread have no doubt been setting this in action.
  Or they've been doing nothing but navel gazing on Lemmy.
  
  Votes do matter... Would've voted just a few more against Trump, we wouldn't be in this (I think at this point global) mess...
  Should they matter more or should the "democratic" process be quite different (more deliberate), yeah...
  At this point though, we need big protests, I agree. Also just to wake up all those (not entirely lost) MAGA idiots...
- I think the Democratic Party is more to blame for running a Status Quo candidate when there's so much dissatisfaction with the state of things. When people are angry, the guy who blows up the system is more appealing than the person trying to maintain it. You gotta actually promise to overhaul things, that's how Obama won.
- Start a revolution
  Why do people keep smugly citing this as the third option when there are a million better options before outright rebellion?
  As if any rights or liberties we've won as a working class have ever come from anything other than violent opposition and disruption.
  
  Revolution is the only option for long-term gains, rather than short-term concessions. As long as the bourgeoisie controls the state, they will use it to wind back any concessions they give out temporarily.
- All 3 points are wrong. 1 There is no status quo, they have demonstrably both gone further right. Which brings me to 2 2 There is only fascism and fascism-light. Genocide Joe also built the wall, deported massively more people:
  
  Bombed civilians in Yemen and displaced half a million people there for his genocidal proxy.
  And many mor scummy thing.
  3 They will never have a revolution, only placate Trump and move even further to the right to win back some votes.
  And people will take it, americans are pacified and harmless, some lame protests are not 'revolution'.
  Gullible AF as shown by the massive upvotes you get from the many libs here.
  They will all be hearded back into the status quo sytem by Bernie or AOC the new sheepdog puppy in training to prevent revolution or a valid 3rd party.
  Sad that even a non-american as yourself, not confined to thinking inside the box can be this wrong.
  The other side of the uniparty thinks like you and is refusing to admit their wrongs, how bad do you have to be to not be an alternative to fascists? All of them get what they deserve.
  
  Mate, assuming youre an American, whatever you need to feel better about your inaction is up to you
  Bottom line: once an Americans ability to vote is gone all your catchphrases mean nothing. The fascist is the one who will take that action.
  American involvement in the middle east has worsened the situation for Palestinians since Trump was elected. That doesn't mean Biden was anything but an awful leader but Trump is worse. Way way worse. Everything he does both foreign and domestic was enabled by those who both voted for him and those who refused to vote against him.
- Vote to make things a billion times worse
  Your daily reminder that blueMAGA liberals don't consider Palestinians human
  (I'm also curious how they determined op is an American eligible voter in a swing state)
  
  I guess the same way you assumed I am?
- You supported a genocide.
  
  Really? You're assuming of course that I'm am American citizen, which I'm not, or didn't attend numerous protests to support Palestinians in the country I do live in, which I did.
  The whole world is not the USA.
  
  So did you.
  
  I wanted to not be genocided

"Both sides bad" is why we have Trump.
Democrats took America from gays are illegal, to full gay rights with marriage. Environmental laws have been all Democrats. If Democrats did nothing, Trump wouldn't have signed 76 executive orders reversing Biden orders on his very first day.
- Things have been getting worse my entire life regardless of who has been in charge. It gets worse more slowly under the dems, but it still gets worse.
  Why is it too much to ask for things to get even a little better?
  
  It gets worse more slowly under the dems, but it still gets worse.
  Gay marriage? DEI? Pacific Protected waters? Arctic protected from drilling? It was getting better until Republicans were elected to undo it all. The Rachet Meme is a version "both sides bad" which is what helped Republicans win.
- https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/democrat-republican-elect-primary-1.6497911
  It's apparently all part of a Democratic strategy aiming to help those seen as extremist Republican candidates to secure their Republican party's nomination. (Which Mastriano did win.)
  The hope for Democrats is that those extreme Republican candidates would be much easier for Democrats to beat in the November general election. But the strategy has raised some concerns about effectiveness and whether it could have unintended consequences.
  https://observer.com/2016/10/wikileaks-reveals-dnc-elevated-trump-to-help-clinton/
  The memo named Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, and Ben Carson as wanted candidates. “We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to them seriously,” the memo noted.
- id like to remind you biden was a conservative running concentration camps for latinos at the border.
- Democrats didn't flip on gay rights until Obama, and the Supreme Court did marriage equality. (Yes better than Republicans) Democratic leadership is already trying to send trans people under the bus to try to save face with the Republicans. Both sides are bad! We need to demand more from the democrats and force them to support the working class and to never back down when talking about human rights. Right now. The Democratic party is nothing more than an enabler of our abusive and coercive government/economic systems that allows lessor evils to even exist.
  
  Democrats didn't flip on gay rights until Obama
  And Obama didn't flip on gay marriage until the end of his first term. Biden came out in favor of it, which forced Obama's hand, but it wound up being the right move; it energized the base when enthusiasm was starting to wane. Then, under Obama's leadership, they continued to do nothing to establish gay marriage at the federal level.
- No, the DNC is why we have trump. It’s on them.
  Obama wasn’t perfect at all, but his platform was at least change and progress. While he was originally against gay marriage he did listen to the public and change for re-election. If the DNC listened to the public instead of fighting against progress that would be great. But like… Biden was the throw away to conservatives for Obama’s VP to “balance out” Obama being progressive….And now he was their best idea on what to do for a better future? It’s pathetic, and demonstrates the above.
  No one is trying to say Biden was worse than trump. They’re saying the DNC is what even allowed trump to exist, by being greedy fucks who care more about their handlers than the American people and running the worst candidates they can. “Nothing will fundamentally change” is the dumbest, most “fuck you don’t bother to vote for me” fucking campaign I’ve ever heard.
  
  No one is trying to say Biden was worse than trump.
  The meme isn't that Biden was worse but that he did nothing. It's proveably false. Trump himself proved it by criticizing Biden at inauguration and immediately undoing Biden's orders.
  
  Its fine let them keep losing. I honestly don't care anymore. At some point progressives like Bernie, AOC, etc. will finally wake up & realize they don't need Democrats to win. You want to see people passionate about voting again then it is time to leave the establishment behind. Anyone remember Bernie's crowds in 2016? It was obvious he was may more popular than Clinton having to pay Beyonce & Jay Z for people to show up at her events.
- Democrats took America from gays are illegal, to full gay rights with marriage.
  Gay marriage was legalized at the federal level by a conservative-leaning Supreme Court. The only time a Democrat acted on same-sex marriage nationally was when Bill Clinton banned it by signing DOMA in 1996.
  Environmental laws have been all Democrats.
  Nixon created the EPA.
  If Democrats did nothing, Trump wouldn't have signed 76 executive orders reversing Biden orders on his very first day.
  If Democrats passed legislation, Biden's achievements couldn't be undone through executive order.
  The parties are not the same, especially now that one of them is openly fascist, but you're giving Democrats credit for things they did not do. Also, the meme doesn't say they're the same, it describes the rachet effect, which is an accurate representation of how Democrats behaved on multiple issues. Look at how their economic policies have changed over the last 30 years, or how their views on immigration policies have changed since Trump was elected.
  
  Is there a political community you found on lemmy that understands how this works, like you do. I see way too many Democrat apologists on these popular communities.
  
  Your list supporting Republicans means you must support Trump. right?
  I mean you can't have it both ways. Nixon created the EPA, Nixon was Republican, therefore Republican policy is to put the environment first. That's what you are arguing.
- I 100% agree with you but I'd also like to point out that the EPA was made by nixon in the 70s. theyve done some good stuff too, just less
- The Democrats didn't do shit for gay marriage. That was the Supreme Court.
  Also, Nixon created the EPA.
- Socially left on some issues and economically right on all issues isn't left.
- Of course there was some good legislation along the way. Nobody is denying that. But the crisis we face now is there because the Democrats decided to ignore the danger. It really is that simple...
  You can start with Citizens United. You can talk about the Dems after 9/11, the illegal drone strikes, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, how the Dems celebrated the human rights violations then, which leads us to El Salvador today. You can talk about stacking the courts, which was a plan publicly announced in the 90s, that the Dems never seriously tried to stop, leading to the current Supreme Court...
  If you want to say, "Well, the Dems are less evil," then great, many people partly agree. But that's not good enough. They fucked us all over by not stopping the Republicans from doing really horrible shit, even though we all knew what was coming. Maybe in a few years we can write on Biden's tombstone "Not quite as evil as Trump." Would that make anyone happy? Is that something to be proud of?
- actually, your candidate running a dogshit campaign and telling everyone to the left of them to fuck off is why we have trump. we warned this would happen, too. anyone with a memory span longer than a pet goldfish remembers all of this.
- Decades of lesser evil voting is why you have Trump
- No "vote blue no matter who" and not demanding actual representation is how we got Trump. People got duped by a con becuase they have never seen the real thing, so anything different can look appealing to the uncritical.
  
  Never let perfect be the enemy of good or some shit.
- that was a very different party than current dnc. today’s dnc is controlled by two faced lobbyists pimps like schumer and pelosi, who will have trump win again and again than see aoc being a possibility.
  in today’s dnc someone like al gore or obama will be suffocated out of primaries like bernie. heck schumer would probably have obama killed to keep dnc pro-israel
  i will be surprised if aoc is not pushed out of the party by 28.
- LOL no it isn't, Trump or someone like him was an inevitability because US elections are fixed and the people who have actual power in your society, Corporate board members, want fascism.
  
  Truth there. I'm from a dark blue area yet city government here couldn't act any different than if I lived in a dark red state. In some ways I actually think they are worse. All they have to do is put D next to their name & the voters will support them regardless of their actions.
- Spoken like a Weimar
- Accepting gays is definitely the same as funding sex change for prisoners and sending them to a female prison, which was one of the most successful ads in history.
- Correct. Not to mention the midterm congressional elections that only see ~20% turnout, and even less in the congressional primaries. The overwhelming majority are retirees, who will almost always pick the most conservative option in their party. People love to complain about term limits and appeasement centrists, but they don’t show up when they actually have a say in who represents them.

Bought a lot of European stock during the trump crash so..
THANK YOU COMMUNISTS FOR NOT VOTING 😁😁😁😁
6% total increase in a mooooooooooonth lalalallalala
Ahhhhhhh bonjour mademoiselle.. mon chérie.... Ma femme pour toujours 🌝
- Why do you think communists didn't vote? Are you believing what Reddit and Lemmy.world are posting again?
  
  Go fish some trout and salmon. The post is about not having to vote as a marxist leninist.
  My country has compulsory voting, into the voting booth you go matey
- yo arrête de parler français je t'en prie 🤮
  
  You beg it hard

Democrats spent their entire life understanding what FPTP is and their entire political understanding hangs on explaining it to other people any time Democrats get criticized.
- I mean, I want to replace FPTP though. Any kind of proportional system is ideal, but Sequential Proportional Approval Voting is ideal.
  
  Democrats hugely benefit from FPTP so they will never advocate for replacing it.
  It is a catch22 where the only answer is to call the Democrats bluff and vote for other parties until the Democrats cave to voter demands.
  Democrats also refuse to acknowledge that not voting for them is the only way left to pressure them.

- If you get mad at progressives for not falling in line, start running better candidates.
  Since it's so easy to fall in line, the centrists and neo-liberals should have no problem doing it.
  You're literally just playing into the hands of the ruling class when you spout rhetoric like yours.
  
  Then run a progressive who can make centrists and neoliberals fall in line. Don't be mad at me when you don't see candidates you want.
- You just have a stupid voting system
  
  Yep. Democrats are complicit. Check out the podcast episode "Americas Hidden Duopoly" to learn more, it's the Freakonomics podcast I think.
  I'll try to scrounge up a link: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/americas-hidden-duopoly-2/
  We all know our political system is “broken” — but what if that’s not true? Some say the Republicans and Democrats constitute a wildly successful industry that has colluded to kill off competition, stifle reform, and drive the country apart. So what are you going to do about it?
  
  Why not both?
  
  Agreed, it's stupid and needs reform, but it's the one we operate under. Gotta play the hand you have, not the one you want.
- hey man remember when the democrats were in the house and senate and obama was president and they dismantled ACORN? haha damn that's wild, bro.
- There are only a few legitimate swing states, votes outside swing states don't matter
  In no swing state did third party votes supercede the difference between Kamala and Trump votes. Ie, even if every third party voter, Libertarians included, voted Kamala, she still would've lost.
  Even under the Democrats, "No Rights" is still the party platform.
  Leftists have always supported revolution as the only legitimate means of enacting change, while liberals aid in the constant rightward spiral. Voting is an incredibly small level of political activism, organizing is far more effective.
  The DNC were enacting a genocide of Palestinians.
  
  True
  This comic is also directed to nonvoters. If as many people voted for Kamala as did Biden, she would have won.
  Ask women, gay people, trans people, protesters, and refugees about that one bud
  Yeah, I can tell how much more effective leftist organizing is compared to voting by motions around
  Wrong for starters, and please tell me how Palestinians are better off under Trump's "have Israel kill everyone so we can build a resort, and lock up anyone who protests" plan?
- You spent the whole elections saying that leftists were an irrelevant Demographic who could be safely ignored. And you'll be saying it again come the next election. It's only when you need someone to blame a loss on that they matter.
- Can you tell us how the Dems are going to reform the voting system so that people's choices are fairly represented? No? They have no plans for that because they perceive themselves as beneficiaries of a broken electoral system? Wow it's almost as if they're self interested crooks themselves
  Edit: people downvoting this are the same people who'd hear about coca cola paramilitaries in South America and then switch to Fanta, thinking they're voting with their wallets
- I dont get it.
  OPs cartoon makes it clear that the dems are oposed to left-wing policies, so commie guy refused to vote against his interests.
  The problem isnt commie guy, it's all the other brainless sheep who keep voting for the same two parties who don't represent them.
  Consider this: if all the people forced to vote opted to vote someone else, then the Dems would really understand why they're failing, and more, you'd have the basis for an actual third party to from.
  But instead you and other dimwits keep preaching the same old 2 party rethoric who has been fucking you over for decades.
  
  The problem ~~isnt commie guy, it’s all the other brainless sheep who keep voting for the same two parties who don’t represent them~~ is definitely commie guy for not understanding that a boring and flawed neoliberal Democrat is preferable to a fascist dictatorship.
  Fixed that for you.
  Consider this: if all the people forced to vote opted to vote someone else, then the Dems would really understand why they’re failing, and more, you’d have the basis for an actual third party to from.
  Wrong answer. That made sense under Clinton vs Bush or Obama vs Romney, not nowadays. We can "consider" your proposal when there's not a damn fascist dictator threatening to send US citizens to an El Salvadorian gulag for disagreeing with the President.
  Then again, commies tend to love gulag'ing people who disagree with them, just ask Stalin... So maybe commie guy sees the gulags as a good thing?
- Good. Since we're the deciding factor, we have increased influence and more negotiating power going forward. Now the democrats (whose slogan is also "No rights!") might actually listen to our demands next time if they don't want to eat shit again.
  And if they still won't, then it's obviously necessary to replace them and that has to start somewhere.
  
  hehe, I agree with you. If we don't get what we want we root for the worst possible outcome, and just hope that we are important then!
- I see you understand the faults of the First-past-the-post voting system. Did you know that we can change how we vote at the state level?
  That means blue states can easily avoid the situation you are describing by passing electoral reform. We don't need need to wait for a hail Mary from congress to work out, we can do this right now. In fact, some states have already passed electoral reform.
  Totally possible, there should be no excuses to keep things as they are. Democrats are self proclaimed defenders of democracy. Of course they would want people to vote how they want freely.... right?
  You seem very concerned with the spoiler effect, so I'll leave you some videos on our current voting system and alternatives we can choose from. Because who could understand the flaws of the voting system and not want to fix it? So that people can vote how they wish in a democracy without a spoiler effect.
  Who indeed.
  
  Well aware of alternatives to the flawed 1st part the post system. Which of the alternatives are in place nationally?
  You may want to tell your congresspeople and neighbors about it, not just random shitposters on Lemmy for better effect, I know I have.
- That's not even the whole story. A friend from Alabama said half his union voted for Trump and even the MLs in his area promoted Trump because accelerationism or something.
  
  There's some very weird ml groups, but you just made that up, if not, you'd have said which org.
  
  Well, you actively lie to defend genocide "because Trump", so you're not really in a position to talk.

From what I've seen it's more like republicans fuck everything up, then democrats come in and un-fuck everything. Then the democrats introduce good policy that Republicans take credit for. Rince and repeat.
- "Genocide is good policy"
  
  I never said I was a fan of genocide. I am and always will be a democrat even though I can't vote. Maybe you should read my comment again since I think you're reading it the other way around.

You can always count on @hamid@vegantheoryclub.org to get most rabbid libs stirred up and face their own contradictions (without taking away any insights from the posts themselves anyway lol)..
Literally every post that just puts the quiet part loud upsets them, lol. Please keep it up, love to see it.

- Here is the education that you need to take over the Democratic Party:
  David Hogg, the new Vice Chair of the DNC, has allocated $20M to primary out the old appeasers, and replace them with youthful progressives to create a true opposition party.
  Democratic primaries only see ~20% turnout in congressional elections. 30/50 states have partisan primaries, meaning you must be registered as a Democrat to vote in the Democratic primary. This was a contributing factor in Bernie’s 2016 loss.
  Rather than progressives and leftists fracturing over third-parties, we need to all block vote progressives into the Democratic Party through primaries and replace the deadwood centrists that have been content with the status quo.
  Check your state’s primary type here: https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_election_types_by_state
  
  David Hogg
  Be unarmed if you wish, but don't choose for other people how they defend themselves.
  The Democrats will not defend us, the justice system will not defend us. We are on our own.
  SocialistRA.org
  
  This was a contributing factor in Bernie’s 2016 loss.
  I am from the Bronx. I was a registered democrat my entire life. Somehow when my wife and I went to vote in 2016, after making sure we were registered, we were turned away from the polls because "we weren't registered"
  2 years later I started receiving the letters and was suddenly registered again.
  The reason Bernie lost in 2016 is your fucking party threw us off the rolls because of who we are and where we lived. Your fucking party stole that election. You are full of shit and it is you that is a fascist enabler by making an excuse for corruption.
  
  Lol, and this was the establishment Democrat response:
  https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/david-hogg-james-carville-lawsuit-b2735217.html
  Hilarious that Carville claimed progressives have purity tests in the same breath

This is why revolution and working class organization is necessary.
Also funny when people complain about Leftists critiquing the Dems. Pre-election you said to wait, now it's post election and the same complaints arise.
- "First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."
  Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection." - mlk jr
- Blue MAGA: Its always never the time for criticism.

This has to be the most brain dead community on Lemmy, still pulling this “Both sides” bullshit
- I don't know on which community we currently are, but this is the most accurate depiction of what's actually going on. Democrats serve the corporate elite and don't really bother turning it left.
  
  You aren’t wrong in that the democrats prefer the status quo but it’s far from both sides being the same. If we have to pick a side, and if we are still pro democracy, we do, there is only one correct choice.
  Now if we can convince that side to then use the victory to change the rules, then so be it. For example, Ranked choice voting would be great, but let’s get more states to use it before expecting the highest office in the land to adopt it.
  
  Stop with this braindead serve the elites meme. Dems last admin passed tons of left wing legislation that benefited everyone.
- Look at this guy, believing there's actually 2 sides
- The most braindead instance is still .world. It's basically reddit in a nutshell
- You might not have noticed but 90% of these posts come from the same user
- Welcome to .ml, you'll get the jokes now.

Dear Liberals,
I am so glad I can't see the bullshit from lemmy.world on my server
Your economic system guarantees fascism. You can't vote your way out of it. Capitalist modes of production inevitably concentrate power and lead to fascism. It is unavoidable.
- it was nice talking at you too hamid
  do you still live in Iran?
  just wanted to let you know the top comment was in opposition to your opinion

As said by a wise man, a silent majority does not exist in policy.

There’s so much Democrat bootlicking in here, the comment section smells of wet leather and shoe polish.
If you can’t draw the line at genocide, you’re trash. No exceptions.
- LoL. Sure bud.
- If you can't vote against fascism you will get genocide every time.
  
  That’s the point. Both the Dem and GOP candidate were full blown, genocidal fascists.
  
  And if you vote for genocide, you are voting for fascism.
- Well looks like not voting Democrat got you even more genocide and a president openly advocating it.
  
  even more genocide
  Nope, you were just pretending it wasn't happening when your team did it. In that sense, I'm glad that the president is being open about it, it means you libs can't deny it as easily
  
  No. Same amount.
- In case you haven't noticed, https://time.com/7212848/trump-gaza-own/ and https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-palestinians-leave-gaza-us-rebuild/story?id=118463249
  
  I’m not defecting to Trump. I’m a socialist. I’m not supporting either of your genocidal fascists. Both gotta go.
  
  Whataboutism. And to defend genocide too

Sounds a lot like the “both sides are the same” argument with more steps. If people voted left wing then the politicians would go left wing.
- republicans never vote for democrats, yet democrats never stop chasing their votes.
  the left wing are far more reliable voters for democrats than the republicans whose votes centrists envy. And their votes are actually gettable. You know their issues.
- Neither the Dems nor the Reps are left. Further, that isn't how electoralism works, parties don't change their position if they recieve mass support, but if they don't, and only up to the extent their donors allow. In the US, this means Capitalists, ergo the Dems will never be a Leftist party.
  
  Dems could become a left wing party if that's where voters wanted them. They would lose their donors, yes, so the reps would become the much better funded party.
  But if voters voted for left wing candidates there is nothing the donors or centrist politicians could do about it. It would be a generational project, winning primaries and general elections, but it could be done.
- They really are the same though and no this isn't some demoralization post. People always get pissed on here because they think it's propaganda or something. There is no meaningful difference between Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell outside of the performatives. It's a joke.
  
  Trans people: am I a joke to you?
  Seriously. Harris would have been a lot better for me personally. My life is not a performance.
- Glad to see you endorsing voting third party
  
  Did not say that. If everyone kept voting left then both parties would move left.

laughs in lives in a monarchy

Surely this means we just aren't voting hard enough
- 90 million people didn’t vote at all. Trump won with 77 million votes. 13 million more people did nothing, than all of the people that voted for Trump.
  
  So, not any different from any other presidential election in the USA?

Politicians will never save us. The democrats won’t; the republicans won’t. Anywhere. Ever. Period.
- This is the truth. Politics that really matter happen at home. Prioritize self-reliance and live in accordance with your values to the best of your ability. It's literally the best you can hope for which is why it is the singular pursuit of people throughout history. The smart man knows the government does not and will never care about him.
  
  Carlin told us in the plainest words possible: all politicians are full of shit. The only ones that can save us is us.

The two party system is bullshit, and the solution is electoral reform like ranked choice voting.
One party, the Democratic party, usually (but not always) approves of such reform efforts.
The other party, the Republican party, universally opposes such efforts with extreme fervor.
So it makes sense to hate the two party system, but that system is one party's fault in particular.
- This is just blind unconditional loyalty to the Democrats with extra steps.
  If your plan is really to get voting reform done, then obviously the best strategy is to make support for a candidate conditional on them supporting it - because democrats do not always or even "usually" support it. Otherwise, there is zero incentive to implement it and a strong disincentive to do so - you won the election using the old rules, but if you change the rules, who knows?
  You types are so silly about this issue. The very reason that we need RCV is the same reason we won't get it. In the same way that FPTP blocks popular support for other progressive causes like "Don't do genocide," it also blocks causes like, "Implement RCV." It's like if my car won't start and you tell me to just drive it to a mechanic. If we have some mechanism for implementing RCV, we should also just use that mechanism to get the other policies we want.
  Your position would be more sensible and coherent if you were looking to achieve it through a mechanism outside of voting, but to insist on trying to use the tool you recognize as broken to repair itself is an absurdity, it's completely irrational.
  The only question worth discussing regarding voting is whether or not any conditions should be imposed on the democrats at all. If you say yes, then we can have a conversation of what those conditions should be, obviously, "supporting genocide" is unacceptable, but whether RCV should be a red line is another conversation. But if you say no, then your position on RCV is completely irrelevant, you'll get it if the democrats say you do and won't if they say you don't and nothing about your behavior will change either way. It's pure fantasy at that point, your support for RCV exists purely within your own mind and has no influence or effect on anything that happens in the world, you might as well be trying to wish a pony into being.
  
  Your position would be more sensible and coherent if you were looking to achieve it through a mechanism outside of voting, but to insist on trying to use the tool you recognize as broken to repair itself is an absurdity, it’s completely irrational.
  Your position would be much more sensible if RCV had never been achieved through voting. But it has. And notice the states where it does exist - these are the same places where lots of people vote for Democrats. And the places where it's banned statewide? Those are the places where lots of people vote for Republicans. We need more of the former, and less of the latter.
  I know I'd be a lot cooler, especially around here, if I just put on the Che Guevara shirt and say revolution is the only answer. But it just isn't. Because every example of that sort of thing just leads to more fascism under a different name. Voting works, it's the best choice, and I have yet to see any evidence other than wanting to be cool to convince me otherwise.
  But as for making it a red line for supporting democrats, sure. I mean honestly, credit to you for proposing something that might actually work. I think if there's a big enough movement to do that, every Democrat would get behind it.

I mean... I'm not in love with the idea of "blocking movement to the left", but I sure as fuck would take that over the freespin to the right we are on for now. Like, I get that Dem's need to step their game way the fuck up because you don't win elections by being the "second worst choice"... but still. If we didn't want accelerated fascism...
- You didn't have a choice, the economic system in the US concentrates power in the hand of people with money and they are fascists. If it wasn't 2024 it would be 2028 after 4 years of congressional stalling. The path the US is on is predetermined, they don't have to fix every election to the vote, they fix a percentage of them over the course of decades to push the policy to the right.
  
  You're not wrong. But if I had cancer, and a doctor gave me a way to delay the inevitable, I would take it. Maybe it can't be fixed, maybe it's totally fubar. But I don't have it in me to just give up and willingly let people suffer without a fight.
- Up until the moment we have enough confirmed support for a progressive movement, status quo is a hell of a lot better than accelerated fascism; if only to buy more time to build the aforementioned progressive support. I'm all for actual leftward movement, but gambling on unconfirmed support is stupid. Even the liberals understand that, in their sports-team monkey brain.
  The left has no plan sufficient to deal with this. I hear vague rumblings about strikes and revolutions and the power of the working class united, but the working class isn't united yet. There is no organized, validated plan to effect that revolution. There's no leftist Project 2025. That's a natural consequence of the commendable independence of leftists, but it has the unfortunate consequence of being tactically untenable. The right uniform under the banner of their dictator, the left squabbles about trivialities.
  It's not that I wish it to be so; I would vastly prefer the left to have a functional plan to secure power. But it is the reality; I see neither such a plan, nor the necessary organization to implement such a plan. That's why we vote lesser evil. We strive for the stationary phase of the ratchet to avoid the freewheeling phase, because we don't yet have the organized strength to break the pawl from its housing.
  Once we have that organized strength, and not sooner, we can break the pawl. Sooner, and the ratchet spins freely to the right.
  
  And how's that working out for you?

Soooo Dems won't make it better but least won't make it worse. If 2 party then easy choice.
Shame people didnt do this 20 years ago and voted gop out of existence.
- But they did make it worse, their policies led directly to where the US is now.
- twenty years ago people gave the Dems a super-majority; they used it to lock in the fascist policies of the Bush admin and give a massive hand out the wealthy.
  
  911 kind of destroy any semblance of reason in the country. Everyone was angry. Tried to talk reason? Just look at Dixie chicks and boondocks version of MLK.
- Soooo Dems won’t make it better but least won’t make it worse.
  Obama oversaw the largest decrease in black household wealth in american history
  
  Not because of housing crisis? I seriously don't know what specifically he did.
- No, my friend, you're wrong. The Washington Democrats do make it worse. They (most of them) are willing participants in making life worse for the average American, and they know it, and they don't care.
  
  Well we know it. A few dinos are collaborating for power trips. I recall a few ruining quite a few plans.
- The problem with having 365 million people or so in a sick society that encouraged and rewards destroying each other is that things get worse automatically.
  Dems doing nothing makes things worse. Reps doing nothing makes things worse. Its a prisoners dilemma where the only winning move is to kill the cops and hope for the best.
  If al gore won we'd have still invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, it would just be in bush jrs first term in 2004 that we invade Iraq.
  
  You are Probably right though im sure gore would have pushed for renewables. Thats like his whole thing.

Democrats certainly have flaws, but focusing on them during an election of such consequence resulted in Trump. And so being "right" was worth it?????
- Trump is a consequence of decades of lesser evilism and rightward ratcheting
  
  If progressivism was so popular they could've taken over the Democratic party at any time.
- Leftists are not liberals. The things that matter to leftists are different than the things that matter to liberals. We have different goals. The things liberals advocate for do not move us towards our goals. We have no reason to support you.
  
  And yet many of us leftists are still calling you out. If anyone needs any more evidence of this, look up who voted for her the most. Black people, particularly black women, Jewish people, and the LGBTQ+ community. Now, who wants to guess which groups have been the loudest voices against capitalism in the US? Who has been the most politically active?
  Its generally been us in the communities who are going to die.
  But if these communities tend to be liberals then I will gladly be a communist liberal.
- The same Democrats that barely won the previous election by telling people not to focus on them but Trump. Imagine funding the murder of kids, ignoring the housing crisis & then thinking you could just pull out the previous playbook with a dementia patient, then anointing Kamala Cheney at the last minute.
- But you just can't put a price on that feeling of smug self righteousness ya know?

Primaries exist. Show up and vote for the boring elections too.
- Did you already forget how they literally cheated Bernie Sanders out of the primaries?
  Edit: Or what about that primary they had after Joe Biden stepped down? Oh right
  
  It's so fucking wild what liberals will simply refuse to acknowledge happened back in 2020. And it could easily be argued that 2024 was even more blatantly and flagrantly the result of corrupt backroom dealings, as a sitting President was deposed following a poor debate performance, to be replaced unilaterally by party insiders.
  https://theintercept.com/2020/02/04/iowa-caucus-app-shadow-acronym/
  “ACRONYM is an investor in several for-profit companies across the progressive media and technology sectors,” Tharp said. “One of those independent, for-profit companies is Shadow, Inc, which also has other private investors.”
  David Plouffe, a former campaign manager to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential bid who joined Acronym’s board, also distanced himself from the company during an MSNBC panel last night. “I have no knowledge of Shadow,” said Plouffe. “It was news to me.”
  But previous statements and internal Acronym documents suggest that the two companies, which share office space in Denver, Colorado, are deeply intertwined.
  Last year, McGowan, a co-founder of Acronym, wrote on Twitter that she was “so excited to announce @anotheracronym has acquired Groundbase,” a firm that included “their incredible team led by [Gerard Niemira] + are launching Shadow, a new tech company to build smarter infrastructure for campaigns.” McGowan also noted that “With Shadow, we’re building a new model incentivized by adoption over growth.” The acquisition was announced in mid-January of last year.
  In an interview on a related podcast last month, McGowan described Niemira as “the CEO of Shadow, which is the technology company that Acronym is the sole investor in now.”
  What’s more, internal documents from Acronym show a close relationship with Shadow. An internal organizational chart shows digital strategy firm Lockwood Strategy, FWIW Media, and Shadow as part of a unified structure, with Acronym staff involved in the trio’s operations.
  In an all-staff email sent last Friday, an official with Lockwood Strategy reminded team members about “COOL THINGS HAPPENING AROUND ACRONYM.” The list included bullets points such as, “The Iowa caucus is on Monday, and the Shadow team is hard at work,” and “Shadow is working on scaling up VAN integration with Shadow Messaging for some Iowa caucus clients.” (VAN refers to the widely used Democratic voter file technology firm.) Acronym staffers also attended the Shadow staff retreat.
  A person with knowledge of the company’s culture, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, shared communications showing that top officials at the company regularly expressed hostility to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s supporters. McGowan is married to Michael Halle, a senior strategist with the Buttigieg campaign. There is no evidence any preference of candidates had any effect on the coding issue that is stalling the Iowa results.
  
  Despite what people say online, there are elections every two years. Those centrists in Congress that everyone complains about? Yup. Two year terms in the House. You should be voting twice every two years for national elections alone.
  
  And what were the consequences? They all re-won their primaries.
- Been doing that ever since I could vote.
  It isn’t helping.
- Fr. Midterms are so important, but I rarely hear them talked about
- I do, I just vote null.
- You fool. This is social media where the loudest ignorant voice wins. You should agree with the clowns and farm the upvotes like on Reddit.

Oh look, yet another post where traitors and cowards try to convince people not to vote
- Imagine saying "traitor" to the USA like it's a bad thing.
- Demand politicians worth your vote
  
  Glad I'm expendable in the meantime
  
  America deserves fascism until I get my unicorn!
- The US Empire should be dismantled. If the so called "traitors," ie third party voters, have the power to do so, then we will be doing our duty to the world.
  
  and replaced with an authorian comunist one run by china and NK /s

I would still take blocking progress to the left over concentration camps every time
So yeah, if you think bith sides are the same, then I guess it doesnt matter who won. We probably would be here with tarrifs and camps and a dictatorship, but just with Harris.
- The concentration camps were there and expanded under Biden. The parties are not different on this, even if the Democrat-leaning media like to highlight it when Republicans are in office and minimize it when Democrats are in office.
- Both sides aren’t the same.
  Republicans are much better at getting things done and winning elections.
- I would still take blocking progress to the left over concentration camps every time
  You had concentration camps under Biden.
- I would still take blocking progress to the left over concentration camps every time
  Um, blocking progress to the left was a major step in creating the concentration camps. That's how it works, my friend. We've been saying this for several decades. Maybe one of these days the message will get through... Not today, though.
  
  It will probably get through as me and my friends are in camps thinking that at least this would have happened with Harris anyways. Im sure she was all about getting rid of due process and shipping citizens to El Salvador.
  But its cool. You guys are gonna have that revolution any day now. I hear theres all sorts of plans already.
  Edit: In fact, lets just go back to the image
  Dems block going left
  Repubs ratchet to the right
  So when the republicans dont have power, do the dems do it for them? I mean I know they dont do enough to stop them. No disagreements. But if we never elected a republican in office again, and they never had either of the 3 branches, and they didnt control any state, we would still be going right.
  Im not asking would they still block us going left
  But do you think we would stop progressing as a country?
  Cause going through hundreds of years, theres actual quite a few things we actually have progressed with. Like look at us in the queer community. When I was graduating high school in 08, I thought we were still so much further out from same sex marriage. And then once people focused on trans people, I thought we were still even further out from the dems helping them.
  But yet over time they did move forward. Dont Ask Dont Tell was still dog shit. But it was something. Then it became queer people were allowed in. Period.
  So even just in my life and my community I have seen progress. Its slow. It is. Its painfully slow. But its progress
  So if we never had republicans in power we would suddenly stop that? Am I wrong about my community slowly becoming more and more accepted over the decades?
  Or does me just knowing my communities history and celebrating where we have gotten make me a liberal?
- Nobody's debating this. What are you going on about.
  
  Which part?
  The part about both sides? Well if both sides arent the same then maybe we should do harm reduction, which is a term I tend to hear more so in leftist spaces, and go with the dems.

I empathize a bit, but it's not like democrats haven't been getting more leftward either.
The truth is though that ultimately, politicians are gonna be malleable to those who are going to vote, both because of the very simple "if I focus here, I will be more likely to get the most votes while providing due change", but also because the idea of democracy is based in the trust that publics will emerge to voice their concerns to the politicians.
Most politicians are just not online enough to gather the discourse that we would be experiencing, and also there's the whole issue of not knowing how much of it is foreign interference in a trench-suit pretending to be the voices of the locals. That's why direct calls to voicing these concerns to local politicians, and being willing to hear them out as much as they hear you out matters a lot. Some do forget over the years, but a lot join politics because they genuinely want to make life better.
- I vote all the time and Democrats don’t give a shit what I want.
- Oh no, I entirely disagree. The majority of Washington Democrats are right in the corporate center. They aren't working to make life better for the average person. If they were, why didn't they seriously push for universal healthcare, raising the minimum wage, or regulating big banks and other monopolies?
  (I know, you're going to say the Republicans stopped them, but everyone who actually remembers when the Democrats had the majority knows better than that. But even if we're mistaken, like our memories are entirely false, that would only show that the Democrats have the power to stop Trump right now, which they're failing to do... Either excuse only goes to prove the aforementioned claim.)
  
  Bernie and Warren were definitely contributers to making Biden move on minimum wage,
  but everyone who actually remembers when the Democrats had the majority knows better than that
  the democrats did not have the overwhelming majority (60) that can surpass a filibuster, and yeah, the big-tentism hurts to an extent with more conservative democrats, but the states they come from don't have a lot of alternatives in terms of what type of politician is going to get voted.
  Democrats have the power to stop Trump right now, which they’re failing to do
  Trump is engaging in a lot of bypassing that the judicial branch should be taking care of, but the judicial branch is compromised. They could in theory prevent bills that require overwhelming majorities yes.
  They can and should protest it, but a lot of it is on the judicial branch saying no and reversing demands by the executive branch

This is a bit of an oversimplification. Actually, the Democrats deliberately run a weak campaign while Russian botfarms tell the left not to vote for the Democrats. And that's how movement to the left is prevented.
- Fuck it, I'm gonna blame foreigners even more!
  Rupert Murdoch is responsible for most of the fascist propaganda.
  Benjamin Netanyahu has been corrupting the Democrats and helped lose the election for them.
  Elon Musk is destroying the country, in a bad way.
  Adolf Hitler inspired MAGA to be as awful as they are.
  White people should never have invaded Turtle Island, that's the cause of all America's problems today.
- Classic BlueAnon Russiagate conspiracy theory.
  Wall Street Journal: Mueller Doesn’t Find Trump Campaign Conspired With Russia
  Jacobin: Democrats and Mainstream Media Were the Real Kremlin Assets
  Washington Post: Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters
  Jacobin: It Turns Out Hillary Clinton, Not Russian Bots, Lost the 2016 Election
  Matt Taibbi: Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New King of Media Fraud The Twitter Files reveal that one of the most common news sources of the Trump era was a scam, making ordinary American political conversations look like Russian spywork
  Jacobin: Why the Twitter Files Are in Fact a Big Deal On the Left, there’s been a temptation to dismiss the revelations about Twitter’s internal censorship system that have emerged from the so-called Twitter Files project. But that would be a mistake: the news is important and the details are alarming.
  MSNBC Repeats Hamilton 68 Lies 279 Times in 11 Minutes
  Matt Taibbi: WMD, Part II: CIA "Cooked The Intelligence" To Hide That Russia Favored Clinton, Not Trump In 2016
  Chris Hedges: Why Russiagate Won’t Go Away

Stupid seppo propaganda because they don't know what the fuck democracy is. Dumb cunts. Enjoy your fascist dictatorship losers.
The spread of this brain cancer will kill universal healthcare, public education and all the worker entitlements and minimum wages the rest of us enjoy in real liberal democracies. Canada and Australia are voting and we don't need shit takes from our idiot ex-allies right now. Every vote counts here. Save this shit for the next US election if you ever have one.
Have actually seen people post this bullshit in countries with proportional representation with lots of minor parties. It's a fucking stupid oversimplified distortion even in its country of origin.
- It is almost like you didn't understand the meme, can't read, then wrote the absolute dumbest comment in the thread, congratulations moron.
  
  It's fucking childish. Like a spoiled toddler who doesn't get their way so throws a tantrum and lies on the ground screaming.
  The seppos fought a war to preserve slavery. The politics gets dragged to the right because on the whole they are an abhorrent, damaged, immoral society. They have massive incarceration, capital punishment, don't act to prevent mass shootings, let people die of preventable causes, don't have fair wages. They are ignorant about everything including socialism. Their media is fucking awful.
  Yet it is the fault of their center-right political party for following the votes? They are where they need to be to get half the votes and no further. There are some shit people in the US Dems for sure. But its a reflection of a shit society. There aren't millions on the streets demanding a shift to the left and they aren't voting in primaries or trying to reform the political system.
  The thing is if working people consistently voted for the least shit option the parties would drift in the other direction or the right would be entirely wiped out. They don't because they are brain washed and ignorant. Instead what has happened is all the culture wars, politics of hate and fear and weird cultish bullshit that has now made the GOP the party of the uneducated working class who now vote like suckers for billionaire authoritarians against working class interests. The US needs a true Labor Party that is focused on restoring wealth to working families. But until then adults should accept they need to always vote for the least shit option until they can reform their society and have real choices instead of merely damage control.
- "Muh (western) democracy!" cries the lib that would remain unaffected had people not pointed out its effects, for example, on people's day-to-day lives outside the fucking empire.
  "Remain resolute and steadfast in the belief of liberalism. Trust and believe in the system!" as the lib gets side-eyed by everyone else that understands the libs platitudes are directed towards those that stand to benefit from the empire's wrath, like suburbanite libs, or for the case of Europe, the original libs that started the spread of the "cancer" they swear was started by an orange peel, as if to pretend history started not too long ago.

This is probably the most simplistic, and dumb take you could have posted without actually simping for Trump.
- I just saw that it was memes. I thought I had the .ml instance blocked.

/s