If everyone who didn’t show up because of genocide in palestine (or darfur / tibet / cambodia) voted, would trump still be president? I don’t honestly know.
What I DO know is that things are objectively worse now than they were before the 2020 election and there was no party in that election that adequately addressed the problem. So sure, maybe this is an instructional moment and there will be a huge surge on the left in 2024. On the other hand, maybe there won’t be an election at all because of “war with domestic terrorists” or something. I understand the argument of “nobody WANTS to vote a lesser evil anymore” when it’s between the likes of Al Gore and Mitt Romney. When it’s Trump, Project 2025, and a risk of validating Jan 6 (which we unfortunately did), I’m sorry but even though I agree with your position my gut feeling is to blame you MORE than my dumb Trump voting family because at least they got duped. You (generally) walked right into it and said “Ha. Yeah. Win without me.” and then left it to burn, knowing full well that this bullshit we are living was a possible, or even likely outcome.
“Why did this thing I did nothing to stop happen if it was the worse option?” Well. I don’t know, but I know who I’m more frustrated with about it.
See, the difference between our perspectives is that you’re punching down at voters rather than punching up at politicians. Maybe if every single person who stood by their valid moral principles was convinced to abandon them, it would’ve changed the outcome. I don’t know how that’s supposed to be achieved, exactly, aside from trying to shame people for having morals, which I don’t expect to be particularly effective.
Alternatively, instead of changing the public in order to be in line with what politicians want, we could change politicians to be in line with what voters want. I think the word for that is “democracy.”
It sounds like this might be a deeper part of disagreement: fundamentally the voters pick the politicians. Blaming voters isn’t punching down, that is the ground floor and the only place progress is made. Its the ONLY place to punch.
Politicians serve at the leisure of the people. It is our duty to vote them in or out. It’s not punching down to tell voters to do their jobs, voting is literally the only ask for the vast majority of people. Besides jury duty, it is the minimum form of governmental/political participation a citizen can do.
There is no excuse for doing nothing besides being lazy. I am going out of my way to respect your perspective and your right to have it, but at the end of the day I think doing nothing and being proud of it is a cop out, and saying “it’s all the same in the end” is not just a cop out but is also disingenuous.
No they don’t. The DNC is a private entity that can nominate on whatever basis it feels like. That’s especially true considering the nonsense of the 2024 primary. When there was something more of a semblance of a legitimate primary, in 2016, the voters soundly rejected Harris. That is, of course, before we get into Citizens United, dark money, the electoral college, etc. Bourgeois elections are not a legitimate representation of the people’s will. There’s even been studies that show no correlation between how popular a policy is and how likely it is to be enacted. Opinion polls likewise show strong, consistent disapproval of Congress.
Suppose the public is pro-Palestine - when did we ever get a chance to express that and have it represented in the political system? If we never got the chance, then how can you claim that Kamala’s Zionism is an expression of popular will? The only opportunity I ever saw was to vote third party, which I did, but apparently that’s not a legitimate method of making my voice heard on account of you’re currently criticizing me for it. So then there was no method at all.
It’s an objectively raw deal. For the presidential race there are functionally only two choices.
The down ballot races have choices and primaries have choices and local races have choices. Mamdani surging to the top of the mayoral race for NY is an expression of the voters. 3 years of 4 there’s time to demonstrate public opinion and express unhappiness in any of a variety of ways, but I don’t have a silver bullet to provide.
All I can do is say that, practically, if there are two candidates for the president race and both support arming Israel, I would rather get a half assed attempt at public infrastructure than a government burning gestapo grift. And I think most people agree. If you want to make the argument that I’m the long run trump is a cold shower that we deserve to shock the whole system… I might have agreed in 2020, but now I’m not so sure it will change anything past 2028.
It’s an objectively raw deal. For the presidential race there are functionally only two choices.
That being the case, everything you said falls apart. Voters are not “the only ones we can criticize,” we can instead focus our criticism on the people deciding what our two choices are.
I could just as easily say that it’s the fault of Democratic voters for splitting the vote instead of rallying around PSL or the Green party. The only real counterargument to that is that there are a lot more of them than there are of us. But there are also a lot more of us compared to the singular individual of Kamala Harris. So why does it make sense to say we should be the ones to change instead of her? It’s nonsense. The only reason I can see is that we’re regular people and she’s ruling class.
If you want to make the argument that I’m the long run trump is a cold shower that we deserve to shock the whole system
I don’t want to make that argument, no. My position has never been that it would be better for Trump to get elected than Harris, and I have never argued for voting for Trump.
I mean you can criticize whoever you want and I’m happy to support you doing that. The idea of rallying around a 3rd party candidate is unfortunately a pipe dream. How would anybody know who to rally around because they aren’t allowed to participate in debates or even really participate as a first class candidate? It sounds good on paper but it just isn’t and has never been a reality. It looks a lot more possible if one election like 20% of people vote third party, but it hasn’t ever happened.
There’s no “gotcha” here to be had. There are 2 predictable choices at present and they both suck, but it is clear which is the least worst.
How would anybody know who to rally around because they aren’t allowed to participate in debates or even really participate as a first class candidate?
It looks a lot more possible if one election like 20% of people vote third party, but it hasn’t ever happened.
All the more reason to support them, then. You even spell out the logic yourself, even if they can’t win, if they reached a certain threshold then they’d have to be taken seriously.
Elections are about more than who wins and loses, they’re also about setting precedent. If a third party gets enough votes, if a faction within a party demonstrates a credible threat of defection, then a major party has to start making concessions if they want to bring them into the fold. The Democrats, however, did nothing but spit in our faces, because they made the incorrect calculation that the left’s opposition was just blowing hot air and that we’d come around to the lesser evil (which is generally what has happened in the past and how we got here in the first place).
I see three possibilities, one where the democrats remain stubborn, and a third party eventually emerges and supplants them (as has happened before in history), a second where the democrats start taking the left seriously and start responding to our demands, and a third, by far the worst, where the left gets cold feet and gives up, desperately rallying around the “lesser evil,” thereby ensuring that nothing ever gets fixed, that conditions will continue to decline, and that fascism becomes inevitable.
If the status quo was enough to address Trumpism, then why is Trump president?
If everyone who didn’t show up because of genocide in palestine (or darfur / tibet / cambodia) voted, would trump still be president? I don’t honestly know.
What I DO know is that things are objectively worse now than they were before the 2020 election and there was no party in that election that adequately addressed the problem. So sure, maybe this is an instructional moment and there will be a huge surge on the left in 2024. On the other hand, maybe there won’t be an election at all because of “war with domestic terrorists” or something. I understand the argument of “nobody WANTS to vote a lesser evil anymore” when it’s between the likes of Al Gore and Mitt Romney. When it’s Trump, Project 2025, and a risk of validating Jan 6 (which we unfortunately did), I’m sorry but even though I agree with your position my gut feeling is to blame you MORE than my dumb Trump voting family because at least they got duped. You (generally) walked right into it and said “Ha. Yeah. Win without me.” and then left it to burn, knowing full well that this bullshit we are living was a possible, or even likely outcome.
“Why did this thing I did nothing to stop happen if it was the worse option?” Well. I don’t know, but I know who I’m more frustrated with about it.
See, the difference between our perspectives is that you’re punching down at voters rather than punching up at politicians. Maybe if every single person who stood by their valid moral principles was convinced to abandon them, it would’ve changed the outcome. I don’t know how that’s supposed to be achieved, exactly, aside from trying to shame people for having morals, which I don’t expect to be particularly effective.
Alternatively, instead of changing the public in order to be in line with what politicians want, we could change politicians to be in line with what voters want. I think the word for that is “democracy.”
It sounds like this might be a deeper part of disagreement: fundamentally the voters pick the politicians. Blaming voters isn’t punching down, that is the ground floor and the only place progress is made. Its the ONLY place to punch.
Politicians serve at the leisure of the people. It is our duty to vote them in or out. It’s not punching down to tell voters to do their jobs, voting is literally the only ask for the vast majority of people. Besides jury duty, it is the minimum form of governmental/political participation a citizen can do.
There is no excuse for doing nothing besides being lazy. I am going out of my way to respect your perspective and your right to have it, but at the end of the day I think doing nothing and being proud of it is a cop out, and saying “it’s all the same in the end” is not just a cop out but is also disingenuous.
No they don’t. The DNC is a private entity that can nominate on whatever basis it feels like. That’s especially true considering the nonsense of the 2024 primary. When there was something more of a semblance of a legitimate primary, in 2016, the voters soundly rejected Harris. That is, of course, before we get into Citizens United, dark money, the electoral college, etc. Bourgeois elections are not a legitimate representation of the people’s will. There’s even been studies that show no correlation between how popular a policy is and how likely it is to be enacted. Opinion polls likewise show strong, consistent disapproval of Congress.
Suppose the public is pro-Palestine - when did we ever get a chance to express that and have it represented in the political system? If we never got the chance, then how can you claim that Kamala’s Zionism is an expression of popular will? The only opportunity I ever saw was to vote third party, which I did, but apparently that’s not a legitimate method of making my voice heard on account of you’re currently criticizing me for it. So then there was no method at all.
It’s an objectively raw deal. For the presidential race there are functionally only two choices.
The down ballot races have choices and primaries have choices and local races have choices. Mamdani surging to the top of the mayoral race for NY is an expression of the voters. 3 years of 4 there’s time to demonstrate public opinion and express unhappiness in any of a variety of ways, but I don’t have a silver bullet to provide.
All I can do is say that, practically, if there are two candidates for the president race and both support arming Israel, I would rather get a half assed attempt at public infrastructure than a government burning gestapo grift. And I think most people agree. If you want to make the argument that I’m the long run trump is a cold shower that we deserve to shock the whole system… I might have agreed in 2020, but now I’m not so sure it will change anything past 2028.
That being the case, everything you said falls apart. Voters are not “the only ones we can criticize,” we can instead focus our criticism on the people deciding what our two choices are.
I could just as easily say that it’s the fault of Democratic voters for splitting the vote instead of rallying around PSL or the Green party. The only real counterargument to that is that there are a lot more of them than there are of us. But there are also a lot more of us compared to the singular individual of Kamala Harris. So why does it make sense to say we should be the ones to change instead of her? It’s nonsense. The only reason I can see is that we’re regular people and she’s ruling class.
I don’t want to make that argument, no. My position has never been that it would be better for Trump to get elected than Harris, and I have never argued for voting for Trump.
I mean you can criticize whoever you want and I’m happy to support you doing that. The idea of rallying around a 3rd party candidate is unfortunately a pipe dream. How would anybody know who to rally around because they aren’t allowed to participate in debates or even really participate as a first class candidate? It sounds good on paper but it just isn’t and has never been a reality. It looks a lot more possible if one election like 20% of people vote third party, but it hasn’t ever happened.
There’s no “gotcha” here to be had. There are 2 predictable choices at present and they both suck, but it is clear which is the least worst.
All the more reason to support them, then. You even spell out the logic yourself, even if they can’t win, if they reached a certain threshold then they’d have to be taken seriously.
Elections are about more than who wins and loses, they’re also about setting precedent. If a third party gets enough votes, if a faction within a party demonstrates a credible threat of defection, then a major party has to start making concessions if they want to bring them into the fold. The Democrats, however, did nothing but spit in our faces, because they made the incorrect calculation that the left’s opposition was just blowing hot air and that we’d come around to the lesser evil (which is generally what has happened in the past and how we got here in the first place).
I see three possibilities, one where the democrats remain stubborn, and a third party eventually emerges and supplants them (as has happened before in history), a second where the democrats start taking the left seriously and start responding to our demands, and a third, by far the worst, where the left gets cold feet and gives up, desperately rallying around the “lesser evil,” thereby ensuring that nothing ever gets fixed, that conditions will continue to decline, and that fascism becomes inevitable.