Here’s a fun idea: how about no more presidents?
Very fun idea, I’d like that. Counterpoint: how do we accomplish that?
Wish I knew honestly. Vote for radical change makers and/or build dual power. But it’s not going to be easy.
No more presidents requires either 1) enough representation to call a Constitutional convention to change Art. II 2) enough grassroots support to circumvent the Constitution entirely. My aversion to power vacuums and general assessment of the populace pushes me towards 1, but in either case you’re right that it won’t be easy. And in either case it will be slooow. Part of that is going to have to be supporting Dems as the lesser evil when their support dwarfs that of the radical change makers, to practically minimize opposition to radical change.
2 years is, unfortunately, a small period of time on the scale we’re talking about. There may be methods to sway a plurality of voters, but until we reliably secure those methods, voting for someone who stomachs a little genocide might be the best choice against an alternative that yearns for a lot of genocide. I didn’t vote for Biden or Harris because I liked them. I did it because the alternative which was poised to win was much more enthusiastic on that front. When you’re in the minority, you don’t vote for who you wish would represent you, you vote for the easier enemy to fight.
It won’t be easy, but the easiest path has the shortest obstacles.
I mostly agree I just want people to stop thinking the right president will fix everything. Not going to happen, so we need a different plan. But yeah tactical voting for people you hate might be part of that plan.
Yeah I don’t think we’re going to get the right president anytime soon. But we still get to vote for who it will be, and tactically we should be voting for whichever candidate, with enough support to actually win, poses the fewest obstacles to a different plan.
same way we accomplished no kings
Liberals have no answers for the current political crisis. And instead of caving to that reality and showing some humility, they’ll try to rally the troops to “VoTe BlUe nO MaTtEr wHo” as if the Democratic party signifies all good with politics, while Republicans signify all bad.
A lot of these people don’t have the political science education or distrust in the current party to be able to see the Democratic party for what it is: controlled opposition.
Why do liberals think Bernie Sanders and AOC are leaders in the party that draw so much attention? It’s not because of some focus group. It’s because of the anti-rich world view both candidates hold.
Per usual, a Leftist means being right too soon.
VoTe BlUe nO MaTtEr wHo"
We should as a last resort.
The meme has a point. As leftist we haven’t done much to primary dems, nor to make a separate party. This leaves us having to pick for the lest bad option.
Its a big unforced error to ignore elections.
As leftist we haven’t done much to primary dems
In fairness, the party opposes primary challengers from the left (and only the left. They didn’t protect Cori Bush or Jamaal Bowman like they protected Henry Cuellar) much harder than they have ever opposed fascism.
In fairness, the party opposes primary challengers from the left
True, but that doesn’t mean we should roll over because there is opposition. We should keep trying to primary. And we should build out as much of an independent party as we can.
It is our movement. We are the ones building it. And we should have done more of this decades ago.
True, but that doesn’t mean we should roll over because there is opposition.
It also doesn’t mean there’s been a lack of trying.
Sure, but our modern fellow lefties do discourage trying.
For example in this thread @AntiBullyRanger@ani.social was asking why we no longer have a black panther party all while telling me all the reasons why they are not interested in showing up to vote.
Engaging in elections is still one way we can engage in the public space and start to make some changes in a favorable direction. We can’t keep wondering why electoralism is not in our favor if we are also not even trying.
Like i said in the other side of the thread; if you can get your supporters to show up and vote you have credibility to mobilize for other things.
Since your Nazi instance banned me in that community, look at what fascists are doing this election too.
look at what fascists are doing this election too.
And your take is to just step out of their way? Strange resistance, but lmk how that works out for your company captain.
So now you’re just going to lie about me?
You’re aware @Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world upvoted&read our entire conversation the other day, right?
Ensign_Crab knows your entire government keeps massacring us, without giving us the opportunities to play in first past the post politics.
But sincing lying will be your praxis moving forward, I will definitely make an appointment to your voting district now.
Never said to ignore elections. Stop with this strawman ultra Leftist bullshit
Never said to ignore elections.
Lot of our fellow lefties on lemmy do. Stick around and you will see the “you think you can vote your way out”.
I wouldn’t say elections will solve everything, but we keep neglecting it as a form of organization to our own detriment.
When are Dems&Reps going to stop killing us?
You may have missed some information here.
Btw, @Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com this is a case in point of what I was referring to. @AntiBullyRanger@ani.social is in one of the lefties that is saying we should ignore voting. They are not wrong that the dems don’t represent us, but they are also not willing to show up to primaries to move them as left as possible, nor will they likely be interested in splitting. I’d like to be wrong, but it is all to common on lemmy.
Which means the meme will hold and we will still be left with no influence for another election cycle. Its a massive unforced error to ignore elections. They are not the end all be all, but they will add credibility to our movement. Being able to get millions of followers to show up one day to tick some lines on a paper means you are also able to get them to organize in other ways too. We only hurt our own credibility and presence in peoples minds. As our own party or subsection of the dems (like the tea party of sorts) it does not matter; tho it would be nice to be our own faction.
So, you want to bomb us again?
How many more McCarthyism do you need to comprehend your electors are bought and paid for?Bro if you can’t be bothered to vote I have no confidence you will show up to back me up with a rifle.
These ultra Leftists will cry for communism but haven’t done shit to build it from the ground up. They will criticize Progressives and Dem Socs for organizing while they themselves remain as keyboard warriors.
I think Lenin made it very clear that we are to operate within the existing societal systems before any revolution is had. That means voting. And as you point out, that also means primary-ing bad Democrats.
Imagine the world we’d live in if those corpo fucks didn’t screw over Bernie
Or if harris had literally a single electoral group she didnt actively spray shit on
Or if clinton hadnt helped trump win
Or…
Hey, it was her TURN
That is true. Have to be fair.
We’d have an additional 4 years before Trump fascism.
Cool.
At least you’re admitting Bernie would have won in 2016.
But yeah, I’m similarly pessimistic about the 2016 Bernie alt-history. Too many conservative democrats would have stood against his agenda.
The electability argument has been proven to be false —Kamala lost, Zorhan won—, conservative dems don’t offer to improve people’s lives materially. What is the positive case for conservative democrats at this point? (Other than “They aren’t as bad as Trump”.)
He would have been absolutely hamstrung by the the bullshit factory that is the legislature, and nothing good would have happened that wasn’t undone immediately by the next administration.
Haven’t you been reading the news? Apparently you don’t need congress.
People are OK with auth right. But auth left? Oh no, that’s not gonna happen. The military would coup the shit out of that real quick.
Auth Left is still inherently abusive.
No matter how much you pretend that it’s for the greater good, authoritarianism will always be detrimental to the relatively powerless masses.
Using authority against billionaires is good actually
Yeah, but it’s not like auth left stops there.
You can have egalitarian taxation and common sense regulations without being generally authoritarian, and you should.
Oh I’m not pretending anything. Just saying that auth left would never get as far as Trump is getting.
auth left would never get as far as Trump is getting.
History would very much disagree with you.
Not talking about history. Talking about what would happen today.
“People” or Russian bots?
The problem with the Democrats is that they still have respect for the constitution and institutions. Otherwise they’d get a lot done.
The problem with democrats is that they feign respect for the constitution and institutions when it means enabling fascists.
They didn’t give a shit about the constitution or institutions when they ignored the Leahy law to play arms dealer for genocide.
I don’t agree. They waited until they lost a supermajority in congress to push healthcare reform (what became Obamacare). And dang, wouldn’t you know it, mean old republicans wouldn’t let us have single payer.
So we got a healthcare bill that mandated we buy (generally) private market insurance. A bill written by Penny Pritzker, an insurance industry lobbyist.
It’s kabuki. There’s only one party — the billionaire party.
“The United States is also a one-party state, but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them,”
~ Julius Nyerere.
Then why don’t they take office when elected?
They dont have respect. They just would rather see the other guys win than the the window move one nanometer left
No, the problem with the leading Dems is that they ONLY respect the institutions. And their owner donors, of course.
They’d rather let a million people die from lack of political action than subvert the Holy System or inconvenience the rich people legally (and sometimes illegally) bribing them.
He didn’t need congress to sell weapons for genocide.
He just needed congress when it was shit he didn’t want to do.
Those millions of corpo fucks voting in primaries, how evil of them.
Trump got elected twice because the Democratic party kept nominating corrupt, evil people who were buddies with Dick Cheney.
If all it takes to justify a dictator despot is framing the opposition as being in any way that is corrupt and evil, even if somewhat justified, then the electoral system has already lost. That’s Orban’s playbook, too. Funny how the people who usually do this don’t tend to employ the same clear cut terms for the actual dictator despot.
If the democrats had nominated Bernie Sanders in 2016, then Trump would have never happened.
Nominating evil losers like Clinton or Harris leads to election losses.
Good thing it lies in the theoretical so you don’t have to bother pointing out anything corrupt or evil about him, huh. Although at the time, he was also demonized considerably. He’s a great safe spot for propaganda what-ifs, since he’s unlikely to ever be mainstreamed by democrats, but having said that your comment still sounds astoundingly naive because of its suggestion that even in 2016 elections weren’t being manipulated.
That’s the biggest problem with your comments, that you try to portray the candidates as the cause when it is a significant part of the system, from the gerrymandering, to the social network manipulation, to the purchase and control of local and regional media networks in the districts that mattered, to the lobbyists financing, contributing, and sabotaging for their candidates, all to place the labels of “evil”, “corrupt”, “loser” to candidates several orders of magnitude less than the current candidate.
It cannot serve any other purpose to misinform and disarm opposition by eliminating the possibility of any step by step solution over the “we must choose the sacrosanct most virtuous god emperor to save us!” I frankly think you’d be tooting Bernie Sanders flaws if he was more likely to be mainlined into a candidate, because yes, he’s been the better candidate for a while even if the process will not make him electable. Doesn’t mean that there aren’t better alternatives to dictator despot, but no matter how evil, how inhumane, how despicable Trump is, I suspect your conditions will always be placed in such a way as throw insults and discourage support of the clearly flawed but still nowhere as bad alternative. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but regardless I still thank your efforts because it does eventually push for much needed candidates like Zelenski in Ukraine to be voted in, although the US seems a bit hopeless in this regard so much so that state secession seems like a solution it might need to resort to.
Look, if you nominate bad candidates, you’ll get bad electoral results. Anyone who wasn’t a complete moron (or corrupt) could see that Democrats lost the recent elections due to the bad choices in the candidates they nominated.
Implying that the dictator despot convict scammer wasn’t a worse candidate. The world you preach is as simplistic as the words you like to throw around.
Did I say Trump was better? Trump is pure evil.
But if you want to win elections, then you need to nominate popular candidates. It is as simple as that. You can’t nominate horrible candidates and expect to win.
Sort of like how Biden lost in 2020. Your world view is simplistic and so are you, and that’s assuming the best possibility.
Hey so its actually that we have 2 years to uplift leftwing ideals until the general election, at which point we vote for the candidate who wants to bring the Torment Nexus levels down a little so that the Candidate who wants to double the Torment Nexus loses and we have a few years of lower torment while we uplift leftwing ideals again.
To clarify: not lower than now, both candidates want a torment nexus, but one wanrs to build it faster and not worry aboyt whether the orphan bones are fair trade.
Hang on there, because with some issues, they do want to reduce the torment below current levels, and i think that should matter
reduce it below
Citation needed.
Most libs want to provide free healthcare and fight climate change. Both items would reduce harm and suffering and genocide* domestically and abroad. *inequities health outcomes are tantamount to genocide; climate change also has genocidal effects
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Even if you did, because someone else who we see as undesirables we will never lift a finger for occasionally murdee for fun or because theyre getting uppity but broadly half tolerate most of the time because theyre fucking stupid enough to vote for us a lot of the time didn’t vote for them this time, because they were holding out for an option that does not endorse their family being murdered with their (and your) tax dollars .
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I don’t pay taxes.
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No you’ll catch
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That’s the definition of democracy, yes.
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By this logic, 1920s German Jews were responsible for Hitler.
Nope, Germans who voted for Hitler are responsible for Hitler.
So, you agree then that Trump is a result of Trump voters?
And you agree that nonvoters did nothing to secure the Trump presidency?
How can we vote with Russia amping up its Voter Interference Beam and Disinformation Ray?
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Leftists: you have two years to get a candidate that doesn’t support genocide through the primaries, and if you can’t, just vote for the one that supports genocide the least.
Radlibs: so you want Trump to win
What’s a RadLib?
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