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If this bothers you then vote for some candidate and party other than Harris and the dems.
I like PSL.
Terrible idea. A better plan is vote progressives into congress. The presidency literally doesn’t matter. Congress gets to dictate almost everything the President can do.
I guess if you don’t care who gets in then yeah.
I’m personally past just voting for the “least bad” candidate no matter how that’s determined. It’s candidates I actually want from here on out.
You do that. And if/when Trump wins and gives Netanyahu the ok to turn Palestine into glass then turn it into luxury apartments for violent Americans, and he does, then those people's blood will be on your hands. Remember that.
It’ll be my fault… why?
Will it be because I’m responsible for the choices my government makes? Wouldn’t the blood also be on the hands of the “progressive” voters? The Harris voters?
Because every vote counts, and there are only two possible outcomes.
Buddy, you know why. You can pretend online that you don't understand it, but I know you're smart enough to get it, and deep down, you know that what I'm saying is true.
Either you feel emboldened to say it because it looks like Kamala might win, so therefore you think you can just throw your vote away, or you know exactly what you're doing.
I’m old enough to have been able to vote in the 2000 election. Is the blood from 600 thousand Iraqis on my hands too?
If I were choosing the vote that makes me least responsible for the genocide in Gaza wouldn’t I choose a candidate who opposes it in both word and deed?
If what you said were true and I really was responsible for the actions of my government through my vote, wouldn’t it make sense to focus on getting voting records from diebold or whatever so you could use that information to target your vitriol at the people most responsible for this nations cruel actions?
I don’t think you’ve seriously thought what you’re saying through.
Did you vote for Ralph Nader in Florida? Then yeah, it kind of is.
Gore would have won in Florida if there had been a full recount instead of a partial.
If you really believe that people are responsible for the actions of their governments does that extend to the gore voters in Florida?
If people are responsible for the actions of their governments then what justice should be enacted to right the wrongs they bear responsibility for?
I believe that the number of people who voted for Nader in FL was enough to have given Gore a significant enough lead that a recount would never have taken place. Been a few years since I've looked at the actual numbers though so maybe I'm thinking of another state.
Not sure why we're talking about the 2000 election but ok.
we're talking about 2000 because i asked about it to find out exactly how far back your belief that voters bear the responsibility for the us governments actions goes and to which particular voters it applies.
are the nader people more to blame for the recount not taking place than the many people and political actors calling for it to stop?
are the election workers responsible for the failed system they enabled through their work that literally put the wrong person in office?
i'm gonna sound like a broken record here, but:
If I were choosing the vote that makes me least responsible for the genocide in Gaza wouldn’t I choose a candidate who opposes it in both word and deed?
If what you said were true and I really was responsible for the actions of my government through my vote, wouldn’t it make sense to focus on getting voting records from diebold or whatever so you could use that information to target your vitriol at the people most responsible for this nations cruel actions?
If you really believe that people are responsible for the actions of their governments does that extend to the gore voters in Florida?
If people are responsible for the actions of their governments then what justice should be enacted to right the wrongs they bear responsibility for?
Why? So that Trump ends up in office and does worse?
No, because the only thing elections track is approval. If genocide is too much for a person to approve of then they need to vote for a different candidate.
Why can't we just vote for the biggest leftist party with the most ballot access? Ya know, the green party
I will generally not recommend people vote for or support the greens because they represent a directionless triangulation with no vision.
I’ve had the opportunity to vote green in every national election they’ve been in and even chosen them a few times and they’ve always let me down.
It's that kind of attitude that weakens the left. If every leftist were involved with the greens, we could create a truly revolutionary party.
perhaps by changing the party into something entirely different from within. of course that would require a lot of work to overcome 25 years of institutional inertia, let alone a big job of completely changing the party's strategy and operation.
i would even make the argument that the greens aren't left, since they aren't calling for worker control of the means of production and historically that's been the bare minimum to be considered left but using the french seating chart hundreds of years later has its own issues.
Well I don't see nearly as much ballot access from the PSL or any other minor party. Maybe we should make a new party that'll lose popularity to the next one in 5 years. No party will ever be leftist enough for leftists in this country and that pretentious mindset will keep us weak forever.
How does that saying go? “If ballot access were candy and nuts we’d all be eating steak!”
There are absolutely ultras in America but it’s not a position necessary to recognize that the Green Party isn’t leftist. I’d say at the very least the greens can’t be called leftist for the same reason the dubious moniker “progressive” isn’t any marker of the same: their platform is explicitly not left.
They are the leftist party available.
There are other parties that are both more left, more explicitly align with my politics and do not have a dubious history of triangulation.
The greens are not the best available option any more than the democrats are.
That's dumb. If you think the greens are just as bad as the Dems, then your brain is broken. PSL has ballot access in 17 states and they're the only other leftists running a candidate. Green party has more ballot access in 37 states and holds a significantly higher chance of meaning anything. But maybe in another 3 or 4 election cycles the PSL will have the ballot access that the greens do now.
I didn’t say the greens are as bad as the dems, I said they’re not the best available option any more than dems are.
Im not gonna rake you over the coals too much for it, but maybe the language around ballot access and chances isn’t the best way to pull people to your particular electoral construction given it’s the same set of ideas that supporters of the democrats are using against both of us.
They use that argument because it's valid and holds weight. The only other option besides bringing in a third party with ballot access is violent revolution and that was a lot cooler of an idea before drones existed.
If it’s so valid then why aren’t you voting democrat?
My problem with the idea that we all ought to vote for some party whose policies and politics are far from our own in order to win isn’t that it denies the blossoming of everyone’s special flower ideas, but that it collapses all the effects of a third party into winning and losing.
Getting a third party to win is the first step into breaking the US political duopoly and fixing the broken electoral system. The first changes a third party will make is regulations that allow third party wins in the future. It's about making progress towards the left. Democrats do not represent progress, but an upholding of the same tired political duopoly that gives capitalists power. The green party, regardless of whatever ideals you still hate about them, are very intent on changing the electoral system and ending the duopoly.
So that’s a real specific problem I have with the greens: they have no theory of power.
Green politics of all stripes are predicated on, at best, recognizing that there is a system in place and that if it were different, things could be different. I tend to take issue with the specific causes and effects involved in the things greens want to change up, but even if I didn’t, the party has no idea of where the political power it purports to desire to wield comes from.
Democrats and republicans have clear understandings of that. The different weird communist parties have understanding of where they think political power comes from.
Green conceptions of power are inscrutable.
What you just wrote is a great example of that. Where does the power to enact any of the changes you claim greens want to make on the electoral system flow from? From being elected into positions in government by the same system that keeps people from exercising their political will?
Part of why even looney lefties like myself dismiss the greens is because at the most serious level they’re still just trafficking in “well, if i was in charge” rhetoric.
I mean, yeah. The only way to reform the system is from within the system. Here in lies the ultimate issue with the left: all I ever hear is criticisms and no solutions. We have two options, reform or revolution. Revolution is nearly impossible. So if it's reform, people need to be elected into the system to make the changes. There is no reform without elections. Even if we were to organize something big like a general strike, it would only make the bourgeoisie afraid. Real changes are legislative and that means elections. Unless you've got a better idea, in which case, please share with the class.
I’m not against taking part in elections.
When I brought up theory of power it wasn’t to handwave away the strategic value of participating in elections, but to specifically critique the lack thereof on the part of the greens.
Winning an election isn’t enough. Simply participating in an election as a voter, party member or organizer or official is also not enough.
Under a theory of worker power like what we see from looney lefties of yore and today, election participation in all these roles is useful because it builds worker power and unity.
propaganda from both parties keep people at the bottom of the juice pitcher unable to breath fresh air and there are too few not drinking the punch to do anything
huge crab effect going on here
like when you go crabbing and put all the crabs in the bucket and the crabs that almost get out get stopped by their peers
It's not cool that Americans are as dumb as crabs in this analogy. If every leftist just got behind the green party we might stand a chance. But everyone wants their own unique ideology represented.
If you think Jill Stein represents any sort of real leftist ideology, I have a number of bridges to offer you.
I didn't say that I did think that. What I do think is that leftists should leverage the biggest third party that's the closest to representing their core values into the party that they want. It has nothing to do with Jill Stein and more to do with uniting under one generalized leftist party instead of constantly fracturing into weaker more specific parties.