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Harm reduction is bad?
Obviously, it's not ideal, but one has to act according to the real life conditions... And in 2024, our only two options were "harm reduction," and literal fascism with literal concentration camps.
Fuck you if you didn't choose harm reduction.
To be fair to them, we're just delaying collapse. It is a choice.
I agree with them that there's no saving this constitutional structure. In one sense it's cowardly, because there's no escape from this capitalist slaughterhouse hellscape without collapse. Collapse is necessary. Trump will certainly usher that in faster.
But Im too much of a softy to let the blood that always has to spill be on my hands.
This country was irreparable since Reagan, a zombie nation oligarch piggie bank. My vote was a cowardly one for a few more years of quiet orderly slaughter, NOT peace.
But we lost, so the slaughter will be loud and bigger than it's ever been, so maybe it's time for revolution if we want our kids to have anything left.
Because in 4 years the DNC WILL anoint someone to meet Trump's economy in the middle, and even I may not be able to stomach voting for that.
Kamala was in a weird place as well.
Normally it's easy for people to hold their noses for an incumbent. But if Kamala won. Shed run again in 2028.
Which would mean from 2012 to 2032, there wouldn't have been a fair Dem primary.
20 fucking years...
Party leaders don't understand that when you take primaries away, it hurts general turnout. Because regardless of who wins, the primary is the time for the eventual candidate to get their finger on the pulse and see what voters want.
Which is reliably that the Dem candidate moves left.
Without a primary they move right and turnout goes down.
We have literally decades of data that shows this, but it's not what the donors want and the present DNC wants donations more than votes.
Hopefully Winkler gets chair in a few months and that changes.
The DNC would rather have Trump as POTUS than Sanders or AOC.
With Trump, the bribe money keeps flowing to both party machines, They are both paid to keep this sociopath owned economy safe from the people.
Always have...
Which is the problem, and we have zero control over what the DNC does, literally the only leverage is not voting for them, which obviously is a huge risk with potentially disastrous results.
Which is why now is the time to pressure the DNC and make noise.
If Ben Winkler wins DNC chair because Kamala lost, it might actually be a net positive.
If Kamala had won, we'd be stuck with Jamie Harrison again. A guy with little political experience whose only notable accomplishment was being "the only other option" to Lindsey Graham and raising an insane amount of money on that fact alone then losing the election.
I don't know why people are surprised with the 2024 result of they had any clue who was running the DNC...
Raising money and losing elections is all Jaimie knows. And that's what the DNC did under his leadership
How would one pressure the DNC or make a noise they're able to hear? And will it involve putting clamps on sensitive body parts and 150dB train horns?
AOC voted to protect the rail corporations from a union strike.
Some More News did a good summary of how the Democrats win when they have a primary - and move to the left - but lose when they don't.
Realistically they weren't gonna hold a fair primary anyway. If they held one we would've gotten candidate Shapiro, who would have been stomped into dust by Trump.
In large part because Jaimie Harrison was the DNC chair.
There's an upcoming vote for chair, and there's some standouts and one crazy with no chance.
But from what I know about them (not everything) we're almost guaranteed a good chair with a very good chance of getting an amazing one.
I'm no fan of the DNC, but there's a real chance to turn everything around and it's barely a month away
Here's hoping, though remember the people who voted for Harrison are still the ones voting. I remember we did get Howard Dean after his campaign, so hopefully there's a similar thing that happens.
Jaimie got it because Biden appointed him...
He was the only option for DNC members to vote for, it's a rubber stamp process when a Dem wins the presidential.
The only time they really vote is when a Dem president doesn't win, or the chair resigns early (I think).
I think there's some truth in thinking that continuing to elect milquetoast corporatist neoliberal candidates just builds up more extremism and discontent as people continue to suffer under option A of 2 - so when eventually a neocon breaks through they tend to be bonkers. It's why I'm so fucking disappointed in Starmier as he's clearly going to do fuck all and likely hand the next election to the torries.
That said, that's a pretty fucking abstract view and there's always a chance we get lucky. I voted for Harris but I was really hoping we'd get Senator Harris who actually gave a shit and, even if I knew for certain she'd be underwhelming I'd still fucking vote for her because Trump was worse on every issue and would directly cause a lot of additional human suffering. Women would be forced into unwanted pregnancies, trans people would be suppressed or worse - deaths would come from increased incidents of suicide and self-medication, and, lastly, (and I know a fuck ton of pushback on this point here) more Palestinians would die as Trump accelerated genocide.
So yea, I really regret that we are constantly dealt such bad hands but harm reduction is always a good thing to pursue in the absence of better actions.
Seriously though, when Biden dropped out fuck absolutely everyone who defended the DNC anointing Harris instead of running a snap primary.
Democrats going the full Florida route and just nominating Mitt Romney for President in 2028.
At which point, I will roll my eyes, tear up my ballot, and go home. 24 years of voting for least worst, and phone banking for a primary candidate I actually liked in two campaigns to no avail will have been enough for me if the 2028 candidate isn't an economic leftist, because I already feel like a sucker and capitalism enabler.
The oligarchs were never not going to shoot the hostages for a tidy profit.
It doesn't have to be a total waste, you can still chip your vote towards a third party to help them get that 5% that gets them ballot access and federal campaign funding.
If you're only voting for harm reduction year after year and doing nothing to try and organize grassroots opposition to the lesser evil, yes constantly voting harm reduction is bad. It's how you allow lesser evils to grow into the larger evils of the current DNC, who care more about fundraising than winning.
That been my realization. I voted for harm reduction for what 12 year now like a lot of us and have little to show for it if not less. Yes the other side is a factor but they also seem more successful in their braindead idiot agenda too.
The thing is that this is everyone in America. The left has practically no grassroots organization and expects online complaints about the DNC to magically accomplish something, and the right has astroturfed horse shit that that is on board with whatever the corporatist GOP wants to do.
...thirty years of choosing harm reduction brought us to this point...
...i held my nose and voted against fascism, but if you want to blame someone, blame the f*cking fascists and blame the thirty years of harm reduction which enabled them: pluralities win, that's how american democracy works...
This is such a dumb take. You can't say "thirty years of harm reduction brought us here" with the implication that if Republicans won every election in the time frame things would somehow be better, unless you're actually just a right wing voter.
I'll say it for the thousandth time: voting in national elections in no way affects your ability to do other activism. If your argument is along the lines of "voting for the worst option will unite the resistance and we'll make real change", well, I hope you realize that that "real change" is bloody revolution with an uncertain result.
Harm reduction and neoliberalism just wont work, end of discussion. Its fucking 2024, if you want to beat republicans you need to elect progressives
For years I've seen leftists complaining about 'harm reduction' and 'lesser evil' and how the dems are ignoring their vote. But all we ever do is bicker with ourselves. We don't have a united front. We don't have any reliable voting bloc.
They literally don't care about us because there is nothing to care about. If Dems court one leftist group they risk alienating another because of our unnecessary purity tests and virtue signaling. It's so much easier and more reliable to get votes if you tack to the center so that's what they do.
Meanwhile we don't do any meaningful activism or organizing. We don't vote practically and only get excited about voting when we have an exciting candidate. Leftists seem to expect their vote to have power but it doesn't have any. And it's entirely our own fault because you have to actually do the work to get the power.
What work is this? Writing your representatives? Voting in primaries? Voting every year there's an election no matter how local? Knocking on doors and phone banking? Donating to campaigns?
And if that's not the work, please tell me what the work actually is because I've done all those things and have no power to show for it.
Mad respect to you for the effort you put into it - all those things matter. Problem is we don’t do it as a community. Most leftists think their vote is the be-all end-all if they even vote at all, so of course not enough of us are doing what you’re doing.
Beyond that, getting involved locally and/or running for office would be powerful too. Grassroots movements have been shown to work and we don’t have anything remotely like it.
Well said.
Clinton Clinton Bush 2 Bush 2 Obama Obama Fuckface Biden Fuckface
Its as even as you can get over 9 terms (4:5)
Let's not forget how much absolute harm Bush and Fuckface caused, and I'm not even counting Fuckface's homicidal COVID response.
The US would have universal healthcare and a sane supreme Court if it wasn't for Republicans.
I blame both.
With caveats.
A lot of people who chose to just not vote were given a choice between two people who want to genocide their family... Harm reduction wasn't offered to them.
Neoliberalism and harm reduction wont work anymore. What the fuck do you think America has been doing the past three decades? If you want to beat republicans, you need to elect progressives, otherwise fascism will keep on rising.