this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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Anti-war lefties tend to be comfortable voting for third party candidates.
Yup. The only practical effect of which is to enable the Right.
Voting for the center-right Democrats enables the right as well, as necessary as some may feel it is to prevent the openly fascist candidates from winning. Democrat PACs give money to run ads for the most insane fascist Republican primary candidates, with the strategy being they are easier to win against, which has worked for them before. Hillary's campaign helped Trump's campaign in a similar manner. Over time this drags politics to the right.
This is a downward spiral, you can pick the fascist aesthetic of it or the one that says "don't worry everything is fine."
Almost like, instead of sitting out and complaining, we need to get involved in the primaries and go for the farthest left candidates who can win...
It's easy to sit on the sidelines and complain or to say voting is pointless. This enables the status quo. What's harder but meaningful is getting involved and affecting real change.
Agree and I also disagree that criticizing aspects and futility of presidential voting implies it's completely meaningless. The ideological consensus within the two main parties that came together over the past 30 years has never existed before, and the system was basically designed around independent rich landowners controlling the government, factions developing within this system was one of the main concerns. That's where it is now, two factions which each operate as a single ideological unit, led by some of the most historically disliked and unpopular people, both funded by planet-destroying interests.
In terms of action I look to what has led to major changes in the past, labor and class organization and agitation, and accepting that things are looking bad and that it's necessary to acknowledge this. Understanding how the present day system was basically designed around suppressing things like the Populist movement and any class consciousness, the Taft-Hartley act pacifying unions, and how fucked it is right now, is to me more important than blindly accepting the terms of party politics and letting that control your political behavior and dictate your opinions. That's why I have no time for entertaining the "don't criticize Democrats because you help fascism" line. People can vote strategically but the logical conclusion of that is to accept the status quo and the impending doom this system has already manifested, and continues to do at an accelerating rate.
Saying both parties are the same is absolutely the same as saying it's meaningless.
No one is saying that. What I'm saying is that saying both parties are the same is helping the bad guys. Criticize the Democrats sure, but also note that all those criticisms apply except worse to the Republicans. Criticize and demand change in a way that helps progressives rather than conservatives.
Consider that Gore would be president if a bunch of goofs hadn't voted for Nader. Consider that we face a very real possibility of another trump presidency because a number of us don't like Biden.
That's just utter nonsense. The logical conclusion is to vote as best you can in the moment, and work for better options next time. Like getting likeminded people involved in the vehicle most likely to carry the necessary changes, in America, that's the Democrats.
It's hard to say Democrats are the ones to make necessary changes when they are in real material terms bringing the whole political sphere to the right by helping the most insane Republicans win primaries. Like Hillary's campaign early on wanted Trump to be the GOP primary winner, what a joke that would have been, they'd look ridiculous! Lots of races around the country have had the same influence, Democrat PACs run ads on behalf of the fascist GOP candidates, it helps them sometimes because they get to say "hey if you don't vote for me you're helping the crazy person over there." Over time it's clear what this is doing though, since the 90s-00s, this is a downward spiral. Change has to come from outside, the more people think the Democrat apparatus is the machine for change the more history will simply repeat itself, further sliding to the right as what's been the case since Reagan. Why would it be different? Bernie was the nail in the coffin, the delegates aren't interested, unless you can replace the delegates there's no hope in the Democrat machine. People need to wake up to this and move on to new organization, and it will happen as people become more desperate and stressed by the degrading conditions of life in the US. I have more hope in the labor movement right now than I do in party politics despite the obligation to vote, that's where the improvements have come from historically anyway.
And did they do anything to make that happen? Right, they didn't.
Yes, in 2020 some of the lunatics were boosted but this is a relatively new phenomenon. And not to mention, is pretty damned strategic and as someone who understands how damaging republicans would be, I'm kind of okay with it.
If you aren't constrained by reality, sure, this is a valid point!
Except Bernie lost the primary vote 43% or so to 55%... Let me ask, this was important to you, did you vote in the democratic primaries? Did you canvas for Bernie? Bring friends to vote? If so, awesome. If not, you, like most folks under 40 once again lost to the people who actually show up and vote. Almost like the younger, more progressive wing keeps buying into stupid ideas like both parties are the same and thus voting is pointless...
(You might be shocked to learn that the labour movement has had most of their victories by gasp getting candidates elected, becoming a force to be reckoned with. Unions were the backbone of the progressive coalition for a long time and had all sorts of victories with, yup, electoral politics. Weird how that works huh?)
Nobody said voting was pointless, it's the bare minimum. Labor organizing provided an outside influence to party politics, the party politics weren't the vehicle for change there. Democrat delegates and members don't want Bernie or class policies, because they aren't a left party, they're a neoliberal capitalist institution supported by and for capital interests. Their branding is what you're talking about when the "vehicle for change" stuff comes out, if they stood by broadly supported left-rooted measures they would say as much, but they don't because it would lose them material support. For political involvement I have had close friends run for office as socialists, and campaigned with them in two elections. I'm also involved in my labor union doing unglamorous work and hopefully as a delegate one day.
Good luck with the superdelegates overriding anyone who wants to effect change. Bernie, specifically, and whoever the next person will be. The DNC is a disgrace.
I think Obama represented the best the DNC can hope for in producing a candidate, and Adolph Reed Jr's 1996 column criticizing Obama was a perfect prediction of what became of his legacy.
I'm super curious what you wanted to have happen. Overall, Clinton won the Democratic primary vote 55% to 43%. So, the votes should have been over-ridden because the candidate you and I preferred got fewer votes? (Yes, they also got more delegates but at the end of the day, the vote total was in line with the delegates.)