On the one hand: Yes, go to the ballot and vote blue. Even if they’re 99% Hitler. If you think you have “nothing to lose”, go look at Syria or Russia. ‘The worst the Republicans could do’ is worse than you can imagine.
On the other hand: Have you ever heard of the ultimatum game? Imagine you and a friend are offered $100, and your friend offers you a split of $X. You can either accept the $X, or reject it and you both get nothing. You might think you should accept the $X no matter how low, but if the scenario happens again and you have rejected low values last time, your friend will be more likely to offer you a fair X. Otherwise, if your friend’s a bastard (and he is), he’ll offer you $1.
Anyway, in 2020 the X offered was a Biden, and in 2024 the X offered was a Kamala. If every Leftist votes for Biden/Kamala/Next, then the DNC will keep offering the same dogshit or even shift right because 1) they want to grab more centrist voters (who won’t vote for a more progressive candidate), and 2) they won’t lose any leftist voters so why not. And then when the right-shifted candidate loses they’ll blame it on “leftists didn’t vote enough” anyway, in spite of the statistics saying otherwise.
So in other words: If you’re willing to vote for a 99% Hitler, don’t be surprised if you’re offered a 99% Hitler. Unless you’re expecting the DNC to be extremely principled, anti-corruption, and spineful?
“Vote blue no matter who” isn’t a solution; it’s forfeiting democracy (if you follow it, you literally don’t get to choose not to vote blue) in pursuit of… not letting Republicans in. Great! The Dems reliably prevented Trump from being re-elected, right? No, he trod water in the status quo but didn’t actually fix the core problems, so Trump’s “vote me in and I’ll burn down the system” still resonated with voters. But hey, at least Biden prosecuted Trump and all the criminals who he enabled to flagrantly break the law and rewrite it to their benefit? Not really, no.
“Vote Blue No Matter Who” is a travesty which can be at best justified as a strategy of lesser evil - but still evil. If it doesn’t have an expiry date then you’ve already abolished democracy, and that’s fucking horrifying, even if it’s the correct strategy.
So the solution is to not vote blue? Then what?
The solution is to stop treating politics like a brief interruption of your normal life around election time, after which you go back to being a passive pawn - which is what most people in the USA have been doing since Reagan at the latest.
Join a union, stand for local elections, organize strikes. All year round. If you cannot afford to do so right now, start/join local mutual help communities designed to save enough collective time for one of their members to do so. Reject the hyperindividualism injected into your culture by the wealthiest few permille specifically to hinder your ability to gain collective bargaining power.
Your only bloodless path towards victory is creating a convincing enough economic threat to the personal wealth of elected politicians as a balancing counter force.
Continue to fail to do so (as a people) and all voting for the lesser evil does is buy you time you’re then wasting.
Gotta love the schordinger leftist, simultaneously responsible for the Dems loosing and not significant enough for Dems to pander to.
Thought I was gonna get in before the “my candidate was imperfect for me so I didn’t vote so fuck everyone else” people.
Too late!
“Imperfect”
Looks at imperfection
Genocide
Oh good thing we have Trump now.
Looks at reality you created
Still genocide, but now it’s a regional war with Iran and people are talking about ethnically cleansing Gaza so Trump can build the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Good going. You really stopped that genocide by electing people who hate Muslims.
What would it take for you to admit your decision was stupid? If Trump drops a nuke oh Tehran, would that do it?
You are literally the only new account I’ve seen recently that isn’t actively trying to discourage people from voting. Good on you. For real it’s like Lemmy is allergic to the concept that they should fuckin vote and if they don’t vote, they’re still responsible for who wins by not voting. Fuck. Sorry, the discourse here is fucking infuriating and I’m drunk, and you’re a breath of fresh air.
One, democrats have already demonstrated their lack of appetite to protect trans rights.
Two, it’s a hostage situation that allows the “left” party to do nothing by just not being the actual villain. It won’t win them elections and won’t actually help anyone. You can’t pretend you’re the good guy if you just stand there while the bad guy shoots the people who you claim you want to help.
Three, vote for the love of gods. I don’t care if they’re the lesser evil, we can still make them change and that’s better than active evil. Their strategy of hostage taking might be a losing one, but we can force them to become the actual good guys
Remember Trump’s last term?
Remember Biden coming in and turning around a really shitty situation?
Then remember all the leftists 'ree’ing at each other and saying Biden didn’t do anything?
Remember Biden coming in and turning around a really shitty situation?
No lol what the fuck are you on about
