I think it's important for liberals to realize that the far-right is fully represented by and actively appealed to by the GOP, while the entirety of the left is forced to fall in line with a center-right candidate or a far-right candidate.
Obviously, the center-right candidate is better than the far-right candidate, but liberals have been doing an awful job of actively appealing to leftists. Fascists line up with glee to vote for their favorite demon, while leftists have to vote for someone that doesn't represent their views at all, just not someone doing even more harm.
What would be better is if the democrat party actually threw a bone to leftists. Pass Medicare for all, for example. Instead, we are stuck with voting out of fear, rather than voting for something.
32As someone on the left, explain to me what we're supposed to be doing to appeal to folks on the right, earnestly. Seems like every time Dems want to throw Republicans a bone they torpedo it themselves - border deal much?
Have those on the left considered for a moment that their entire political party in America has been hijacked by people who are actually trying to take everyone's rights away? Been told by the left "fuck your feelings" for quite some time, but no things aren't perfect for their group, burn the whole thing down?
4The left doesn't have a political party, so I'm not sure what you want me to say. I don't think the leftists should try to implement incorrect or brutal solutions just to throw right-wingers a bone, that's like saying they can do a little KKK as a treat.
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- Makes a massive legislative priority out of the ACA, aiming for genuine reform and then after extensively having the original pared back within our neoliberal hellscape, still manages to somehow pass a substantial reform which gets health insurance to a huge number of people, and defends it against multiple serious attempts to murder even that fairly corporate-friendly system which in DC politics is somehow akin to the Cultural Revolution
- "Waaaaaaa! I wanted medicare for all."
- Makes comprehensive immigration reform a key priority, bringing the number of removals + returns down from about 1.2 million in 2008, to around 430,000 in 2016, i.e. a huge number more people are able to stay in the country. DACA provides key protections for one of the most important categories of "illegal" immigrant who we shouldn't be kicking out. Also, the number in the "removals" column goes up.
- "WAAAAAAAA DEPORTER IN CHIEF DEPORTER IN CHIEF"
- Student loan forgiveness infrastructure act gun reform federal marijuana pardons, also no fascist dictatorship
- "Too old, do not want, not left enough."
2-liberal attempts at reform without radical change
-more liberal attempts at reform without radical change
-more liberal attempts at reform without radical change
Again, none of this is actually to the left, it's still liberalism and still center-right. For people who believe the system itself is fucked and needs to be restructured, of course moderate reform isn't going to be enough.
You're proving my point. Biden is decent for a liberal, at being a liberal. That is not a leftist. Trump is great at being a fascist, and fascists love to vote for him. Leftists have to bite their tongues and fall in line with a moderate right winger that will never attempt to appeal to them.
Did you even read my comment?
13Leftists have been saying for literal decades how the modern measures of economic outlook -unemployment, total job numbers, stock market profitability, ect - are designed to misrepresent or ignore the actual economic outlook of working-class americans.
It's crazy to me that now that a growing portion of the public are seeing the misalignment of those measures, it's suddenly the fault of leftists that the democratic party is loosing support because 'we're being uncharitable to Biden's achievements'.
Democrats are pointing the metrics republicans have been using for 50 years to advocate for their reactionary policy and saying to moderate republicans 'look! we're working toward the same goals!', and yet somehow leftists are supposed to give democrats credit for working within the limits of those metrics that are designed to undermine working-class interests?
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Your ignorance around the political process is daunting.
-7"Daunting?" How so? If you mean to say that you believe I think Biden secretly has dictatorial power he isn't using, then you've misunderstood my point. I understand that the system is built to change as little as possible via the electoral process. However, that doesn't mean leftists have to be happy with a complete and utter lack of motion or intent on moving towards Socialism.
6No, I think they've pretty much got it right: If things aren't set up the right way, we whine, and refuse to choose better outcomes over worse ones until Daddy comes and fixes the whole thing to be better. I'm pretty sure that's how it works.
(I'm being a little unkind. I'm actually talking with Cowbee and feel like there's a potential of a pretty good conversation there, and I don't think they're wholly off base or talking in bad faith like a lot of people are on this topic.)
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Wait is this implying that tankies want trump to win? I mean wouldn't be surprising since they already support every other genocidal maniac in the world but man
31There's been a moderate-sized influx of supposed good leftists who all of a sudden are very concerned with spreading the message that both parties are basically the same, and voting won't change anything. I won't say all of them are fake Trump-promoted social media shills, but I definitely believe some nonzero number of them are that.
26I've even noticed them around here, asking with some who claim to be left but will comment on how bad Joe is on articles about TFG.
5Don't forget that Russia pays people to do this subterfuge shit and Russia desperately needs Trump to win.
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They want him to win because they want the whole place to burn down.
16"After Trump, our turn"
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I have no way of knowing, but I think it's honestly way simpler than that. I think people on the left who are relentlessly shitting on Biden are pretty much made up of X percent shills and (100-X) percent people who have been taken in by shills.
It would be easier, more productive, and safer to hold up some particular other Democrat as the one that we should be supporting instead of Biden, if the goal was a better Democratic nominee who didn't have all these problems they're so nail-bitingly concerned will hurt Biden in the election with Trump, which is leading to them innocently trying to help by shitting on him. I've literally never once heard them say a productive solution along those lines, though. Nope, just that Biden is bad.
Also, they keep insisting that voting won't accomplish anything, and direct action is needed instead, because the system is irrevocably broken. I have asked many of them, with genuine interest and motivation to help, what direct action I can do, because I also think direct action (on behalf of Gaza for example) sounds great. Guess how many answers I've gotten.
6Direct action is when you obstruct or threaten to act against a target group's interest or influence in order to pressure them into concessions.
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here is an idea: how about neither?
1Yeah, I think the pic describes op fairly well. I'm convinced they're an accelerationist and intentionally spread voter apathy.
-1An accelerationist wouldn’t have to be proactive. They could just sit back and let the country fall apart on its own. Voter apathy existed before my post, and will continue to exist until our electoral system is changed.
An accelerationist would advocate for the status quo, which maintains the duopoly.
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No, our goal is to steer Democrats to produce a candidate that will beat Trump in November.
If Biden continues taking planks from the Republican platform then he won't win.
If Biden appoints an AG that completely ignores Republican crimes and instead appoints special counsels to trash Biden, then he won't win.
-21You understand that is absolutely not going to happen, right.
I want an AOC/Sanders ticket but, again, that is 100% not going to happen.
If you're talking about throwing votes away on a third party candidate, well, that absolutely is a really stupid thing that could happen.
30Produce a candidate from where? Who? When? November approaches.
16From their secret bunker of far left candidates of course!
The more these idiots speak on the more inclined I am to belief they aren't actually Americans. No one is this is politically activated and this ignorant of the process.
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If Biden continues taking planks from the Republican platform then he won't win.
Because you think Americans are dumb? In first past the post voting, if you have Hitler and Hitler lite, you vote for lite or you end up with classic. Do you think people don't know that?
We need to be spending our anger and political capital on changing the voting system. Everything else is begging for scraps from slightly-less-right-wing crazies.
16As far as I can tell, voting for Biden doesn't consume any energy at all that might be directed instead at changing the voting system. Vote, done. If you want to expend energy talking about it on the internet, you can, and that seems fine, but the voting part is pretty straightforward.
Most of the voting-advocacy energy I see expended on the leftist sections of the internet seems to be devoted to why not to vote in the election. I would actually really welcome someone devoting energy to changing the voting system instead of that, and letting it go completely assumed that of course we're going to vote for Hindenburg instead of Hitler ("Hitler-lite" is an absolutely wrong designation for Biden, although generally I agree with your post and message, and if he was Hitler-lite it would still be better to vote for him instead of Classic.)
Almost makes me think the loud not-voting advocacy is not friendly leftists who of course want the best for the Democrats, and are just so concerned with fixing the voting system that they have no time for anything other than advocating against voting for Biden.
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Who is this "Democrats" that you are trying to steer, by shitting on Biden? Democratic voters?
You have one. I am steerable. I am going to vote in the Democratic primary soon. Presumably, the person who wins in the primaries will have the nomination. Who should I vote for instead?
Because relentlessly trashing Biden as a way to get a replacement, without bothering to even figure out who that replacement might be, during the middle of the process which literally requires and only requires that voters agree on a replacement, seems a little not-quite-matching-the-priority-you-are-claiming-is-the-priority.
(I know, Bernie Nevada it's not that simple et cetera I know. The point that I'm making is that Bernie was an identified person who people could vote for. No one was relentlessly making memes about how Hilary was bad without bothering to support anyone else in particular, and then claiming they were just looking out for the Democrats because they were just concerned she wouldn't be able to beat Trump, and explaining all the ways she sucked and waiting for someone else to figure out who instead.)
15I would 1000% support Katie Porter.
She doesn't have the political capital to sustain a presidential run, but I'd love to see her at least put her name out there. Similar to Yang in 2020. But she's going to follow the rules and not run until 2028.
My biggest gripe with Biden is that he's too old. He was old in 2020 but I still vote for him because I was against Trump.
That's what this election is. Are we voting for democracy or fascism?
Democrats haven't put out a decent candidate since Obama, and I say that as someone who was a conservative when he was up for election. Hillary was just......awful. 2020 was an election to put Trump out of office, not necessarily to put Biden into office.
I'm not saying Biden is a bad candidate but he isn't great either. But compared to Miami Mussolini, yeah I'll be voting Biden.
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