Gaza is not worse off than if the democrats changed, because if the democrats changed they’d win, as you point out yourself. And then things would be better for Gaza. I know you’re saying it’s worse off under Republicans than under Democrats…I’m skeptical it would be any different, but whatever, sure, maybe it’s 10% worse, idk. None of my business. I’m not voting for 10% less demonic when they could just stop being demons instead.
We’re not fucked because we didn’t vote for the Democrats, we’re fucked because the Democrats decided that continuing to support a genocide was more important than winning. No one should be asked to hold their nose that hard. Getting killed by Nazis would be better than actively helping and legitimizing the diet-nazis. The domestic horror is a rounding error. Feel free to throw in other points if you want too, medicare for all, meaningful environmental regulation, or whatever you want, maybe those would have been enough to make a difference, but I think Palestine is a pretty goddamn huge one. The point is they were not trying to be minimally palatable. I’m sure you know, but in case you didn’t, 2020 biden would have beaten 2024 trump…trump didn’t win (he did worse than he did in 2020), the democrats lost hard.
The party doesn’t cease to exist when it’s not in power; they don’t need to be in office to change. In fact, I’d say when they’re in office they’re impossible to change…why change when they’re winning? The party platform could say “Israel is conducting a genocide in Palestine and if you vote for us we’ll put a stop to US support for it.” They could announce that first thing in the morning if they gave a shit. I’d be banging on doors for them tomorrow afternoon, and I don’t think that’s an unusual position. Since they don’t give a shit about the genocide they have to carefully weigh whether it’s worthwhile, from the perspective of electoral success, to alienate zionists in order to win the support of people who do give a shit. Fine, I can’t control that. But I can control whether I vote for them or not; whether they actually have to consider that or not. Let them decide, but don’t look at me askance for not wanting to vote for more support for genocide.
If you voted for Harris, she was explicit, you were voting for continued support for genocide in Palestine. Maybe you can hold your nose and say “relative to trump, some slight reduction in horror there and significant reduction in horror here is enough for me to vote for continued horror there,” good for you, I 'aint judging, I don’t care. I can’t do that.
Well I’m not going to change your mind but I hope the three people who scroll by will consider trying to unfuck us all in the midterms in eight months.
But the whole point of your post is that they’ll win if people turn up for them. They have the power to decide whether people will vote to unfuck us in the midterms. I’m saying people (at least people like me) will not turn up to vote for genocide. All they have to do is say “we’re no longer going to provide weapons to Israel” and I’ll be there. I’ll spend my saturdays banging on doors. I’ll spend my evenings making calls for candidates. I’ve done it before…and I’d love to do it again. It’s fun and exciting and fulfilling. But not for this party as it is. And again, they know that, they’re suppressing their postmortem report for that reason. Maybe folks like me don’t matter, but obviously I think we do, and so do you if you’re making a post like this trying to convince us to show up despite our principles.
I know you’re trying to disengage and I’m sorry. I can’t help myself; this is a smear that I can’t just bear without responding to it.
Is voting for a democrat the only way to fight republicans? News to me!
So like…I help organize folks supporting workers, resisting cops, protesting, etc. That doesn’t count? It’d be better if I just sat on my ass and did all my fighting in the ballot box every two years?
Look, would it make you feel better if I said I’d be conflicted if I lived in a swing state? That I’m open to the idea that I might think differently if my choice not to vote actually mattered to the result of the election, rather than merely a signal to the democrats to do better?
Is voting for a democrat the only way to fight republicans?
In an election, for the purposes of determining who will govern - YES.
Look, would it make you feel better if I said I’d be conflicted if I lived in a swing state? That I’m open to the idea that I might think differently if my choice not to vote actually mattered to the result of the election, rather than merely a signal to the democrats to do better?
Well, my feelings being irrelevant, for a national office you should be open to supporting them because not everyone lives in your solid blue leftier-than-thou state. Or at least preface your denunciation of our only option accordingly.
If you can’t, you can’t. But on election day in November 2024 a bunch of people - for whatever reason - chose this most incompetent, corrupt, and demented timeline. And for those who did so because they hold high morals or standards - that’s ironic at least, if not unconscionable.
I’m not denouncing your decision, you’re denouncing mine! I think it’s fine for you to vote for a party that supports genocide if you think that it’s the lesser of two evils. You go for it.
I don’t understand what you mean that I should support the democrats from my very-liberal state because…other people don’t live in liberal states? I don’t follow, but if there’s some connection there, I’m happy to hear about it.
The democrats chose this in 2024 (well, I’d say they’ve BEEN choosing it since Bill Clinton). They poll on this stuff, they know what policies will get them elected and what policies will lose them donors. They’re the moral actors here; they’re the ones that make the decisions that matter. We just get to say our opinion once every few years. I wish people like you would stop trying to put it on individual voters. Blame the people with power. They know how to win, but they choose to lose, because, for them, losing (or at least risking losing) is better than doing what they’d need to do to win.
And I wish you’d stop saying this about having high morals or standards! My standards are not very high. Don’t arm a genocide. Pretty easy. Low bar. Low standards.
Who said anything about not fighting republicans? I’m all for fighting republicans.
Of course they are still a thing, and the democrats are significantly better on those issues than the republicans are (still not great, but significantly better). Palestine is an issue the democrats are not significantly better on and it’s significantly more dire and imminent. I don’t think any indigenous or black people would disagree with that; it matters a lot of course, but there are at least 75,000 dead palestinians in the last few years. So…yes it matters? Yes we should fight the republicans? No I don’t think we should accept the slaughter of Palestinians in exchange for progress on that?
You have to realize that this kind of question just makes people go straight to “death to America”, not “we have to vote for a more polite team to continue America’s long and bipartisan tradition of genocide, slavery, and imperialism”, right? Your framing is likely making people less likely to vote if that’s what you care about.
Even if that is the case, “republicans cheat” isn’t a great argument to get non-voters (not those who purposefully abstained) to vote.
So what you’ve accomplished here is that (from your point of view), leftists are more likely to vote Republican and (from my point of view) non voters are demoralized further by their lack of sway in a place where democracy is already dead, causing them to stay home. People don’t like participating in rigged systems where cheating is common. If you didn’t want republicans to keep winning, you should probably delete this post lol.
Gaza is not worse off than if the democrats changed, because if the democrats changed they’d win, as you point out yourself. And then things would be better for Gaza. I know you’re saying it’s worse off under Republicans than under Democrats…I’m skeptical it would be any different, but whatever, sure, maybe it’s 10% worse, idk. None of my business. I’m not voting for 10% less demonic when they could just stop being demons instead.
We’re not fucked because we didn’t vote for the Democrats, we’re fucked because the Democrats decided that continuing to support a genocide was more important than winning. No one should be asked to hold their nose that hard. Getting killed by Nazis would be better than actively helping and legitimizing the diet-nazis. The domestic horror is a rounding error. Feel free to throw in other points if you want too, medicare for all, meaningful environmental regulation, or whatever you want, maybe those would have been enough to make a difference, but I think Palestine is a pretty goddamn huge one. The point is they were not trying to be minimally palatable. I’m sure you know, but in case you didn’t, 2020 biden would have beaten 2024 trump…trump didn’t win (he did worse than he did in 2020), the democrats lost hard.
The party doesn’t cease to exist when it’s not in power; they don’t need to be in office to change. In fact, I’d say when they’re in office they’re impossible to change…why change when they’re winning? The party platform could say “Israel is conducting a genocide in Palestine and if you vote for us we’ll put a stop to US support for it.” They could announce that first thing in the morning if they gave a shit. I’d be banging on doors for them tomorrow afternoon, and I don’t think that’s an unusual position. Since they don’t give a shit about the genocide they have to carefully weigh whether it’s worthwhile, from the perspective of electoral success, to alienate zionists in order to win the support of people who do give a shit. Fine, I can’t control that. But I can control whether I vote for them or not; whether they actually have to consider that or not. Let them decide, but don’t look at me askance for not wanting to vote for more support for genocide.
If you voted for Harris, she was explicit, you were voting for continued support for genocide in Palestine. Maybe you can hold your nose and say “relative to trump, some slight reduction in horror there and significant reduction in horror here is enough for me to vote for continued horror there,” good for you, I 'aint judging, I don’t care. I can’t do that.
Well I’m not going to change your mind but I hope the three people who scroll by will consider trying to unfuck us all in the midterms in eight months.
I hope the democrats consider trying to unfuck us; they’ve got all the power to make that happen.
Well, they don’t, very specifically. They don’t have either chamber, the white house or a majority of SCOTUS.
That’s - that’s what the voting for them would do.
They have it within their power to listen to their base and stop supporting genocide. You consider that unthinkable.
But the whole point of your post is that they’ll win if people turn up for them. They have the power to decide whether people will vote to unfuck us in the midterms. I’m saying people (at least people like me) will not turn up to vote for genocide. All they have to do is say “we’re no longer going to provide weapons to Israel” and I’ll be there. I’ll spend my saturdays banging on doors. I’ll spend my evenings making calls for candidates. I’ve done it before…and I’d love to do it again. It’s fun and exciting and fulfilling. But not for this party as it is. And again, they know that, they’re suppressing their postmortem report for that reason. Maybe folks like me don’t matter, but obviously I think we do, and so do you if you’re making a post like this trying to convince us to show up despite our principles.
I know you’re trying to disengage and I’m sorry. I can’t help myself; this is a smear that I can’t just bear without responding to it.
Well your choices are to fight (vote Democratic) or not fight (not vote / not vote Democratic).
Sounds like you’re not going to fight and the reason is Palestine. That’s up to you, of course.
Is voting for a democrat the only way to fight republicans? News to me!
So like…I help organize folks supporting workers, resisting cops, protesting, etc. That doesn’t count? It’d be better if I just sat on my ass and did all my fighting in the ballot box every two years?
Look, would it make you feel better if I said I’d be conflicted if I lived in a swing state? That I’m open to the idea that I might think differently if my choice not to vote actually mattered to the result of the election, rather than merely a signal to the democrats to do better?
In an election, for the purposes of determining who will govern - YES.
Well, my feelings being irrelevant, for a national office you should be open to supporting them because not everyone lives in your solid blue leftier-than-thou state. Or at least preface your denunciation of our only option accordingly.
If you can’t, you can’t. But on election day in November 2024 a bunch of people - for whatever reason - chose this most incompetent, corrupt, and demented timeline. And for those who did so because they hold high morals or standards - that’s ironic at least, if not unconscionable.
I’m not denouncing your decision, you’re denouncing mine! I think it’s fine for you to vote for a party that supports genocide if you think that it’s the lesser of two evils. You go for it.
I don’t understand what you mean that I should support the democrats from my very-liberal state because…other people don’t live in liberal states? I don’t follow, but if there’s some connection there, I’m happy to hear about it.
The democrats chose this in 2024 (well, I’d say they’ve BEEN choosing it since Bill Clinton). They poll on this stuff, they know what policies will get them elected and what policies will lose them donors. They’re the moral actors here; they’re the ones that make the decisions that matter. We just get to say our opinion once every few years. I wish people like you would stop trying to put it on individual voters. Blame the people with power. They know how to win, but they choose to lose, because, for them, losing (or at least risking losing) is better than doing what they’d need to do to win.
And I wish you’d stop saying this about having high morals or standards! My standards are not very high. Don’t arm a genocide. Pretty easy. Low bar. Low standards.
Do you support the genocide of Native Americans or African Americans? Because that’s still A Thing and not fighting the republicans furthers it.
Who said anything about not fighting republicans? I’m all for fighting republicans.
Of course they are still a thing, and the democrats are significantly better on those issues than the republicans are (still not great, but significantly better). Palestine is an issue the democrats are not significantly better on and it’s significantly more dire and imminent. I don’t think any indigenous or black people would disagree with that; it matters a lot of course, but there are at least 75,000 dead palestinians in the last few years. So…yes it matters? Yes we should fight the republicans? No I don’t think we should accept the slaughter of Palestinians in exchange for progress on that?
You have to realize that this kind of question just makes people go straight to “death to America”, not “we have to vote for a more polite team to continue America’s long and bipartisan tradition of genocide, slavery, and imperialism”, right? Your framing is likely making people less likely to vote if that’s what you care about.
Well, I’m pretty sure those people were going to throw their vote away again anyway.
If some rando’s framing prevents someone from voting - ehh they really weren’t gonna vote anyway.
And, to be fair, if they’re saying “death to America” then letting the republicans run the table is a great way to accomplish that.
Even if that is the case, “republicans cheat” isn’t a great argument to get non-voters (not those who purposefully abstained) to vote.
So what you’ve accomplished here is that (from your point of view), leftists are more likely to vote Republican and (from my point of view) non voters are demoralized further by their lack of sway in a place where democracy is already dead, causing them to stay home. People don’t like participating in rigged systems where cheating is common. If you didn’t want republicans to keep winning, you should probably delete this post lol.