There’s nuance. Obviously, vote for the liberal over the fascist, it’s not even close. However, the fascists are absolutely represented in government, while there’s no leftist candidates to speak of. Leftists have to plug their nose and vote liberal, while fascists gleefully vote republican.
Voting is entirely for loss prevention, because ultimately it absolutely impacts minority groups and people who stand to lose a great deal by a republican victory. However, leftists will not be able to move America to the left by voting.
That’s why grassroots movements and building up of parallel structures are so important for leftism, it cannot work within the confines of a 2 party Capitalist state, and must be built from the bottom up.
You said there’s nuance but then went on to explain that there isn’t nuance and the only reasonable vote is for Biden. And you’re not wrong. There are a lot of folks pretending to be on the left acting like there’s a whole lot of nuance here, and that voting for someone other than Biden, or not voting at all, is an acceptable option.
None of this precludes advocating for your positions or doing other praxis, but when it comes to voting the answer is clear
There’s nuance, because leftists saying voting isn’t going to change anything meaningfully as far as moving towards the left is still true.
That is true, but not voting or casting a protest vote right now ensures fascism, under which there will be literally no choice at all.
At least under a democracy there are chances to improve things, like replacing FPTP with a better voting system that will actually allow the left a seat at the table. That’s already happening in some places and there’s a movement (supported by democrats and vehemently opposed by republicans) to enact alternative voting methods.
Unfortunately there’s been so much apathy for decades that the fascists have got their foot solidly in the door. There was nuance years ago, but we squandered it. There’s little point debating left vs liberal when fascism has taken hold. That must be stopped first.
There’s no such thing as moral neutrality in this environment, and as much as it sucks, not voting against fascism is the same as voting for fascism.
So is the illusion of being able to shift the Overton window in any way more important than saving your supporters from genocide?
I just don’t know why the Onus is never on Joe Biden himself. Why is it that we feel like he doesn’t have to earn any votes at all?
“Am I so out of touch? No, it’s the voters who are wrong.”
“Am I so out of touch? No, it’s the voters who are wrong.”
No, it’s more like “LOL you have to vote for me, or the fascist will win”. Democrats love opponents like Trump, because he helps them fundraise like crazy.
The onus isn’t on him because voting for him is for our benefit, not his.
Voting for someone other than Biden or not voting is an absolutely acceptable option, and I’m not pretending to be a leftist when I do so. I have Ranked Choice Voting in my state, but even if I didn’t, I would vote for who I most want in office because I have no faith in either democrats or republicans to fix the most important issues currently plaguing 99% of the people. Vilifying people for voting third party — when third parties are currently the only viable presidential and congressional solution apart from a violent revolution — is misguided.
Democrats are not your friends; you deserve better.
Leftist 3rd parties split votes between leftists and the more conservative liberals (who are the vast majority), increasing the chance of a Republican victory. I fully support right-wing people voting Libertarian though :)
With the politics of the U.S. population, and violent revolution would likely be fascist.
This is very well written and well said. If we want change that doesn’t come from working within the Democrats, we have to build our own robust party across all 50 states, drawing on strong local support. No one outside of the two parties is currently trying to do this, which speaks volumes about the Green and Libertarian Parties.
Leftists really have no choice other than to vote Democrat. We have to protect people who would be targeted by Republicans. We fundamentally go against left wing values if we don’t. I cannot call myself liberal or leftist or wherever in-between if I sit out an election where innocent people will suffer if one of the candidates wins.
I like how you’ve phrased this – voting for Biden isn’t because you necessarily like his policies or viewpoints, but because you want to protect people from Trump and the Republicans. I’d love if we didn’t have to worry about fascists, but we don’t have that luxury. As long as they’re a hair’s breadth away from power, we pick the option that opposes them.
Exactly. There’s one terminally online radlib here that I blocked because they were just shit-slinging for daring to suggest both voting Biden and unionizing, organizing, protesting, etc. As a leftist, we must work from without the Democratic party.
Speaking purely from a leftist perspective, I’m actually of the opinion that Anarchist principles of building up parallel structures actually may be more applicable to the American political climate, even if you’re more of a Council Communist, Libertarian Socialist, Marxist-Leninist, etc. The US is seeing rising Unionization, and dramatic impacts from it, so I think Syndicalism actually has some revolutionary potential, unlike waiting for a Vanguard Party a la MLism.
Just my 2 cents.
It’s funny, I thought that unions had passed their usefulness, and we needed a new structure to effectively push CEOs. And then the UAW and SAG proved me completely wrong, and I’m glad for it.
I think either way, you have the perfect viewpoint on this. Voting won’t work to create change, but that doesn’t mean you just ignore voting. You use it to protect what we have from fascists while initiating change from a new organization built from the ground up.
We have to protect people who would be targeted by Republicans.
How’s that going? Republicans are enacting all manner of bigoted policy. What are the Democrats doing to reverse their hateful shit at the federal level?
I’d love if we didn’t have to worry about fascists, but we don’t have that luxury. As long as they’re a hair’s breadth away from power, we pick the option that opposes them.
We don’t have that option. We have Democrats, who will always care more about decorum and procedural bullshit than they ever will about protecting anyone.
They don’t have the numbers in Congress necessary to take federal action. It’s a vicious circle – people don’t think they’re doing enough, so they don’t vote for them. As a result, they don’t have the numbers necessary to actually affect change. And then people don’t think they’re doing enough, and so forth. The justice department is suing states at least, but I agree that’s nowhere near enough.
If you have a way to get 60 Senate votes to protect minorities (or 50-51 who also are willing to overturn the filibuster) and the House majority, I’m all for it, and you have my support. In the absence of that, any action we take will be inadequate, no matter who is in office.
And Democrats may not be perfect, but a vote that doesn’t go to fascists is a win in my book. I also think we should try to maintain norms and decorum for as long as possible – if we can beat back fascism without compromising on our institutions, we emerge as a much stronger democracy than if we have to break the rules. If that’s what it takes to stop fascists though, then so be it. I just worry that you end up in a French Revolution type situation where there’s no stable governance because everyone’s given up on the rules.
Be the millionaire Democrat socialist/ liberal representative you want to be!
There’s no chance they’d ever let an actual Socialist into office within the 2 party Capitalist system.
while fascists gleefully vote republican.
If I was a fascist, I’d vote Dem - fascism just gets more traction with liberals in the Waffle House, and Dems are utterly ineffective at actually doing anything to stop fascism anyway. It was Trump whipping the fascists into a froth while a lib was in the Waffle House that brought antifa into the streets - not Trump actually humiliating himself on a daily basis in the Offal Office.
Fascists just gets more from a Dem regime - the Dems are doing a fine job strengthening fascist institutions. If Pig City was being constructed under Trump, the resistance to it would be ten times stronger.
None of this means you are wrong, of course (you’re not) - but if voting can stop fascists it simply means the political institutions aren’t ready to hand power over to them just yet. They are working on it, though.
Accelerationism works both ways, I suppose, but there legitimately are fascists in the republican party.
but there legitimately are fascists in the republican party.
Doesn’t matter. The actual fascists doesn’t matter. The thing to be concerned about isn’t the fascists themselves - what matters is the liberals that will hand power to the fascists if their precious status quo is threatened enough.
The thing about fascists that nobody except leftists seem to understand is that fascists serve a very distinct purpose in the classical liberal nation-state - they don’t exist in a vacuum as some kind of “aberration”. Fascism cannot exist without threatened capitalists funding them. Fascism cannot exist without liberals handing power to them to maintain their precious “Law & Order.”
There is no such thing as “grass-roots fascism” - it’s all coming from above.
If Pig City was being constructed under Trump, the resistance to it would be ten times stronger.
I think I once would have believed this but I do not anymore, and I wouldn’t be willing to bet the lives of all people who aren’t white, heterosexual cis-men on a resistance suddenly appearing. If anything, it seems like people are more willing to normalize, or at least look away from, atrocities than I would have ever imagined in the past.
and I wouldn’t be willing to bet the lives of all people who aren’t white, heterosexual cis-men on a resistance suddenly appearing
You won’t get the chance to bet on it - it is simply the direction in which the US political establishment is careening. By all means, vote your conscience - hell, I’ll vote with you - but don’t be surprised when that doesn’t alter the course much… or even at all.
If anything, it seems like people are more willing to normalize, or at least look away from, atrocities than I would have ever imagined in the past.
Certainly - but then, again… a lot of us always have. That’s how we ended up here in the first place, isn’t it?
If you were intelligent and you’re not, you would already be voting Democratic. That you can’t tell who are the bad from the good guys in this scenario just speaks to how illiterate and unintelligent you right wingers truly are.
No democrat has ever helped “strengthen” a fascist institution. It’s possible you’re just idiotic and haven’t had any education. In fact, I’d say you just proved it beyond all question.
And frankly I’d rather have democratic fascists anyway. Whatever that looks like - I’ll take it over a repuglican one anyday.
No democrat has ever helped “strengthen” a fascist institution.
“Fund the police” - Joe Biden.
No democrat has ever helped “strengthen” a fascist institution.
Biden literally had a pig for a running mate, genius - what did you think the police really is?
I bet you can’t tell me what the first police department in the world was called or why they were created, eh?
Like all “enlightened centrists,” you don’t even know - and don’t want to know - the history of the institutions you are so desperate to normalize. Like all “enlightened centrists,” you don’t want to see the brutal violence that upholds your preciosu status quo. It’s only when it shows up on your doorstep that you start ineffectively whining about it.
It’s true what the leftists say - fascism is just colonialism coming home to roost. And it’s only the “coming home” part that you have a problem with.
And frankly I’d rather have democratic fascists anyway
Oh, I know what those look like - I grew up in Apartheid-era South Africa. They were pretty “democratic” - and their “democracy” would be quite compatible with your batshit liberal conception of it.
The US is about as “democratic” as the USSR was “socialist” - ie, they never were and never will be. You couldn’t handle actual democracy, Clyde - your understanding of politics is too constrained to even recognize it when it happens and instead you feel threatened by it.
So go… vote “harder.” But when (not if) the faux “democrats” you put your faith in delivers you onto the fascists do remember - somebody tried to explain to you why.
I am not saying I am not voting for Biden, but running on the platform of “vote for us or bad things will happen” is a shitty platform.
Look I get it, I also wanted someone different than Biden in 2020. But I truly don’t think it’s sane political strategy to run a different democratic candidate when you already have a sitting democratic president who’s able to run for another term. The loss of the incumbent advantage is way higher than any benefit a new candidate would bring (from a voter turnout perspective, not a policy one). People would be rightly furious if the Democrats ran a new guy only to lose to trump based on name recognition alone.
I think it’s the sane option when said candidate is 80 years old.
Most people are in a care home or dead at that age.
That’s true of both of them, thereby making your point moot.
If you really want to change this, run in your local elections, and state elections. You can change far more at the local level than the federal, by design.
Of the two major parties, the GOP is far closer to what you’re describing. If it wasn’t for fear mongering, the GOP wouldn’t have anything at all to go off of. Bad things will happen like, immigrants flooding the borders, socialism raising your taxes, your kids being taught to be gay, etc. “Vote for us or bad things will happen” might as well be the official slogan of the GOP. Either that or “White Christians good, everyone else, bad”. Take your pick.
No, everyone loves being scared and shamed into voting for a candidate that supports a genocide.
That’s not the platform they are running on at all though. That’s something I only hear progressives online say as they attack centrists to the delight of right wingers.
You never heard “we need to stop trump” or “help us stop trump” from democrats? Being not-trump has been the party platform ever since he got elected, to the point where they adoringly talk about any republican that has argued against him, even scumbags like john bolton.
I think their point is that Democrats aren’t progressives. They’re Neo-Liberals, aka, conservatives.
I personally have to hold my nose and vote for Democrats when the party puts forth the most milquetoast conservatives that they can possibly find. Hell they had to run an 80 year old candidate just to find someone that agrees with the DNC corporate policies.
This isn’t to say both parties are the same. They aren’t. The Republicans are absolutely fascists that want to destroy democracy because it doesn’t work for them at all. The Democrats are only willing to work with democracy because it’s working for them thus far.
Don’t tell that to all those weekend armchair political quarterbacks, though, you’ll be bombarded by a barrage of “mUh PuRiTy! bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL aMiRiTe!” confirmation-biased autistic screeching.
Other voters have standards. I get that you don’t but you need the people to your left that you hate if you want to defeat the fascists.
Yeah exactly. It’s so shitty we will most likely have 2 terrible terrible choices.
In primaries, yes. In the presidential election, no. That’s how we get DeSantis.
DeSantis is done. We (the progressives) don’t have that option any more (as opposed to full on dictator Trump as our alternative option to Biden) Disney has effectively buried DeSantis.
Don’t get me wrong. DeSantis would have been far more effective as a dictator that Trump ever will be. DeSantis was supposed to be more subtle and therefore more effective than Trump for the fascists. He picked a fight with Disney, and has removed that aspect of his political currency. I’m particularly glad that DeSantis did this, as I still feel that he would be much more destructive to the US democracy than Trump has ever imagined in his most feverish of delusional fantasies.
Fucking thank you! I read so much bullshit about this group or that one saying they’re not gonna support Biden because of whatever, it makes me want to scream
A lot of those people and the enlightened centrists who say “both parties are the same” are disinformation warriors and Russian bots designed to erode support for Biden. Even just 1% or 2% can make a difference in some battleground states.
It really depends on what fields you’re comparing. For example, in terms of climate change, both parties, policies will result in the destruction of the planet. Period.
When people say that, they’re saying we need radical change to stop the problems right in front of us, and neither party is doing that.
Ok so you DEFINITELY don’t know what you’re talking about then. Climate change is one of the issues that they’re furthest apart on. One has repeatedly made efforts to work with the international community to expand green energy and reduce emissions, and the other believes it’s a lie and wants to double down on fossil fuel production and consumption. Just because it’s not the immediate, drastic, quasi-legal action that you’d like to see, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
Or maybe people plugging their ears and pretending everything is some giant misinformation campaign against their home team because they think they deserve the win without trying are being shocked to find they don’t have the support they think is owed to them for simply not being fascists.
If everything you hear is just some fake person with no real problems you miss the people actually complaining about their legitimate ones and feel forgotten about and at best don’t vote and at worst vote for the side that agrees that it would be fun to pick on the people perceived as above them.
Biden should at least run debates or else people are just going to be in exactly their own bubble of awareness and have his results of his presidency to work with and hopes and dreams of the other and people suck at objective looks at reality and are much more willing to believe in fairy tales than you think.
And I know my statement makes everyone foam at theouth cause “How dare I say this!” But it is what it is. You must look reality in the face of you want to have any hope controlling it.
Without arguments like these in 2016, women in the south would still be able to have abortions. If you want change, find local elections with candidates you agree with. Their campaigns typically pay well, in my experience, or you can volunteer if the pay doesn’t matter to you. It’s more fruitful than throwing your hands in the air and shouting about disenfranchisement.
If Biden wants those groups to stop being detractors, there is a very easy solution - simply hold a primary for DNC president, and let them cast their “other” vote there. Then Dems can galvanize support for the winning candidate in ‘24.
Unfortunately they know this won’t work due to how massively unpopular Biden is, and so they refuse. So, the problem is that DNC doesn’t want a democratically elected president, they want to try to force a genocidal dinosaur down our throats and somehow at the same time claim that the end of democracy is voting for the other guy. It’s a lose-lose for America - thanks, Biden.
Yeah, Biden doesn’t have to support genocide. He can do the right thing. He just chooses not to.
Precisely. The claims of at least trying to protect civilian lives might be believable if the US wasn’t blocking every single effort at the UN to send in peacekeepers to stop the genocide. Or, you know, not approving $14Bn more taxpayer dollars to go towards sending them even more bombs to drop.
Biden’s lies to provide cover for Israel’s war crimes are boldfaced, undeniable, and disgustingly cowardly.
Biden has to earn my vote, just like every other candidate. If you want me to vote for Biden, convince me. What do you like about his platform? Can you convince me to vote for Biden without bringing up Trump?
That doesn’t make any sense. You’re basically saying that you refuse to look at a suite of potential consequences of your vote. That’s not responsible at all.
Can you convince me to vote for Biden without bringing up Trump?
What would be the point in that when Trump is the only other candidate who has a chance of winning? The rational thing to do is to compare and contrast them.
If you’re not going to vote for either of them, you might as well not vote at all. You’re not going to have an effect. Decades of people voting third party have not gotten any third party anywhere. Not even when Ross Perot tried it and he actually had a decent chance.
I think there’s something wrong with a system that every 4 years have you pick wether you’d rather get repeatedly punched in the face or shot
Where am I being shot? Maybe it’s someplace kinda safe like the ass. I would take a bullet to the ass over being punched in the face.
This is not trump support, was a joke about how neither is a good experience. But whatever y’all
Just to name a few:
Continued support and funding to Israel with only the most tepid condemnation as people became more aware of their genocide against Palestinians.
busting the railway union which arguably, if their demand had been met, may not have had the disaster in Ohio. A move rivaled only by Regan
Despite being told that we had to fight for “kids in cages” nothing has actually come to fruition on that front
Woah woah. Biden is definitely the getting punched in the face candidate less we remember that Trump will happily send innocent people to jail for calling him names.
He tear gassed a protest to get a photo of him as supreme leader with his upside down borrowed ǝlqı𐐒.
He will happily roll back any regulations and protections and enrich anyone and any country that makes his erection harder.
Trump is absolutely the getting shot option and it’s in the leg and you think it may have nicked an artery.
On Israel, you’re spot on.
The rail union thing…that was a hard one, but ultimately, 3/4 of the unions involved had already approved the deal the government forced. A strike could have cost 750k jobs across the entire economy, and we’d be in full-on recession mode right now.
On immigration… We stopped forcibly removing kids from their families and have been working to reunite the families Trump separated. They’re currently working on reestablishing judicial discretion (which the Trump admin removed) and fired a bunch of the Trump-appointed immigration judges. The system still really sucks, but that’s a legislative issue, not an executive one. At this point, the alternative is talking about immigrants poisoning the blood of our country.
Joe ain’t left-wing, that’s for sure, but he’s the best candidate in the batch at this point (that can win the presidency while we’re locked into a 2 party system).
Biden made the best of a bad situation with the railway union issue. He worked pretty hard and without any need for adulation behind the scenes to continue resolving the strikers needs.
Allowing the railways to collapse would have been financially devastating.
America got 300mil people and the best 2 candidates to lead the country is Trump and Biden??
It’s never been about the best candidates. That’s a story for school children. In reality it’s all about who is connected to who, who makes favors for who etc.
And naturally you need to be rich, which means you are already connected to a web of individuals who you owe favors, or are expected to satisfy in different ways.
“Best?” Of course not, that’s not how the 2 party system works. We don’t live in some meritocracy, Capital is what makes the gears turn. The system is designed to change as little as possible.
That’s why Unionization and organization at a grassroots level is the only way to move America meaningfully to the left, vote Dem to keep fascists out of office while actually doing the hard work yourself on the ground.
What else do you expect from a colonial imperialist state?
It’s surprising rather that Hitler didn’t resurrect to run for president. I imagine he’d get a good chunk of votes.
What else do you expect from a colonial imperialist state?
New colonies at the very least. Haven’t seen any new colonies created imperially in a couple hundred years at least.
One such colony is committing a genocide in Palestine right now.
Technically started as a british colony I suppose, but it’s been functioning far more like a US one.
