Kbin/Mbin (and possibly others?) definitely have the edge here since those platforms make votes public (only admins can see them on Lemmy). So, if you want to confirm what I’m saying here, go view some of these posts from Kbin/Mbin.
Every time one of the “usual suspects” says stuff like this in the comments, there will later be posts detailing how Biden is doing (or at least earnestly trying to do) exactly the things they’re saying he needs to be doing (oR ElSe i WiLl noT voTE anD NEithER ShoULD yoU!!!11!!). 100% of the time, those posts are downvoted by these same “usual suspect” accounts.
What gives? They have very strong opinions about how he should run his administration, so you’d think they’d appreciate him doing what they’ve been so helpfully suggesting. Unless…it was never about the issues at all.
That thin veneer of concern they’re hiding behind is not as thick as they think it is and is quite easy to see through. Now you know where to look.
Edit: Please don’t name and shame any specific users. That may violate the community or LW rules. We all know who most of the “usual suspects” are.
Their goal is to be loud and waste time and energy.
CLASSIC LINKERBAAN
Prior to 1993, Canadian politics was dominated by two parties: The Liberals, and the Progressive Conservatives.
In the federal election of 1993, the government of the Progressive Conservatives (who had been in power for 9 years) was so unpopular that their vote collapsed and they won only 2 seats in parliament. The Progressive Conservatives were never again a political force in Canada.
In the same election, the votes for minor parties like the Bloc Quebecois and the Reform Alliance surged, with the Bloc Quebecois becoming the new official opposition party with 54 seats in parliament.
Is it wrong for me to hope something similar will happen in the US elections?
It’s not at all unreasonable to hope for it, but you need to see sufficiently low support for the party in question. That does not look even slightly plausible in the upcoming US election. It might happen in the upcoming UK one, and you can see clearly the difference in polling and reporting
Wrong? No. But I would warn, as a fellow Canadian myself, that it didn’t totally fix the problem.
Pierre Polievre (current right wing leader who walked with the Trucker convoy) is probably going to win at least a minority, and the more right wing parts of my family can’t hide their hope he “finally helps the majority, rather then all these minorities getting help.”
If he wins a minority he has to partner with another party to form government.
He’s been shit talking them all so they probably are going to tell him to fuck his hat.
Or the liberals will join up with him and they’ll just make sure no one hurts the corporations they were paid by.
If he wins a minority he has to partner with another party to form government.
No, that’s not how it works in Canada. By convention, whichever party has the most seats in parliament forms government, even they don’t have a majority.
In theory, the other parties could form a coalition (giving them a majority of seats), but Canada has no tradition of that and the last time a group of parties proposed doing that, it led to a constitutional crisis.
No, but it is foolish to think that it begins at the Presidency. Historically, new parties have emerged from grassroots movements, beginning with local offices like school boards and city councils. Otherwise, they have been splintered from existing parties.
So do those things down-ballot instead.
Yeah, people talking about proportional representation seem to turn a blind and eye to the Senate, which has had principled socialists and libertarians in its seats. It’s not a healthy state of affairs, but if you wanted to send a message to the Democrats theres a proven way to do it in house and Senate races, trying to make big swings at the presidential level is just idiotic and betrays bad faith.
Yeah we can limp along with a major party and a minor party for a couple decades. We have before.
There will never be more than 2 for more than 1 election cycle. Ross Perot couldn’t do it. Pat Buchanan couldn’t do it. George Wallace couldn’t do it.
Teddy Big Brass Balls Roosevelt couldn’t do it with with his Bull Moose Party as a two term ex president. If he couldn’t do it, nobody can.
I get what you’re saying, but the Reform Party was a far-right Christian nationalist party that was against gay marriage, any immigration that would alter the “ethnic makeup” of Canada, and had a problem of attracting openly racist supporters. Not the greatest example of a small party seeing a surge in support!
US parties are much less locally run than Canadian parties are.
In the US you’re basically just voting for a face on your preferred platform, and that platform is homogeneous across state lines.
The only place in the US that even has different parties is Puerto Rico and that’s more about their specific debate about their status within the US.
Yea. Sorry, the conditions are MASSIVELY different. In every conceivable way. Populations, demographics, broken government systems, corruption, info wars being waged by forgien interests, literal trillions of dollars at stake.
Canada is awesome… but it’s a Podunk backwater with barely the population of a single state and a much much much more homogeneous population (especially in the 90s)
Everyone (large governments) on the planet is fighting over control of America. If Trump wins, the global fascist agenda kicks off and the whole planet goes with it. This is a historical inflection point.
The PCs loosing just meant they created new parties and came back a few years later. They all stayed rich and white.
and a much much much more homogeneous population
I wouldn’t say that. There’s a pretty big linguistic and cultural split in Canada that doesn’t exist in the USA. French Canada and English Canada sometimes feel like different worlds.
It doesn’t feel homogeneous at all.
(especially in the 90s)
Just FYI, Canada came very close to splitting into two different countries in 1995. The vote was 50.58% to 49.42%.
It was a national crisis and the culmination of decades of national tensions.
Always have to include the caveat “he’s trying” to make it not a lie lol.
Neoliberals are great at trying real real hard and never getting there. Kind of like how he “tried” to convince Netanyahu to stop committing genocide and then ended up sending him billions in aid.
Nah, I’m done voting for anyone taking AIPAC money. I’ll submit a blank ballot before I vote for any of those pieces of shit.
I’ll submit a blank ballot before I vote for any of those pieces of shit.
We thank you for your privilege.
Voting is the right. Voting blank to prove a point is a privileged action.
There’s people who will be in much greater risk if trump is president, and to not do everything possible to avoid that speaks to privilege.
You could just say you don’t understand how federal laws are passed in the United States and I’m sure someone would you the ELI5.
This video is a pretty great introduction to how laws are passed.
Once you understand that hopefully you’ll understand why Joe Biden can’t just do all the things he’d like to.
Dang that’s some irony right there. Imagine lecturing soneone on how laws are passed and not even knowing what a veto is. And trying to be condescending on top of that.
The president has powers to veto laws and also, as commander in chief he has power to delay or direct aid even when congress goes around him.
Presidents have witheld munitions and aid in the past, this isn’t a question.
Biden couldn’t veto anything related to Israel if he wanted to. All Republicans and enough Democrats would vote to override it instantly. Because Congress is the problem. But sure, continue to waste effort and be counterproductive.
Grow up.
I’d vote for a plank of wood before Trump, and it’s not because I believe the plank of wood is doing the right thing in Gaza. Someone is going to become president of the United States, and unfortunately for now that’s either a Republican or a Democrat. Trump will be worse in Gaza, in addition to being much worse on a whole bunch of other issues.
Ultimately I’d like to see many parties, no more electoral college and ranked choice voting. But I live here and now, so I’m going to vote for the option that’s least harmful.
Just admit you have no fucks to give to those that live here in America and instead, will side with people in a country you probably couldn’t have pointed to on a map a year ago and save us all the suffering of having to constantly explain how things work to you.
Yeah, as long as upper middle-class Americans are comfortable, absolutely. Saving you from the consequences of your own conservative politics would be a great honor. The rest of the country and world just needs to take a few more for the team am I right?
The simple fact that you’re suggesting that my politics are “conservative” truly shows you’re not here to even try to be in good faith.
An in fairness. I’m only here to help you call yourself out.
I, too, am a very left leftie. So I, too, will be doing checks notes exactly what the most fascist people want me to do. A corrupt Christofascist regime taking control will help us do a socialism. I am very smart.
Socialism isn’t in the cards, not sure what you’re on about with that. This is just about throwing a hail mary to try to stop the democratic party from continuing their slide to the right so they can even begin to actually organize to maybe be a force that might oppose fascism.
Like, that’s what I think maybe you’re confused about – Joe Biden is not helping stop the encroachment of fascism, he and politicians like him are literally just slow boiling average democrats into becoming complacent fascists themselves. That’s arguably an even worse scenario than Trump taking another term because when Trump does Trump stuff people actually get outraged, but when Biden does Trump stuff people just kind of shrugg and say “lesser evil”. That complacency and refusal to acknowledge the reality in front 9f them is what will kill our democracy.
You still think it’s this red team blue team thing, but the majority of the blue team are unwilling to actually fight and often help the red team and play grab ass with them, so they need to be opposed in addition to the red team.
What you’re not getting is that we’re past the stage where you can just vote blue and it will magically fix things. Voting for certain democrats is actually harmful and pushses us to the right, not away from it.
“A Trump term is better for stopping fascism, because of reasons.” Pretty delusional. He has already done a putsch and is promising to be a dictator.
You have been living under a rock. When the Repubs win the Dems go further right, not left.
100% this. They think they’re not being seen for what they are, but it’s all right there. Plain as day.
In my experience, any criticism of Biden is immediately met with “but Trump is worse!!!” Rather than any current argument as to why Biden isn’t actually that bad.
If the responses WERE generally any Biden I’d still dislike Biden but I wouldn’t bitch so much about him. Every once in a while you find someone making an effort to defend Biden in good faith and, great. We can disagree on the dude, that’s fine. But if I can’t criticize Biden without immediately being redirected to talking about Trump, I’m going to keep talking about Biden. If the best case scenario is we’re stick with this guy for another 4 years I would appreciate some pressure to do better.
There are plenty of reasons why Biden isn’t that bad. And I’ve seen enough people list them that I don’t feel I should waste the time. The information is very easy to obtain…
And Trump IS worse. News flash… BOTH things can be true.
Now in MY experience, most… and I said MOST criticism about Biden is about one single thing.
gEnoCiDe.
And it’s mostly from people that have no history of showing any support for Palestine prior to several months ago. Also, it’s from people that have no viable solutions to the question of who we should vote for if not Biden.
Because not voting doesn’t cancel an election.
And you’re absolutely right. He 100% should do better. And he should be held accountable for the things he could have done better- in whatever way is fair and just- But when you’re in the middle of a hurricane, you don’t bitch at FEMA for not sending people to drain your flooded basement. You endure what you have to to get through it.
We need to get through this.
Now…
To the actual far lefters, I’d say:
We are risking losing our entire democracy. This isn’t something to hold hostage in a negotiation over foreign affairs. I’d suggest you take this shit seriously- the genocide will be MUCH worse due to willful inaction. And you won’t have anyone to blame but yourselves.
To the “far lefters” that are actually MAGA bots here to disrupt our election:
You’re not fooling anyone.
I love that you’re gatekeeping caring about genocide. This just goes to show how amazing of a job biden is doing that you can rationalize defending genocide with “actually the people who are anti-genocide are the real bad guys because they don’t actually care, according to me”.
There’s a shit storm of astroturfed anti Biden sentiment. You know this, everyone knows this. Knowing that, you should know that there aren’t enough hours in the day to eloquently frame and debate the benefits of Biden. To people who most likely aren’t even listening. At a base level, Trump WILL be worse on all issues. It’s a fact. And if Biden doesn’t win. Trump WILL. Also a fact.
It’s not a great argument. But it’s the only argument necessary. The fact that you act wounded or surprised by this seems very disingenuous. Why are others obliged to spend their time explaining public knowledge to you? Not to knock those that do just that. It is important after all. But where’s the entitlement coming from.
I keep hearing that but I rarely actually see it. Maybe one in fifty of the accounts accused of being a Russian troll actually looks like one if you check comment history. That’s said so much here it feels like a meme.
I think it’s fair to say a lot of people are disillusioned with Biden, and disillusioned with the process. Screaming about Trump is going to do absolutely nothing to bring them back.
They know. Everyone knows. What they don’t know, because no one fucking talks about it, is where Biden has been successful. Instead of an opportunity to shine a desperately needed light on his successes, you turn it in to another shit flinging contest.
