Progressives acknowledging the fact of genocide is a good first step, and it’s useful that Ocasio-Cortez and others have done so — “I think [unconditional aid to Israel] enabled a genocide in Gaza,” she said in Munich — but it is not in and of itself sufficient. Before anyone in the party can move on to selling a post-Biden vision of human-rights-first foreign policy, they must address what accountability for the war criminals in the Biden administration — those who aided, armed, and funded genocide — should look like.
Come mid-terms I’m going to proudly vote democrat everywhere I can so hopefully we can get some control of the country again.
Don’t wait for midterms, vote in the primaries for the most progressive candidates. We should want strong candidates in the general who aren’t compromised by corporations and who run on a progressive economic platform. This is what it will take to make a Democratic win a true victory rather than a brief respite from only the most visible aspects of fascism.
Bingo.
I’ll think about Palestine after my country stops being run by actual fascists and Americans stop being executed in the street and our Constitutional rights stop being violated on a daily basis.
And, coincidentally, by voting Democrat, I am doing the most beneficial thing I can for Palestine because THERE ARE NO VIABLE THIRD PARTIES IN THE UNITED STATES.
What state was going to flip to Harris if ALL of those green party voters flipped Democrat? You can’t name one, because there isn’t one.
Reactionary centrists got Trump elected. Period.
@TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world you can’t just look at Green party voters because some people very likely also stayed home instead of voting for the same reason. If you could also count those it’s possible one or more would have flipped.
That said, it’s always a combination of factors so it is still partly to blame even if we assume it wouldn’t have done it alone.
You can’t argue against my first point. We literally have the numbers. This isn’t speculative. We measured this.
Stein (G): 862,049 votes,
Kennedy (I): 756,393
Oliver (L): 650,126
De La Cruz (S): 166,175
West (I): 82,664
In no state election would the greens have even come close to moving the results of that race. And if you argue that the green votes actually belong to the Democrats, you’d have to concede that both Kennedy’s and Oliver’s would belong to the Republicans. In which case Trumps victory would have been even more secure.
In the most charitable interpretation, third party votes in 2024 helped Democrats and hurt Trump. If we make some demographic assumptions and treat it like an instant run-off, reassigning third party votes would put Trump even further into the lead.
Third party votes in 2024 were historically low and had almost no impact on the outcome of the election.
You must take lessons in how to miss the point and dodge the question while responding to something that no one said, to argue against something no one claimed.
It’s not just about third-party voters, it’s also about non-voters. Not people who can’t vote, and only partly about people who aren’t registered to vote. It’s about registered voters who didn’t vote, either because they were lazy, busy, didn’t have transportation, or because they were deliberately boycotting the vote. More registered voters abstained in 2024 than there were voters for either candidate.
Laziness can only be addressed with civics education. Busyness can be addressed by making election day a federal holiday and making it illegal for employers to schedule double-shifts that day for businesses that are open. Transportation can be addressed by bolstering public transit infrastructure and adding state-funded shuttle services on election day.
The boycotters can only be addressed by convincing people to ignore all the anti-election propaganda which is being peddled on social media. If leftists actually believe in harm reduction, they would understand why voting for Kamala Harris would have been magnitudes better than allowing trump to win…
Please, spare me with your pedantic, pedagogical narcissism. The only ones in this room who need lessons are the ones who insist on an approach to electoralism which has consistently, repeatedly failed to actually win elections.
Lets just take your institutionally ignorant approaches as an example:
Its August of 2024. You have 3 months until election day. NOTHING you outline could be accomplished on that timeline, so its UTTERLY FUCKING MEANINGLESS.
That’s not why people don’t vote you fucking moron. They didn’t vote because the candidate was pro-genocide. They TOLD You why. YOU didn’t think it was important that Democrats provide an option that people WANTED to vote for, so people didn’t vote. They told you why they didn’t vote. Stop making up reasons that aren’t borne out by reality.
So anyone who disagrees with you is a narcissist? Projection much? Narcissists and their DARVO, I guess. Thanks for telling on yourself.
I was calling out your strawman. You were arguing against an argument that was different from the one the commenter you replied to was making. Sorry not sorry you’re not emotionally stable enough to handle that.
I never claimed it could be fixed by this year’s elections (it’s 2026, by the way). I simply acknowledged those things as part of the problem and stated how they can be addressed. It’s obviously longer-term thinking than you seen willing or capable of engaging in. I included it for completeness.
Over 70 million registered voters abstained in 2024. More than either parties received in votes. That’s not simple policy disagreement, that’s the result of a coordinated anti-election cyber campaign, which the kremlin openly admits to doing.
And I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had to say this, but Kamala Harris’s passive support for Israel when the shock of Oct 7 was still fresh was completely different from trump’s active promotion of genocidal rhetoric. The Palestinians would be better off today if Kamala Harris had won, and if you deny that then you’re the moron you accuse me of being.
If you knew how to vote strategically, with pragmatism and realpolitik in mind, and valued harm reduction, you would have understood that preventing a second trump presidency was more important than protesting the DNC’ chosen candidate by boycotting the election completely. Time and place, man.
You don’t know what I think is important, so stop making assumptions. What was important was keeping trump out of the white house, as anyone who’s watching things play out now should be able to tell.
The reality being born out is that trump is president, Gaza is now a parking lot, and he plans to turn it into a riviera. He not only passively allows Israel to do whatever they want, but he actively supports and encourages them to. US and Israel are starting an unnecessary war with Iran. The US has been threatening its allies and trade partners, and ICE thugs are abducting people (including children) on the streets of the US and holding them in concentration camps, frequently even murdering people in broad daylight and getting away with it.
But you allowed all this to happen because you thought Kamala Harris would somehow be worse for the world? Spare me.
You are a narcissist because your arguments are utterly self serving. None of them contribute to the candidate actually getting a different outcome in the election. They serve as an analgesic to cope with the fact that you advocate for strategies that explicitly list the election.
There is no straw man because we’re not talking about magical scenarios that didn’t happen or anything else other than one specific election that happened in 2024.
Ok. Then it’s completely fucking irrelevant and doesn’t belong in this conversation because we’re not talking about anything other than what it was going to take to get a Democrat elected as president in 2024.
Americans have always always voted at about the rate we saw in 2024. There is no evidence for any widespread voter fraud. Nothing about the voting in 24 was abnormal. I’ve seen no evidence that anything Russia did was even worth mentioning in 24. I guess if you get all your news from right wing Blue MAGA rags, maybe the narrative is different.
I do however, know one specific country, Israel, which spent HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS, in influencing the US election. Who lobbied Congress and the White House directly, to keep them maintaining a pro genocide position, one deeply unpopular with Democrats, and marginally unpopular with Republicans.
This is why I call you a narcissist, because the narcissist will only ever believe themselves, not what the people who do the things actually tell them.
The voters litterally told you what their issue was 11 months before the election. They repeatedly told you the genocide in Gaza was their highest priority. They shut down Columbia campus about it. They organized write in campaign to say they couldn’t support a Democratic candidate for office who supported a genocide. They told you what it was going to take to win the election, and you, the narcissist, decided that what your thoughts and comfort were more important.
And as far as inferring your intent, you telling me what you think in these comments. You are telling me what you think is important. I’m not making assumptions, I’m listening to the thing you tell me you think are important and explaining to you that in the context of an election, the things you think are important might not be the most important things required to win an election.
How does your point in any way refute that voting for Democrats is the most beneficial thing for Palestine? Unless you’re trying to say that by voting for a third party you actually helped Democrats win more than you would have by voting for them?? Your point was a non sequitur.
So I responded by broadening the scope and looking at all third party voters. Its a classic trope for apologist Dems to blame third party, and the point is that third party voters were utterly meaningless, and if anything, actually helped Dems in 2024.
We are not, at all, nor ever have we been, nor ever will we be, talking about what any of us as individuals do. Neither your vote or my vote decided an election. The presentation that voters individually needed make different decisions is a dangerous and deceptive framing that political parties have used prop up deeply unpopular candidates and policies. No one voter decides the outcome of an election.
The 6 million votes that Harris left on the table lost the election. You are arguing against a strawman of your own creation, and what you think my personal choice would have been is utterly fucking irrelevant.
What we are discussing is how elections and electorates respond to candidates and the strategies those candidates use. The point that is now conclusive, is that there was one functional path to Harris winning the election: She needed to oppose the genocide in Gaza. There was no other way for her to win.
Nope. They were talking about an individual vote, their own. Again, you’re changing the subject.
And the point is: No, they’re not.
The most beneficial thing they could have done would have been to make it clear to the campaign that they were going to lose if they didn’t change their policy on Gaza, because their individual vote doesn’t matter.
Suppose, in 10 years, your choice for president is between a democrat who openly expresses interest in murdering six million Jewish people, and a Republican who openly expresses interest in murdering seven million Jewish people.
Will you still be an unwavering Democrat?
That’s what we have right now. BlueMAGA believes if they keep repeating the same mistakes over and over eventually it’s going to turn out the way they planned. And then with a chest full of arrogant hubris they will proclaim I told you so
If a communist killed between nine and thirty million of their own citizens would you still support communism?
If Taco Bell reintroduced the shredded chicken burrito, how many angels could dance on the head of a pin?
So you see how ridiculous your original question was?
Somehow you managed to ask a question that takes less leaps of logics than your last one.
Theoretically infinite, but in practice three or four.
even if said dem supports genocide and war crimes? vet carefully. vett? vette? whatever. boba vett your votes carefully. :)
If it’s a choice between republicans and democrats I will vote for democrats every time.
I will vet during primaries but mid-terms aren’t the time for that with what’s happening at home in the states and aboard with the current administration.
Democrats who support genocide can’t win, and candidates aren’t static.
If at any point you are supporting a Democratic candidate who holds unelectable policies, you are doing work to support the opposition. Your only option is to move the candidate when they hold a policy which will prevent them from winning the election.
When you say something like “Any Blue will do” in the face of a genocide, you are doing work to get the Republican in the race elected.
If you read my entire comment you’ll see I’m not advocating for ‘any blue will do.’
Not voting for the only other viable option is actually doing the work to vote in the republican.
Please, address the issue on its merits: If you advocate for a candidate who has a policy which will prevent them winning a race, you are doing work for their opposition.
This is what happened with Biden/ Harris. By supporting them (ABWD) instead of being critical, you set up the permission structure necessary for them to recognize they’ve got your vote without having to change policy positions. The permission structure you and I do me you because you are maybe the most clear and consistent Blue MAGA voter on lemmy, that permission structure allowed Harris to maintain a pro-genocide stance into November. Since holding that stance would prevent her from winning the election, shifting the responsibility from a candidate who is one person, of one mind, running one campaign to change their policy, you shifted that responsibility to the millions of unwashed masses, whom have no great track record for making good decisions when it comes to November, and for which there is no credible mechanism to move the minds of millions of people in the period of a few months or weeks. There is no tool a campaign can operate which changes millions of minds from “I will not support a genocide” to “I will support a genocide”, and I’m glad that this is the case.
Framing elections as if its a matter of individual choice shows an explicit and intentional illiteracy when it comes to how campaigns, electoral-ism, and electorates work. One voter is like a grain of sand. It acts and behaves like a solid, and has other properties we would liken to “its a tiny rock”. But when millions of grans of sand are moving together, their behavior is nothing like an individual grain. When we take individual votes and scale them to millions of voters, their properties and behaviors are different. What and how an individual voters should act is fundamentally irrelevant. We’re not talking nor are we ever talking about what individual voters do. That’s what oil companies in the 90’s did with recycling: they convinced you that your individual choice was what mattered, when they controlled the levers of power to determine what choices were available to you.
The candidates and campaigns have all the power to change their polcies or approaches in this system. Voters as individuals have practically 0 power in this system. There is no practical mechanism to get millions of voters to do whatever it is you would have them do (at least not over the course of months and weeks, like an election). There is an abundance of tools to operate on individual politicians to get them to change.
If you allow a politician who is competing for your vote to maintain an unelectable position, you are doing work to support their opposition.
I’ll be honest I read your comment until you started ranting about Blue MAGA and I decided that that point that reading further would be a waste of my time.
No one should take someone as disingenuous as yourself seriously. You wanted the country to stay pro-genocide and you got what you wanted.
Lol. Your comments are getting increasingly desperate. You know you’re losing this argument.
I think the word you’re looking for is genius not disingenuous.
So Trump 2.0 was a better option than Harris because she wouldn’t/didn’t say the words you wanted to hear?
For the 9000th time, we’re having a conversation about what voters do, not what any one individual does. And no matter how long you keep your head in the sand about the matter, voting isn’t a binary. Any one voter has a range of choices about what to do with their time available to them.
I don’t know if you are fully aware of this, but: SHE LOST THE FUCKING ELECTION!
I don’t really believe any of you blue maga fascists are actually operating in good faith at this point, but I’ll at least offer you the grace of addressing the following issue.
We’re going to run two experiments, @SinningStromgald@lemmy.world , which will both start with the following premise:
It’s August 2024, the night before the convention, and you are Kamala Harris’s campaign manager. You are just coming off the big bump in polling you got from naming Tim Walz your vp. So far, your polling has been meteoric. You managed to got from the low forties/high thirties to high forties in a few weeks. Its one of the most dramatic and staggering increases in polling in history.
You’ve got 1.5 billion dollars to spend, and a week of captured media going into the convention. You have three months.
The experiment (0, 1) is conducted by you answering the following questions follows:
0 You are not allowed to change the candidates policy positions. Explain how you would use 1.5 billion dollars and 3 months to win an election.
1 You are allowed to change the candidates policy positions. Explain how you would use 1.5 billion dollars and 3 months to win an election.
If you can’t identify a coherent strategy that creates a path to victory under premise (0), we have to conclude that the only way Harris could win the election was to change their policies.
Yes it is. Will I vote in the next election? Binary choice. Will I vote Democrat or Republican? Also binary choice.
Only if you include options that are not related to voting does it become a non-binary choice. Since we are talking about voting, which is a binary choice, the other options are either irrelevant or still boil down to yes I will vote or no I will not vote.
As a news service your timeliness is horrible.
People who don’t agree with your opinions are fascists. Got it!
Now, allow me to reword my previous point:
Stop making excuses for the people who didn’t vote in 2024 and therefore allowed Trump to win the election. Every Dem KNOWS Harris and the DNC screwed the pooch and blame them for their loss. But, and this really important, we also blame those Dems who didn’t vote. What percentage of blame is assigned to Harris, DNC, and non-voters gets probably differs greatly between individuals. Personally, 40-40-20.
What you’re describing is a strategy for primaries, not the general.
The vote in the general election comes at the end of the race. Any response to the input of your vote or lack thereof is irrelevant at that point. We just have to live under the policies of the winner. Even if Kamala changed her stance on Gaza as a result of you and other 1-issue voters withholding your votes, it doesn’t matter; it’s too late and now we have Trump.
If your plan is to let MAGA run roughshod over the world until Democrats share your stance on the issue, then you are as responsible as Trump voters for what is happening.
No, I am not talking about primaries. If a candidate holds a position which will prevent them from winning a general, in the context of election like the previous election, you have the responsibility to take whatever actions are necessary to move that candidate, including withholding your vote if they don’t change their position.
You need to look at the modifier here: the candidate holds a policy that will prevent them from winning the general. If they maintain the policy, the lose the election. Period. How you vote is utterly irrelevant, because the millions of people who won’t vote for them aren’t going to vote. Voting or advocating or a candidate who is running on a losing set of policies isn’t harm reduction or strategic.
FTFY.
Hell, even do it in secret and claim even after voting, that you didn’t vote for the Dem because they wouldn’t take a stand against Genocide in Israel. You can even still claim today to have withheld your vote, for all I care. If you didn’t actually vote, or voted 3rd party, or even (God forbid) voted Trump, even though your vote is private, then you are a piece of shit, and the criticism being levelled at you is appropriate.
But many politicians who hold a position you claim makes them unelectable won in 2024, including the president. How do you square this with your theory?
Like others I instantly downvote and refuse to read the remainder of any comment that says “Blue MAGA”. It’s too stupid for me to justify wasting my time on.
Blue MAGA fascist who demanded the candidate maintain pro-genocide positions, there-by ensuring a Trump victory.
I’m not gonna lie. I also tend to ignore posts using the term “Blue MAGA”, because it was frequently used to harass black and brown people for being scared about Trump.
You should work on that then. Its a useful term and a clear demographic, and has been for almost 10 years, and I can’t think of any example in history of it being used to harass black and brown people. You’re more than welcome to provide one.
It’s used to equate normie Democratic voters with MAGA. It’s especially cruel and disingenuous coming from someone who helped the MAGAs defeat Democrats and put us where we are now.
Voting for the Democrat in the general election helps the Republican win. Got it.
I’m fully convinced that the people who promote that sort of rhetoric are either astroturfers trying to convince people to waste their vote, or just don’t understand how the voting process works in the US.
SatansMaggotyCumFart has the right of it: Push progressive candidates in the primary, but don’t let perfect be the enemy of good in the general. If you vote third party in the general because the neither of the two viable candidates perfectly aligns with your desires, it’s every bit as bad as a centrist deciding to vote for the GOP candidate. Vote for whichever of those candidates is better.
You have a fantastical view of voter behavior not based in reality.
sure. on topics that are largely just bullet points and trading cards to collect.
but some topics are themselves so important the choice around them outranks all other topics. genocide being one of them. no?
If the Republicans were better than Democrats on the issue, this would make sense.
This is the crux. It’s not about voting for genocide or not genocide; it’s about voting for genocide, or genocide with a side of fascism. There’s a clearly better choice. If you’re a left-leaning person and you choose to vote third party instead of voting for the less- or non-fascist candidate, you’re not only wasting your vote, but you’re directly contributing to things like we’re experiencing right now. If you think Harris would have been worse for the country, or for Gaza, than Trump is, I think you’re delusional.
Found the single issue voter that helped put Trump in the Oval Office.
I’d be open about what I think of single issue voters, but that could net me a ban even on Lemmy.
found the pro genocide “just ignore the genocide of brown folks because i care about me more” voter.
The candidate has a policy which will cause them to lose the election. If you vote or don’t vote is utterly irrelevant, because the electorate won’t vote for them, so long as they maintain that policy.
You want elections and the American electorate to operate in some fundamentally different way than it actually does.
Many members of Congress you consider insufficiency anti-genocide were elected in 2024. Most of them, in fact. Even our current president won on a pro-genocide platform, along with all the other stuff he’s doing now that still isn’t enough for you to admit that the lesser of two evils is worth voting for. I’m glad the Rupublicans’ policies haven’t touched you or your loved ones personally yet, but consider that they may in the future.
Yes we know, the democratic party is in favor of genocide and they are the only viable opposition to republicans who are also in favor of genocide. The difference is the democrat party’s base of support is generally not in favor of genocide while republican voters are. If democrats choose to lose the support of their base then they will have a hard time winning back the house, senate, or presidency. It’s that simple. All the blame for Trump’s win lies with the party and nobody else.
It’s Dems or Repubs, kiddo.
Look at me with a straight face and tell me Repubs are better for Palestine than Dems.
Look at me with a straight face and tell me you’d rather have Repubs continue to be in control instead of Dems.
And please don’t waste Lemmy’s storage capacity with ridiculous comments about third parties. There are no viable third parties in the United States. You have two options for the foreseeable future.
Be a smart person.
Awfully smug centrist thinks the problem with them repeatedly and predictably losing elections is everyone else but them. And then you throw on “kiddo” and “be a smart person”. Just loathsome.
what makes not liking one group mean i think the other is better? you’re replying to someone who realizes they (both sides) are absolute capitalist pieces of genocide shit.
one is outward about it. another is hidden about it.
Satan is the Chuck Schumer of lemmy commenters. Their job isn’t to make sure that the Democrats win, their job is to keep the party pro-genocide.
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