This is the same frustrating conversation we had to have when people blamed Clinton’s loss on Bernie bros staying home.

Even when we had concrete data that showed that a higher percentage of bernie voters voted for Clinton in 2016 than Clinton voters voted for Obama when he won the primaries.

The data tells us over and over that progressive and demsoc voters show up in higher numbers for candidates they prefer less than centrists will when presented with someone ideologically further left.

Are there people that wouldn’t vote for the centrist candidate, sure. But Mamdani is currently seeing how many centrists are happy to say “fuck strategy, I’m supporting cuomo!”

I get why those that still have faith in the Democratic Party are upset about the defeat. But I also understand why leftists are tired of being told “vote for this compromise candidate” in every election and even when we do turn out getting scape goated for them running garbage candidates that fail to capture the further left elements AND tons of non-left voters who sat at home and didn’t bother to vote.

Wealthy consultants: I know you’ve tried running as republicans-lite. We suggest that you move further to the right.

DNC: brilliant

How much poverty can wreck your health.

Shitty cheap food, stress, hard physical labor.

Poor health ain’t cheap either so it just widens the trap

https://youtu.be/G_Op-GGYPTM

Establishment Dems splitting the vote.

Those fucking fuckers. Decades of “eat this big pile of shit because we painted it blue, fall in line, don’t split the vote”

The DNC, which over my life I’ve donated thousands of dollars to support their candidates, can eat my entire ass. Not one fucking cent to those bastards.

I think a lot of people read this as “I want credit for my kindness”

I actually think the real animator of the right is much worse.

They want to choose who is deserving of their kindness.

They want to be able to choose who gets help. Person that did something they don’t agree with, no help. Person that’s sympathetic to them, help.

That’s the reason they dislike systematic assistance. Because someone that doesn’t deserve help might get some.

So I’m nearing 40 and I’ve been a progressive / leftist now for over 20 years.

I remember getting pepper sprayed by capitol police for protesting the Iraq war and the halcyon days of thinking George W Bush would go down as our dumbest president.

I saw Obama capture the imagination of a progressive generation promising hope and change and then getting into office and giving us a heritage foundation plan that further entrenched the insurance industry into a dysfunctional for-profit healthcare system.

The entire time the democratic faithful have said, “vote blue no matter who” and the pragmatic progressive and democratic allies that want a party that cares about the issues they care about have gone “more and better democrats”

For two decades of my life I’ve been told the way to get policies that don’t just favor the ultra rich at the expense of everyone else is to elect more democrats and have these fights in the primary. Don’t split the vote by having progressives run outside the party, that will end in ruin. 20 years later we can name every progressive fire brand by name because the party only lets us have a few.

I’ve watched this strategy fail over and over. I think it might be time for the progressives and further left elements to make our own party. I look back now and think, I’d much rather have spent the last 20 years building a viable alternative, but if 20 years ago was the best time to start, the second best time is right now.

The democrats have failed in every imaginable way, and when the greatest test came along, would they defend the constitution and hold a bunch of fascists accountable. They failed. They dithered, they let bygones be bygones, they dragged their feet. And the fascists emboldened by this lack of consequences are now enjoying the cancerous fruits of their labor.

As a Bernie supporter for every campaign he ran, I saw him get fucked over. I still remember when all the centrists rallied behind Biden so he could win a bunch of primaries in states he would end up losing in the general election and that was it, the story was now that Biden had unstoppable momentum.

I remember saying at the time that a Biden presidency would just be hitting snooze on fascism and the very serious Dems telling me I was just dining on sour grapes.

I’ll finish the rest of this post after I show my papers to ICE, trumps personal paramilitary which is now one of the best well funded organizations in the world.

Bernie lost the primaries.

Sure the corporate media spent every day talking about what a dangerous unelectable person he was.

Sure the same corporate media was happy to report about how because of super delegates he had basically no shot at winning and a smart voter wouldn’t throw their vote away on such a dangerous lunatic.

Sure Chris Matthews literally said that he was worried people like him would be executed by chairmen sanders

And yea the DNC marshaled all their money and influence against him.

And then the corporate media did just start calling whoever he was running against the presumptive nominee.

But that’s what makes these dangerous leftists so unelectable, billionaires and millionaires paid by billionaires keep calling them unelectable.

Won’t someone please, for once, think about the poor billionaires and what’s best for them and their media companies?

I’m enjoying the idea of someone going IRL hunting and their only training is the Pokémon games.

Just out in the woods, gently tossing pokeballs at very confused deer.

The constitution allows for no such thing. The constitution is pretty crystal clear that only the congress can declare war.

The congress passed a law saying the president can take military action that then comes under review by the congress. The President can do that without a declaration of war.

This power the president has is one granted by the legislature not by the constitution.

I left Reddit 2 or 3 years back and have only used Lemmy since.

I joined through Lemm.ee so recently had to move over to Lemmy.zip

I think this was a net positive for me overall. Lemmy has a lot less content which helped me break the “I’m slightly bored let me pull out my phone and scroll Reddit” addiction I didn’t even realize I had. Now I check Lemmy maybe once or twice a day, still see the big important events and the couple communities I care about.

I was never one for twitter, so I don’t bother with trying to find a replacement for that.

Overall the less social media I use the better I feel. I think future generations will look back on our constant use of social media and dopamine mining the same way we look back on how people used to smoke everywhere.

We know it’s bad for us, but we like the dopamine so everyone just does it everywhere, we give toddlers tablets so they can start dopamine mining as early as possible. I hope our descendants look back at this time with a sense of “holy shit they just let people smoke in the nurseries at the hospital?!”