You must only care about the horse race aspect of the election then.
There are people who don’t see “beat the other guy no matter what” as the aim of our great political project.
The aim of our great political project is “Lets work together to create a world worth living in, a world of broadly shared prosperity, a world with the infrastructure that is the envy of the world, a world where housing is a human right, and so are healthcare (including in the rural areas), retirement, food, education and transportation. Let’s work together to explore space and to discover new science. A world that’s unpolluted. A world where being poor is not a slow motion death sentence. A world where everyone is in a position to build some savings instead of living paycheck to paycheck. A world of internet connectivity as a human right, including in the most rural area. A world of net neutrality. A world of limited copyrights and limited patents. A world void of monopolies as a matter of principle. A world of personal bodily autonomy. A world where privacy is protected for most people but where the superrich have transparency requirements because they can greatly affect our wellbeing with a stroke of a pen. A world with a wealth ceiling and no billionaires.”
You understand the other guy will invariably KILL that project? If you really care about it, beating him at all costs is what you should be doing
If that was the aim, it wouldn’t be a “two” party system. That is clearly not the current purpose of the US government.
Whose aim?
I aim to represent my interests. My foes have their own interests.
The aim of our great political project is "Lets work together to create a world worth living in,
That’s all fine and dandy in theory when assuming good faith from all parts of the project.
In reality, though, one of the two major US parties is literally a fascist party now. By definition, fascists don’t argue or negotiate in good faith. Furthermore, their goals are so horrid that compromising towards them at all is inevitably a worse concession than reasonably acceptable.
A lot of the reason why it got this far and continues to get even worse is the Dem party insisting that “bipartisanship” is the highest political virtue of all. No matter what you’re giving up.
a world of broadly shared prosperity, a world with the infrastructure that is the envy of the world, a world where housing is a human right, and so are healthcare (including in the rural areas), retirement, food, education and transportation
That the Dems almost always fail to move society in that direction is in large part BECAUSE they insist on cooperation with people who are pathologically opposed to honest good faith cooperatiLet’s work together to explore space and to discover new science. A world that’s unpolluted. A world where being poor is not a slow motion death sentence. A world where everyone is in a position to build some savings instead of living paycheck to paycheck. A world of internet connectivity as a human right, including in the most rural area. A world of net neutrality. A world of limited copyrights and limited patents. A world void of monopolies as a matter of principle. A world of personal bodily autonomy. A world where privacy is protected for most people but where the superrich have transparency requirements because they can greatly affect our wellbeing with a stroke of a pen. A world with a wealth ceiling and no billionaires."
All good ideas. And all impossible to achieve through cooperation with fascists.
Not only do they by definition argue in bad faith. They’re also ideologically opposed to ALL of it.
Compromising with an opponent who refuses to compromise in return is not compromise - it’s surrender.
Exactly!
Servatives and “moderates” have been at war with my interests for as long as I have been alive, but I was too dumb and too weak of heart to recognize the truth of my situation until the last decade or so. I have been “compromising” my interests away, but really living in vile surrender like you so beautifully said.
If nothing else I need to earn my own approval. I better rep my interests like my interests matter to me more than anything else in this pustule of a capitalist hell hole. I am tired of my red lines being violated and then pretending that nothing majorly bad has happened to me.
What? Take out Biden completely. Remove his parts from the debate. Every single one of Trump’s non-answers were antidemocratic. He was racist, what are "black jobs’, Mr Trump? He was disconnected, talking about murder and rape crisis that dont exist. He was unhinged, and sounded like he lived in a different universe. There was nothing constructive or attractive about his remarks. You can’t build America with them. None of those ideals belong in a egalitarian democracy.
There are people who don’t see “beat the other guy no matter what” as the aim of our great political project.
If the neofascist movement captures America the ‘great political project’ will be over. End of story.
It won’t. It will be a scenario like WW2 all over again.
Yes, years of hell and nightmares, but compare the Germany of today to the pre-WW2 Germany, it’s like a night and day difference. And Germany was nearly destroyed out of existence before it was rebuilt into what it is now.
Nothing is ever over. What you’re talking about is a challenging time as opposed to “the end” or “game over.”
Obviously the civil process isn’t working today. We will most likely have to fight even if the Dems win a few more election cycles.
Yes, years of hell and nightmares, but compare the Germany of today to the pre-WW2 Germany, it’s like a night and day difference. And Germany was nearly destroyed out of existence before it was rebuilt into what it is now.
Wait wait wait. So your high falutin protest vote plan is a success if Trump gets in, we devolve into WWII Germany, get destroyed as a nation, and rebuilt from the ground up?
Holy baby with the bathwater, Batman.
Who’s going to invade, occupy, and rebuild the US like the Allies did in Germany? The US is the most powerful country in the world, is the third largest by both land area and population, nobody has the resources for either the invasion or the rebuilding. American fascism would be a long lasting fascism with civil war as the only hope for restoring democracy, as much as we have it now.
One option, and that’s a possibility.
The other, and that possibility disappears.
The fact that you don’t recognize that is, to me,a huge problem for the upcoming election.
I am against Trump as much as you.
But if we feel we must vote D “or else” how and why would the Democrats feel the need to offer meaningful reforms to their voters?
If I am a Democrat politician and I depend on billionaire good will $$$, I know I don’t even need to promise much to my voters, I just need to be less tyrannical and less insane than my friends across the isle. Then my goal is to work the system enough to get reelected, and after a few election cycles revolving door myself into a $300k a year “do nothing” job that one of my billionaire backers will have lined up for me assuming I don’t displease him.
The logic of this is inescapable. It means our only hope is for the Republicans to somehow become much more progressive so that the Dems actually need to work to compete.
The only way for a progressive voter to escape this conundrum is to signal to the Democrats that the Dems do NOT have our votes on lock. And the only way to signal that is to vote our conscience no matter what, even if it’s scary.
I am against Trump as much as you.
Bullshit; you’re concern trolling. That means there are only three possibilities, all of them bad:
-
You’re too dumb to see this as the existential threat to democracy that it is, and that now is not the time for an ignorant-of-game-theory protest vote.
-
You’re too privileged to care.
-
You’re a pro-Trump shill doing it on purpose.
Local elections.
No one is getting a 3rd party candidate in the Presidential office today. Full stop, totally ridiculous idea, an absolute waste of a vote. Yes, a waste. It’s a vote that will do nothing but help Trump win.
Meaningful reforms don’t happen overnight, don’t happen with magical ghost candidates that don’t exist, or by “showing the Democrats you aren’t happy by voting against them”.
Meaningful reforms take time. Look at marijuana legislation. Incredibly popular support for, at a bare minimum, medical uses. We are talking nearly 50 years of fighting at a federal level, but local compassionate use has been around since the 1970s, despite efforts at the federal level to constantly make all marijuana use criminal. By the 90s there were several states with compassionate use ballot initiatives (though it took until 2000 for a state to legalize it through the legislature - Hawaii).
Despite democrats that were out there against use of cannabis for medical purposes, and the many, many, many Republican administrations who put up as many barriers as possible, we are now trending toward full legalization.
Should everyone have just given up because only some supported legalization, even medical-only? And let it be banned outright?
It’s the same with climate change legislation, it doesn’t have to be all at the federal level. And abortion access, protections for minorities, police reform, and so on, and so on.
So let’s be clear about one thing. The choices this election are Trump and Biden. You’re not getting any others.
You can vote for Biden with a chance for the future, or Trump where the platform explicitly goes against these concerns to the extreme, and outright going full throttle for fascism.
You want to signal to the Democrats? The only signal you’ll be sending anyone is that fascism is A-OK, because you’re not getting another chance at democracy.
So you send that signal locally. The other option is, for lack of any better way for me to phrase this right now, the absolute stupidest fucking idea I’ve ever heard.
Easy. Actively, vigorously, constantly primary Democrats with solid, left leaning candidates. But show solidarity in the general. At first they accidentally lose a few seats. But it’s okay because those that won still caucus and work with them. Eventually the “others” start to become sizeable. And they’ll think to themselves perhaps we should work with them more to get things done. Eventually they become us. It’s realistic, and 1000% more effective than protest votes they’ll continue to ignore.
The logic of this is inescapable.
The logic that is inescapable is that if the neofascist moviement captures America the only ‘meaningful reforms’ you’re going to get your whole life is a vast enshitfication project like 1930’s Germany.
No shit dude. You need to focus on the present first, though, so that we can continue to work towards that future you speak of. Because right now, the authoritarians threatening to make that future inaccessible are more relevant.
You need to focus on the present first
That’s literally why the Democrats keep getting away with the pied piper shit and why things will never improve, that thinking right there.
It’s why they’ll always find and actively prop up the most extreme fascist to face off against to make their own terrible candidadte look better.
If Biden steps down it won’t be because of people like you. It will be because of the people who made it clear that they would not vote for Biden simply because he was the less evil.
So you want to throw away our democracy in order to teach the Dems a lesson? Have you ever considered the outcome of that? Grow up, and realize that sometimes we have to settle for the imperfect to ensure our future. You have no understanding of just how damaging another Trump term would be to America’s most vulnerable groups. That’s simply not acceptable to those of us who are actually considering the REALITY of our current system, instead of being led by emotion and frustration at its unfair nature.
We’ve been told that since Hillary was running. How long are you all going to keep beating that drum?
We’ve been told that since Hillary was running.
I didn’t like Hillary one bit. I don’t like Biden much more. But if folks had voted for Hillary, we’d not be in this mess and having this debate right now.
So yeah, maybe this time would be a good time to decide that lesser of two evils is a better choice than greater of two evils.
I hope they swap out Biden so people such as yourself might feel mollified enough not to help Trump get in again. The only thing “better” about Kamala Harris will be that people can STFU about age, but hey, I’ll take what I can get. She’ll pull us further right than Biden would though, mark my word.
Look, I want fully automated gay space communism as much as the next guy.
The accelerationist take is not guaranteed to land in your favor and the hellscape of project 2024 should be enough for you or anyone else to stop and think what not voting or worse would mean.
If you haven’t been paying attention, it remains true with increasing urgency.
Til we have another choice. That time isn’t now.
Maybe we need to do better to give ourselves that choice. But we haven’t.
I am copying my reply from elsewhere in this thread so you can see it too:
I am against Trump as much as you.
But if we feel we must vote D “or else” how and why would the Democrats feel the need to offer meaningful reforms to their voters?
If I am a Democrat politician and I depend on billionaire good will $$$, I know I don’t even need to promise much to my voters, I just need to be less tyrannical and less insane than my friends across the isle. Then my goal is to work the system enough to get reelected, and after a few election cycles revolving door myself into a $300k a year “do nothing” job that one of my billionaire backers will have lined up for me assuming I don’t displease him.
The logic of this is inescapable. It means our only hope is for the Republicans to somehow become much more progressive so that the Dems actually need to work to compete.
The only way for a progressive voter to escape this conundrum is to signal to the Democrats that the Dems do NOT have our votes on lock. And the only way to signal that is to vote our conscience no matter what, even if it’s scary.
Think of free market capitalism. In an ideal world, where people played fair, this system would work. But it has been clearly shown that any and all abuses of a free market will be made in order to gain an “edge”.
You are clearly so naive that you think the meaning behind a vote somehow makes that vote more important.
I wish you were right, but you are not. I am a registered Republican and I have been voting Democrat, down ticket, as a protest for the last two elections because the GoP has become taken over by fundies and fascists.
Project 2025 scares the shit out of me. It should scare the living shit out of you too.
But here you are, arguing that Biden doesn’t deserve to be President because he did horribly at the debate, ignoring that Trump was 90% full of shit.
I don’t want Biden to be President either. JFC, he was a corporatist asshole 30 years ago, but at least this country has a chance to move forward with him in the oval office. If Trump gets elected, this is the fucking end of our Democracy. Do you not realize the point of project 2025?
I wish you would just shut the fuck up. The time to talk about different leadership was three fucking years ago.
I’m trying my best to change the local party but I’ve been blacklisted from every local GoP event. What the fuck are you doing, besides watering down opposition to literal fucking Nazis?
If we had ranked choice voting, I might agree with you.
We don’t, so I don’t.
If the Republican party maintains control in Congress - which for all practical purposes means “having 34% of the seats in a given chamber,” which they will use to block anything decent from happening - and wins the Presidency, we will have all three branches controlled by lunatics who aim to end the great political project you’ve waxed so poetically about.
“Meaningful reforms” - like student loan forgiveness, that the Republicans keep throwing roadblocks in front of? Like getting rid of non-competes, that Republicans have put a hold on? I don’t know what “meaningful reforms” you’re referring to, but you’re definitely not going to see them when the brownshirts are patrolling restrooms.
People like you talk as though “not voting Democrat” happens in a vaccuum. For the presidency, we’re FPTP and EC (the latter unless and until the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is in full effect). If you live in New York, California, Illinois - fine, throw down your protest vote for whoever you want. Those states are going to the Democrat no matter what. Pretty much everywhere else, a vote for anyone but the Democratic candidate for President makes it easier for the Republicans to win - because it narrows the margin by which they have to beat the Democrat, and nobody who is not either the Democrat or Republican candidate has a snowball’s chance in hell of actually winning the Presidency.
Do I want a more progressive party to vote for? Sure. But at this stage, there is no hope for anything like progressivism ever again if a Republican is the next President. If you hold the Democratic party to a high progressive standard now, and withhold your vote on that ideal, you’re supplying the gasoline and matches to those who fully intend to burn everything to the ground.
For the Presidency (and the Senate, to be fair), the standard I want to see met is “don’t burn everything down.”
Switching tracks: all of this is so very much the trolley problem. Right now, the trolley is going to run us all over and then fall off a cliff, unless enough of us pull on the switch that diverts the trolley onto a different course where some people might still get run over, but at least there’s a track that we can all work on making sure is clear.
