Exert*
“To the people of the Middle East, I say now here you are with your faith and your Peter Pan advice. You have no scars on your face and you cannot handle the pressure”
- Harris excerpting Billy Joel’s Pressure
At least some, like Ralph Nader, regretted it. Now we have those actively seeking to spoil the vote.
The tragic thing about Nader was his activism basically proved to General Motors and later large American corporations in general that political engagement and and public opinion was vital. The corpos learned to fight grass roots activism with astro-turf until they were just as skilled as Nader’s acolytes, only with orders of magnitude more resources.
Every time I see an Oil company do a commercial about their commitment to the environment I think of Ralph.
Similarly, Woodward and Bernstein showed the corporations how dangerous an independent press was.
Back in Watergate Era, there were plenty of locally owned newspapers and TV stations. Today, thanks to ronald reagan’s assault on the Fairness Doctrine, we have six major media companies controlling what we hear.
What does third parties have to do with lifelong Dem voters wanting the Dem candidate to side with the Dem voting base on basic parts of the party platform like:
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No fracking
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Better healthcare
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Climate change is real and producing less fossil fuels is a good thing
What you’re doing is insisting if you’re not 100% loyal to the candidate with a D by their name you really have an R.
That’s the same fucking shit Republicans went thru and it ended up with trump.
Why the fuck do you want to follow down the path of “never criticize the party, and always vote for them”.
Please explain to the class why this time it will work out good for the party that takes that path.
It’s not that it will work out good (though in a sense, it has for the R in that they got what they actually wanted), it’s that if the Rs have ~50% ish support, no matter what they do, because of them going that route, the only way to beat them is to get everyone that isn’t them in a coalition together.
Right and that makes sense…
Unfortunately that’s not what Kamala is doing.
I’ll say it till my face turns blue:
Taking a stand against fracking is all it would take to guarantee trump can’t win, but Kamala is pro-fracking, refuses to give the party voters what they want, and refuses to even explain why being pro-feacking is seen as a good choice by her and her campaign.
That isn’t the only issue she’s to the right of the party on either.
It’s like her, her campaign, and the DNC aren’t focused on beating trump, they want to beat Trump while giving the voters the bare minimum it would take, because the more they give voters, the less they get in donations.
So then telling voters “all that matters is beating trump” it’s obviously bullshit because they’re not doing everything possible to beat trump.
It ain’t complicated.
Like you said:
the only way to beat them is to get everyone that isn’t them in a coalition together.
That’s the opposite of what OP spends their time on, but considering a month ago they were intentionally spreading misinformation about when early voting started, I’m surprised the mods still let them post here.
Every single “meme” OP posts is about how Dem voters should fight with Dem voters rather than band together.
The problem is that the broader Democratic electorate is a much bigger tent, with overall much more moderate politics, than online leftists are typically willing to admit. We’re still only eight years past an election where Hillary Clinton took the Rust Belt for granted, and we all paid the price for that when traditionally solid union votes swung to Trump because he was boosting fossil fuel extraction while Clinton implicitly threatened the livelihoods of families dependent on coal and fracking jobs.
Healthcare you have a point on, but also keep in mind that the last time Dems had the votes for sort of sweeping reform was 2008, and what we got out of that was the ACA, which for all its faults was still a big step up over the status quo. Obama was going for a big bipartisan win, in spite of McConnell’s announcing that he was killing bipartisanship in the GOP caucus, and that was a mistake, but perhaps an understandable one given that up to that point that’s how Congress had always worked.
There have been windows of time since in which Dems have held the Presidency and both houses of Congress, but never with enough margin to defeat a Senate filibuster, and with DINOs like Manchin and Sinema standing in the way of filibuster reform. I do not doubt that progressives in Congress would move an M4A or public option bill through the legislature if, in 2025, the House flips back and the Senate stays Democratic in spite of the unfavorable cycle, but withholding your vote doesn’t get you any closer to that happening.
The problem is that the broader Democratic electorate is a much bigger tent, with overall much more moderate politics, than online leftists are typically willing to admit
Polls show progressive policy isn’t just popular with Dems, but all voters…
That’s life mate, I’m sorry it doesn’t agree with your opinions, but it’s the truth.
That’s why Obama’s 08 campaign did so fucking well, despite not really being that progressive in any other developed country.
The neoliberal experiment has only benefited the wealthy, stop defending them, they got lawyers and lobbyists for them, pick people over corps and we can get something done.
What’s your alternative, Trump? Because a 3rd party candidate will never win the general election without a massive overhaul of our election system which will never happen as long as the Rs have a majority in any branch of the government.
I don’t disagree with the reality of what you’re saying, and I personally agree, but at the same time I think you have to grant people the right to vote their opinion if that’s what they choose. It’s not my choice, but people should be able to represent their views how they want.
Except Biden repeatedly gave in to pressure from his voter base on a lot of actions, we also got a lot of changes to DNC policy care of Sanders voter base. It’s not ‘‘do or die’’ it’s vote for an administration that will actually respond to pressure and voter’s policy goals, or vote for a dictator backed by industralists who all want an ethnostate of uneducated second class citizens.
Except Biden repeatedly gave in to pressure from his voter base on a lot of actions, we also got a lot of changes to DNC policy care of Sanders voter base.
And Biden got elected despite his age…
2020 was an example of the candidate moving their campaign left and winning the election.
I think this is a dumb take. Third parties are only used like this in the US because our voting system is incredibly broken and there is little interest in fixing it. If you don’t explicitly highlight the caveats:
- The spoiler effect is a fixable problem, even on the state by state basis.
- Third parties are, conceptually, a great idea
then what you’re doing is attempting to uphold and protect the broken system from being improved.
You improve a broken system by fixing the broken system, not by pretending you’re not using it.
Vote, agitate or even run as a candidate that will pass ranked choice voting, locally or larger. Support the interstate electoral vote compact. Do whatever you can to directly fix the system.
Until then, you mitigate harm within the broken system.
Nobody is arguing that. The problem is presenting third parties as bad without giving any sort of context on how and where harm needs to be mitigated.
For instance: Alaska has ranked choice voting. Why on earth would you waste resources telling people to oppose third parties if you know some of the people you’re talking to live in alaska? It makes no sense. The problem here, as it has always been, is the voting system cannot handle 3rd parties and we should back away from them where spoiler effects are a concern
It is a fixable problem, but it is not a fixed problem. Bringing them up during presidential elections and only during presidential elections doesn’t fix the problem and just leads to it.
Which is why the correct way to bring it up is to mention the spoiler effect.
The problem is when you talk to some republicans they want a 1 party system. They want to ban democrats. If you talk to some democrats they believe we should ban third parties. These are both antidemocracy views that normalize each other.
So what you’re arguing for here (to be very clear) is that it is better to embrace a softer form of anti-democracy messaging than to explain that we should avoid voting third party when spoiler effects are a concern.
Hotbed*
“1000 year old conflict” is already Zionist propaganda.
It’s closer to 5000 years, the only time when the area was really peaceful for a long period of time was when romans destroyed the temple in 71 AD.
Yeah, sure. This specific conflict of Zionist settler-colonialism has been going on for 5000 years. /s 🙄
That is not what I’m saying. The greater Jerusalem area has been in conflict for millennia. It’s shrouded in a different veil over time, but the core conflict remains over control of the Middle East, specifically access to the Mediterranean and control of the trading routes between Africa, Asia and Europe. Over the years this has become entangled with religious fanatische, but at its core, it’s the same conflict that’s been going on since people first settled the region.
No, it’s been a little over a 100 years of Settler Colonialist Zionism.
Origins of Zionism
Zionism is a settler colonialism project that was able to really start with the support of British Imperialism. Zionism as a political movement started with Theodore Herzl in the 1880s as a ‘modern’ way to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ of Europe.
Since at least the 1860’s, Europe was increasingly antisemitic and hostile to Jewish people. Zionism was explicitly a Setter Colonialist movement and the native Palestinians were not considered People but Savages by the Europeans. While Zionist Colonization began before it, the Balfor Declaration is when Britain gave it’s backing of the movement in order to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ while also creating a Colony in the newly conquered Middle East after WWI in order to exhibit military force in the region and extract natural resources.
That’s when Zionist immigration started to pick up, out of necessity for most as Europe became more hostile and antisemitic. That continued into and during WWII, European countries and even the US refused to expand immigration quotas for Jewish people seeking asylum. The idea that the creation of Israel is a reparation for Jewish people is an after-the-fact justification. While most Jewish immigrants had no choice and just wanted a place to live in peace, it was the Zionist Leadership that developed and implemented the forced transfer, ethnic cleansing, of the native population, Palestinians. Without any Occupation, Apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, there would not be any Palestinian resistance to it.
Herzl himself explicitly considered Zionism a Settler Colonialist project, Setter Colonialism is always violent. The difficulty in creating a democratic Jewish state in an area inhabited by people who are not Jewish, is that enough Palestinian people need to be ‘Transferred’ to have a demographic majority that is Jewish. Ben-Gurion explicitly rejected Secular Bi-national state solutions in favor of partition.
Quote
Zionism’s aims in Palestine, its deeply-held conviction that the Land of Israel belonged exclusively to the Jewish people as a whole, and the idea of Palestine’s “civilizational barrenness" or “emptiness” against the background of European imperialist ideologies all converged in the logical conclusion that the native population should make way for thenewcomers.
The idea that the Palestinian Arabs must find a place for themselves elsewhere was articulated early on. Indeed, the founder of the movement, Theodor Herzl, provided an early reference to transfer even before he formally outlined his theory of Zionist rebirth in his Judenstat.
An 1895 entry in his diary provides in embryonic form many of the elements that were to be demonstrated repeatedly in the Zionist quest for solutions to the “Arab problem ”-the idea of dealing with state governments over the heads of the indigenous population, Jewish acquisition of property that would be inalienable, “Hebrew Land" and “Hebrew Labor,” and the removal of the native population.
Settlements, Occupation, and Apartheid
Israel justifies the settlements and military bases in the West Bank in the name of Security. However, the reality of the settlements on-the-ground has been the cause of violent resistance and a significant obstacle to peace, as it has been for decades.
This type of settlement, where the native population gets ‘Transferred’ to make room for the settlers, is a long standing practice.
- The Transfer Committee, and the JNF Ethnic Cleansing, which led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate before the Nakba
The mass ethnic cleansing campaign of 1948:
Further, declassified Israeli documents show that the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were deliberately planned before being executed in 1967:
While the peace process was exploited to continue de-facto annexation of the West Bank via Settlements
The settlements are maintained through a violent apartheid that routinely employs violence towards Palestinians and denies human rights like water access, civil rights, etc. This kind of control gives rise to violent resistance to the Apartheid occupation, jeopardizing the safety of Israeli civilians.
The apartheid regime is based on organized, systemic violence against Palestinians, which is carried out by numerous agents: the government, the military, the Civil Administration, the Supreme Court, the Israel Police, the Israel Security Agency, the Israel Prison Service, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and others. Settlers are another item on this list, and the state incorporates their violence into its own official acts of violence. Settler violence sometimes precedes instances of official violence by Israeli authorities, and at other times is incorporated into them. Like state violence, settler violence is organized, institutionalized, well-equipped and implemented in order to achieve a defined strategic goal.
Visualizing the Ethnic Cleansing
Peace Process and Solution
Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution
How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution
‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe
Historian Works on the History
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Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History - Nur Masalha
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The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948 - Nur Masalha
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A History of Modern Palestine - Ilan Pappe
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The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine - Rashid Khalidi
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The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe
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The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences - Avi Shlaim
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The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories - Ilan Pappe
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The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development - Sara Roy
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10 Myths About Israel - Ilan Pappe (summery)
As per my other comment:
That is not what I’m saying. The greater Jerusalem area has been in conflict for millennia. It’s shrouded in a different veil over time, but the core conflict remains over control of the Middle East, specifically access to the Mediterranean and control of the trading routes between Africa, Asia and Europe. Over the years this has become entangled with religious fanatische, but at its core, it’s the same conflict that’s been going on since people first settled the region.
Theodor Herzls ideas concerning the region are in no way new or original. He’s making basically the same argument as the church prior to the first crusade.
Far Left Intellectual: The party is the politically conscious, advanced section of the class, it is its vanguard. Therefore, we must form a vanguard party that pursues the interests of the working class.
MAGA Conservative: This time Trump will fix all the problems.
Lemmy Liberal: If Harris loses, it is because Far Left Intellectuals didn’t vote for her, after she did not sound enough like Donald Trump
The standard D strategy of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory - let’s whitewash anti-Trump neocons and bring in Hillary to advise on the campaign to win this election.
Lemmy libs seeing the polls - surprised picachu face it’s all the leftist’s fault!