As is tradition.
For a while now the Ds have been owned by corpos. They support the establishment and that stance is as far left as center right, and many times far less left than that’s. A lot of D candidates have R policies with some lip service to left ideology. The governor of MI was caught saying she didn’t care what the people wanted about data centers, she’ll make a deal to build them anyway. Gavin Newsom is positioning himself as a presidential candidate and he’s about as corpo establishment as someone can get. So when the choice is a corporate owned candidate thats either far right or center right, its not really a choice. I won’t vote blue no matter who b/c that just enables and empowers Ds to continue acting like they currently are.
Bernie got fucked over in two primaries and his political ideology is not aligned with the Democrats. Given his influence with voters, his endorsement would go a long way towards helping independent candidates win. I don’t understand why he’s telling people to vote for plutocracy unless his stated political views are not sincere or his family has been threatened or something.
I think he’s just being pragmatic. He endorses progressive challengers in the primaries, and then he urges his supporters to support Democrats in the general instead of splitting the liberal/leftist vote and handing the Republicans a win. He often gets blamed for losses anyway (Hillary supporters are still mad) and he’s made some bad picks (Fetterman and Platner come to mind), but the growing success of progressive and DSA candidates this year might be vindicating this as long-term strategy.
No. I won’t. I’m paying attention to the people left of center. Fuck dems.
And then continue to work to make the party more reflective of its members
And if you don’t vote in primaries, you need to start. It’s the only chance any of us have a say-so on who ends up on the Dem ticket.
This will not work by itself. The Dems have been cheating in the primaries for decades. Do it anyway! But also, we need to get into the bureaucracy.
We can’t stop at voting in the primaries. The reason we have never gotten anywhere is because we are not in the machine. We watch from the outside.
If you personally can’t do it, push someone you know to try. We have to be in the machine watching the boring procedural stuff, sitting and taking minutes, making and checking internal votes, leaking information when the status quo cheats, changing things from the roots.
The magats took over the Republican party. It took 30 years, and they had big money helping, but we can do it faster and cheaper if there’s enough of us!
And this:
Thank GOD for this! I was WORRIED, with all the Democrat Leaders NOT endorsing OR supporting Progressive WINNERS, that we ABANDONED our BLUE no matter WHO Mantra! THANK you Bernie for Bringing it back in case a REPUBLICAN wins the Democrat Primaries!
Could everyone please stop typing like Trump having his nightly 3am toilet aneurysm on socials? It’s not cute or funny anymore, it’s been a thing for over a decade.
Oh, we’ll vote for them, but the Democratic Party must cease to be undemocratic, and they must stop their ploy to act as a honeypot to capture and neutralize progressive policies and politicians. They must reckon with us, not the other way around. Armistice. That is the offer. After the midterms there will be deep canvassing in every district the shitlib Democrats thought were safe. Now they can go ask for more fucking money from their malefactors. They’ll need it.
Yeah, I agree with you on this. Well said, we need to take over the Democratic Party and make it left wing again
I am so with you here. I’ve been scolding (I’m old, it’s my job) people for whining that the Dems won’t do anything if they take power, and I’m saying that statements like that give them permission to squander the next opportunity, too.
We have to let them know that if we sweep a bunch of angry progressives and democratic warriors into office, we expect every other Dem to match that energy, or get the fuck out of the way. And step one is to get rid of the MAGA comedy act of Schmuck & Jeffries. Those two losers are 50% of the reason MAGA is back in power, and stronger. Their schtick is old, and they need the hook to drag their corrupt asses offstage.
The Dems get ONE more chance, because if we don’t win the Midterms and play some serious HARD BALL for the next two years, we’ll lose the next opportunity in 2028.
What we need is a deep bench of like minded individuals in every contested region who are willing to run for everything from dog catcher to Senate, and to be one term politicians. If one loses, “batter up” for the next one. Policy not personality.
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Quiet now, that commie is cooking
Dude, this is Lemmy, why are you here if you’re not a commie?
Because I hate Reddit
To troll commies
Be sure to let us know once you get that trolling thing figured out.
Bash the fash
If you’re not an anti-authoritarian commie by this point you’re one of the bad guys.
I am a bad guy
Well it is in your name I guess.
It’s hard to buck the establishment. ~16,000 people were the difference in a state of 10 million.
If every eligible voter participated it wouldn’t even be close. Always blows my mind seeing comments on voting doesn’t matter when I’m on average voting for 3-4 other citizens in primaries.
On one hand, true. But some things to consider:
- Only about 1.4 million votes were cast, ~13% of the state’s registered voters. If you look at a map of the volume of El-Sayed’s votes, this low turnout let a relatively small number of local hot spots swing the election with higher-than-normal turnout due to his focus on them
- That moneyball strategy succeeding is a good sign regardless of the margin; the opposition spent millions of dollars in big market cities (notably Detroit) and on state wide campaigns and still failed to keep up. Spending from AIPAC and corporate interests was something like 11:1 vs his total campaign spend ($95 per non El-Sayed vote vs $9 for)
- Michigan has open primaries, meaning any voter could ignore the red side of the ballot (mostly uncontested and landslides) to poison the opponents primary. I’m not sure if this is quantified anywhere, but it’s definitely a factor considering republican strategists view the nascent progressive wing as a larger threat than establishment dems
47% of Dems in that state are conservative neoliberal Zionists. The boomers will eventually die off.
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What up doe
I’m not convinced by that whole theory that “if everyone voted, the elections would turn out different!”. If we follow the Law of Large Numbers, the results would be pretty much the same.
If we followed the Law of Large numbers here then we’d be doing garbage statistics and dumb.
I’m not convinced by that whole theory that “if everyone voted, the elections would turn out different!”.
There’s a strong correlation between election turnout and results trending conservative or progressive. It’s not the numbers but the percentage of turnout – and when turnout percentage is higher, the results skew progressive.
That’s only correct if the reasons for not voting are similarly distributed across the political spectrum.
They are not: GOP constituencies tend to have easier access to time and resources to vote. Dem constituencies often have less access to polling stations, less ability to vote on election day due to work or life circumstance, and are disproportionately affected by moves for stricter voting requirements like proof of citizenship.
It is almost universally true, when turnout is high it benefits the Left. When it is low, it benefits the Right.
Yeah, my friends live in blue district in the city and it took them almost an hour to vote, their polling place was packed. The rural location I vote at was empty I was able to drive there, vote, and get home on a 30 minute lunch break. This seems to have always been a problem my whole life. I remember my parents taking me when they went and having to stand in long ass lines too. People are are always bitching about not wanting to go vote because it takes too long. IDK why it’s so hard for these places to organize it well enough to handle the volume more efficiently. It’s not like it really requires all that much manpower to hand out ballots and check IDs. Alternatively just make election days holidays.
Or reimburse the companies the salaries of their employee’s while they vote - I’m confident that would make queue times drop
My voting flow chart is socialists, then democrats, then nobody.
Imo, we can fight over what shade of blue after the pedos are out of office.
except Fetterman, fuck that guy
This right here. And it goes for centrist dems too. If a progressive is the candidate on the ticket, vote for them. Don’t let the pedophiles win this one
Yes. The centrist ass dem I voted for veto’d a pro union bill. I would still vote for her over the alternative.
My primary votes are all left though.
Seems notable that we don’t have a headline with Joe Biden or whoever urging moderates to vote Democratic
That might have more to do with the senile and dying thing. Or he might’ve said it already. He probably did but I’m too lazy to check.
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THANK YOU
Turning in a ballot with an empty selection is exactly the way to send the “voting for nobody” message that non-voters convince themselves they are sending, rather than the “you don’t need to care about my opinion on the issues because I don’t vote” message that it actually sends.
I cannot tell you how many sanctimonious jackasses I’ve met in my life that think their non-action is “sending a message”.
Staying home or doing performative nonsense like not selecting a candidate or voting third party is basically non-action, and virtually no one sees the message or cares.
I thought it rather silly when I was still in university and hearing it from peers. These days, when someone my age tells me they have been doing this for decades I usually ask him them who has gotten their “message” and what was done about it?
One of the recent local elections i voted in had a list of 3 shit Republicans for sheriff. I chose to vote for none of them. Every other ballot choice i filled out.
We’ve tried nothing and we’re out of ideas!
voting third party is basically non-action
Unless the elections are rigged any party has the same chances of winning, stop spreading misinformation and propaganda, voting a third party is as much action as voting red and blue is.
Unless the elections are rigged any party has the same chances of winning
This is not an accurate statement. Plurality voting inevitably results in a two party system, due to the spoiler effect.
Until we switch away from plurality voting, voting for a third party helps the party you least align with. It’s math. If you’re thinking of a scenario where magically a majority of voters all vote for a third party, you’re not taking this seriously; that is not a realistic scenario.
Now, if you live in Maine, Alaska, or whatever other places that have switched from plurality voting (a) I’m very jealous and (b) you’re encouraged to vote any third party as you see fit.
If you’re thinking of a scenario where magically a majority of voters all vote for a third party, you’re not taking this seriously; that is not a realistic scenario.
People voting for whoever they want is a realistic scenario in democratic elections.
You are assuming that American elections are more democratic than they really are.
Do you understand what the spoiler effect is? It’s sometimes called “splitting the vote”.
It’s why having, for example, two left leaning candidates and one right leaning candidate results in a win for the right-leaning candidate. With plurality voting the candidate with the most votes wins, without regard for whether that candidate has majority (more than 50%) of the vote.
Let’s imagine that we have a population of 100 people and the demographic breakdown is that 60 of them are left leaning and 40 are right leaning. In a two party vote, the left leaning candidate wins. Now imagine a three party election with a liberal, a progressive, and a conservative. If more than 20 left-leaning people vote for the progressive candidate, the conservative wins. Since the voters know this, they have strong incentives to vote for the left leaning candidate they think is most likely to get the most votes, not the one they most align with.
It is technically possible for everyone on the left to all switch parties at the same time, but realistically impossible, especially considering that many people do prefer liberals over progressives.
The only way we get more than two parties is by abandoning plurality voting, and if you’re voting for a third party in a plurality voting system, you’re helping the candidate you least align with.
The world isn’t divided in left and right, you are still assuming that voting for a third party is voting for blue.
The overall election rules are rigged in favor of the D/R duopoly. I have several big posts, with sources, on the current statistics. To summarize:
- 3 out of 535 members of US Congress are independent or 3rd party. One of them elected as R and changed in office. One won the D nomination before turning it down and running as independent
- Fewer than 100 out of >7200 state level legislators.
- Zero EC votes for a 3rd party presidential candidate since 1968, including Ross Perot when he won 19% of the national popular vote
- No 3rd party was on the ballot in all 50 states in 2024, only 3 were in more than 10 states
Unless you have an independent or 3rd party incumbent, or have some form of ranked choice in your district the winner will be either the D or R nominee.
Your argument is that elections are rigged because a third party never got voted for?
I’m showing the observations that would lead one to hypothesize that the elections are rigged against 3rd parties. If you can look at the gerrymandered districts, the ballot access rules, the minimum percentage of the vote needed for public funding, the plurality-based vote counting, etc and then combine that with the statistically non-existent representation of 3rd party and independent legislators at the state and federal level and not suspect that the elections are rigged against 3rd parties then I don’t know what to else to say to you.
LOL, it’s not misinformation to state the fact that voting third party is basically pissing away your vote. There is no real serious third party option. Maybe we can talk about some other country or some future where a serious party emerges in this country. Until then, what I said is truth.
LOL, it’s not misinformation to state the fact that voting third party is basically pissing away your vote.
Arguing to not vote for third parties because they can never win is indeed misinformation. Governments spend billions in propaganda, what the hell do you think they are advocating for? for people to vote for parties that aren’t part of the government?
There is no real serious third party option.
I would argue that any party is a more serious option than red or blue, they don’t have blood on their hands.
All it takes for a party to get traction and votes is popularity and popularity can be farmed in a day, if a bunch of famous people with millions of followers would start advocating for a third party you would have a revolution in a week.
On a practical matter the message is still “both are equally acceptable to me”, with a small shade of a slightly louder “I wish there was someone better”.
But it indicates you actively participate and are therefore a winnable vote. That means campaigns are more likely to reach out to you in some way.
Since votes are secret, it really just indicates “I voted is this election and are 50/49/1 percent likely to have voted winner/runner-up/either”
I think not voting at all is a stronger message of “I wasn’t encouraged to actually vote for or against either”, but it’s also indistinguishable from “I just don’t care anymore” or “I was in a coma that November”
I think not voting at all is a stronger message
Have you observed that to be moving the DNC to the left over the past few decades? My observation is that after Kamala received fewer votes than Biden and lost to Trump, in the face of the historic (yet still measly) 4% of the primary vote being for Uncommitted, the entrenched neoliberals are digging in their heels and continuing to oppose progressive primary candidates in 2025 and 2026 primaries. My conclusion is that they don’t care, and we can’t trust them to get any message other than “you’re fired, and being replaced by this progressive candidate.” And the only way to do that is by voting for a progressive primary challenger in the primary.
I see people who don’t vote saying they never receive any flyers, calls, texts, canvassers, or any other kind of outreach from any campaigns. And then I see people who voted in either the primary or the general say they are bombarded with those types of outreach. So it’s hard for me to conclude anything other than that campaigns by and large ignore people with a public record of not voting. Because it’s harder and costs more to get a non-voter to vote than it is to get a voter to vote against the opposition. And in first-past-the-post, that is truly what your vote is in the general. Not a vote for the best, but a vote against the worst who is most likely to win.
“First-past-the-post” is a terrible moniker to describe the sort of single ballot plurality wins elections common in the USA. It’s metaphor is clumsy to the point of inaccuracy, since there isn’t any predermined scale that declares a winner. Whether only 3 votes are cast or 3 million, the winner is whomever has the biggest pile. A better sports metaphor might be “shotput”, but I think “plurality wins” is clear enough.
That being said, that the democratic establishment is ignoring the signals doesn’t mean that they aren’t relatively strong. The party’s voters are moving to the left, so even if the consultant gang isn’t responding to the collective “ew” of Uncommitted someone is.
Yeah, agreed on the wording.
What I mean is whether the signal is being ignored or misinterpreted is kind of immaterial. The desired result is not being observed, so a different tactic is required. We consistently have more non-voters than primary voters, so why not try voting in the primaries where each vote carries more weight than it does in the general? It certainly can’t be construed as a tacit approval of neoliberal policies like a vote for such a nominee in the general could be. So you still get a more clear and direct message than you did with non-voting.
There’s always a worse choice of the choices for who to vote for.
Vote for the other one.
The only perfect candidate for you is you yourself. If you’re not running, and you don’t have some form of ranked choice, not voting against the worse candidate is one fewer vote they need to overcome in order to win. And for your 1 vote against them, they need two for them to get ahead.
you just wrote ‘die’ on a piece of paper…
“I’m aware.”
Imo, we can fight over what shade of blue after the pedos are out of office.
I’m not sure what you are advocating for but if your argument is to vote for the democrat party to counter evil people such as pedophiles your best option is to advocate for a different party that isn’t affiliated with any pedophile and that doesn’t endorse genocides.
My flow chart represents exactly those people recieving my vote first and foremost if available. The Democrats are only viable in the absence of any decent choice.
Hm, it seems as if this patient is dying from a sucking chest wound. Doctor, how should we proceed?
“First, we need to get his diabetes under control. Then we will stop the bleeding.”
In Canada, we have “centrists” that are really just fascists that don’t openly hate gay people. There is almost no difference between our current prime minister and the guy so many people were voting against. The stupid thing is that we have a proper progressive party.
My message to you is this: The conservatives know you’re scared and are using that. Their only tactic is to tell you that you need to vote against someone who is worse than them and then they get their power either way. It’s always “we can argue over the shade of blue once you put this specific shade of purple into power” and then nothing happens. The name-brand conservatives complain about them being woke, the “moderates” act like the problem is solved, and the left has to deal with both those idiots refusing to do any work.
Democrats have won multiple times since Carter and we’re still broke and rent is still insane. You’re preaching to the choir, but we didn’t operate concentration camps on American soil, or start two-three(who knows!?) wars.
Better, at the moment is all I can get. One italian kid having the balls to shoot a ceo isn’t enough for these sheep to actually do what’s necessary to fix the disunited states.
Gotta agree here. In terms of endorsing human rights, Dems have a far superior record to the GOP. However, it’s their motivation that I question. Since most Dems are beholden to their corporate donors, their motivation is “freedom of consumption,” that is, giving access of consumption to marginalized groups to maximize profits. I wonder how much of it is a genuine concern for human rights.
It also explains how Dems don’t go far enough or fight hard enough when it comes to marginalized groups.
I’ll take a win regardless of the motivation, but it’s interesting to investigate the underlying motivations.
That’s the thing, there will always be those COUPLE OF DEMOCRATS that come out of nowhere and flip on ONLY the key issues we care about. Lieberman, Manchin, Sinema, Collins, Fetterman, etc.
Funny how we always just have to vote a little harder, right?
Fetterman is a Trojan horse. They sent an undercover chud to parade around as woke. Bro looks about as woke as a snorlax
A lot of moderate and right wing Dems here.
And this is consistent with how Bernie has voted over the years. If his vote doesn’t matter on a bill that will move things towards his goals but not enough, he votes no. However, if his vote is needed, he’ll vote yes because some progress is better than no progress.
And it is always amazing how people will claim to like Bernie but really don’t like it when this is pointed out.
Perfection is the enemy of the good. I understand that. I am also empathetic to the choice of those who sit out elections when they feel ignored. I don’t agree with it, but i understand.
Honestly though, we’re not even talking about perfection. We’re not even getting anyone that’s better that the stock, spineless, no-idea Democrat in a lot of places. I get why people sit out when all you hear is no big ideas other than, REPBULICAN IS BAD, VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO.
I’ll say it until I’m blue in the face.
Not voting is a moral endorsement of whoever wins no matter how bad they may be.
(For single non-transferrable votes like we usually have in the US this also applies to spoiling your ballot or voting for a vanity candidate.)
We’re not even getting anyone that’s better that the stock, spineless, no-idea Democrat in a lot of places.
Do you know what’s worse than stock, spinless, no-idea Democrats?
Fascist Republicans.
Do you know what happens when you sit out the vote?
You, as someone who might’ve voted Democrat, now are not. This increases the Republican vote.
You are enabling fascists.
People like me are frustrated by the spineless right-center Democrats as well, but I FUCKING VOTE BLUE TO PREVENT FASCISTS FROM TAKING OFFICE.
In the primary, vote progressive. Support progressives running for office! BE a fucking progressive running for office if you can. BUT WHEN YOUR CHOICE IS FASCISM OR NOT FASCISM FUCKING VOTE FOR NOT FASCISM OR YOU SUPPORT FASCISM. The general election is TOO FUCKING LATE and THAT is why you FUCKING VOTE BLUE IN THE GENERAL ELECTION NO MATTER WHO because they are better than the fucking fascist option.
Jesus fucking Christ it’s not that fucking hard.
Are they? When they vote in a “bipartisan” way and ensure the fascists get 90% of their way? Nah, I’ve done and defended the harm reduction for the past decade and a half now, constantly holding my nose to vote for the assholes only to get mostly fascist bullshit. Nothing like Democrats who voted to give ICE MORE MONEY!
Nah, I vote in every primary for who I want and if after I vote someone who’s going to run with a Republican, fuck them. I’ll take the quick burn to the ground vs only burning slightly slower, not like these milquetoast assholes are actively doing anything to prevent it, welcoming fascism coming anyways.
Nah, I’m over the bullshit Blue no matter bullshit for no-idea, do nothingings especially when it’s not reciprocated.
welcoming fascism coming anyways.
Yeah, obviously you are.
Ah yes everyone in the other political party is literally Hitler. Convenient
Found the fascist.
J’accuse!
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My experience with the Obama/Bernie/Trump voter isn’t that they have some nuanced understanding of politics that must be studied. They’re just extremely responsive to a charismatic performance.
Obama/Bernie/Trump voters are very fringe, despite the media’s attempts to suggest otherwise. There were more Clinton voters who went Republican when Obama won the primary in 2008.
I think it’d be a lot easier and smarter for Bernie to convince the centrist dem leadership to stop supporting genocide and at least pretend to give a crap about the needs of the voters than bernie asking all dem voters to support genocide (thats implicitely what he is doing if we are real about his ask) and to support a dem party that ignores the peoples needs.
Do you know that he isn’t doing both?
Why would the centrist leadership do what they are paid not to do? This shift won’t happen through convincing but through losses of centrists in primariea and victories of progs in generals.
Here in reality that isn’t happening before November (3 months). And Bernie knows it.
Time to put our adults pants on and make adult decisions to attempt to save our democracy. Once the fascists are out we can force the Democrat party in a more progressive direction.
Your “democracy” has been dead for 50+ years, if it ever really existed.
The Democratic party is the polite face of fascism.
Your idea of “adult pants” is as cartoonish as your worldview.
There is no convincing them. They know exactly what they are doing. It’s not a flawed strategy to win but a strategy intentionally to lose.
Why not both?
If Democrats don’t take at least one chamber of Congress in the fall, I genuinely worry they may never again. The little that’s left of American democracy won’t survive another 2 years of full MAGA control. Anyone urging you to not vote for the Democrat in your races or to not vote at all is either running a right-wing/foreign influence campaign or so clueless about the big picture as to be safely ignored.
Anyone urging you to not vote for the Democrat in your races or to not vote at all is either running a right-wing/foreign influence campaign or so clueless about the big picture as to be safely ignored.
Anyone urging you to not vote for a party that supported and fueled a genocide is running a foreign influence campaign? Sound most likely to be the other way around to me
Foreign influence campaign is the generous assumption. No one would be stupid enough to genuinely recommend we hand the election to MAGA because Democrats haven’t done enough against Israel.
Would they?
If you ask me the best way to handle power to the red party is to keep voting for red and blue, these two parties cycle in power and enable one another to win.
The party is far from unified on that issue. There are plenty of anti-genocide voices within the Democratic party, and you should try to elect Democrats if you want any of them to be anywhere close to holding power.
The party is far from unified on that issue.
The previous blue administration endorsed and fueled a genocide where thousand of kids were murdered, without any repercussion. To me it looks like they are quite unified on the issue.
How would you feel about anti-corruption voices within the republican party?
The previous admin is not the whole party. Clearly the republicans are better on this issue 🙄
Regardless of the outcome elections, the GOP isn’t leaving.
Good that you’re holding out hope. Some of us have already lost that lovin’ feeling.
To clarify, I was just saying the bell may already be rung, and I’m no longer of the view that we can definitely right this ship. BUT I am NOT saying we should not try. I’ll keep trying until the bitter end.
We’ve been voting for the Democrats to vote progressive for years.
Let’s figure out an agreement and perhaps we’re on board.
It’s such weird phrasing. Encourage progressive voters to back democrats? The progressive candidates run as democrats. We’re trying to vote for democrats, and the bulk of voters have been clearly trying to get the entrenched democrats to get behind that and support them. But they keep not doing that.
The voters aren’t supposed to follow the will of the party establishment. They’re supposed to follow the will of the voters. They have it all backwards and feel like they should get to vote whatever way they’re paid to vote on issues and that we’re the ones doing bad and causing Republicans to win if that causes us to lose trust in them
TBF, not voting for democrats in the next cycle or so might be the immediate end of democracy in the US, (you could make a convincing argument that it’s already dead.) But just letting them keep doing what they’re doing is just a slightly longer path to the same.
I think the vast majority of us are voting for democrats and will be. It seems to be a bad sign that instead of chiding the establishment about ignoring the will of the voters to force progressive candidates off the ballot in favor of their preferred corporate owned candidates Sanders has turned the other direction entirely and is now basically saying that even if the democrat party ignores the will of the voters whatever candidate they decide is best should get everyone’s full support.
If the establishment is willing to ignore the will of the voters and do what they want instead then that’s already not a democracy. It would be like forcing a choice between corporate owned “democrats” who do what they’re paid to do and don’t care for the peasants at all or fascism. Sort of makes sense that there will be large numbers of people who select “Just fuck off then.”
Kinda fucking scary the only way to get representation is to go brewsters millions style and write in candidates…
You know, I’ve seen the things Count Binface has been doing across the pond and I’m really starting to feel like we could use some of that over here.
It’s got to be a nice change to have a politician you can look in the eye and trust. A genuine person instead of someone putting on some fake performance just to get votes.
