In a two party first past the post system, not voting (or throwing away your vote on a candidate who will not win) benefits the candidate you least want because it effectively gives half your vote to each side
In the general elections, voting blue no matter who is harm reduction, the time for activism was back in the primaries
Hey you stupid shit the radical right has FULL CONTROL OF ALL MAINSTREAM MEDIA. That:s because liberals gave it to them. How bout blame them for creating a nation of Nazis?
Lol. I supported Sanders in 2016 but he wasn't sabotaged, more dems preferred Hilary in the primaries. It was still a problem vis-a-vis the enthusiasm gap (Sanders supporters were more enthusiastic on average than Hillary supporters, but she had more supporters).
Edit: I don't want to spend hours on dead shit at this point, but my bigger point is she actually had more supporters than Bernie. But also, why I'm a talking about this...damn it, fell for the trap again!
The leaks resulted in allegations of bias against Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign, in apparent contradiction with the DNC leadership's publicly stated neutrality,[8] as several DNC operatives openly derided Sanders's campaign and discussed ways to advance Hillary Clinton's nomination. Later reveals included controversial DNC–Clinton agreements dated before the primary, regarding financial arrangements and control over policy and hiring decisions
Oh man, I was there and none of this is news to me. I'm not saying DNC did things right, im not saying they didn't try to corninate her. Beyond that, they were insulting about it, especially Debbie Whatsherbitch Schultz, who openly scored us Bernie supporter...the irony is i was an lefty independent before Bernie and he's what brought me to the Democratic party, but everyone "schools me" on 2016 because I also realize more democrats writ large preferred her to Bernie. Do all you perpetually online lefties talk to real world democrats and black democrats? Alot of them didn't love and don't love Bernie.
I'm do agree the fuckery was very dumb because she actually had more supporters than Bernie the whole time. The person who quietly got fucked over in my opinion in 2016 was Biden, who might have run as younger (but still old) version of himself except he could tell the Clinton camp had already thumbed the scale the process pre-emptively.
Above all, i don't hating Hillary in 2024 is useful politically. The "Clinton Machine" being dead might be the only good thing to come out of Trumpism.
The worst thing to come out of the emails is that they gave Clinton some debate questions beforehand and that they called him some nasty names. It did not uncover any conspiracy against him. This is the same shit I hear from trump supporters who claim they know evidence came out that it was rigged.
I mean, technically, that's a conspiracy. It's just not a conspiracy "theory" like the faked moon landing, Area 51 &aliens, etc etc. It's just the regular, boring, type of conspiracy. And it was perfectly legal,very legal, the legalest, and legalsideboob (thanks autocomplete for this one. )
I'm not sure what you're driving at exactly, but keep in mind that these were private conversations that were made public. You're talking about public comments.
But the funny thing is that the reason they were mad about sanders is that it was clear Clinton was going to win, and he was publicly attacking her.
She did a pretty good job sabotaging herself by cleaving the party in two and then expecting everypne to just forget about the viturol thrown at the left the entire time
What the fuck is this shit? Motherfucker, I lived through these elections, and this is some boomer revisionist bull shit.
Al Gore lost because he couldn't differentiate himself from god-damned George W Bush. He was too centrist to encourage the left base to show up for him.
Kerry lost because he couldn't articulate his better vision for America, and was too centrist to encourage the left base to show up for him.
Hillary lost because she didn't even try to reach out to the left base. She was too centrist to beat Donald Fucking Trump.
Three ostensibly intelligent leaders who lost their elections to fucking morons because they thought that they didn't need to try very hard to reach out to progressive voters.
Any one of them would have been a better President than what we got, but the fact that they all lost means they did something wrong. It isn't the fault of the voters demanding better, it's the fault of the party failing to meet the demand.
Simultaneously stupid babies on the fringe who don't even warrant acknowledgement, AND the singular cause of every Democratic loss of the past 30 years - no adjustments to make, no lessons to learn, just blame the left and take 5 more steps right.
I mean... It's always Schrödinger's left. When we talk about "the left" it's always a constructed public. Whatever the speaker wants "the left" to encompass is in there. Like you talk to a conservative and "the left" encompasses a party like the Democrats, you talk to a democrat and Depending on the person they might consider themselves leftists or not depending. You talk to a Socialist and "the left" excludes the Democrats. The concept serves a purpose in each case. To create a body of condemnation, to create a nebulous scapegoat, to attempt to build (sometimes false) solidarity out of an incredibly fractured group, to establish an aspirational ingroup or out group... Or to self soothe that one's highly individualized take on politics is not alone.
It's a weakness in the flanks of the way we discuss these things. There's a holier than thou approach to claiming where on the political compass one sits and what is worthy of scorn. The Republican base doesn't seem to have that in the same measure which makes it more dangerous.
I don't think it's resolvable personally. Ditching the concept of claiming "the left" may be key to changing engagement styles to become less armchair criticism of a nebulous ill defined group... And more focused on actually tackling and pushing specific issues with more progressive non-partisan ship.
I mean, it’s true that the left base didn’t completely show up for him. Enough of them showed up that he won the popular vote and the electoral college, but if the vigorous activist left that was focused on WTO and GATT and other non electoral issues had been on the ground in the same way that Roger Stone’s machine was, they might have been able to stop Bush from stealing the election, and we might have had action on climate change back before it was too late, no global war on terror affecting hundreds of thousands of lives, no ISIS, no 2008 financial crash, and we might not have had all the failures to take US intelligence’s warnings seriously, that led to 9/11. Plus God knows what else actual forward progress.
Reframing “the US news media is so corrupted by propaganda that the average viewer can’t determine who is better between Gore and Bush, by a large enough margin to overcome a pretty blatant coup” as being all Gore’s fault somehow, is the most Lemmy-fake-leftist thing I’ve seen today, and I’ve seen someone praise the USSR’s justice system and someone else say that Biden shut down Trump’s insulin price cap.
“Too centrist”
Get the fuck out of here
You’re right about Hillary though, that part is true
That doesn't make sense for a couple different reasons, but thinking how to explain that it is wrong actually led to me to realize that Hotelling's Law is a not insignificant part of the incentives at work in a FPTP system which is yet another reason not to use them.
(Basically, in short, whatever point Gore staked out on the little spectrum, Nader can gather some votes by picking a different point. Doesn't mean a damn thing about how good the point either person picked was or the relation between them. But yes, mathematical pressure on both "main" candidates to move to the center and similar to each other is absolutely a real thing and I hadn't fully realized that before, although it seems totally obvious in retrospect and like I should have realized it before this.)
You're right, "too close to the center to win" doesn't make sense. But Nader did run to Gore's left, and took votes from Gore that might have caused a different outcome.
I know because I got yelled at for it on the Internet for eight years.
All the Democrats are too close to the center except for a handful of congress people. Honestly, I won't disagree with your earlier point there. But my point was that Gore out of all the Democratic candidates was pretty fuckin sensible in terms of seeing big problems and wanting to deal with them, instead of just having a big party for all the defense contractors and oil companies and Wall Street.
But yes, Nader was a factor, sure. Also: I actually know somebody that worked in politics for quite a while, and her take on the whole Florida debacle was very interesting to me -- basically that it was a failure of on-the-ground organizing by the Democrats; that they should have been able to pick up right away that people were at risk of getting confused by the ballots, and have someone at every polling station that could be able to give a little spiel (or cause the election workers to give a spiel) about how to mark your vote correctly. Like, it was rigged (on many different levels, including in my opinion deliberately making the ballot confusing in a way that would confuse a certain percent of Gore voters), but also every election is "rigged" somewhat, to whatever extent each side can get away with, and part of your job as a political organization is to watch close and be sharp and not let the other side get away with stuff.
IDK if I agree with her, but that was her take on it and she has a lot more firsthand experience than me.
But my point was that Gore out of all the Democratic candidates was pretty fuckin sensible in terms of seeing big problems and wanting to deal with them, instead of just having a big party for all the defense contractors and oil companies and Wall Street.
Totally agree. He got lampooned for the "lockbox" but it was actually a decent idea. Regarding the ballots: There's a (paywalled) study from Stanford that claims to show that people accidentally voting for Pat Buchanan were a significant reason the election went the way it did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida#/media/File:Butterfly_Ballot,_Florida_2000_(large).jpg
All this analysis would be fun if it weren't (a) so consequential and (b) continually showing our only hope dropping the ball.
"So like 50 assholes just worked hard on getting the guy they wanted, did some fairly basic shenanigans including showing up at an election office and throwing a fit?"
"Yeah. Is bullshit. And they changed the result, and looking back, it changed the whole world."
Press A: "Wow. I'm never getting involved in politics, that's corrupt as fuck."
Press B: "Holy shit. Can we make a bunch of people to go somewhere and throw a fit? Like, what did they do? And it worked, and it made a difference?" "Yeah like a huge one." "Holy shit..."
You young ones won't know this, but Gore had a very different persona as Congressman and VP. Note that the only reason Clinton, a notorious draft-dodger, picked Gore as his running-mate was because of Gore's reputation as the top Pentagon-hawk. As well, Gore led centrist wing of the party that wanted to eliminate welfare and implement austerity measures.
People who say Gore would have kept us out of Iraq, or not done all the other dumb shit Bush did, don't seem to recall that politician Gore was complete polar opposite of post-political Gore we know today.
Dude I don't really wanna play the game of "let's pull on this thread and see if a bunch of conservative-propaganda-worldview stuff pops out" again, I've done it like twice in the last 2 days and it sometimes takes a while
But (a) it's like a cat with a laser pointer (b) tbh it doesn't look like this particular thread is all that long
I mean everyone knows we all look down on people who didn't fight in the Vietnam War, and in general who don't do what the federal government wants them to do. Fuckin cowards, what was wrong with them! What do you think? Clinton should have gone over and shot a bunch of Vietnamese people, amirite fellow anti Iraq War person?
Yeah, completely fair. I see what you mean. I think I am impatient and short tempered after talking with a series of not very nice people yesterday and today.
Regardless of that I still think your main point is made up, though. Here and here are some contemporary stories about the pick -- he voted for the Iraq War 1, but that was seen as sort of a surprise given his father's antiwar reputation. His reputation at the time was as an environmentalist and technocrat. It's important to remember that the tolerance for austerity at home and war abroad was a lot greater in 1992 than it is today; it was a much different political landscape. Gore wasn't seen at the time as any kind of hawk in either respect that I'm aware of and rereading the stories from the time I don't see any kind of inkling that Clinton had him on to pander to pro-war people or anything.
Gore voting for Iraq I was hardly a surprise, as he championed it regularly on TV. He then chastised Bush I for ending the war too early.
In the Clinton Administration, he was among the staunchest hawks. He would give speeches calling for removing of Saddam ("finish the job"). You can probably find some of those speeches with Google...cover the name over and you'd think you were seeing something from Rumsfeld or Cheney.
Contrary to myth, Iraq II was not invented by a small group of neocons. It had full bipartisan backing in Congress, and there are some who were close to Gore who believe he would have also been in support.
Here’s a speech Gore gave about Iraq War 2. You don’t need to believe whether or not he would have been in support; you can go back to contemporary speeches and find out whether he would have been in support, and he wasn’t. As you pointed out, it had pretty freaking broad support, so that made him an outlier.
Idk what you mean about “among the staunchest hawks” in the Clinton administration. It’s not the VP’s job to do policy decisions and take part in the debate about what the president’s policy should be (at least not in public). If he was making pro war statements from 1992-2000 that’s a statement of what the Clinton administration’s policy was, not what Al Gore’s policy preferences were.
He was okay with war, in general, in ways that would make him an anomaly for a progressive Democrat today, but not at all at the time. (At the time, we were still doing our own Israel-in-Gaza slaughter and torture operations all over Central and South America with, as you pointed out, broad bipartisan support with 0 of this modern level of protest or debate about whether we should be doing it.) And like I said, he definitely wasn’t brought into the Clinton administration because he was some pro war guy. I honestly have no idea what you’re even talking about with that. Anyway, I showed you the contemporary articles about why people were saying he was brought in; you’re welcome to read them, or alternatively to think what you like about it if you’re committed to your way.
Man, I lived through it. Don't piss on my leg and call it rain. I followed Gore's campaign. I watched his debates. The man had splinters in his ass from riding fences. He picked Joe Lieberman as his running mate to prove how centrist he was.
Compared to modern Democrats, he's basically a communist, but 2000 was a heady time for progressives. We thought Bill Clinton was just the beginning, a transitional precursor to a new era of balanced budgets and human rights for all. But it was not to be.
We thought Bill Clinton was just the beginning, a transitional precursor to a new era
This literally made me laugh out loud. Well done. I was there, too.
Yeah, Clinton was a new era. That part is definitely right. He was the death of JFK/LBJ/Carter, and the start of "welfare to work" and the WTO. All the progressives at the time were thrilled about that budget surplus. They were super psyched about that part, let me tell you.
Get the fuck outta here. Here's the prison population per 100,000 population:
Yeah we were all talking about how happy we were about that budget surplus, and how unhappy we were about how Gore talked about war all the time. Man. I was there with you, I remember all that stuff so so clear.
(I'm not planning to continue the back and forth; like I say you can think or say what you like about it)
I think this election is a little different in that we have a known threat that is significantly worse than the alternative. It's not an exaggeration to say that Trump is a threat to democracy and to anyone that doesn't want to live under religious law as interpreted by the Republicans.
The other candidate is harm reduction presidentially personified. That is the best choice we actually have, and the consequences for disincentivizing left leaning or undecided voters is much worse than Bush, and that's saying something.
Vote against Christ flavored dictatorship, and encourage others to do the same. And not some impossible 3rd party bullshit.
If either third party gets even 5% this election, they qualify for federal funding and could have a greater influence in the future. Third party votes are ESSENTIAL when the establishment wins any other way.
I would agree with you if the stakes were not as dire as they are now. If any of those 5% of votes are taken from traditionally Democrat voters, you might get that 3rd party its federal funding, and you might just see them in the next presidential election, but you may not have the right to vote.
Republicans have stepped up their campaign against voting freedom, and they have a whole plan on how to seize control of our government and give dictator authority to their president. Project 2025 is going to irreparably harm us if it comes to fruition.
Try this when we are not so disastrously close to religious extremists seizing control.
The Bush's were tame compared to this shit, and Jr even thought God talked to him. McCain turned out to be a relatively decent human being, and it got him Republicancelled.
You could be right that we will never see a moderate Republican again in our lifetime, but I fail to see why doing ANYTHING that would help their campaigns is a good thing.
If they couldn't get 5% in 2016, they aren't getting 5%.
Note also that Perot got >5% in 1996, but that did nothing for third party politics. The Reform party doesn't even have name recognition.
You want third parties to be viable? They need to start local and build a base from the ground up. They need to start having significant presence in state politics and legislatures, and we need to see them have a modest bloc of senators and representatives in Congress. Even if a third party did win the presidency, they'd be a complete lame duck with no Congressional support.
You should be asking yourself why third parties aren't doing this, and instead wasting money on presidential elections and conventions. The sad truth is that we don't have a third party because we have no serious third party contenders. None of them want to play the long game to actually win. They'd rather just grift donations.
It's not that revisionist. I definitely remember "have a beer with him" being said.
In retrospect it was probably a phrase coined by the media to lure the lowest common denominator to GW. But it worked and it stuck.
Lin Manuel made a reference to this in "The election of 1800" in Hamilton:
Talk less! (Burr!)
Smile more! (Burr!)
Don't let them know what you're against or what you're for! (Burr!)
Shake hands with him! (Burr!)
Charm her! (Burr!)
It's 1800; ladies, tell your husbands, vote for Burr! (Burr!)
I don't like Adams!
Well, he's gonna lose, that's just defeatist
And Jefferson?
In love with France!
Yeah, he's so elitist!
I like that Aaron Burr!
I can't believe we're here with him!
He seems approachable?
Like you could grab a beer with him
Well ranted, and I don’t disagree but it’s simply the case that voters not showing up gave us the shitshow we now have. It would have been very different, and you can blame the candidates but the fact is none of them are Jesus or Batman or whothefuckever is going to be all things to everyone.
And, at this point, after 2016, i do not give a single fuck about it. Get to the polls vote Biden and bitch after we’ve saved this country. Everyone gets a full three-and-a-half years to promote whatever their answer is, and if they don’t get it done by then, or have any other useful purpose, time to shut up and get to saving us from Idiot Handmaid’s Dream Reich.
This tweet or whatever - It’s not an academic treatise. It’s making the point that we can’t sit back again and let cheating fascist billionaire sycophants run away with it again. LIKE WE DID. Didn’t like Al Gore? Don’t care. Kerry too “stiff” for you? Shut the fuck up, we’re fighting goddamned war criminals. Hilary too - whatever - for you? Well no shit, me too but i’m voting for her anyway.
No, right now we’re doin “it’s the candidates job to market themselves, not the voters’ job to vote for the better candidate, so please don’t talk to me about which candidate is better while I’m talking to you about which candidate is failing to market themselves.”
Next week is when “being right about things is called smugness and it’s not cool ok” comes into the rotation
Hey, want to restart this conversation? I’m interested to hear more about the nature of the justice system in the USSR, and now I’m pretty curious what is your assessment of the Ukraine war.
I just want to join in to remind everyone that multiple things can be true at the same time.
The DNC/Biden can and should be doing better.
We only have 2 options for president. It will be one of the two main candidates because that is how the system works. Don't pretend it doesn't. You either vote for one of those two or you are ok with either.
We should be pressuring Biden to do more about both Ukraine and Gaza. Ending both conflicts and getting aid to people.
Choosing to vote for a 3rd party to protest Biden's response to Gaza/Israel is only going to help Trump in the short term. Yes, long term Biden and DNC may notice their total votes going down, but in the short term it will put Trump in the Whitehouse and now what? What did you accomplish if the DNC realizes they fucked up, but can't do anything about it because Trump is now a dictator?
Politics is a slow moving thing. Too many people expect some perfect ideal candidate or policy and won't compromise on anything. That isn't how it works, you have to compromise and slowly pull things the way you want. It doesn't happen in one election cycle.
We should have been and should be campaigning and pushing for changes to our system so that we can have better options in the future. We need to push for Ranked Choice Voting (or anything better than FPTP). And voting in local level elections to make small changes across the country. Term limits. Campaign finance reforms. Etc etc. because until we get a new system we effectively can't just vote for who we want or it doesn't do anything more than a fart in a hurricane.
I see a lot of people who are saying they will not vote for Biden because the Gaza/Israel issue. Which I completely understand. But the two truths you have to accept in doing so is that you will not be complicit in the genocide. But you will be complicit if Trump wins. Both can be true. You decide which one you would rather see. If you don't want Trump then the only option is a vote for Biden. And until we reform our voting system we don't have viable 3rd parties and pretending we do is just delusional. Look at every election for the last hundred years and you will see enough proof. It's not ideal, but it is reality. **Accept it **so we can change it together.
I would add that there ARE things you can do to help stop the genocide, that are not refusing to vote. I absolutely believe that the demonstrations, protest votes, calls to congresspeople, and so on, are part of what’s behind the changes to the US’s Israel policy recently (sanctions on settlers, pause in the weapons shipments, stuff like that - that’s nowhere near enough and no excuse for Biden’s support for Israel during the “war” and before it, but also, nothing ANYWHERE near that has happened in 75 years of consistently war-criminal support by the US for Israel).
All that stuff makes a difference and can help stop the genocide. Refusing to vote does nothing to stop the genocide and risks putting someone in office who is much much worse (actively wants to kill more Palestinians.)
We either vote in a way that prevents a fascist from regaining power--voting Biden--or we vote in a way that makes it more likely that fascist gains power again--voting for anyone else.
Period end of story, thats the end game. A vote for Biden is a vote for democracy, any other vote is a vote for fascism.
Hey as long as we’re ganging up on this guy, it’s notable that he claimed that one good thing about living in the USSR was that unlike the modern day US, people weren’t one interaction with the legal system away from having their life destroyed. Which is a pretty odd thing to say.
Odd and inaccurate but probably a sign of a bad faith actor imo. Lol, what regular person is going around supporting the USSR at this point in history, lol. How dumb.
Yeah. It could just be that they are a leftist who just doesn’t have much at all of a factual understanding of 20th century history in any respect, and is substituting an overall rosy picture of anything non Western instead of even the broadest of broad strokes of factual statements and understanding
But… it could also be someone who didn’t have a Western education with its notable gaps in what we wanna admit happened, and instead had a different education with a different set of notable gaps on what we wanna admit happened, such that it didn’t even occur to them that praising the USSR’s justice system would be a totally bizarre thing to say from the perspective of being supposedly a Westerner talking to another Westerner.
Do you want to feel good about your choice or do you want your choice to make a small difference?
I want wars and genocides and murders and suffering and death and sickness to be minimal or zero. I want my fellow humans to be happy and healthy and thrive. I want my labor and work to be a positive thing for society and also benefit me fairly. I want to be a part of ensuring the ecosystem doesn't collapse. I want to learn from others and I want to be able to teach others. And I have a feeling you agree with me on those things.
But I also am approaching this from reality. And I am acknowledging that with our voting system as it is today, you can either vote for 1 of 2 candidates or you don't care who wins and are complicit with their choices the next 4 years. That is simply reality.
But I also agree with you that ideally we could vote for not-genocide. I want that so badly. But we have to have a viable means to do that first. So let's work together and push for a system where our voices can be heard and can make a difference. In the meantime I'd rather see Biden in office which gives us a chance for those things vs Trump which has said and demonstrated he will try to end it.
I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm trying to make the point of reality vs ideal. And we aren't at ideal yet, so we need to work toward it.
The Greens and Cornell West are good choices. I like West more but it's looking like the Greens are the ones that will be centered around so let's go for Jill Stein.
This is their plan if they win, it's in the open, and it's the end of Democracy in the United States.
Do you want to not vote?
If you don't vote you might not ever vote again.
Even if you aren't lgbtq it's highly unlikely that you don't know someone who isn't. They will suffer first.
Know any women? They'll lose control over their bodies, thier periods monitored by the state
You like having sex? Don't like getter her pregnant though? Hope that you like pilling out because say goodbye to condoms. Actually that's a sin to spill your seed so you're going to jail for that too.
Say that you actually want to have a baby? Maybe you waited to do it, but now you're having trouble? Say goodbye to invitro fertilization. That's not God's way. If he wanted you to have a baby he would have made it happen. Clearly something is wrong with you. You're defective and must be bad.
Oh, you call God by a different name or don't believe?
Sucks, you're going to need some corrective education. You Heathen!
It's literally good to be A Handmaid's Tale.
But stand by your principles.
Maybe it won't happen here.
But what if it does?
When God Emperor Trump jails his enemies.
Suspends the constitution.
"Leader for life, I like the sound of that."
Not voting for Biden supports Trump, who will be even worse regarding Gaza. So either you're a troll, an idiot, or actively want to make genocide worse?
This kind of thinking is how you end up with only two options.
A third option emerges when enough people say "I am not voting for either of those two".
You either vote for one of those two or you are ok with either.
Or, it means you're not okay with either.
We need to push for Ranked Choice Voting (or anything better than FPTP).
Canada has FPTP voting and still manages to have four federal political parties.
Australia has ranked ballots and effectively has a two-party system that hasn't changed in 80 years (though they do sometimes manage to get some independents elected to parliament)*.
I'm not saying the voting system is irrelevant. But the true obstacle to multi-party democracy is the fact that voters think in a polarized two-party way (that you are currently reinforcing).
* This is a description of Australia's House of Representives. Their Senate uses proportional representation, and does have more than two parties. And technically Australia has three political parties in the House of Representives, but two of them have been in a permanent coalition since 1946 and are often treated as a single entity, with the result that Australians consider themselves to have a two-party system.
Politics is a slow moving thing. Too many people expect some perfect ideal candidate or policy and won’t compromise on anything. That isn’t how it works, you have to compromise and slowly pull things the way you want. It doesn’t happen in one election cycle.
It took fifty years of consistent Evangelical support, along with their advantage of low population density, to get to a point where Roe was overturned.
