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
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.
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
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?
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
Okay? The point I'm making, which you have totally ignored, is that votes are the only leverage that we have. By throwing my vote away the Democrats can't have it, and if enough people do that they lose. Supposedly they want to win, so they need to convince me to note vote for Aaron Bushnell this November. By deciding to enslave yourself to the Democrats and slavishly give them your support no matter what they have no reason to not get even worse. By next year they'll have moved even farther to the right and it will be your fault because you refused to use the only leverage you have to move them to the left.
Every election cycle the Democrats just become the Republicans from the last election cycle. Biden is doing genocide, violating international law by limiting asylum seekers, and marching us towards WW3. How much worse will they get if they aren't stopped?
I never did, that's the least destructive way to let your displeasure be known, as long as you still vote for, and encourage others to vote for, the least bad candidates in the general elections (spoilers, the least bad candidates will pretty much universally be blue)
All this that does is ensure this election's Democrat is the same as last election's Republican, they constantly move as far to the right as you let them because they know they can count on your vote no matter what. You are making things worse. Maybe you, specifically, didn't speak out against uncommitted. The whole .world instance definitely did, though. We remember.
All this that does is ensure this election’s Democrat is the same as last election’s Republican
Even if this is true and we're in a metaphorical political nosedive, that's still harm reduction, it's 4 more years to be politically active in a functioning democracy, vote in every primary and general you can from your local school board up to the presidential election, and hopefully pull up hard enough that we don't actually smash into the ground
If you think our democracy is already too far gone and completely unsalvageable, you shouldn't be advocating for other people not to vote, you should instead be advocating for people to join/form a local militia and start training to defend it because clearly it's already time to break out the 4th box
If voting matters, if this is a democracy, then non-votes matter too.
So which is it? Is this a functioning democracy, where refusing to vote unless certain demands are met can be used as leverage? Or is this a kleptocracy where you must vote for the fascism lite party if you don't want the fascism delux party to win?
Non-votes literally do not matter, mathematically it's the same as if you had two votes and you gave one each to both candidates. Parties cannot appeal to you as a non-voter because they have no idea what you want, the only way they can is if you vote in primaries for your candidates of choice so they can see the sorts of things their constituents value. Only don't vote if you truly don't care whether we have "fascism or fascism-lite", because if you would prefer one then not voting only helps the other win.
Again, general elections are about harm reduction, sometimes you have to be an adult, grit your teeth, and choose between two bad choices because one is clearly the better option. We'll have to eliminate FPTP first if we want anything different.
By refusing to vote unless my demands are met I can exert pressure on Democrats. You, by voting blue no matter who and no matter what, literally have no impact on Democrats. How else do you think we push them left?
Also, genocide isn't harm reduction.
You're an enabler. This genocide is on your head, blue no matter who's have made it impossible to convince Biden to stop.
If that's what you have to tell yourself when you and others like you not voting enables Donald Trump and the GOPs super genocide on the Palestinian people, I'm sure their spirits will rest well in their mass graves knowing that you really stuck it to the Democrats
I for one will be trying to save lives come November
You are cutting off your nose to spite your face, your selfishness and inability to move past your moral grandstanding on this single issue will guaranteed cause untold suffering across the globe (especially to domestic minorities) should the Republicans gain more power
More dead Ukrainians, more dead Gazans, more dead women, more dead LGBT, and if they get their way, the death of American democracy as we know it
Don't forget that he's also made more progress on building the southern border wall and killing the asylum process than trump did in his 4 years. But he wears a blue tie (Good Guys) and that's all that really matters.
And not voting for a major party will fix that how?
Even if a significant portion of the population goes third party (and assuming they all agree on the same party), splitting the vote has only ever helped the opposition.
And if Democrats are just Republicans from the last election cycle, which is an absolutely unhinged notion but I'll humor you anyway, voting for Democrats is still in my best interest since Republicans are even further right
You've legitimately lost your mind in a purity test if you can't see that.
Would you vote for that just because the other guy might be worse?
Yes, are you retarded? Like you've gotta be actually fucking stupid to be queer and think letting republicans win to punish dems is better for you, or Palestine. American politics is harm reduction, and the choice for less harm is clear.
It's not like Biden has done fucking anything about Republicans attacking our rights in the State legislatures. When my red state decides to make it illegal to use the bathroom he won't do anything about it.
I'd still vote for him if he'd stop doing genocide, of course, but until then 🤷♀️
Hey russian troll monkeys, get your heads out of your asses for four months!! That’s it!! Then you can jam ‘em right back up there. Promise.
Fucking sick of you GeNoSiDe JoE bullshit fuckheads. God fucking dammit you want trump so goddamned bad. Idiots! And claiming to be left! The stupidest possible take is the one you won’t shut up about. Almost like . . like you know it’s only going to divide people and suppress turnout. Fuck you.
