Anyway, you've really illustrated why the American centrist is so ridiculous. You honestly want to argue that a nuclear-powered (yes, Israel has nukes, even if they don't admit it) military with a $20 billion budget that is systematically destroying a civilian population couldn't possibly be committing genocide because none of their founding documents say, “genocide.” Meanwhile, you also want me to accept that a terrorist organization with homemade rockets, that controls an area the smaller than Detroit, with a military budget of $350 million, is just as capable of committing genocide. Not only that, any deaths they cause are a genocide, because their charter calls for genocide (which is obviously ridiculous; by this logic, Dylan Roof committed genocide). You are a deeply unserious person and I'm done with this absurd exercise.
Biden does not deserve peace, and he should be held accountable for his role in genocide. Responding to anti-genocide protesters with 4 more years is some cultist ass shit. Literal human lapdogs.
Biden has bypassed congress to provide aid to Israel.
You can only play dumb and act like Biden has no agency for so long before people realize you all are full of shit. Every time Democrats recycle this lie more and more people are able to see it for what it is.
The democrats have been playing this "there's nothing we can do" game with leftists for years and its going to bite them in the ass at some point.
For example, the recent election in Argentina was between a Libertarian nutjob and a corrupt center-left party. Unfortunately the corrupt center-left party lost, and now the maniac is wrecking their economy.
Then you've got the Labor party in Britain, who despite all of Brexit couldn't manage to form a government.
It's like the entire world is trapped between the options of idiotic populism and neoliberalism.
Then the audience — made up of many young people & women — immediately started chanting things like "Four more years" & "Let's go Joe." Be careful of these stories.
Well, obviously. The audience was there to see Biden because they presumably like him. You think the protestors were going to suddenly win over his strongest supporters after yelling for accountability from their hero? Biden, the audience, and the press covering the event weren't getting what they wanted to hear, but they needed to hear it.
Because women having their rights taken away deserves attention too. They interrupted this rally to target Biden, when there's plenty of other places for them to do that.
Because there's probably a good amount of overlap between people who are pro-abortion rights and those who are sympathetic to Palestinian rights. Abortion rights are also an important and immediately critical issue domestically, so interrupting a rally to support those who need access to abortion with a pro-Palestine protest is just going to piss off people at the rally who are already on the side of the protest. It'd be like if a group of pro-choice advocates started a protest at a pro-Palestine rally, it's just bad form when the group they're disrupting probably agrees with them.
I get the protest was targeted at Biden and Harris, but even still, it's a bad idea to protest them at an event that is probably for an issue the protestors also care about. It just signals that there's no reaching the protestors and they're going to be unreasonable, even if Biden comes around to their side and stops shipping arms to Israel.
Protests should absolutely be disruptive. What they shouldn't do is occur at events to support different marginalized groups. Protesting an abortion rights rally is fundamentally different from shutting down a highway. It's like having anti police brutality protest disrupt a pro asylum rally. How does it help to disrupt an event for an issue the protestors probably support as well?
Again, I get they were there to protest Biden, but do it when he's at a random campaign event, not when he's at an event to support a marginalized group.
I love how we're all so stuck up our own asses that people actually think it makes sense to hamper any sort of attempt at progress because it's not perfect. This is the same exact shit as single issues voters in the Republican party over guns or anti-abortion. So focused on one thing that they can't even understand they're hurting themselves.
Maybe this isn't you exactly, but it's what your comments rhetoric represents.
Should people hold a pro-choice protest at a rally to support Gazans, shouting over the speakers? It's not convenient but after all that's the argument right? Disrupt every possible occasion?
Every Democrat I know irl is a kind, considerate person with empathetic views.
So it's amazing to me that the party seems to go out of its way to find the most horrific ghouls and status quo warriors to set forth in a federal election, especially really fucking important elections
If we want better candidates we should be prepping for 2028 and 2032 now. Not 2024. We have a big chance coming up. So many of the boomers that have been in control of all levels of government for the last several decades. Neocons and neoliberals are all dying out. And being forced to retire. Change is coming one way or another.
1/3 of all boomers are dead currently. That proportion will grow significantly for each coming year. Effectively reducing the power of that voting block. Which has been outsized for decades. And reducing their hold on the leadership of the parties which has also been outsized for decades. McConnell, pelosi, Schumer, Biden, and many more are all in that generation and all quickly approaching their cutoff.
During the primary isn't really the time to be introduced to a candidate unless you are generally unengaged and uninterested in politics or the process. So it's really too late to start trying to run new candidates, especially with Biden as the incumbent this cycle. The next two cycles should be significantly different. And we should start looking for and prepping candidates for it now. There are a number of younger Democrats etc that could fit the bil. But we need to start organizing for that now. Not in 2028 or 2032.
Yeah, but the other guy is actively campaigning on chopping your balls off for laughs and keeps showing up to rallies with a cleaver and a salt shaker...so y'know...you pick your fucking battles.
Which choice frees the refugees? Which choice provides universal healthcare? Which choice gives land back? Seems to me both choices are unfathomably bad. Do we have to pick who gets human rights?
Seems less like a democracy and more like a system inspired by the Saw franchise. Fuck this so much.
I understand your sentiment, I really do. We also need economic reparations for black people, to redesign the police system, and to ensure LGBT people are represented in society and education.
It's ironic to me how much I hated the country back when I was a senior in high school, 2012 -- and now how it's in many ways worse today in 2024. There have been advancements, and those need to be celebrated, but there have been significant setbacks and reversion. I never thought I'd live to see an era even more hostile to LGBT people, in many ways.
I'm not going to tell you that I've learned to love the country in spite of its many faults -- but I have learned to recognize that we are a country that owned slaves, and also freed slaves. We enacted Jim Crow, and we passed the Voting Rights Act. We didn't let gays serve in the military, then we enacted Don't Ask Don't Tell, and then we stopped caring if soldiers were openly gay.
America is a story of oppressors and liberators. Those who only let rich white men vote, and those who protested until women and black people could vote. America is all of them. We can pick though who we extol as model Americans, and who we condemn as our worst.
To tie things back to what you're saying, we need to preserve the human rights we have right now above all else, before we can expand them to everyone who deserves them. In 2016 people were unhappy that we weren't expanding more, and it led to us losing abortion rights we already had.
We protect those we can, and we wait for our moment. We do our damnedest to make sure we don't regress, and when the time comes, we honor the woman's suffragists and civil rights marchers and secure expansions.
Before we can expand, we have to bury these Trump fascists six feet under. Only then can we get around to fixing our many problems.
We've been regressing though. Bush gave us the Patriot Act, Obama took no action to lift it. Same with Guantanamo and the use of torture, Obama took no action to rescind these things that I'm aware of. Trump put refugees and immigrants in cocentration camps, Biden built even more of these camps.
The problem is the Democrats are not preserving the rights we have. They're willing to compromise on basic human rights.
I've been around since Reagan, and I've been watchin this happen in real time. The few "wins" in human rights have been bittersweet since they are always won by throwing other groups of people under the bus -- for instance, Obama's healthcare plan that successfully helped more middle-income people gain access to healthcare while causing actual harm to our lowest income earners.
I've never seen this protection you're talking about. I've seen both parties drift further to the right and become more and more defensive of the capitalist status quo.
So it’s amazing to me that the party seems to go out of its way to find the most horrific ghouls and status quo warriors to set forth in a federal election, especially really fucking important elections
I think its useful to distinguish between Democrats and democrats. I try to use Democrats for party officials, elected officials, talking heads within the party etc. I try to use democrats for democratic voters.
Democrats do not have the priorities of their voters in mind, and have, since the 90's, wished that they actually had republicans for voters. Democrats don't want to be managing a leftwing party (the votership they largely have), they want to be managing a rightwing party. The Democratic party reconfigured its self to be diet Republican after Carter and have been failing forwards ever since.
Feelings aside, Biden is objectively one of the most, if not the most, progressive President we've had in modern history.
[Bernie] Sanders said that some of the early goals that the Biden administration and a Democratic Congress were able to accomplish in the first two years of Biden’s presidency were progressive victories, including the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.
“I think the American Rescue Plan that we passed early in his agenda, in the midst of the terrible pandemic, the economic collapse, was, in fact, one of the most significant pieces of legislation for the working class in this country, in the modern history of America,” Sanders said.
No, I know who you're responding to, but pointing out that Biden is marginally more left-leaning than the guy who repealed Glass-Steagall and the guy who created the assassination-robot squad doesn't really undermine his point. FDR's party gutted the New Deal, Biden being slightly more pro-union doesn't really mean much to the overall trend.
The point being that I don't expect inhuman levels of perfection for my political leaders, and I don't think you should either. There was much more to FDR's administration than the New Deal, and when it comes the historical comparison Biden may have fallen short on matching the New Deal (although objectively he passed the biggest infrastructure and progressive economics bill since the New Deal), he has an undeniably better track record than FDR in terms of human rights, civil rights and environmental protection. There's really no comparison.
(FWIW, it's also worth noting that FDR had a significantly stronger Democratic backing in congress, with IIRC, a large supermajority in the Senate for multiple years. Historical political context is also important.)
Like it or not, It's just a point of fact that Biden is the most progressive president we've had in at least 50 years, if not a century, when looking at the entirety of his record so far.
The Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, 'O Muslim, O servant of God, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.' Only the Gharkad tree would not do that, because it is one of the trees of the Jews
A) Glad you were eventually able to edit your post to more than a single emoji. B) You know that Palestinians aren't Hamas, right? C) You understand that it's not a, "two-way genocide," if only side can actually commit genocide, right? Hamas may want to kill evey Jew, but they've only managed to kill 1,200 people in their initial attack and 210 soldiers since then. Meanwhile, Israel has killed a minimum of 25,000 people, and by there own estimates only 9,000 of them were militants. (Also, 9,000 is a number the IDF gave without any evidence, so it's probably a gross overestimate.)
There's a reason that, of the two groups, only the Israeli government is being accused of genocide in the ICJ, and it's not because the international community likes Hamas. Genocide isn't just a declaration in a charter, it is a specific series of actions against an ethnic group, and it sure seems like Israel is committing those actions.
A) Glad you were eventually able to edit your post to more than a single emoji
It's only fair, I was just short on time.
B) You know that Palestinians aren’t Hamas, right?
Not all Palestinians are Hamas or even sympathetic to Hamas. Not all Israelis are IDF or supporters of Netenyahu.
Every single innocent person on either side of this war is a victim.
C) You understand that it’s not a, “two-way genocide,” if only side can actually commit genocide, right?
This is a stunningly bizarre point.
We've already established that the founding mission of Hamas was a jihad in the name eliminating Israeli Jews. To take it a step further, nations like Iran, who back Hamas, have openly called for "wiping Israel of the map" on multiple occasions. So not only is the intent real and well documented, but the actions of Hamas, including the war crimes of taking civilian hostages, are consistent with those original goals. Hamas leaders are still openly talking about a one state solution today, as are most of their supporters, even in the west.
But to your point, that intent doesn't matter and only capability matters.
I find that quite ironic considering the thousands of missiles fired from Gaza into Israel by Hamas as part of their coordinated terror attack. The IDF estimates (grain of salt, best number I can find right now) there were 2000 Hamas missile attacks on October 7th alone. There have been continuous attacks from Hamas and Hezbollah since then.
The only thing stopping those missiles from hitting Israeli civilians was the American Iron Dome missile defense system. Had it not been for American support of Israel, it's very possible that the combined forces of Hamas and Hezbollah, with the backing of Iran and Russia, could have very well been capable of waging an all out genocidal attack on Israel, as they have repeatedly stated is their shared intention.
In that regard, are Israel guilty of simply being able to defend themselves better than Hamas could defend Gaza? Would it have been better if Israel hadn't had Iron Dome and been hit with some thousand missiles from multiple different Islamic militant groups on multiple fronts?
Of course not, which is also why the "accusation" of genocide against Israel has been rejected by every key member of the UN as baseless and without merit or evidence.
We don't get to simply refine words until they mean what we want them to mean. Hamas and Netenyahu both wanted war, played off each other for political power, and have both openly called for a unacceptable single-state solution "from river to sea". Which, as a worst and most cynical interpretation, can be seen as a call for genocide from both parties. Neither should have ever been given political power, and neither should be allowed to hold power in the future. But it does take two to tango, and Hamas' intent and actions do matter here as well, especially when they are not helpless and have used plenty of potentially lethal force towards Israel. (And again, there is the war crime of taking civilian hostages.)
This is on them, not the United States, who have (thanks to Iron Dome) protected the lives of countless innocent Israelis and who have called for the IDF to show restraint and to work towards a two-state solution with an autonomous Palestine that Hamas are unfit to rule over.
Doesn't matter if it's Biden, Bernie or FDR's ghost in the Oval Office, America will continue to support its most important ally in the middle east, especially as they take heavy fire from all directions by groups whose state intent has always been their annihilation.
the "accusation" of genocide against Israel has been rejected by every key member of the UN as baseless and without merit or evidence.
Well, Israel's allies (France, Germany, Hungary, Austria, U.S., and U.K., by my count) have objected, and most of the other Western nations have declined to take a stance. Meanwhile, more than 25 nations in the Middle East, Africa, and South America support the case. So, if you think that this case is meritless because, “key,” U.N. members don't support it, your ignoring massive international outcry and showing off your Eurocentric bias.
The only thing stopping those missiles from hitting Israeli civilians was the American Iron Dome missile defense system
the United States, who have, thanks to Iron Dome, protected the lives of countless innocent Israelis
Yeah, this is just wrong. It's not American, it's Israeli. We've contributed money and missiles to it, but it was designed and built by an Israeli defense firm and the IDF. Americans want to believe that Israel would be helpless without them, but Israel has a first-world economy and a very well-funded military. This isn't Ukraine; there would economic and political consequences for Netanyahu if Israel lost our support, but they don't need our support to survive. Biden could withdraw support to Israel due to human rights violations without creating an existential threat to Isreal.
We don't get to simply refine words until they mean what we want them to mean.
You're right, so let's look at the U.N.’s legal definition of genocide:
Killing members of the group (check); Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group (check); Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part (check); Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group (check); Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group (...nope, not that one).
Any of these constitute genocide, and Israel is at 4 out of 5.
Finally, you seem very concerned with what could happen while ignoring what is happening. Yes, Hezbollah and Hamas could commit genocide against Israelis with enough support and resources. Yes, Israel could have much higher civilians casualties without the Iron Dome (which, again, is an Israeli creation). If these things happened, there should be international outcry and U.S. intervention. But Hezbollah and Hamas can't win a war against Israel, much less commit genocide, and Israel does have the Iron Dome.
But what is happening is that Israel is waging a campaign of destruction that has killed at least 1% of the population of Gaza. At a bare minimum, 64% of those casualties, 16,000 people, were civilians, and most of them were women and children. Their actions have been described as collective punishment and ethnic cleansing by human rights groups, and there is a genocide case against them before the ICJ.
These are not hypotheticals; this is what is happening right now. And they are happening with the support of the U.S. and, “one of the most, if not the most, progressive President we've had in modern history.”
So, if you think that this case is meritless because, “key,” U.N. members don’t support it
No, the accusation is meritless because there is little evidence to support it:
"This killing is nothing short of destruction of Palestinian life," South African lawyer Adila Hassim
There are upwards of 2 million Palestinians in Gaza alone, and if Israel's intention was to inflict destruction of Palestinian life, wouldn't there be far more than 20,000 of Palestinians dead? And, if the goal was genocide, why would Israel be only focusing Gaza and not the West Bank where there are upwards of 3 million? Not to mention the population of ethnic Palestinians who live or work safely and peacefully inside of Israel.
The world has seen genocide many times, from the American genocide of Native People, to the Armenian Genocide, to the Holocaust. Jews know first hand what a ethnic genocide looks like, and this ain't it.
It really doesn't matter who does or doesn't support accusations, or who are allies with who, because legal matters are not democratic and instead based on evidence.
Now when it comes to Hamas, on the other hand, they have made it easy by writing their genocidal intent directly into their founding language. They said their quiet part out loud on day 1, and while they've tried to legitimize themselves by moderating their official language, they clearly haven't moderated their actions. Their allies and backers have made it equally clear that their intent is the complete destruction of Israel and Israeli Jews.
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as
such: (Genocide Convention, Article II)
Please don't omit the parts that hurt your argument, it's a waste of time and it doesn't work or help.
Remember when you said:
it’s not a, “two-way genocide,” if only side can actually commit genocide, right?
[...]
Genocide isn’t just a declaration in a charter, it is a specific series of actions against an ethnic group,
The Genocide Convention does not support your original claim that Hamas' actions cannot be considered genocide because they aren't capable. The part that you omitted is very clear that intent is everything.
Killing members of the group (check); Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group (check);
What? By that definition alone, every war in human history could/should be labeled a genocide.
That doesn't pass the smell test, and its why you're not doing a service to your argument by omitting inconvenient parts of definitions. It's doing these things "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" that meets the criteria for genocide under the Genocide Convention.
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part (check);
I'm not sure what you're citing here, as it links to an entire CNN news feed.
Not that it's relevant, because as we've just established, you've omitted important language from your mischaracterized version of the definition.
But to get back to it, it is Hamas whose intent (as expressed in their founding charter and many times since) and actions (as perpetrated on and after October 7th) most certainly meet the Genocide Convention standards for genocide that you've (at least partially) listed here.
Finally, you seem very concerned with what could happen while ignoring what is happening.
...You seem to have lost the thread on your own argument: that Hamas' actions cannot be considered genocide as the don't have the capacity to pull it off. (Which, again, is an ass-pull and not consistent with the Genocide Convention definition in the slightest.)
Hamas, combined with its allies and backers, absolutely have the capability to murder massive numbers of Israeli civilians. They have also all expressed genocidal intent against Israel at various points in time. Israel is facing attacks from multiple Islamic militant groups as we speak.
These are not opinions, but facts.
If not for Israel's ability to defend itself from these very real attacks, a direct result of ~$130 Billion of US military aide since its inception, we would be seeing massive numbers of Israeli civilians dead from the very real attacks on Israel during this war.
The fact that Israel is able to defend itself from most of Hamas attacks, has no bearing on the classification of this war as a genocide. American investment in Israeli defense has helped save countless lives of innocent Israelis from a daily volley of missiles from openly genocidal, Iran-backed groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
Anyway, you've really illustrated why the American centrist is so ridiculous. You honestly want to argue that a nuclear-powered (yes, Israel has nukes, even if they don't admit it) military with a $20 billion budget that is systematically destroying a civilian population couldn't possibly be committing genocide because none of their founding documents say, “genocide.” Meanwhile, you also want me to accept that a terrorist organization with homemade rockets, that controls an area the smaller than Detroit, with a military budget of $350 million, is just as capable of committing genocide. Not only that, any deaths they cause are a genocide, because their charter calls for genocide (which is obviously ridiculous; by this logic, Dylan Roof committed genocide). You are a deeply unserious person and I'm done with this absurd exercise.
I lived through all of that and you put it just right: They kept failing forward. If they weren't the only alternative to the Republicans the party would have died after 1984.
Doesn't work in our system. To do that we'd need to use the same broken system we have to implement some other kind of voting system. But for it to work in time we would've had to have started in the 80s.
Primaries. The people have to show up and actually vote for what they want into the primary (rather than trying to vote according to political strategies). With enough sustained effort and time a coalition of like-minded representatives could be built up to slowly change the system to a more representational one.
You shouldn't. Your thinking is linear and deterministic, but elections and society structures are not. Voting for X over Y period is not a guarantee of X. It's a chance at X, assuming an entire host of other people vote with you and a number of other factors fall into place, but not a guarantee.
Be the change you want to see friend. Organize, distribute literature, engage others in honest and open dialogue (like you're doing), and encourage those around you to vote in every election and primary, or to run if able.
Really though, we just gotta last another 15 years or so and then the climate change feedback cycle will take care of everything
The U.S. government was always designed so that it would be ruled by ‘the top’. Through failures of imagination, inability to build in flexibility, and the entrenched powers doing what they can to grow their power, we’ve wound up with a system where money is power and people are merely numbers that can be shuffled to produce desired end results.
I’m quickly approaching a point of throwing up my hands, but if there is a needle that can be threaded by ‘the people’ to stitch back together our fraying democracy, it’s this —
A state-by-state ballot initiative effort to remove political drawing of electoral maps.
Changing voting (likely also ballot initiative) to remove the first past the poll system, so that we use instant run-off (aka ranked choice) to give people the opportunity to vote for who they want without throwing their vote away.
Removing barriers to voting and establishing a national holiday during election days.
Overturn Citizens United. Overhaul campaign finance. Eliminate unknown funding sources from politics. Eliminate business contributions and PAC’s entirely. Narrowly define acceptable lobbying, and broadly define what lobbying can’t be.
Strong consumer privacy laws that have teeth, so that micro targeted campaigns can’t be used to manipulate people into swinging elections. Case in point - Trump only won the swing states by 11,000 votes (total) in 2016.
And using ballot initiatives to have enough states join the national popular vote interstate compact to render the electoral college moot.
I suspect the DNC is gonna try another Bill Clinton style southern strategy and appeal to disenfranchised conservatives by shifting further to the right. And current democrat voters will shift to the right with them, defending their right wing actions tooth and nail.
Of everyone who claims no third party could win would actually coalesce around and vote for a third party candidate, the third party would win. Their children apparently aren’t suffering and starving enough, yet.
That's not true for the president. They are not picked by popular vote but the electoral college, and it's "first to get half the Electoral College votes", not who ever gets the most. It takes a literal majority, otherwise Congress or some other suits just get to pick.
The US is absolutely not a democracy when it comes to 2/3rds of its branches of government.
The problem is you're only focusing on one branch.
Congress has an amazing amount of power... the problem is a majority of them are really only concerned with their own piece of the United States of Pie. Their first, second, and only concern is being re-electable. Start focusing on electing more people who actually have the people's (all the people, not just their specific constituents, mind) best interest at heart and you can have effective change.
Constantly focusing on the Presidential election, and only the Presidential election and you lose out on most of the power in this country.
Start focusing on electing more people who actually have the people's (all the people, not just their specific constituents, mind) best interest at heart and you can have effective change.
The problem is that the person you want to elect will lose to someone who selfishly serves their constituents, because their constituents vote for them.
Considering the Senate is just two assholes per state and the House would have over a 1,000 members if we had the same ratio as 1789 I'd expand that to all three branches.
It's not a legitimate government, but we all pretend it is. Especially the people with guns.
Well, a "legitimate" government just needs to retain control, and they definitely have control. Though yes, the US is definitely not a legitimate democracy.
No they wouldn't, it would, at most, be a deadlock between the three parties that the House would decide on. One would hope they would go with the one with the most votes, but in reality they can pick anyone. Including someone who wasn't even one of the top three candidates.
Not to mention all the people who want a "third party" aren't necessarily going to vote for the same third party. They all want their own person. Most likely none of them would get anywhere near the majority popular vote, much less any electoral votes.
(Unless you live in NH, then you don't get a primary. Also the DNC reserves all rights to ignore any primary election)
Either we get rid of the two party system, or it's gonna be the death of democracy.
There can't just be two options picked by private organizations... That's just the illusion of choice when billionaires and corporations donate to both parties.
Vote in all primaries. Vote in state and local. Vote on your local dog-catcher.
The President isn't the only office that matters, and really it doesn't even make up a majority of the importance. It's just easier to get people to focus on it, and ignore all the other just as important elections.
I get what you're saying, and I'm very involved locally, have even considered running myself, but then what? We've still got immigrants and refugees in concentration camps, still can't get anyone, especially women or trans youth, access to healthcare, can't redistribute wealth, can't give land back to the tribes. I still feel powerless. Now what? Just be content with that?
I know plenty of Dems who voted trump because abortion. I think a lot is the demographics’ religion. I’ve heard too many say they will vote for trump because at least he gave them $1200. And a friend told me in conversation he visited a (all black) church where the pastor said he doesn’t care if trump is elected, because “God has a plan.”
Biden leaves much to be desired, and waited until election year to mention price-gouging, even try to contend with border red states and abortion. Facts are, both establishment parties are on the same Team Gazillionaire, which isn’t us, and they don’t want it to ever be us. It’s time we wake up that one party is just more sneaky about it, and they’re really not that sneaky. And the EC is still in place.
Biden leaves much to be desired, and waited until election year to mention price-gouging, even try to contend with border red states and abortion. Facts are, both establishment parties are on the same Team Gazillionaire, which isn’t us, and they don’t want it to ever be us. It’s time we wake up that one party is just more sneaky about it, and they’re really not that sneaky. And the EC is still in place.
You can't convince me that a native English-speaker wrote this.
I just thought it was funnier than going point by point through that incoherent nonsense to try to correct it, because sometimes I feel like it's better to laugh than it is to try to engage with political talking points that are so mired in bullshit that they are hard to take in good faith. It's also flawed to assume that everybody who is engaging in conversations around American politics are American citizens acting in good-faith, based on what we know about the history of foreign meddling in global elections, but I digress.
It's possible that you've taken it more seriously than I meant it to be, but ultimately I said something that may have been offensive and exclusionary to ESL speaking people, and for that I'll just say sorry.
I appreciate that you were willing to hear what I was saying. FWIW I recognize there was a legitimate problem with troll campaigns in at least the past 2 presidential elections and I’m sure already is a problem in the upcoming one, but defaulting to ‘someone isn’t using perfect English, they’re a shill!’ (in addition to being exclusionary to ESL speakers) casts too wide a net and includes a lot of people who legitimately do speak English as a first language (ask any English teacher, lol).
"Genocide Joe" is a little crass, but he absolutely deserves to be taken to task for his blind support of the IDF/IOF. That's more important to me as a voter than hearing circle jerk promises about known positions. We know he's pro abortion rights, he's shown that. Now it's time to address the elephant in the room.
So it’s amazing to me that the party seems to go out of its way to find the most horrific ghouls and status quo warriors to set forth in a federal election, especially really fucking important elections
Can you elaborate on what you mean that "the party seems to go out of its way to find the most horrific ghouls and status quo warriors to set forth in a federal election"? Are you unaware of the fact that Biden is the incumbent President?
He was nominated by a wide margin against a dozen other candidates (including over my preferred candidate), and elected with solid EC majority and a record number of individual votes.
To suggest that he was somehow appointed by the party establishment, when he's simply running for reelection like almost every incumbent President in American history has done after their first term seems like a very disingenuous statement. It's interesting that nobody leveled that argument against Trump when he ran for reelection in 2020, not to mention every other time it's happened, considering it's been the norm for decades.
A lot of us live in states that didnt get to vote in the primaries, and a lot of us show up to every election even when neither option really represents our views (albeit one much more than the other). To say we aren't getting our way cause we aren't voting, though undoubtedly true for some, is a bad take
This is not even touching on the DNC putting their finger on the scales in the primaries that did happen
There is a large amount of progressives who support progressive ideals but don't show up to vote in primaries or push politicians left. Hence- they just don't show up.
Progressive goals just aren't that popular and there is no large cohort abstaining from voting.
Don't get me wrong- I like some progressive ideals (though not nearly left as some on lemmy notably are.) I support fixing healthcare via single payer or at least some universal scheme with a public option, etc., I agree it's genocide in the Gaza Strip and we shouldn't at all be supporting Israel, etc.
But look at the results. Either progressives are sitting out A LOT or the party actually is just representing what the majority wants (like the OP stated.)
I think the general feeling of disenfranchisement comes from the DNC influence in primaries. Who they throw their weight behind in terms of advertising dollars and publicity makes a big difference in how the primaries go. Also very relevant is which states have their primaries when, as most times the primaries are called before every state has theirs. This is also hearsay and way harder to substantiate, but there are also some that cry foul that there isn't actually much in place to monitor primaries like there are in standard elections and there is significantly higher potential for fudged numbers and misrepresented results.
Of course I would still love to see more left candidates get the nomination despite that, but it is certainly still possible that I am in the minority in that desire.
For 2024, though, it doesn't much matter if Biden is who the left wants. When running against a literal fascist, there isn't really as much room to voice complaints about the alternatives. I voted for Biden in 2020 and will again in 2024 even though he is much further right than my political leaning, and even for those of us on the left who are not happy with how Biden has been doing, there isn't really room to show that with voting because the alternative is so much worse. In this scenario, votes for Biden can easily be misconstrued as support for Biden which is not really the case
When running against a literal fascist, there isn’t really as much room to voice complaints about the alternatives.
The Republicans have been running literal fascists for decades, and will continue to do so long after Trump and Biden are long dust. You will never get room to voice your complaints.
Most of your complaints seem to revolve around just presidential primaries. I'm not gonna argue that it's stupid how they do it but it's also just one position.
Why are people not voting in every single primary for local and state positions too to get left leaning candidates as the Dem candidate? Congresspeople have far more weight and more impact than just the president. Witness the overton window shifting far, far right due to crazy Tea Party and Freedom Caucus candidates, etc. etc.
Did every centrist decide to tediously lecture the left 5 times a day? I’ve voted in every election since I turned 18 and I see at least 10 dipshit centrists lecturing someone to vote or there will be fascism. I’m pretty sure leftists already know about fucking fascism, the thing we’ve been consistently resisting since like 1930. Stop being a fucking nag and we’ll vote for Biden.
Also, it’s also good if someone cares about ethnic cleansing and settler-driven apartheid. It’s kind of horrifying more people don’t. Sorry if I come off as smug when objecting to crimes against humanity.
Witness the complaints- "Oh Biden didn't legalize weed, didn't implement a whole new healthcare system, didn't absolve all student loans, etc. so I'm not going to vote for him" disregarding he has tried to do a bunch on those topics and either got some things done or got stopped by SCOTUS. Or just "he is supporting genocide in Gaza so I'm not voting for him" and disregarding that it would be far, far worse if Trump wins.
The guy has had either a razor thin majority OR a minority in government for his term and has still accomplished quite a bit like the biggest legislative bill ever that targets climate change, etc.. But if people are going to not vote for him because he can't turn around the aircraft carrier that is the US government on a dime by executive fiat then why bother courting those people?
My point isn't that he shouldn't try to get as many votes as he can- my point is progressives need to show up and vote for the least bad option and be grown ups about it. If you ever want to get change you need to show up every damn time and make your voice heard. And if you want things to go more left, get involved. I'm getting involved in a ballot measure that my state is putting forward for independent redistricting. I vote in the primaries even though I don't really like the Democratic party as is. AOC didn't just bitch- she showed up, worked her ass off, etc. and is pushing the conversation left, just like the Squad.
It's the people who throw their hands up, bitch, and then do nothing that I get irritated at. Don't like it? Then get involved like crazy and force the conversation left. If your ideas are actually popular then it should be easy to rally support no? So do it. But you can't blame politicians when people post complaints on a message board and then just...never show up and then wonder why people don't run totally different campaigns targeted towards them.
Because the parties don't represent the people. The parties represent the interests of those with most influence in the party. In the modern system it is those who make the most impactfull and sustained donation efforts. The rest is just marketing used to secure enough votes in the election show according to arbitrary rules they set and change as they see fit.
The parties represent liberals and fascists, when leftists are gaining in grassroots popularity. This grassroots movement must continue to build momentum and make real change.
