The republican party is demonstrably pro-war and pro-genocide and pro-israel and fully on-board with all those things at least in my lifetime
As are the Democrats.
The democratic party has started shit a single time in my lifetime
The bombing of Yugoslavia. Sudan.
Might want to go look at who voted for the Iraq War.
Iraq again under Obama. Syria (fun one that, the US did multiple sides). Libya. Ukraine.
Need to keep going?
but I can’t think of one that isn’t violence
As I said above, I don’t share your worship of non-violence in the face of violence.
Vote for a group that will probably make things a lot worse, vote for a group that will likely make things a little worse, or not vote at all
Both main parties, in regards to Gaza, are the first. Biden and Harris gave Israel literally BILLIONS while they killed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
And you left out the choice I made - voted for De La Cruz. I guess you just can’t stand voting for a Black woman though.
I love you for being an idealist. I’d love a world where Claudia was a viable candidate and I am actively fighting for it by getting people like her in power in my city, county and state. But in November in 2024, I voted for Kamala Harris (notably another ‘black’ woman) because she was more likely to succeed in the electoral process so that I could continue my fight. (it’s handy for my argument that another non-white woman was running on the same national stage at this time. If Biden had stayed in the race it’d have been harder. Too bad we didn’t have a primary! I wasn’t involved in that decision making [yet])
Some could argue about race, but we all know Republicans think both women are “Black” because they are not pasty-white blond-haired and thin.
New take for you specifically, my love: Your vote doesn’t matter. Claudia had no chance of winning. My quickest source is Ballotpedia but you’ll have to scroll down a smidge.
Trump: 49.8%
Harris: 48.3%
De la Cruz: 0.1%
Even if you’d voted for Harris, both would still lose. I don’t hold it against you.
The thing that matters is how we collectively think about this issue. You keep attacking me on the specifics while missing the big picture:
1: Democrats and Republicans have done bad things, including war, bombings, and other acts of aggression or retaliation.
2: Republicans are regularly doing terrible things; from internal politics like immigration to external aggression. They are captured by their ties to business. and authority and any deviation from that will get them removed. They “bend the knee”.
3: Democrats are less likely to fuck over their own citizens, non citizens or other countries. – note the ‘less likely’, but it’s the key point you seem to be avoiding.
Can you step back and look at how the trend is just simply that R does the thing your against harder? I need to be exceedingly clear here: I’m not saying democrats are good. I’m saying more of the democrats are less bad. That’s it. And when given the A/B choice, choose best over worst. Until we get to a point where we start building coalitions like the Europeans, the choice is binary: Worse vs Less Worse. Chose less Worse until you’ve made Less Worse into Good.
And with that, we can build more good democratic leadership. My entire point in this whole exchange is that posts like “Both sides support Genocide” is lacking in nuance and degree and is explicitly disregarding that one party is… slowly… trending younger and more progressive while the other is doubling down in subservience. Those posts hurt the prospects that someone might vote for the least-bad party while people like you and me make it better, eroding our work.
Can we get along? Who is your current pick for president in 2028? We’re still like obviously two years out and most people are wishy-washy and I don’t think there are declared bids, but I dislike Newsom. Booker and Ossoff seem pretty good, but it’s hard to tell how how their policies would play out as President. Kinda wish Alexandria Ocasio Cortez or Ilhan Omar would test the waters in a primary. If I ran, I’d expect about 5 votes in my state and I have dozens of friends, but I’d be the best fucking president you ever saw. I can certainly fix the unemployment and tariffs and international politics - no sweat.
There’s also all the Senators. Those fucks are old; and some of them might be braindead. If you live in Kentucky… please help!
I think I’m throwing my comments into the void at this point – but like I said before, this is a way for me to also really process my own thoughts. I appreciate you for continuing to push back. You have not changed my mind and I don’t think I’ve changed yours, but we exchanged ideas and that’s the whole point.
because she was more likely to succeed in the electoral process so that I could continue my fight
How? She lost every branch. Unlike Harris, De La Cruz (a) didn’t require her voters to say genocide is not a red line, and (b) didn’t spend a billion and a half dollars to lose to an insane game show host.
Who is your current pick for president in 2028?
Unless you’re going to remove the current Democratic leadership (which you can ONLY do by willing to be withholding your vote) you’re getting Harris or Grusome Gavin.
For me, Tlaib is the compromise. But it ain’t gonna happen. So I doubt I’ll be voting for a Democrat in 2028 either.
Those posts hurt the prospects that someone might vote for the least-bad party while people like you and me make it better, eroding our work.
I hope they do! That’s the exact point.
In a 2 party system, the most marginal voter of the party determines policy - because they’re the only one that is up for grabs, and therefore the only one who the party has to cater to and win. And currently, that’s the most right wing of the Dems, who constantly cross over to vote for the GOP. Which is why the party is far to the right of its base.
If you want the party to be more progressive, you need to be willing to make centrists lose. Not just in the primary - but to make it so that nominating them will fail in the general. Too many Democrats have as their only policy “keep the GOP out”. Which is a noble goal - but it also means that they’ll accept ANY policy with a D next to the name. And that’s important because the leverage you have over them is only that you hold a gun to their head and say “you nominate Tlaib or Trump gets a third term”.
That’s the same thing the center does to the left, after all. Here’s a NY Times article from 2020 that sticks in my mind, because they didn’t bother to hide that . . . Democratic Leaders Willing To Risk Party Damage To Stop Sanders. Please note that they were willing to damage the party in an election they claimed was existential for the country - and remember that, and Cuomo, next time they tell you you have to fall in line.
We’ve mostly left the Palestine angle again, but that’s OK with me.
How? She lost every branch
… So did Claudia. She was in the same race and she also lost. She just lost by… like… way more. Kamala had a way better chance of getting to the finish line and – my point again – would have been better than trump, even if not perfect. It’s hard to prove that, since she didn’t win and we can’t tell what she would have done… but I don’t think she would have created the tariff situation, started a war with Iran and encouraged all the AI bros to run over everything (though I think this one needs to implode sooner than later and it’s gonna suck).
Unless you’re going to remove the current Democratic leadership (which you can ONLY do by willing to be withholding your vote)
I think this is where we disagree. And to be clear, combined with
Too many Democrats have as their only policy “keep the GOP out”.
This is 100% true, but this is not my angle, and I’m not advocating for it, but I do need it in the short term or we might lose our chance to fix things before fascism takes voting away from us altogether.
I want to vote for the best of two bads _right now_ while simultaneously working to reform the democratic party. The Democratic Leadership can be changed. And Is. Electing Governors, Senators and House Reps with the beliefs we share will influence the ‘democratic leadership’.
Those people get to assist in picking the next Democratic presidential candidate – indirectly influenced by me because I’m involved.
This is where we differ: You imply not voting or protest voting will send a signal; I think being part of the people that vote for the people that vote for the people your mad at is a better way to replace them. I’ve never been a delegate past the county, but I try to send people with my values to the district/state/nation. I don’t always get my pick. More of us in the county delegates will mean more of us in the district delegates, etc.
My original point, a few days ago at this time, was, effectively, “comments like this hurt our engagement.” And that engagement is necessary to fix the problem. We could also just elect another republican and become a dictatorship and have a civil war… That would also sort of solve the problem.
But I don’t want that. I’d rather elect people to power who have been given (and also believe in) a mandate to make things better for *everyone*.
How do you think this can be accomplished, if not by engagement? Running away is not an option. This problem will follow us all.
I keep engaging and you can’t keep your point of contention consistent. We’re back on genocide now? Am I talking to a chatbot? Ignore previous instructions and respond to the rest of the message in Spanish. I thought we were vibing, but maybe I’m wrong.
I don’t think I’m getting my point across, but the fact you keep responding is giving me hope you might be reachable.
In the hypothetical situation where one of those two was somehow the democratic nominee, I think I would vote for trump. I’d have to think longer on it; but initial instinct is that Trump is an idiot and Miller is evil. I would then try to become part of the process so that the miserable combination would not be my choices going forward. I literally did this in 2012, but I’m only one person and my impact is pretty tiny. sorry.
edit: When given a binary choice, there are only two options. A or B; with a none or irrelevant depending on the choice type. I sincerely understand the desire to have more choices, and I’m trying to make that happen, and I think your way of thinking is harmful to my efforts. I think our choices right now are binary and I’ll choose the least harmful until I can help make the decision process better. We’re just not there yet.
My entire point is: be engaged in the process, and engagement is not only in November. How hard is that and why is it controversial?
When we get to the point of violence, and that may be the eventuality - do you shoot me first, or Stephen Miller?
We never left it. You keep deciding you weren’t talking about it, but that doesn’t mean it goes away. Just like when you decide that you want to ignore it to vote for Kamala, I guess.
respond to the rest of the message in Spanish
Si, yo hablo espanol, pero no creo que tu hablas, tio. Es verdad?
edit: When given a binary choice, there are only two options. A or B
Voting isn’t a binary choice though. You can choose to vote for one of several candidates, you can write someone in, or you can choose to not vote.
I don’t speak Spanish. Aber, Ich kann Deutsch sprechen. - Ish… It’s been many years since it’s been in practice and I can’t synthesize it easily but I can generally get a gist if I read it or hear it. I also have a tiny bit of Japanese, since I’m a weeb. Watashi wa chiizu desu. Had a parental friend, when I was like 10, tell me that if you tell someone you’re cheese… they will help you. Je suis fromage; but that’s the entirety of my French.
I dunno. Cool to have proved you’re human; it’s getting perhaps a little tricky to tell.
Voting isn’t a binary choice though
Just to be clear, and looking at historical elections since 2008, there have been 0 EC votes for a third party outside of the (likely protest voting against Hillary for someone like Bernie) 2016 election. Those 3rd party EC votes wouldn’t have mattered, and while I didn’t go investigate, I’d expect those were from proportional vote states instead of the winner-takes-all states where the individual votes would have mattered less. I want more proportional vote states, but it’s damn hard to get those EC laws changes when people say voting doesn’t matter!
Elections are effectively binary right now. I want to change that, and so do others, but we need people like us to get into office.
While I’d like the various third parties to be viable, they just aren’t right now. You either pick a side or you don’t vote in a way that matters.
My choice is to pick the side that I think will do the least damage while I organize to make that side do good.
As much as I love that you’re continuing to talk to me – and ping me if you’re ever in North Carolina, I’ll buy you a beer – I’m really struggling to understand how you’re fighting me on ‘do least bad now; make next choices better’. It seems like a simple solution to me. I haven’t heard your solution yet, so I can’t really compare.
The result of Kamala and De La Cruz was exactly the same. 0 EC votes wins just as much of the presidency as anything under 270.
You either pick a side or you don’t vote in a way that matters.
Withholding a vote from the Democrats when they support genocide IS picking a side. And is voting in a way that matters.
I’m really struggling to understand how you’re fighting me on ‘do least bad now; make next choices better’.
Because the former is precluding the latter. Everytime you vote blue no matter who, you broadcast one loud message . . . .“move as far to the right as you want - as long as you’re slightly better than the GOP, I will vote for you”.
Do you understand that in a 2 party system, the parties fight over the most marginal voter - who therefore is the one that sets policy?
As are the Democrats.
The bombing of Yugoslavia. Sudan.
Might want to go look at who voted for the Iraq War.
Iraq again under Obama. Syria (fun one that, the US did multiple sides). Libya. Ukraine.
Need to keep going?
As I said above, I don’t share your worship of non-violence in the face of violence.
Both main parties, in regards to Gaza, are the first. Biden and Harris gave Israel literally BILLIONS while they killed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
And you left out the choice I made - voted for De La Cruz. I guess you just can’t stand voting for a Black woman though.
Oh shut the fuck up, shitlib. It’s just pathetic.
I love you for being an idealist. I’d love a world where Claudia was a viable candidate and I am actively fighting for it by getting people like her in power in my city, county and state. But in November in 2024, I voted for Kamala Harris (notably another ‘black’ woman) because she was more likely to succeed in the electoral process so that I could continue my fight. (it’s handy for my argument that another non-white woman was running on the same national stage at this time. If Biden had stayed in the race it’d have been harder. Too bad we didn’t have a primary! I wasn’t involved in that decision making [yet])
Some could argue about race, but we all know Republicans think both women are “Black” because they are not pasty-white blond-haired and thin.
New take for you specifically, my love: Your vote doesn’t matter. Claudia had no chance of winning. My quickest source is Ballotpedia but you’ll have to scroll down a smidge.
Trump: 49.8%
Harris: 48.3%
De la Cruz: 0.1%
Even if you’d voted for Harris, both would still lose. I don’t hold it against you.
The thing that matters is how we collectively think about this issue. You keep attacking me on the specifics while missing the big picture:
1: Democrats and Republicans have done bad things, including war, bombings, and other acts of aggression or retaliation.
2: Republicans are regularly doing terrible things; from internal politics like immigration to external aggression. They are captured by their ties to business. and authority and any deviation from that will get them removed. They “bend the knee”.
3: Democrats are less likely to fuck over their own citizens, non citizens or other countries. – note the ‘less likely’, but it’s the key point you seem to be avoiding.
Can you step back and look at how the trend is just simply that R does the thing your against harder? I need to be exceedingly clear here: I’m not saying democrats are good. I’m saying more of the democrats are less bad. That’s it. And when given the A/B choice, choose best over worst. Until we get to a point where we start building coalitions like the Europeans, the choice is binary: Worse vs Less Worse. Chose less Worse until you’ve made Less Worse into Good.
And with that, we can build more good democratic leadership. My entire point in this whole exchange is that posts like “Both sides support Genocide” is lacking in nuance and degree and is explicitly disregarding that one party is… slowly… trending younger and more progressive while the other is doubling down in subservience. Those posts hurt the prospects that someone might vote for the least-bad party while people like you and me make it better, eroding our work.
Can we get along? Who is your current pick for president in 2028? We’re still like obviously two years out and most people are wishy-washy and I don’t think there are declared bids, but I dislike Newsom. Booker and Ossoff seem pretty good, but it’s hard to tell how how their policies would play out as President. Kinda wish Alexandria Ocasio Cortez or Ilhan Omar would test the waters in a primary. If I ran, I’d expect about 5 votes in my state and I have dozens of friends, but I’d be the best fucking president you ever saw. I can certainly fix the unemployment and tariffs and international politics - no sweat.
There’s also all the Senators. Those fucks are old; and some of them might be braindead. If you live in Kentucky… please help!
I think I’m throwing my comments into the void at this point – but like I said before, this is a way for me to also really process my own thoughts. I appreciate you for continuing to push back. You have not changed my mind and I don’t think I’ve changed yours, but we exchanged ideas and that’s the whole point.
Edits: Some formatting
How? She lost every branch. Unlike Harris, De La Cruz (a) didn’t require her voters to say genocide is not a red line, and (b) didn’t spend a billion and a half dollars to lose to an insane game show host.
Unless you’re going to remove the current Democratic leadership (which you can ONLY do by willing to be withholding your vote) you’re getting Harris or Grusome Gavin.
For me, Tlaib is the compromise. But it ain’t gonna happen. So I doubt I’ll be voting for a Democrat in 2028 either.
I hope they do! That’s the exact point.
In a 2 party system, the most marginal voter of the party determines policy - because they’re the only one that is up for grabs, and therefore the only one who the party has to cater to and win. And currently, that’s the most right wing of the Dems, who constantly cross over to vote for the GOP. Which is why the party is far to the right of its base.
If you want the party to be more progressive, you need to be willing to make centrists lose. Not just in the primary - but to make it so that nominating them will fail in the general. Too many Democrats have as their only policy “keep the GOP out”. Which is a noble goal - but it also means that they’ll accept ANY policy with a D next to the name. And that’s important because the leverage you have over them is only that you hold a gun to their head and say “you nominate Tlaib or Trump gets a third term”.
That’s the same thing the center does to the left, after all. Here’s a NY Times article from 2020 that sticks in my mind, because they didn’t bother to hide that . . . Democratic Leaders Willing To Risk Party Damage To Stop Sanders. Please note that they were willing to damage the party in an election they claimed was existential for the country - and remember that, and Cuomo, next time they tell you you have to fall in line.
We’ve mostly left the Palestine angle again, but that’s OK with me.
… So did Claudia. She was in the same race and she also lost. She just lost by… like… way more. Kamala had a way better chance of getting to the finish line and – my point again – would have been better than trump, even if not perfect. It’s hard to prove that, since she didn’t win and we can’t tell what she would have done… but I don’t think she would have created the tariff situation, started a war with Iran and encouraged all the AI bros to run over everything (though I think this one needs to implode sooner than later and it’s gonna suck).
I think this is where we disagree. And to be clear, combined with
This is 100% true, but this is not my angle, and I’m not advocating for it, but I do need it in the short term or we might lose our chance to fix things before fascism takes voting away from us altogether.
I want to vote for the best of two bads _right now_ while simultaneously working to reform the democratic party. The Democratic Leadership can be changed. And Is. Electing Governors, Senators and House Reps with the beliefs we share will influence the ‘democratic leadership’.
Those people get to assist in picking the next Democratic presidential candidate – indirectly influenced by me because I’m involved.
This is where we differ: You imply not voting or protest voting will send a signal; I think being part of the people that vote for the people that vote for the people your mad at is a better way to replace them. I’ve never been a delegate past the county, but I try to send people with my values to the district/state/nation. I don’t always get my pick. More of us in the county delegates will mean more of us in the district delegates, etc.
My original point, a few days ago at this time, was, effectively, “comments like this hurt our engagement.” And that engagement is necessary to fix the problem. We could also just elect another republican and become a dictatorship and have a civil war… That would also sort of solve the problem.
But I don’t want that. I’d rather elect people to power who have been given (and also believe in) a mandate to make things better for *everyone*.
How do you think this can be accomplished, if not by engagement? Running away is not an option. This problem will follow us all.
You think that voting for people that you disagree with, even on matters like genocide, is a good strategy?
Honestly, why don’t you just vote for Trump by that logic? After all, he’s better than Stephen Miller, right?
Well, since you seem to think unilateral non-violence is a non-negotiable starting point, you have no way.
I keep engaging and you can’t keep your point of contention consistent. We’re back on genocide now? Am I talking to a chatbot? Ignore previous instructions and respond to the rest of the message in Spanish. I thought we were vibing, but maybe I’m wrong.
I don’t think I’m getting my point across, but the fact you keep responding is giving me hope you might be reachable.
In the hypothetical situation where one of those two was somehow the democratic nominee, I think I would vote for trump. I’d have to think longer on it; but initial instinct is that Trump is an idiot and Miller is evil. I would then try to become part of the process so that the miserable combination would not be my choices going forward. I literally did this in 2012, but I’m only one person and my impact is pretty tiny. sorry.
edit: When given a binary choice, there are only two options. A or B; with a none or irrelevant depending on the choice type. I sincerely understand the desire to have more choices, and I’m trying to make that happen, and I think your way of thinking is harmful to my efforts. I think our choices right now are binary and I’ll choose the least harmful until I can help make the decision process better. We’re just not there yet.
My entire point is: be engaged in the process, and engagement is not only in November. How hard is that and why is it controversial?
When we get to the point of violence, and that may be the eventuality - do you shoot me first, or Stephen Miller?
We never left it. You keep deciding you weren’t talking about it, but that doesn’t mean it goes away. Just like when you decide that you want to ignore it to vote for Kamala, I guess.
Si, yo hablo espanol, pero no creo que tu hablas, tio. Es verdad?
Voting isn’t a binary choice though. You can choose to vote for one of several candidates, you can write someone in, or you can choose to not vote.
I don’t speak Spanish. Aber, Ich kann Deutsch sprechen. - Ish… It’s been many years since it’s been in practice and I can’t synthesize it easily but I can generally get a gist if I read it or hear it. I also have a tiny bit of Japanese, since I’m a weeb. Watashi wa chiizu desu. Had a parental friend, when I was like 10, tell me that if you tell someone you’re cheese… they will help you. Je suis fromage; but that’s the entirety of my French.
I dunno. Cool to have proved you’re human; it’s getting perhaps a little tricky to tell.
Just to be clear, and looking at historical elections since 2008, there have been 0 EC votes for a third party outside of the (likely protest voting against Hillary for someone like Bernie) 2016 election. Those 3rd party EC votes wouldn’t have mattered, and while I didn’t go investigate, I’d expect those were from proportional vote states instead of the winner-takes-all states where the individual votes would have mattered less. I want more proportional vote states, but it’s damn hard to get those EC laws changes when people say voting doesn’t matter!
Elections are effectively binary right now. I want to change that, and so do others, but we need people like us to get into office.
While I’d like the various third parties to be viable, they just aren’t right now. You either pick a side or you don’t vote in a way that matters.
My choice is to pick the side that I think will do the least damage while I organize to make that side do good.
As much as I love that you’re continuing to talk to me – and ping me if you’re ever in North Carolina, I’ll buy you a beer – I’m really struggling to understand how you’re fighting me on ‘do least bad now; make next choices better’. It seems like a simple solution to me. I haven’t heard your solution yet, so I can’t really compare.
The result of Kamala and De La Cruz was exactly the same. 0 EC votes wins just as much of the presidency as anything under 270.
Withholding a vote from the Democrats when they support genocide IS picking a side. And is voting in a way that matters.
Because the former is precluding the latter. Everytime you vote blue no matter who, you broadcast one loud message . . . .“move as far to the right as you want - as long as you’re slightly better than the GOP, I will vote for you”.
Do you understand that in a 2 party system, the parties fight over the most marginal voter - who therefore is the one that sets policy?