909
I'd like to think they're all just Russian trolls but increasingly, I think some people are just selfish or dumb.
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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the lesser evil camp refuses to pressure the harris campaign and the harris campaign refuses to self reflect on their republican lite gamble; but the gaza voters should give up their only bargaining chip and vote for them anyways?
I doubt the Democrats will learn their lesson when they lose. They didn't became more progressive when Hillary lost when the Bernie voters stayed home. The only shift to the left in the party that happened was when incumbent democrats got replaced by outsiders like AOC. So if you want to punish Democrats do it during a primary and vote an incumbent out.
So much this. They will go where the votes are.
People who are so worried about their left wing voter purity to vote Dem when the alternative is explicitly fascist are going to come across as unwinnable as voters and will have no effect whatsoever on Dem strategizing any more than insane racists who vote for Trump because they like the idea of mass deportation of all the ethnic minorities in the USA; the kind that tell Native Americans to go back to their own country are not worth the Dems pursuing on policy grounds either.
If your vote is clearly unwinnable and you chose the greater evil from some sort of backwards purity argument, what good is being better than the Republicans on policy grounds for winning your vote?
It is not winning elections that forces the Democrats right, it is losing to the right that forces the Democrats right, you know, to get the votes they have a hope of getting.
It might not matter anyway, because Trump told a rally a while back that if he was elected, they wouldn't have to vote again and since then has accused Harris of planning to end democracy, and pretty much every accusation from Trump is to cover for an admission. Project 25 is grim reading for anyone who likes freedom.
So yeah, people who vote in a way that makes things worse for Gaza are putting electoral pressure on the Democrats to support the genocide, because calling for ceasefire, agreeing with Gaza protestors at rallies and putting diplomatic pressure on Netanyahu aren't enough to get votes for Harris, but are sadly enough to lose her votes from "centrists".
So if you listen to the "genocidal vice president" folks, and ignore the "finish them" "best King of Israel" Republicans, your third party vote or abstention actually encourages the genocide and in your twisted logic you think that people who care about Gaza choosing to not affect the presidency somehow affects it, and that the country choosing the more genocidal candidate will somehow be interpreted as the people not wanting genocide.
americans have committed lots of documented genocides and it's about not perpetuating them as someone who descends from the survivors of those genocides.
i do not want to help create another vulnerable minority for the sake of the almighty dollar and a blue team win.
you can try to convince yourself that democrats are the lesser evil, as we've all been doing here for generations; yet here we nonetheless given a choice between an active genocider and someone who wishes they were.
the democrat's movement right wards guarantees that it will continue to get worse and i don't want to know what's worse than genocide that everyone ignores.
Yes. That's how the two party system works. Dems are still miles better than Republicans on the issue, and thus don't need to improve. It sucks, but that's the hand that's been dealt I don't see any better strategy to help the people of Gaza. If you see one, feel free to share.
There's also the fact that Harris has to appeal to the electoral college. She's not just trying to win our votes.
If she took a firm stance on stopping the killing in Gaza the electoral college could very easily hand their votes to trump. Like they did in 2016.
I'm fairly certain it's a big contributing factor as to why democrats keep inching to the right on certain issues. The electoral college has too much power. At the end of the day it's their votes that count, so Harris has to appeal to them too.
Why couldn't they do a better job pushing Palestine as a civil rights issue and raising awareness among their voter base like they've successfully done with LGBTQ and women's rights? Or at the very least pretend to support Israel to appear more centrist while stopping the genocide instead of pretending to support Palestinians then handing Israel tons of weapons? Plus it seems like many voters are more concerned about our own economy than what's happening on the other side of the world, so regarding combining pro-Palestine with their current economic policies I don't see how that would be a big issue in attracting undecided voters. The only real obstacle I can think of here is donors and the media beholding the party to their interests, which is a much bigger problem than just the electoral college.
Edit: Wait I think I misread your post, I assumed you were talking about swing states controlling the outcome not the electors themselves.
I wonder if there's some misunderstanding on your part about the electoral college or if I'm just not interpreting your phrasing correctly. It's not an entity to appeal to, it's a flawed system that has subsets of the popular vote represented by electors who are pledged to a certain candidate.
The whole system is basically fucked. The Supreme Court can be bought and so can other politicians via "gratuities"... including the electoral college.
They already did not honor the popular vote in 2016 for whatever reason, and it's not the first time it's happened in recent history.
I can imagine Harris doesn't want to give them anymore reason to just say fuck it and hand us another trump presidency.
So I can say now with certainty that you're not clear on how the EC works in the US. Unless there is a faithless elector, the chosen electors represent the majority vote in their state (or district, in the case of Maine and Nebraska). Some states, due to higher population, have a greater number of voters represented by each elector.
The EC has no mandate to follow the national popular vote. That is by design. Electors sent to the EC are beholden to the popular vote in their state (or district).
Campaigns do not directly court the EC, but they do game the system by focusing on states with a large number of electors and traditionally narrow margins in the popular vote. That's where we get the term "battleground states."
So the "for whatever reason" you allude to in 2016 was absolutely for a known reason: Clinton won in heavily lopsided blue states with high populations while losing in lower population red states and closely contested swing states. Faithless electors did come into play that year, but their impact was negligible. Clinton lost handily in the EC despite taking the popular vote.
It's not that not don't understand how things are supposed to work.... it's that fewer and fewer parts of the government are functioning free of corruption.
Forgive me for not assuming the electoral college is functioning outside of that type of influence.
Learning how things actually function vs what we were taught are two different things.
This isn't a matter of "how things actually function vs what we were taught." You're wondering why the EC didn't respect the popular vote in 2016 and speaking of it as an entity to be swayed. The EC for this election does not exist yet. It has not been selected.
The degree of "influence" you suggest would require potential sworn electors to already be compromised before being selected. That suggests that you believe Democrats at the state level, who have been chosen as potential electors by the party itself, have been influenced to vote for someone other than their party's candidate.
Both your questioning of why the EC didn't follow the popular vote and your implication that Harris would somehow lose party support to such a degree that slates of electors chosen by the Democratic party would cast their votes for a non-Democrat indicate that you don't completely grasp how the EC works either by design or in practice.
Not knowing something is fine, especially something as convoluted as the EC. But there comes a point when it's probably best to admit, at least to yourself, that you had only a partial understanding of a process. Otherwise, how can you ever learn?
I just did. I think they should cave (and vote Harris), but the rest of the crowd needs to spend time on drawing concessions from Harris instead of alienating the left. It might just be that the dems are way past redemption with their recent Liz Cheney tours.
we've been holding our nose and voting for democrats this entire time and now our choices has descended into choosing between an active genocider and someone who wishes that they were.
each time we've descended into a madness into this country; there's been another crazier level that we squabble about, but end up it doing anyways because democrats are the lesser evil; i don't want to know what's crazier than a genocide.
if you're not american or western european; you too should be wondering what's crazier than genocide for the world's only super power to consider and enact because it will happen if we can't change our political trajectory.
Do you have a better idea, though?
there are plenty of ideas and many of them have been enacted by other countries; the problem is that both the democrats and republicans are effective at suppressing them to maintain their duopoly.
A better idea about what should be done now. Everybody knows that things could be better.
ideas that we can do now are also shared and just as suppressed as any of the others.
the one i'm going to do is voting third party. i live in a state that will never vote for a republican so a third party vote has no bearing on cheeto hitler's re-election. the american voting system is setup so that, even if it voted for trump, it still wouldn't matter in my state.
I respect your choice and conviction to "let it all burn", and without people like you there would never be incentive for the Dems to move left. That said, this is not the action I would take, there are far too many things wrong with the Rs right now.
the republicans are predictable and their descent into madness was easy to see for the last 60 years, since goldwater.
the democrats are more troublesome partially because they have the ability to be better and extol the better aspects of humanity; but don't for the money and for a team win at all costs; especially the cost of caving in on every single one of your principles just to beat the republicans who don't give af about principles. the republicans pretend they do care about principles, but only as a means to keep misleading their voter base and now it's the same with the democrats too.
i can't convince myself they're the lesser evil anymore when they nakedly do the same things and are actively enabling a genocide.
americans have committed MANY documented genocides and most of them were committed on the the people i descend from; i refuse to participate in perpetuating this generational trauma just so that a couple hundred rich people can keep getting richer.
it's not a team sport for me like it is for you and also not about making the dems move left; it's about not repeating the history that turned me into a vulnerable minority and, most importantly, not helping inflict it on others in the name of the almighty dollar and a blue team win. you can try to convince yourself that voting democrat is the best course of action; but most of us here, especially me, have been doing that for the last 60 years and here we are, deciding between an active genocider and someone who wishes they were.
up until now i've held my nose to vote for democrats and now genocide is a line that's too far for me. if we continue to participate in the same form we are now, it continue will get worse as it has been for the last 60 years.