the_dunk_tank

Ah yes just what I need. A corporate media entity telling me how I NEED to think. Thank you slate very cool

how do you do, fellow leftists

Didn’t Gore lose because the Republicans literally stole ballot boxes in Florida or some shit?

I love when these people bring up the Weimar Republic as a reason to vote for their guy. They always leave out that their guy is the stand in for Hindenburg.

TLDR: genocide is a forgivable crime

It's amazing how refusing to endorse Genocide Joe is breaking so many liberal brains.

If you, like me, are on the far left, you should never fully trust or have faith in any elected official.

If you have read ANY theory on electoralism, you will understand why this entire essay is a pile of stupidity. Lenin's thoughts on electoralism (from my understanding) were that it should be earnestly engaged in to show people the futility of it as a vehicle for meaningful change in a capitalist society.

This is some idiot that thinks voting for Bernie in a primary makes them a raging communist.

Always boils down to "I don't see Palestinians as human beings, now stop whining"

Hell yeah I

Never, in the history of this country, has there been a president who hasn’t engaged in what the left would regard as unforgivable crimes.

so you agree that the dissolution of the US would make the US cease to do unforgivable crimes?

stopping the carnage in Palestine

The only thing I'm going to be stopping, is reading the rest of this article.

Weasel words, can't even say Genocide can they?

Leon Trotsky himself urged the German Communists to reconsider their foolish pride in 1931. “Should fascism come to power, it will ride over your skulls and spines like a terrific tank,” he declared, accurately. “Your salvation lies in merciless struggle. And only a fighting unity with the Social Democratic workers can bring victory. Make haste, worker-Communists, you have very little time left!”

Ah yes, because Nazis came into power because of communists, and not because social democrats sided with Nazis against communists

As a leftist, I wholeheartedly believe in revolutionary defeatism. I’m not trying to build the best empire, I am hoping to end imperialism.

If you are okay with imperialism than you are not my ally.

"Just one more dem presidency" is the same as "just one more lane." Doesn't come close to solving the core issues.

electoralists love to say stuff like : "we will push Biden left after the election and then don't push Biden left after the election"

in bad country china you can only vote for the one guy pre-approved by the central party, unlike in amerikkka where we have freedom

Leftists who don’t like Biden don’t want to see him in office again, so they don’t want to vote for him, or they want to withhold their vote until he changes course. Seems simple enough.

But that’s not how politics works.

The point of electoral politics, as it is lived, is not to vote for a friend; it’s to vote for your preferred enemy. You will never find a morally pure candidate, or one whose positions perfectly align with your own preferences.

By that reasoning I should vote for Trump because Trump is my preferred enemy. A Democratic fascist gets the complacent libs on board with fascism. A Republican fascist shakes the libs to a lower level of complacency and they'll at least do something, albeit ineffective, and then a few defect to the Left when they see that their pussycat pussyhat protests got nothing done.

So you must find one whom you can effectively bully.

Well that isn't Biden or any of the corporate Dems. The more we pressure them to stop being ghouls the more they double down. When pushed, they side with fascism instead of joining us in opposing fascism.

When I was 14 years old, I was a huge fan of Ralph Nader. As a teenage anti-sweatshop activist, I believed that he was the only candidate in the 2000 presidential election who was speaking the truth and advocating for my policy goals. I went to a Nader rally in my hometown of Chicago, where the great journalist Studs Terkel spoke. I’ll never forget what he said in his nasal bark: “Gore or Bush, what’s your choice? Influenza or pneumonia, what’s your choice?”

It all sounds like nonsense to me now. Can anyone today truly argue that the world wasn’t drastically changed by Gore’s loss in 2000? Even if you don’t accept the argument that Nader’s candidacy is what lost Gore the election, how can you argue that the world wouldn’t have been at least a little better if all of those Nader votes had gone to Gore and put the Dems over the top?

You know I had this conversation with my parents (who grew up outside the US and so got to watch it on the world stage from a third world perspective) around 2008. They swore Gore would have been as bad as Bush when it came to war because the US doesn't really change its foreign policy no matter which party is in charge, and that Obama was going to be more of the same. I couldn't wrap my head around it then but watching Obama continue the War on Terror despite campaigning on "Change" showed me they were right.

The author of this article was more mature as a 14-year old than she is now.

In Weimar Germany, where the German Communist Party was far more robust and ready to fight in the streets, the revolution-oriented strategy—allowing a fascist victory to raise urgency and bring about a more lasting leftist one—didn’t work. Infamously, in the fateful early years of the 1930s, the German Communists viciously opposed the governing center-left Social Democratic Party. Calling the centrists “Social Fascists,” they declared that there was no substantive difference between liberalism and Nazism. They refused to ally themselves with the center.

They didn't allow a fascist victory, the liberals did and in so doing proved the communists right

Leon Trotsky himself

God damn I try not to be sectarian but I don't think I have ever seen a good take from someone who respects Trotsky.

Workers of the world, unite with your liberal foes; if you do not, you have everything to lose

Oh how twee, how clever to co-opt a revolutionary communist slogan of liberation and funnel it into supporting the genocidal forces of capitalism. Anyway to address the substance of what she's saying, see the Weimar Republic when the liberals betrayed the Communists. See the 2016 election where even though so many Bernard (gender neutral) Brethren did end up voting for the Democrats' war criminal candidate that she won the popular vote, the liberals turned against the progressives and leftists and blamed them for their loss, when the liberals are the ones who chose to run one of the most uncharismatic and hated war criminals as their candidate. Liberals consistently snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, then blame it on the Left, then side with their fascist friends against the Left. If every leftist voted for Genocide Joe and he lost anyway, they'd do it to us again. If every leftist voted for Genocide Joe and he won because of it, they would still keep attacking us. You can't reason with these people; they don't want to be reasoned to, they don't want to look at truth or what's moral, they just want to keep going to brunch and repeatedly spread covid to the waitstaff.

Never, in the history of this country, has there been a president who hasn’t engaged in what the left would regard as unforgivable crimes. This is the nature of presidents, and politicians in general

This is the nature of presidents, and politicians in general

I see a group of people who can be bullied in a leftist direction on some policy priorities.

So is it in the nature of politicians to be unforgivable forces of evil or are they able to be nudged in a direction

These are contradictory ideas

can be bullied in a leftist direction

mfers will say this but not give the method of bullying/negotiation tactics, nor what concessions they think are winnable and it pisses me off.

I think its because they know what is realistically winnable would sound pathetic. "Oh uh, maybe he'll make weed schedule 3 instead of 1!"

Just ask Trotsky

This is a bit late consisering some countries have already had an election.

So announcing that you'll vote for him no matter what he does will make him change course? Is that how politics works?

No no no, how politics works is you never make any demands and just throw the lever for the "better" (on paper, in rhetoric) candidate once every 4 years. Actually expecting to achieve things? That's just idealistic wishful thinking

The article is just, "we can move him left".

Buddy, he's committing a genocide in an election year and his response is to lie about it and help put those against it in jail.

Nevermind that even if you are incredibly cynical, you lose all credibility as a left advocate by in any way supporting him. Or that by vote shaming you are feeding into numerous falsehoods about effective political work that are in no way "leftist".

Anyways this is just a liberal trying to appeal to other liberals that can't stomach Biden. Be a good sheep. "Leftism" has nothing to do with it.