I think it’s important for liberals to realize that the far-right is fully represented by and actively appealed to by the GOP, while the entirety of the left is forced to fall in line with a center-right candidate or a far-right candidate.
Obviously, the center-right candidate is better than the far-right candidate, but liberals have been doing an awful job of actively appealing to leftists. Fascists line up with glee to vote for their favorite demon, while leftists have to vote for someone that doesn’t represent their views at all, just not someone doing even more harm.
What would be better is if the democrat party actually threw a bone to leftists. Pass Medicare for all, for example. Instead, we are stuck with voting out of fear, rather than voting for something.
As someone on the left, explain to me what we’re supposed to be doing to appeal to folks on the right, earnestly. Seems like every time Dems want to throw Republicans a bone they torpedo it themselves - border deal much?
Have those on the left considered for a moment that their entire political party in America has been hijacked by people who are actually trying to take everyone’s rights away? Been told by the left “fuck your feelings” for quite some time, but no things aren’t perfect for their group, burn the whole thing down?
The left doesn’t have a political party, so I’m not sure what you want me to say. I don’t think the leftists should try to implement incorrect or brutal solutions just to throw right-wingers a bone, that’s like saying they can do a little KKK as a treat.
- Makes a massive legislative priority out of the ACA, aiming for genuine reform and then after extensively having the original pared back within our neoliberal hellscape, still manages to somehow pass a substantial reform which gets health insurance to a huge number of people, and defends it against multiple serious attempts to murder even that fairly corporate-friendly system which in DC politics is somehow akin to the Cultural Revolution
- “Waaaaaaa! I wanted medicare for all.”
- Makes comprehensive immigration reform a key priority, bringing the number of removals + returns down from about 1.2 million in 2008, to around 430,000 in 2016, i.e. a huge number more people are able to stay in the country. DACA provides key protections for one of the most important categories of “illegal” immigrant who we shouldn’t be kicking out. Also, the number in the “removals” column goes up.
- “WAAAAAAAA DEPORTER IN CHIEF DEPORTER IN CHIEF”
- Student loan forgiveness infrastructure act gun reform federal marijuana pardons, also no fascist dictatorship
- “Too old, do not want, not left enough.”
-liberal attempts at reform without radical change
-more liberal attempts at reform without radical change
-more liberal attempts at reform without radical change
Again, none of this is actually to the left, it’s still liberalism and still center-right. For people who believe the system itself is fucked and needs to be restructured, of course moderate reform isn’t going to be enough.
You’re proving my point. Biden is decent for a liberal, at being a liberal. That is not a leftist. Trump is great at being a fascist, and fascists love to vote for him. Leftists have to bite their tongues and fall in line with a moderate right winger that will never attempt to appeal to them.
Did you even read my comment?
I did. My point is that you’re recasting the real situation into a totally cockeyed reinterpretation. If a Democrat tries to do something left-wing, and it doesn’t work within the system, and they have to pare it back to something more establishment-friendly but that still helps a whole bunch of people when they get it passed, I don’t think it’s accurate to blame the Democrat for that situation. You can have a productive conversation about “yo that sucks how do we make this less corrupt,” and tons of ideas within or not-within the system can help get that done.
It’s like ten people standing around a burning building, and five people are trying to put out the fire while five are actively trying to stop them and light new fires, and you’re saying this whole organizational structure is fucked (accurate) we have to fix it (accurate) what the fuck you five guys who are trying seem like your firefighting efforts aren’t working (here’s where it breaks down for me).
You want to bring in better more qualified firefighters? Fuckin’ A, man, that sounds great. In the meantime, I think letting the ones who are trying continue to try is not somehow a bad thing, definitely better than helping the ones who are lighting new fires take control.
Also, “fall in line with” is a very weird phrasing. I’ve never in my life fallen in line with a Democratic politician. (“voting out of fear” is another). I just vote for the person I think will be better than the other person, because I want to have a better outcome instead of a worse one. Why are you searching for ways to cast that pretty sensible decision in some kind of negative emotionally charged light?
(Also, I have asked this of people of your ilk I have talked to on Lemmy before: What should I do, instead of voting, to support leftist change within the US? What is your activist organization, what is your movement to work for change? Because working for something better than the current establishment Democrats sounds great, yes. How can I do that?)
Democrats aren’t doing anything left wing, nor are they trying to, though. That’s my point. If the Democrats were trying to do left-wing things, then leftists wouldn’t always be so upset that they have to bite their tongues, plug their nose, and vote for the center-right candidates.
For your burning building analogy, that is only accurate if you’re a center-rightwinger. The actual analogy is if you have 2 groups of people, one starting 3 fires and putting out 2, and the other starting 3 fires and trying to stop the other person. Both groups are starting fires, one is just better. As a leftist, both liberals and fascists are still bad, though liberals are not nearly as bad as fascists, both are still negative.
Again, I vote for the center-right wingers, and criticize them as they continue to fumble the ball. I’m not advocating for better liberals, I’m advocating for leftists. I am not supporting abstaining from voting, or voting for fascists, I’m asking you to look in the mirror and realize that while Biden may be great for you, he’s far from a leftist and isn’t actually implementing leftist change, so leftists will understandably be upset.
You haven’t had to fall in line because you aren’t a leftist, and liberals are doing a good job in your eyes. Simple as. Leftists have to fall in line and vote for the lesser of two evils, while you get to vote for what you perceive as at minimum positive change.
To answer your question at the end, it greatly depends on where you are. Actual, leftist change comes from grassroots movements, so it will depend on your area. I’m not asking for you to dox yourself, so instead I’ll give generalized information. Unionize your workplace, join something like the IWW or Food Not Bombs, educate and advocate, volunteer for local leftist politicians that may upset the liberal or fascist status quo, read theory, teach others, and donate to strike funds. Those are all pretty achievable for most people, at least partially. You don’t have to be a union leader or anything, but every bit helps.
You haven’t had to fall in line because you aren’t a leftist, and liberals are doing a good job in your eyes.
I’ve noticed this a lot on Lemmy: It’s a common arguing technique to simply tell the other person what their views are, and base your argument on that. In this case, you are 1,000% wrong. Wrong as hell.
I was registered third party for like the first ten years of my voting life, because I was disgusted with the Democrats. Bernie Sanders has been the only presidental candidate I’ve been genuinely happy with in recent memory. Don’t tell me what my views are, and assume that I must be saying what I’m saying because of what those imaginary views are.
while you get to vote for what you perceive as at minimum positive change.
I think this is where our fundamental disconnect comes in. Before I say anything else, I want to ask, what are things that have gotten worse under Biden, to you? Oil extraction and Gaza, I assume; what else?
Don’t be surprised if I label you a liberal if you’re coming in batting full force for tepid, liberal Capitalist reform, and that leftists should be happy with it because it is good change.
Either way, Capitalism continues to erode, resulting in more disparity, less worker power, and no meaningful change in favor of Worker Ownership. Biden is doing a pretty good job for liberals, who wish to maintain the status quo, but for people who actually desire substantial reorganization of the economy into a worker-owned format, he’s done absolutely nothing.
Whoops, we took a little turnoff towards the bad faith highway I guess.
You just told me even more aggressively what I believe. I asked a simple factual question:
What are things that have gotten worse under Biden, to you? Oil extraction and Gaza, I assume; what else?
If a Democrat tries to do something left-wing, and it doesn’t work within the system, and they have to pare it back to something more establishment-friendly […]
Buddy, I mean this in the nicest way, but this is exactly the point
I’m gonna start categorizing the weird bad faith responses I get. I call this one the “Mission Accomplished”: Where you simply announce proudly that the other person has just unwittingly proven your argument without you even needing to make any kind of statement at all, and just start running victory laps for yourself, hands held proudly in the air.
“Liberal reform is ineffectual from a leftist perspective because it stops short of changing the system that is being opposed”
weird bad faith responses
Is it weird because you don’t understand it? Or because it’s uncomfortable?
Aha! A concrete statement. This one, I can respond to.
“Liberal reform is not enough. It’s a positive thing for the world if good things happen obviously, but by no means enough. Continuing to work for genuine reform is necessary if any survivable society is going to continue on earth beyond this generation. On the other hand, letting Trump end the world prematurely is obviously also something we should avoid if we want to be in a position to do any of those things.”
Fixed it for you. I would love a landscape where Biden is the weird right-wing outlier because we have left-wing candidates in the ring. How do we get there?
Or, are you suggesting doing away with voting and political parties entirely and just living in a libertarian utopia where clearly the people with all the money and corporate power won’t instantly take over even more so than they already have? You tell me.
Leftists have been saying for literal decades how the modern measures of economic outlook -unemployment, total job numbers, stock market profitability, ect - are designed to misrepresent or ignore the actual economic outlook of working-class americans.
It’s crazy to me that now that a growing portion of the public are seeing the misalignment of those measures, it’s suddenly the fault of leftists that the democratic party is loosing support because ‘we’re being uncharitable to Biden’s achievements’.
Democrats are pointing the metrics republicans have been using for 50 years to advocate for their reactionary policy and saying to moderate republicans ‘look! we’re working toward the same goals!’, and yet somehow leftists are supposed to give democrats credit for working within the limits of those metrics that are designed to undermine working-class interests?
Cowbee had a more detailed reply, freeing me to simply point out that you don’t get it.
Glad we cleared that up 😀
Your ignorance around the political process is daunting.
“Daunting?” How so? If you mean to say that you believe I think Biden secretly has dictatorial power he isn’t using, then you’ve misunderstood my point. I understand that the system is built to change as little as possible via the electoral process. However, that doesn’t mean leftists have to be happy with a complete and utter lack of motion or intent on moving towards Socialism.
No, I think they’ve pretty much got it right: If things aren’t set up the right way, we whine, and refuse to choose better outcomes over worse ones until Daddy comes and fixes the whole thing to be better. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.
(I’m being a little unkind. I’m actually talking with Cowbee and feel like there’s a potential of a pretty good conversation there, and I don’t think they’re wholly off base or talking in bad faith like a lot of people are on this topic.)
Wait is this implying that tankies want trump to win? I mean wouldn’t be surprising since they already support every other genocidal maniac in the world but man
There’s been a moderate-sized influx of supposed good leftists who all of a sudden are very concerned with spreading the message that both parties are basically the same, and voting won’t change anything. I won’t say all of them are fake Trump-promoted social media shills, but I definitely believe some nonzero number of them are that.
I’ve even noticed them around here, asking with some who claim to be left but will comment on how bad Joe is on articles about TFG.
Don’t forget that Russia pays people to do this subterfuge shit and Russia desperately needs Trump to win.
They want him to win because they want the whole place to burn down.
“After Trump, our turn”
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Just vote for the least removed one, since the options are slim. But I do not have a vote right in USA so whatever.
I don’t care enough to check those links, but did you try to convince me that Trump is good?
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Look I’m no fan of us gov in any degree, but would be cool if the people of strongest country on the planet wouldn’t vote in the sack of sardine shit who’s trying to not only destabilize the enemies but allies too
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I have no way of knowing, but I think it’s honestly way simpler than that. I think people on the left who are relentlessly shitting on Biden are pretty much made up of X percent shills and (100-X) percent people who have been taken in by shills.
It would be easier, more productive, and safer to hold up some particular other Democrat as the one that we should be supporting instead of Biden, if the goal was a better Democratic nominee who didn’t have all these problems they’re so nail-bitingly concerned will hurt Biden in the election with Trump, which is leading to them innocently trying to help by shitting on him. I’ve literally never once heard them say a productive solution along those lines, though. Nope, just that Biden is bad.
Also, they keep insisting that voting won’t accomplish anything, and direct action is needed instead, because the system is irrevocably broken. I have asked many of them, with genuine interest and motivation to help, what direct action I can do, because I also think direct action (on behalf of Gaza for example) sounds great. Guess how many answers I’ve gotten.
Direct action is when you obstruct or threaten to act against a target group’s interest or influence in order to pressure them into concessions.
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Yeah, I think the pic describes op fairly well. I’m convinced they’re an accelerationist and intentionally spread voter apathy.
An accelerationist wouldn’t have to be proactive. They could just sit back and let the country fall apart on its own. Voter apathy existed before my post, and will continue to exist until our electoral system is changed.
An accelerationist would advocate for the status quo, which maintains the duopoly.
Yeah, that’s what you and what you post sound like
Think for yourself.
No, our goal is to steer Democrats to produce a candidate that will beat Trump in November.
If Biden continues taking planks from the Republican platform then he won’t win.
If Biden appoints an AG that completely ignores Republican crimes and instead appoints special counsels to trash Biden, then he won’t win.
You understand that is absolutely not going to happen, right.
I want an AOC/Sanders ticket but, again, that is 100% not going to happen.
If you’re talking about throwing votes away on a third party candidate, well, that absolutely is a really stupid thing that could happen.
Produce a candidate from where? Who? When? November approaches.
From their secret bunker of far left candidates of course!
The more these idiots speak on the more inclined I am to belief they aren’t actually Americans. No one is this is politically activated and this ignorant of the process.
If Biden continues taking planks from the Republican platform then he won’t win.
Because you think Americans are dumb? In first past the post voting, if you have Hitler and Hitler lite, you vote for lite or you end up with classic. Do you think people don’t know that?
We need to be spending our anger and political capital on changing the voting system. Everything else is begging for scraps from slightly-less-right-wing crazies.
As far as I can tell, voting for Biden doesn’t consume any energy at all that might be directed instead at changing the voting system. Vote, done. If you want to expend energy talking about it on the internet, you can, and that seems fine, but the voting part is pretty straightforward.
Most of the voting-advocacy energy I see expended on the leftist sections of the internet seems to be devoted to why not to vote in the election. I would actually really welcome someone devoting energy to changing the voting system instead of that, and letting it go completely assumed that of course we’re going to vote for Hindenburg instead of Hitler (“Hitler-lite” is an absolutely wrong designation for Biden, although generally I agree with your post and message, and if he was Hitler-lite it would still be better to vote for him instead of Classic.)
Almost makes me think the loud not-voting advocacy is not friendly leftists who of course want the best for the Democrats, and are just so concerned with fixing the voting system that they have no time for anything other than advocating against voting for Biden.
You’ll notice, the centrists aren’t working towards changing voting either.
They’re perfectly content sharing power with fascists. Which should tell you a thing about them.
I think that was my point
you think Americans are dumb
yes… yes i do
Well, that guarantees at least one is.
Who is this “Democrats” that you are trying to steer, by shitting on Biden? Democratic voters?
You have one. I am steerable. I am going to vote in the Democratic primary soon. Presumably, the person who wins in the primaries will have the nomination. Who should I vote for instead?
Because relentlessly trashing Biden as a way to get a replacement, without bothering to even figure out who that replacement might be, during the middle of the process which literally requires and only requires that voters agree on a replacement, seems a little not-quite-matching-the-priority-you-are-claiming-is-the-priority.
(I know, Bernie Nevada it’s not that simple et cetera I know. The point that I’m making is that Bernie was an identified person who people could vote for. No one was relentlessly making memes about how Hilary was bad without bothering to support anyone else in particular, and then claiming they were just looking out for the Democrats because they were just concerned she wouldn’t be able to beat Trump, and explaining all the ways she sucked and waiting for someone else to figure out who instead.)
I would 1000% support Katie Porter.
She doesn’t have the political capital to sustain a presidential run, but I’d love to see her at least put her name out there. Similar to Yang in 2020. But she’s going to follow the rules and not run until 2028.
My biggest gripe with Biden is that he’s too old. He was old in 2020 but I still vote for him because I was against Trump.
That’s what this election is. Are we voting for democracy or fascism?
Democrats haven’t put out a decent candidate since Obama, and I say that as someone who was a conservative when he was up for election. Hillary was just…awful. 2020 was an election to put Trump out of office, not necessarily to put Biden into office.
I’m not saying Biden is a bad candidate but he isn’t great either. But compared to Miami Mussolini, yeah I’ll be voting Biden.
Yeah, Katie Porter is a badass. Biden will clearly do better in the general election than she will, but she’s absolutely great.
Gavin Newsom seems great too. Unfortunately it seems like the people who are choosing to run are fairly limited. Hey @ira@lemmy.ml, should I be voting for Dean Phillips instead?
One point of correction: Biden would do better in the primary. If it were Porter v Trump, Porter would win, hands down.
I believe they were saying the Democratic National Committee should put forward another candidate (Gretchen Whitmer?).
I believe they have two other candidates put forward. I never hear people saying “Yay Dean Philips”. Just going after Joe Biden.
Because, at the best… Philips is a younger, dumber version of Biden. At the worst… he spent the entirety of his career toeing the party line.
He’s as milquitoast and boring as Biden. The only thing I can commend him on is primarrying Biden.
I’d love it if any of a dozen progressives got in there. But 2016’s primary made it clear: the DNC will never allow a progressive candidate.
Which is why we’re stuck with a candidate very, very few people actually like; who can’t do the one thing he campaigned on when it actually matters (work across the aisle. Not his fault, except to say he’s out of touch if he thinks the republicans actually care.).
Biden could barely keep his own party in line; even when they had nominal control of the house and senate.
You’ll notice three things about all the. It legislation: they were from that period where they had control, they were extremely hard to get passed, and most of them are barely adequate to maintain the status quo rather than reverse anything.
You’ll also notice that Biden sure loves to take credit for all of that when, while he did do some heavy lifting; he was far from the only one doing the heavy lifting.
Nobody likes a boss that doesn’t acknowledge hard work. Worse, you’ll notice he doesn’t accept equal blame when the rest of the party can’t get shit done.
But 2016’s primary made it clear: the DNC will never allow a progressive candidate.
Kind of, yeah. But let me complete the picture that that forms one accurate portion of:
A self-described socialist, with genuinely good genuinely left-wing ideas about taking on Wall Street and corporate crime and fighting for the rights of working people, came within a realistic distance of being the nominee. If he’d won the nomination, he would almost certainly have won the general if he didn’t get assassinated. He was the most popular politician in American politics for years after 2016, and he’s still to this day half a generation later more popular than both Biden and Trump.
Yes, the DNC is full of corporate-cash-infused criminals who did everything they could to tank his chances, and their corrupt efforts succeeded and ultimately handed the election to Trump. That is the sad nature of big money politics in the United States; “we” as leftist reformers are up against a corrupt system.
BUT EVEN WITH THAT HE ALMOST FUCKING WON
It was extremely close. A socialist was almost the Democratic nominee. All these “good leftists” who are talking about how useless it is to engage within the system somehow miss the lesson from that, and somehow conclude that “well, we tried one time and it didn’t work, time to move to exclusively whining on the internet about how I wish it was different, full-time.”
I cannot get my head around how the lesson of Bernie Sanders can possibly be anything other than that genuinely good people can have a realistic shot within the rigged game that is American politics. Taking home the lesson “well yeah but he didn’t win, the one time that passionate internet people all got together and voted in the primary for someone who was fuckin great, so forget the whole deal” seems cynical, defeatist, and doomed to self-fulfill the prophecy that nothing good is going to happen in US politics and things are going to steadily get worse and worse.
Thanks guys
(Edit: Oh, I got carried away talking about Sanders – it’s wholly untrue that Biden didn’t get anything done. Even with the Republicans arrayed against him determined to not allow him to do anything, and even if “well we better stand back and if the Republicans take over then oh well” is about the most backwards reaction to that situation you could imagine, if it was true that they’d conspired to destroy positive progress during his term and succeeded.)
Just to clarify, I’m not advocating anything other than a political solution. Rather, just an observation that the DNC in its current form will never allow progressives in power.
But there is appetite for progressive policies; which is precisely why they tolerate literal fascists at the table. as blackmail.
The good news is, assuming the fascists don’t absolutely destroy the country, the other arc is destroying their political party; at which point progressives can fork off from the centrists and make a genuine run for it; and drag the country back into not sucking.
Unfortunately, right now we’re more likely to get wrecked. Biden is starting to slide right just to get things done. Without getting the same back. (Fortunately, republicans are too fucking stupid to capitalize on that.)
The DNC has actively opposed the addition of challengers on primary ballots in select swing states, idk why we’re pretending they’re an indifferent actor in this.
