Nobody pushing genocide is worthy of votes or support.
It was incumbent on Dems to EARN votes, and they failed spectacularly. You’re wrong to try blaming voters for failings of our corrupt politicians.
Comment on fuck this asshole
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
crusa187@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Taldan@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Will you still be saying that when Trump puts a resort in Gaza?
Trump has made it crystal clear: He plans for the complete and total ethnuc cleansing of Gaza. All Palestinians will be killed or removed
That’s what Arab and Palestinian Americans chose
UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Will you still be saying that when Trump puts a resort in Gaza?
Yes. Will you refuse to demand electoral reform in your state so the people of this nation can vote outside the two party system without a spoiler effect? Will you refuse to do anything about those who are without representation? Will you refuse democracy?
m532@lemmygrad.ml 8 months ago
So according to you, the palestinians voted for trump and therefore deserve to be genocided???
Tell me, how exactly would arab and palestinian people have been able to vote for trump? And why would they do that?
Of course you dont have proof either because votes are secret, so, because you suspect some palestinians of voting for trump you want them all genocided???
DogWater@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Virtue signaling doesn’t wash blood off your hands sweetie
snugglesthefalse@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
So this includes trump for his support of two separate groups that have demonstrated willingness to commit genocide.
houseofleft@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
I’m not American so nobody got my vote, but seems to me like the issue is with the swathes of people choosing facism rather than progressives who chose not to vote.
Choosing how to act in a world like ours is tricky, anyone following a sense of right and wrong (even if I disagree with their judgement) instead of fear, hate, greed or whatever gets a gold star in my book.
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
Inaction is still a choice, though. I totally understand the sentiment behind that choice and even agree that we shouldn’t be forced to choose genocide, but the alternative that we got is a man who not only wants the same genocide, but wants to accelerate it, put American boots on the ground to assist in it, and then turn the bloodied ground into resorts while also wanting to worsen life across the globe. So, by refusing to act, they didn’t oppose that man getting into power. They cared so much about genocide that, ironically, they enabled making that genocide worse by not acting against that possibility.
The biggest issue, though, is with the people who couldn’t be bothered enough to vote. Some, what, 40% of Americans never vote? Of course, there’s plenty there who can’t due to things like gerrymandering, but there’s a huge swathe of white suburbanites who simply prefer the status quo to actually improving things.
nsrxn@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
by refusing to act, they didn’t oppose that man getting into power.
you can refuse to vote for a Democrat and still oppose the man getting into power.
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
But thanks to the two party system, what effect does it have? And I’m specifically talking about the voting day of the presidential election here, not primaries or other elections. Because that’s where those efforts will have the most impact. Not that the Dems deigned to give us even the illusion of a primary this election (or in 2016, truthfully), but so many of these people seem to shake their fist once every 4 years and then go to sleep like cicadas awaiting the next presidential election.
I don’t blame people for hating the weak candidates that the Dems consistently push forward to maintain the old guards’ leadership positions, but I do blame them for looking at the alternative and saying “I’m okay with the possibility of that man winning if I don’t vote or vote third party.” The chance of a Trump victory and all that it entailed was a line in the sand that they were willing to cross.
As a trans woman, I blame them for saying, “Your life is not worth biting the bullet for.”
UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
The biggest issue, though, is with the people who couldn’t be bothered enough to vote. Some, what, 40% of Americans never vote?
Sounds like First-past-the-post voting doesn’t properly represent the population. Let’s try a new electoral system to fix this. The people of Alaska switched to Ranked Choice and they had a referendum last election to go back to FPTP voting, and they didn’t want to.
Videos on alternative voting systems
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now) Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out. STAR voting Alternative vote Ranked Choice voting Range Voting Single Transferable Vote Mixed Member Proportional representation
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
I absolutely agree, though I know of at least one other place that tried it and had issues because nobody knew who the candidates were or what their positions were, but IIRC, there was some context to it that made it a “well, of course they had problems” situation instead of people just being too lazy to read up on the candidates (though that is a very real but solvable issue). Like there were 10 districts on the ballot with 6 open seats in each, and they had about 30 candidates per district or something crazy like that.
lorty@lemmygrad.ml 8 months ago
Biden also surpressed student protests. This isn’t the gotcha you think it is
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Ahh. This bullshit trope from the class of people basically responsible for Trump winning the 2024 election.
fartsparkles@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Sorry, did you just blame the people who didn’t vote for Trump for being responsible for Trump being president? Interesting mental gymnastics there…
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 8 months ago
There are no mental gymnastics, and unless you’ve been absent in the debate since it began in 2023, it’s been one conversation regarding the direction of the Democratic party, with effectively two camps.
The first camp, effectively taking the party line and acting as cheerleaders of the DNC, have taken a “No critisism of the Democratic Party is acceptable; voters need to move to the positions of the DNC” approach.
The second camp took a “The DNC needs to be better and acknowledge it’s shortcomings, and make changes when necessary. The DNC needs to align itself with DNC voters and the party base.”
The first camp, for the first 8 months of 2024, insisted we had to run Joe Biden. That there were no other possibilities, options, or potential outcomes. They defended the approach the DNC took to the primary process, which was by any measure, the least democratic primary they party had ever held.
The second camp raged at the preposterous farce which was the DNC primary. They pointed out that Bidens poll numbers were so bad he basically had no chance of winning. That by insisting on this losing strategy we were losing critical time.
Bans were made, here, regarding this debate. And the first camp was wrong. There was another way possible.
After the candidates were swapped the first camp further insured that people just needed to move to where the DNC was, after taking effectively a pro genocide, Republican life campaign philosophy as an outcome of the convention.
The second camp pointed out that this would lose the DNC the election, that we needed our focus to be on moving the candidate to a more popular, more electable position.
The first camp won the argument and lost us all the war, because their fundamental belief in what is being argued and whom they are arguing with is wrong. The first camp is responsible for the millions of votes difference between Kamala and Biden, because they insisted on this losing strategy.
zea_64@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
I’m sure the first camp exists, but you should not imply that everyone who voted Democrat and wanted people to vote Democrat was that. I did that, and I encourage everyone to criticize their horrible decisions and actions, of which there are depressingly many.
I’d love it if we pressured them to not be quite as horrible, but at the same time I did not want the Republican party to win control because I knew they’d be worse for people in almost every way. And now, as a trans person, I have to worry about what I won’t be allowed to do anymore, or how they’ll try to make my life worse just for existing. Sending a signal or whatever you think Democrats losing does does not justify the new shit minorities will face now.
fartsparkles@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Makes sense; sow further division in the groups who don’t like Trump so there’s less opposition to him.
DogWater@lemmy.world 8 months ago
If false dichotomy was a person you’d be it
iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
It’s a very popular sentiment on Reddit and Lemmy, in my experience, to blame non voters as much as or even more than Trump voters.
RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
That’s because the people who voted for Trump wanted Trump to win. The people who stayed at home who might not have wanted Trump to win assisted his win by not voting.
fartsparkles@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Which is a fantastic way to get people to care more about politics lol.
nsrxn@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
did you just blame the people who didn’t vote for Trump for being responsible for Trump being president
That’s what this meme does.
NotMushroomForDebate@lemmygrad.ml 8 months ago
Putting Genocide Joe in scare quotes. Libs are going fully mask-off in this thread.
UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Blue MAGA
cybersin@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Imagine thinking 5 people on the internet caused Trump to win.
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 8 months ago
They only had $1,500,000,00 to spend on Biden/Harris…
How is that supposed to counter the majority of Dem voters not wanting the Dem candidate?
What are they supposed to do?
Run a fair primary, back the winning candidate in the general, and stop bankrupting state parties?!
George Clooney doesn’t eat dinner for free ya know…
nsrxn@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
zuck, Elon, bezos… those three are on the internet. got 2 more?
lobut@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
I feel a lot of people do a lot to justify stupid behaviour. “Saving is too hard” or “exercise is too hard”. There’s legit reasons to not be able to save, or exercise or being able to 🤨.
However there’s a lot of bullshit that people were spouting. It’s either a coordinated campaign or just dumb shit. What annoys me is everyone piling on Joe and then they did what people wanted and swapped to Kamala and they’re still upset that the Dems “don’t listen”. Whatever, they’re all full of it.
I fucking hate the Democrats but you have to be completely psycho to justify not-voting for them.
To be clear, I’m Canadian and I’m directly impacted by this now. So fuck all of those people.
DarkFuture@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Your comment’s downvotes = how many profoundly stupid people who STILL haven’t learned from their mistake there are out there.
Nasan@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
Refusal to hold themselves accountable for their own actions/inactions is a trait they share with mainline MAGA.
nsrxn@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
I can’t be accountable for other people’s votes.
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
zea_64@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
Why are we still talking about this? It’s over, and we can’t undo the results.
Drewfro66@lemmygrad.ml 8 months ago
If the Democrats wanted me to vote for their candidate they should have picked one that didn’t suck balls
UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
While I did vote blue conservative (for the last time), they were not worthy of that vote because they did not represent me. That’s how representative democracy works.
Why are you okay with people being underrepresented at the voting booth? Are you actively working to replace First Past the Post voting in your state? People should have the freedom to vote for the candidates they believe are best, while still ensuring their votes count against those they don’t want in office.
It’s not as though democrats are just now learning of the mathematical flaws of FPTP. Every election I’ve seen the same bullshit excuses to take people’s inalienable right to vote how they want. Democrats in blue states made a choice to leave a huge portion of the population unrepresented, all for safe states and easy elections.
We don’t need to wait for a miracle from Congress, we can pass election reform one state at a time. Should we have more elections, we must remove the democratic monopoly on this fight against the republicans. Don’t worry, blue conservative, you will be free to vote for your preference under a more representative electoral system. Because who would want to deny someone the right to vote for the person they feel is best? You apparently.
Alaska has already abolished FPTP voting. After Ranked Choice Voting kept Sarah Palin out of office, Alaskan Republicans tried to pass a referendum to revert to FPTP, but the people voted to keep Ranked Choice. Why would you want to use the same voting system that Republicans favor? Do you support democracy, or do you get off on forcing people unrepresented in government to vote for your preference?
Videos on alternative voting systems
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now) Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out. STAR voting Alternative vote Ranked Choice voting Range Voting Single Transferable Vote Mixed Member Proportional representation
ceenote@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I swallowed my misgivings and voted Democrat, just like I’ve done st each election since I turned 18, but handwaving away valid criticisms is not how you get people to side with you. Pressure needs to be put on the democrats to be better, too.
MagicShel@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
I’m 100% for valid criticisms—I don’t even consider myself a Democrat and I have no compunctions about criticizing them when I think they are wrong. But I’m pretty sure that meme is directed at those who withheld their vote.
Addv4@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It would be in theory, but mostly it’s just spread around as how any protest against Israel cost the democrats the US election (despite how it was considered widely unpopular to support Israel’s genocide by most democrats).
RedditRefugee69@lemmynsfw.com 8 months ago
Unfortunately it may have.
A lot of voters are stupid. They see Israel=Bad, Biden/Kamala = pro-Israel, they stay home.
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Image
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Shielding the Democrats from the pressure to adopt more popular positions lost this election.
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
No, they were never going to do that. They’ve already said that they learned their lesson, and in 2026, they’re gonna double down on the losing strategy that they’ve been running since Clinton was in office and run on building the wall on the Mexican border and deporting immigrants to court the moderate Republican vote that doesn’t exist and never would vote for them even if it did.
By the Presidential election, it’s already years too late to force them to actually do good things. Protest votes and withholding your vote have done nothing to stop the slide that led to Harris campaigning with Liz Cheney in tow in the 16 years that I’ve been voting. If you want change, it’s only going to come by threatening the position of the people in charge of the party and replacing the old guard with people like AOC. Whoever gets elected President does neither of those things. Unless Krasnov declares the Democratic Party a terrorist organization and has them all arrested as political prisoners. But then we won’t have to worry about voting ever again, just like he promised.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 8 months ago
A few things.
Firstly, we can dismiss the notion that the candidate can’t be moved. The citation for that is Biden in 2020, who effectively campaigned during the primary as a moderate Republican, and until the southern states which we’re never going to go blue anyways weighed in, was getting his ass handed to him. The Sunday before Super Tuesday, the rat-fuckening, Oblivious Warren. All that old history.
And then something remarkable happened. Biden opened the doors to the tent and invited the progressive wing of the party in. He handed the Bernie-crats the platform and said “have at it hoss”. And it worked. Instead of disenfranchising the activist base, he embraced them, or at least, extended an olive branch by giving them the platform, without which he assuredly would have lost.
So: Candidates can be moved.
Second:
Again. And I’m singling you out because you responded and well, here we are. This is an obtuse, bordering on bad faith interpretation of the argument being made. You aren’t arguing with me. You are arguing with the millions of voters who stayed home for Kamala but showed up for Biden. And you moralizing about an objectively misguided application of strategic voting didn’t/ doesn’t/ won’t/ change their votes. When your “strategic voting” strategy results in losing you the election, explain to me how and why its strategic?
You don’t/ can’t move millions of voters to a new position. Or at least it hasn’t been shown to be possible (2016, 2024). Asking voters to “vote against” instead of “voting for” doesn’t work and we now have so many receipts, that they will write text books on the matter. What can be done, is that the candidate can be moved. Its also been shown through an evidentiary process to work.
To summarize, candidates can be moved. Biden moved and won an election because of it. When you moralize about your own, demonstrated-to-be-wrong conception of strategic voting, you aren’t arguing with me, you are arguing with the literally millions of people left on the table by the Democrats. A strategy that when examined before hand will clearly lose, the insistence of then implementing it becomes a “burn the world down” moralization to wash your own hands: Democratic voters who reliably show up, but did not, because the DNC got a hall pass from those making the exact arguments you are making here. They did not need to respond to criticism because this argument you are making shielded them. And it cost us all, practically everything.
thebardingreen@lemmy.starlightkel.xyz 8 months ago
Not voting for them has never once, in the history of history, gotten them to change. It actually causes them to pull further right.
lobut@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Yeah, they probably think, well the right is doing so well so that’s probably what the country wants. We need to move further right!
leadore@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Exactly.
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
Yep. Every time they’ve pulled farther right and lost, they’ve blamed the leftists for it for being too extremist in their policy demands or claiming that their issues aren’t as important, like in the case with Millennials and housing costs, student debt, climate change, etc. Despite trying to make some headway on those issues, they’ve always refused to campaign on them.
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Yep, I voted D like I always did…
But I spent a lot of time ringing any alarm bell coupd find that all of Joe and Kamal’s moves to the right was gonna cost us the election, and that the victory fund would lose the House and Senate.
I was right on all counts, but the people I was trying to explain it won’t admit that reality proved them wrong.
There’s no criticism for what the party did wrong, only anger at anyone with higher standards than the letter by the name.
Neoliberals want nothing as much as they want blindly loyal Dem voters, it’s the only way most people ever hold their noses and vote for one. But rather than have a candidate dem voters want, they’d rather risk trump.
When they shut on voters like in that meme, they’re telling us they have zero problem watching the country burn. They’d rather have trump than a Dem who agrees with Dem voters.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 8 months ago
No one is hand waving away anything by asking people to vote
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
If you look carefully, you’ll find statements about how “neither option affects [this particular thing] but we have the best chance of fixing it after the election if we still have a country”.
It was never handwaved. It was the least-worse option with some kind of hope given that issue and a thousand others. How many times this has fucking been fucking explained and not fucking understood.
YarHarSuperstar@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Uh yes it was definitely hand-waved away by some “if you look carefully”. It was only the “least-worse option” because so many were successfully manipulated by the system into being placated with crumbs so they wouldn’t revolt at the thousands of other reasons we’ve had for years to fight back against this shit, pushing the Overton window to the right in increments and leading folks to not use or even possess or be taught in the first place the critical thinking skills required to inform oneself and take steps to make positive change, in this system designed to intentionally misinform and mislead us and pit us against each other so we vote for the same rich white men responsible for perpetuating this system and the harm it brings to all of us, especially marginalized communities.
I would recommend to you (and anyone who is interested in informing themselves on what is being done to us) to read “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein. It details this process of incremental change, and some of the strategies and parties previously and currently involved in taking control of our government (or at this point more like what’s left of it).
(For clarity: I’m not saying both parties are the same, although their goals, tactics, and policies seem less different to me as time passes; I’m not making any general statement passing blame to any group of voters or non-voters in this comment, because I believe the bulk of the responsibility lies on the system and those who hold sway over large parts of it in the form of currency or legislation, for example; and I’m not denying or invalidating that you may feel this way and/or believe it is true, I’m taking issue with your statement that “it was never handwaved”, because I most certainly saw that happen and know people who to this day are clinging to that sentiment)
DarkFuture@lemmy.world 8 months ago
They’re already 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000x better than Republicans. So someone would have to be pretty goddamn stupid not to vote for them when the options are them or Republicans.
The majority of the fault isn’t on Democrats. It’s on goddamn stupid braindead asshole American voters for being goddamn stupid braindead assholes.
nsrxn@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
how can this be quantified?
cosmicrookie@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The argument, was the least bad between two bads. This is way worse than the alternative would ever get