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this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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Liberals: but what if we compromised, how about only some genocide? What if Israel only tortured half as many babies? What if Israel only illegally annexed half of the West Bank instead of their current plan to annex the entire thing? What if people were able to afford 50% of rent and 50% of all bills? What if we only cut Medicare and Medicaid by 50%?
My comment was removed by the mods.. probably because I let my rage show. Though the mod log shows rule 2 instead of rule 1 :P
Here's a longer and nicer version:
I'm a (US) liberal, and I don't approve of any of the views described by kittenzrulz123. Lumping half the country into a single bucket is not going to give you a good overview of the myriad ideals we might have individually.
You have a choice. You can look at the political landscape at the moment of the election and choose one of four options:
At this time, our election system really only works for two parties. Any third-party vote is useless, if not counterproductive. If you can't understand how that math works, let me know and I'll break it down for you. I'd love to change that, but the process is by using our ability during primaries to put forward more liberal candidates that support election reforms, not by putting our heads in the sand and voting 3rd party hoping that we will make people notice... hint: they will not.
If you don't like your choices when you go to the voting booth in November, the solution is to get involved in late November and make things better next time. Join a local democratic organization and become part of the solution. Complaining online about how your choices suck is something we can fix if we all jump in. If you're not doing that, then you are abdicating your responsibility and allowing others to make the choice of who represents us instead. If you choose not to be part of the selection process, the very least you can do is vote for the 'lesser evil' and not make things worse.
Side note: the Primary election is the end of that selection process, not the start. Putting your values on the primary ballot is where you should spend your energy if you're mad at the status quo.
I will admit that I'm angry that we didn't get a Democratic primary and that Harris was ordained as Biden's successor without any popular input. The DNC is to blame for that fuck-up. It's irrefutable, though, that Harris would have been better for Palestine, the US economy, US healthcare, foreign relations, and dozens of other topics than trump is.
Would Claudia de la Cruz have been better? Sure. Her platform looks awesome. Did she have even a chance of winning? no.
I'm confused, when you talk about voting "Democrat," do you mean, for the Democratic-Republicans? I was thinking of voting Federalist, personally.
Since our system makes it impossible to change from the two currently existing parties, it follows that the two parties we have now must be the ones we started with.
But regardless, this is typical shortsighted liberal (i.e. capitalist) analysis that only looks at the immediate outcome and only at electoral politics. If a significant portion of the electorate can make a credible threat to sit out if their demands are not met, then they can leverage that threat to get what they want. The right is much more willing to do this because they put their values above reason, and it works - many Republican candidates understand that if they look soft on things like abortion or guns, a sizable portion of their base will defect, even if it means voting for a crank and throwing the election. Democratic voters are much more committed to being "reasonable" and so refuse to set any red lines anywhere, and the results are clear: the right successfully shifts the Republicans to be more extreme, the Democrats follow, and the left falls in line and accepts it. We are desperately overdue to start learning from their successful tactics and from our own failures, setting down red lines, and thinking beyond the current cycle. And we can debate where exactly red lines should be set, but if genocide doesn't deserve one, nothing does.
Moreover, the facts of physical reality, the material conditions, and the myriad of crises we're facing demand radical changes beyond what we are told are possible in the existing system. But those things are physical, natural, immutable facts, while our political system is, on a fundamental level, manmade. We do not have to abide by its rules and what it tells us is and isn't possible - but we do have to do that regarding the laws of nature, which tell us about things like climate change. Monarchy had no mechanism built into the system to transform into liberal democracy, and yet, here we are. That's because there are fundamental mechanisms for change that exist within every political system, whether the system wants them to or not, and I don't just mean revolutions, but demonstrations, strikes, etc. And so, the party I voted for, PSL, participates in electoral politics for the express purpose of building organization beyond electoral politics. Helping a candidate who I see as fundamentally unacceptable win an election is less important that helping to promote that sort of organizing.