this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2025
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No shaming people for being anti-electoralism. This should be obvious from the above point but apparently we need to make it obvious to the turbolibs who can't control themselves. You have the rest of lemmy to moralize.
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Not voting means the party has to start offering policies to entice you back.
Blindly supporting means the party can start offering policies to entice those who don't vote for them (conservatives).
Tell me again which moves the overton window?
Can we stop pretending like voting for the Democrats as they exist now stops the Republicans from winning? It only makes them win more slowly. It is literally why everyone is so disillusioned and why the Democrats were unable to sell their message to enough people. And can we also take for granted that me saying this doesn’t mean that I didn’t vote for Kamala Harris?
Maybe we could stop pretending that the shitty Democrats that have never learned their lesson suddenly will if Republicans win one more time
Yes. That's how electoralist politics work. The power as a voter lies in the ability to withhold their vote or to vote for someone else. The moment your vote is being forced into compliance, you have thus lost all your political power under that system.
It's kinda one of the major flaws of an electoralist system.
Congratulations for reaching the point.
I feel like you're not quite getting the point. The only sway you have over politicians, is your vote. If you guarantee your vote to a party no matter what they do, you have entirely given up all of your political power.
That's the whole point of democracy. You withhold your vote from the candidates you do not believe in, or who have shown that they do not push for policies that would benefit you or yours. If a candidate does not have beliefs and policies that you believe in, you do not vote for them. And the rough idea is that this incentivizes politicians to adopt policies that people want. If you vote for a politician regardless of whether you believe in what they do, this incentive goes away. The politician will have your vote regardless of what they do, and so they are open to be incentivized in other ways, for example, donations from billionaires.
If a politician adopts wildly unpopular positions, such as just doing genocide, and doing nothing in favor of worker's rights, or doing nothing in favor of universal health care, and so on, and so forth, and they then lose a race, then it's their fault for not adopting policies that more people can get behind, and not that of the people who didn't vote for them. Because again, the whole point of democracy is to incentivize politicians to adopt popular positions, and the politician failed to do so.
"some of my colleagues lost. I shall now begin the transformation to a totally new human"
You're confusing cause and effect; democrats need to promise policy that improves people's material conditions if they want people to vote for them, and use every single power at their disposal to prevent further harm until then to prove they will do as they say if they win. Nobody is going to vote for a party that they dont believe will help them.
You cant win while telling your own base "eat shit, what are you gonna do, not vote?"
The only thing that tells you that is a common sense analysis of the situation
There is also the fact that democrats lost in 2024, and 2016, and the way the dems lost the house and senate in 2010 after bailing out the banks for stealing people's houses and giving the health insurance companies subsidies instead of giving us healthcare. Turns out when you do the opposite of what your base wants, fewer people vote.
The only way the dems can win is if they implement overwhelmingly popular left policy such as free healthcare, and fight the republicans using every tool at their disposal.
The only time we have seen dems accede to popular demand is when Biden had a less than 5% chance at winning.
Do you see where I'm going with this? Voting blue no matter who lets the DNC delude themselves into thinking they can win while running on dogshit policy. If we tell the dems the only way we will vote for them is if they do the thing they need to do to win anyway, they might actually do the things they need to do to win.
You don't need to be progressive to understand "free healthcare", and "free healthcare" polls better than "subsidies for insurance companies". "Free college" polls better than "means-tested forgiveness for STEM grads who operate a business in an underserved neighborhood for 5 years". The great thing about left policy is that you don't need to trick people or gauge people's political positions and try to match them against a 5 dimensional chart, you're simply using the tools available to improve people's material conditions and people will vote for it because the alternative is immediately worsening conditions. Look at europe, public healthcare is so popular even the conservatives need to pretend to support it.
You don't need to be progressive to understand "free healthcare", and "free healthcare" polls better than "subsidies for insurance companies". "Free college" polls better than "means-tested forgiveness for STEM grads who operate a business in an underserved neighborhood for 5 years". The great thing about left policy is that you don't need to trick people or gauge people's political positions and try to match them against a 5 dimensional chart, you're simply using the tools available to improve people's material conditions and people will vote for it because the alternative is immediately worsening conditions. Look at europe, public healthcare is so popular even the conservatives need to pretend to support it.
that didn't happen.
So you know they won't learn, but want people to vote for them anyway? Fucking idiot you are
"Please stop bombing children", "How about we don't back a genocide", "Maybe illness shouldn't put you into bankruptcy", "Police shouldn't be able to assault and murder innocent people"
I feel like these are reasonable requests, and quite different than "short of perfect"
Maybe if the Democrats fought for those values, instead of against them, then they would gain leftist support.
your response is a perfect example of why they are focusing on centrists and right wingers
Because I want them to stop bombing children? Yeah, I know. They'd rather keep doing that, than try to appeal to me as a voter.
Yes it is, but not in the way you think.
this is a lie
The Democrats exist as they do now because they can’t rely on the left to vote. So they have to pander to the center.
The centrist voter is a myth. There is not a human who will vote for "means-tested subsidies for a state-run employer-funded health insurance marketplace where you have no idea what it will cover or cost." But wouldn't vote for "free healthcare" when you move to the center by compromising your bills, you lose voters who suspect the policy won't help them, you dont gain a bunch of "moderate Republicans" who want only half of immigrants subjected to inhumane conditions.
Take a marketing class. If you think that politics is about pandering and not about convincing people, then you’ve lost the game already
Ah I understand now. You took Marketing 101 and have it all figured out.
I definitely don’t have it all figured out, but I wanna know do you ever think about stuff like what it took for the civil rights movement of the 1960s to succeed? Do you think it was a matter of pandering to the interests of centrist liberals or do you think that a big part of it was criticizing status quo liberalism and refusing to settle? I really think that you should read theletter from Birmingham jail by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. because the archetype that he addresses in that work is replayed out every single time somebody ever deigns to criticize the Democrats for their political strategy.
The fuck are you talking about? They did show up for Gore. He won the popular vote. The only reason Bush won was due to the electoral college flipping the vote. Gore's election was stolen from him.
Democrats have not been moving left. They have consistently been moving further and further right since post-WW2 and McCarthyism completely demolished any legitimate left wing politics in this country. Meanwhile the voting population became more and more disenfranchised by the fucked up system we live under.
gore won in Florida, too. the supreme Court stole the election for Bush.
Yes, we already lost last election because of the exact reasons stated by the person you're responding to
Except the person they were responding to phrased the situation poorly by leaving out important context.
In reality, the Democrats lost because they kept expecting leftists to vote against their working class interests in favor of right wing, pro corporate policies that only serve to maintain the capitalist system. You know, the very thing we are fundamentally against?
Maybe if the Democrats actually made strides for legitimate left wing policies, they would encourage more left wing individuals to throw their hat in with them.
Yet, time and time again, they have shown to throw the working class under the bus if it serves the whims of the capitalist market. Now, no one trusts them to uphold our interests when push comes to shove.
Funny of you to assume leftists want the neoliberal, capitalist establishment to win.
Maybe if they actually began to support left wing policy and ideology, instead of routinely throwing us under the bus to save the skin of those who exploit us, leftist would be willing to vote for them.
Also, FYI, there are more than just Democrats and Republicans to vote for. Saying people shouldn't vote for Democrats isn't the same thing as advocating against voting at all.
Free to assume what you want. Not my fault your logic is simplistic and myopic.
You're not exactly wrong, but it's even more fundamental than that. If leftists were a more reliable voting bloc, then Democrats couldn't exist as they do today. They would be primaried by more leftist candidates. And then, if hard left policies were more popular with the general electorate, they would win.
The nightmare we're all living in right now is proof. I don't believe for an instant that The Powers That Be wanted Donald Trump to be president. Even by fascist standards he's kind of a disaster. They wanted fucking Jeb! But Trump's implicit message of "I'm going to fuck shit up and the establishment doesn't want me" resonated with a lot of people. It just got the extra boost from being tied with fucked up racism, sexism, and ignorance, all of which are tied to pretty solid groups of voters.