this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
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Late Stage Capitalism
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There absolutely is lesser evil. And then when the lesser evil is in power, you can choose the lesser evil for the next local and state and primary. Gradual slide to the right is how we got here. A gradual slide to the left is better than continuing that trajectory. A rapid move to the left would be better of course.
How did we get a gradual slide to the right with all these "lesser evil" centrist candidates and people following this logic for decades? It's because it doesn't fucking work.
The right goes around making maximalist demands and standing on all kinds of unreasonable principles and it works. Their politicians know they'll lose the cranks if they're soft on something like abortion or guns. Democrats expect people to foll in line behind the lesser evil, and they generally have, and what we have now is the result of that. It's long past time to acknowledge that standing on principle works.
The same way we got a gradual slide to the left in the preceding 200 years under the same system. As that was voter intention.
Propaganda doesn't help. Allowing corporations and the wealthy outside influence in speech doesn't help. Undermining education doesn't help. A complicit media doesn't help. However, it's not the system of voting that is the problem that is causing the swing right. It can just as easily cause a swing left. In increments.
Incrementalism does not work, incrementalism results in incremental fascism.
In 1984, James Baldwin said
He apparently had been hearing that it takes time, progress takes time, all of his life. Incrementalism is something that liberals tell themselves is the only path forward because they know that they have no plans for actual progress forward.
Except that your lesser evil never moves to the left. If you allow a small, acceptable amount of evil, the amount of evil that's acceptable next time is slightly larger. When you compound that over 50 years you have a party that's gone from the likes of Jimmy Carter to the party that's saying what genocide in Gaza.