this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
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[–] HalfSalesman@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Go far enough, there wont be historians.

What you need to get through your head is that the group of people actively advocating for the abstaining of voting is why 6% did not vote for the lesser evil. At the same level of blame that the DNC lick's Israel's boots. And the 6% itself deserves this outcome, because we have FIRST PAST THE POST.

We did not have a primary. We should have. That's a failure of the DNC and Biden as well.

So, given that I understand that the DNC as villains. That Israel are villains. MAGA are obviously all villains. Where does this leave left leaning independents and potential dem voters?

Each potential voter had a simple moral calculus in front of them:

  1. Progressives: Vote for the lesser evil and hope we build off of that to make things better. Minimize risk that a fascist wins.
  2. Abstain from voting, let the fascist get an edge in terms of their chance of winning.

Potential dem voters who did #1 are not the bad guys. #2 made an explicit choice and are scum, just like MAGA. Just like the DNC. Just like Biden.

This isn't to say the every person who fits into category #1 is blameless: if they advocated for centrists or were pro-israel, yeah, they fit into the same as the DNC category. But the vast majority of the people who fit into category #1 did not do that. You suggesting such is incredible delusion.

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

the group of people actively advocating for the abstaining of voting is why 6% did not vote for the lesser evil.

Schrödingers anti-genocide caucus. Simultaneously capable of with-holding their vote and changing the entire course of an election and yet also not a meaningful enough of a group of voters to be worth changing your policy positions for. If this caucus was sooo important, why didn't the campaign change their positions?

You are demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding how elections work, how they function. Effectively, you are subject in the same kind of propaganda that the petroleum industry used to convince consumers that individual actions, specifically recycling, plastics was going to save the world. This is a bad faith approach because it shifts the responsibility for the outcomes or consequences of elections from those who actually have power in the system, like parties, political campaigns, and candidates, to those who effectively have the least power in the system: voters. That perspective you hold, is the result of a long effort on the parties to dismiss the responsibility they hold for actually appealing to voters and their demands.

The reality was that voters were extremely dissatisfied with the Biden administration. This is something mainstream media told people not to believe their lying eyes about throughout 2023 and 2024, about how good the Biden economy was. About how people were just imagining the struggles they were experiencing, those were just things they were imagining. This is couple with the fact that the Democratic administration continued to support a genocide throughout. When asked what Harris would do differently, she said "nothing would fundamentally change*. No one spoke for her in those words. She said this.

What you are doing, by blaming voters for the failure of a political campaign to meet the moment: Its precisely what allowed the campaign to fail. Your advocacy that its "on the voters" to vote for the 'lessor evil', it creates the permission structure that allowed the campaign to maintain positions that would result in them losing the election. And I want to be clear, in the build up to the election, your perspective, that voters needed to just vote for the lessor evil instead of the campaign change is what prevented the campaign from the course corrections they needed to make to win.

And we have the receipts. Telling voters they'll just need to vote for the lessor evil won't work. You won't win an election that way. The idea that you can blame or shame voters into doing what you want doesn't work. That is now established fact. We've run the experiment, multiple times now, and we've got the results. Creating the permission structure such that campaigns know they don't need to respond to voters: this is what allows campaigns to maintain un-electable positions.

[–] HalfSalesman@lemmy.world 1 points 23 minutes ago

If this caucus was sooo important, why didn’t the campaign change their positions?

Because the DNC would rather lose than not lick Israel's boots. I already FUCKING KNOW THIS. JFNIOAFN UIA. AHGHAIGMIOSAEN.

How dense can you be? Are you trying to give me a stroke? Please do because I want to become simple. The alcohol isn't working fast enough.

Also the "Schrödingers anti-genocide caucus" arguement can go either way. Its a 2 way street. If you don't think abstaining will influence the results of the election, why would you bother trying to use that to influence the DNC? If you think it does influence the results of an election, it means you acknowledge that you are increasing the risk of a fascist victory.

critique about placing some blame on voters

Do you believe in free will? Agency? Autonomy?

And we have the receipts. Telling voters they’ll just need to vote for the lessor evil won’t work. You won’t win an election that way. The idea that you can blame or shame voters into doing what you want doesn’t work. That is now established fact. We’ve run the experiment, multiple times now, and we’ve got the results. Creating the permission structure such that campaigns know they don’t need to respond to voters: this is what allows campaigns to maintain un-electable positions.

I'm blaming and shaming now because it doesn't matter. I know I can't blame and shame you into voting the way I want. I never tried to do that in 2024. I knew that before the election. I'm doing it now because even if the system itself is bad, the people within it have purposefully allowed it to get worse. Their motivations for why vary, but the result of their actions is the same. On an emotional level, I simply hate them.

I can be disgusted by multiple groups at the same time.

But ok, lets engage in your point: You know how voters could have, in our admittedly terrible election system, influence the democratic party's candidates? Voting in the fucking primaries. I wish the DNC had bothered to run one this time in 2024, but you know, they offered what they offered because Biden was an egotistical old fuckhead. Still better than fascism.

But you know dems did run primaries in 2016 and 2020, as much as I preferred Sanders over both HRC and Biden... Sanders lost the primary. Because not enough people who supported Sanders voted in the primary. And the first time this happened in 2016, people who supported Sanders (even ones that did not fucking vote for him in the primary) decided not to vote in the general because he lost the primary and we got Trump Round 1. FUCK THOSE PEOPLE.

The only reason Biden barely skated by was because of how bad things had gotten under Trump by 2020. If people weren't fucking morons, it would have been a blow out in both scenarios in favor of democrats, regardless of the candidate.

We already agree: the Democratic party fucked up electorally but multiple things can be true at the same time. You seem to think voters are blameless.