India just showed the world how to fight an authoritarian on the rise

jeffw@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 164 points –
India just showed the world how to fight an authoritarian on the rise
vox.com
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Tl;dr: they voted

American and European Leftist heads exploding right now

BuT mUh ElEcToRaLiSm!

If we could get blue voters to vote with the same fervor as the insane right (who vote at if their very existence is at stake) there would never be a red president or Congress again.

If we could do that Bernie would have won the primary easily.

The insane right's electoral strategy is to threaten primaries, not the general.

Threatening the primaries makes you a credible electoral threat who's positions should be considered and if possible appealed to.

Threatening the general makes you a moron who obviously cares more about feeling validated than you do about achieving any policy goals since you're literally declaring your intent to hand the contest to the guy who's even less likely to give you anything you want.

There was the uncommitted movement for the democratic primaries, but democrats screamed and shat their pants in anger over people daring to challenge party unity. Reminder that these uncommitted votes were just to send the message that biden should stop supporting genocide which should really be a no-brainer and even then democrats threw a fit. The political parties have their primary processes clamped down and completely controlled. If trump threatened the moneyed interests at all, he would've been shut down during the party primaries like Bernie was.

Is that why the left took power just 4 years ago? Because the right voted with such fervor? Or do you realize it wil be impossible that the left will win anything come November. Face the truth.

"jUsT vOtE" wasn't the solution. It required the opposition parties to work on getting those votes. If the democrats in the US wanted to learn a lesson, it'd be that they shouldn't just lean on "sure we suck ass but trump is worse!!"

This excerpt is key:

First, voters punished Modi for putting his Hindu nationalist agenda ahead of fixing India’s unequal economy. Second, Indian voters had some real concerns about the decline of liberal democracy under BJP rule. Third, the opposition parties waged a smart campaign that took advantage of Modi’s vulnerabilities on the economy and democracy.

Note the first point hitting on the economy. Democrats have gone with "actually everything is great and you not being able to afford things is just your feelings".

Modi won, so you're basically saying "Democrats should try harder but they'll still fail."

That's what happens with complacency. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done to dismantle the fascist machine, but it requires sustained full commitment and effort from the opposition. Think about how bad things were with george w bush. Democrats were able to seize that opportunity to get in and do some good things, but they were mostly fine with the status quo and this is what gave us trump.

I think maybe rethinking tactics is in order because what people are doing isn't working and doing it harder won't make it work. That's what I was trying to suggest.

We're in full agreement here and that was my point when I argued against the "just vote" talking point. Democrats need to change their tactics and apply pressure using what works. Currently their only tactic is pointing out "we're not trump" and they're putting their full force behind that tactic and it's not working (or at least not well enough to enact meaningful change). One key problem is how we get democrats to change their tactics and clearly "just vote" isn't cutting it because they're not fazed by threats to withhold votes, so it's not like they actually care if you vote for them beyond getting them into office. It does nothing to change democratic party policy.

This article was about what strategies and campaign messaging the opposition used to sway voters, and your takeaway from the article was 'they voted'?

I'm not convinced you read it.