Like It or Not, the Left Can’t Get Away From the Democrats

psychothumbs@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 19 points –
Like It or Not, the Left Can’t Get Away From the Democrats
jacobin.com
35

You know how it is, OP. If no bus gets you exactly where you want to go, you take the bus that gets you closest. What you don’t do is take the fascist sedition bus because your preferred bus doesn’t stop at your front door.

Perfect analogy! Perfection never exists and parties can be extremely complex. Agreeing with the one that is more reasonable is exactly how political voting works.

I live in NY. Which bus I personally take in this analogy has no impact on where we end up, so I’ll follow my conscience.

Vote straight ticket Democrats but on the Working Family Party ticket, that'll show em.

  1. What exactly do you think would show them? I am not powerful, and the system is rigged.
  2. Why do you assume I’m voting straight-ticket Dem on WFP? If nothing else, our electoral votes are going to the Dem for president regardless of what I do. I’m considering writing in Chuck Tingle, frankly. My conscience will feel good and there will be zero effect on the outcome. The Dems fucked up their job so bad I had to have my tubes out to sleep at night. Fuck all this noise.

If no bus gets you exactly where you want to go, you take the bus that gets you closest.

This is a shit analogy because it assumes that the two buses are going in different directions. It's just gloating from people who like where both buses are heading.

why don't you ask the gays/trans bout "both buses heading in the same direction"

this "they are the same" bullshit can only be said by someone in a real nice place of privilege, as for me, one bus is already calling to cleanse me and quite a few of my friends off the face of the planet because of who we love and what some of us identify as

Neither party voted to legalize gay marriage. The Supreme Court decided, because Republicans are bigots and Democrats are ineffective cowards.

What have Democrats done about the increase in violence toward LGBTQ people? What have they done about anti-trans legislation or book bans? What did they do with the majority we gave them last session? They didn't codify Roe, and we lost that. They didn't codify Obergefell either.

One bus is barreling toward the bottom of the hill. The other is coasting backwards in the same direction.

one bus is already calling to cleanse me and quite a few of my friends off the face of the planet because of who we love and what some of us identify as

My friends as well. Which is why I'm not going to give the Democratic Party a participation trophy on this. I see an existential threat towards people I care about, and no urgency whatsoever from the only party that is in a position to even try to stop that threat.

I'll accept the analogy once their bus is no longer in neutral.

What have Democrats done about the increase in violence toward LGBTQ people?

Not a damn thing, they talk big like they are allies, but leave us to defend ourselves and treat us like they are doing us a favor.

This queer says both busses are going on the same direction. You dont get to use my community to vote shame other people for your own gain. What has the blue bus done to protect the trans community? How long ago did the bathroom debates come about and what have dems at the federal level done to protect them? Not a damn thing, in fact Biden has advocated for states rights his entire career. So the abuse that the trans community is receiving right now has its roots in people like Biden that supports a weak federal government in favor of states rights. Same argument he made for women's reproductive rights.

We need to try the Montgomery Bus boycott method and boycott all busses. Shit got done then

In this metaphor that means... not voting?

That doesn't sound like a path to success...

Not voting for them, just like the Montgomery Bus Boycott there alternative methods of transportation, and they used those methods until they broke the system and made it work for them

And how exactly are you going to convince conservative voters to join your boycott? Because without that, your boycott will result in fascists taking complete control when they are the only ones who show up to vote.

I don't need to convince conservatives to join, like blacks in Montgomery didn't need help from white bus riders. We out number them, simple math. All it takes is breaking up one side of the duopoly and gain a party that represents people, not capital

You get how voting works, right?

People who support candidate A are going to vote for A because they’re not joining your boycott. Assuming everyone else, or even a large chunk of people who support candidate B join you and refuse to participate? How do you think that fares for B?

You end up with A elected in a landslide, and policy veers even farther from representing B.

Then one side needs to do better and represent the working class, not their donors. But since thats not gonna happen they need to die off as a party so an actual party that represents the public can emerge.

We desperately need to abolish first past the post voting and replace it with literally any proportional voting system. I don't care which one as literally any of them will be an improvement. It's the only way we'll ever break this destructive two party system we're locked into.

"Best we can do is abolish voting. welcome to the one true party, friend."

Any other methods that challenge their power and authority will be fought tooth and nail. Just like the DNC currently suing to keep RCV off the ballot in DC, and neighboring Alexandria VA doing the same. Both claiming minorities are too ignorant to understand.

FPTP works fine if voters would pull their heads out of their ass and realize the duopoly doesnt represent them and support 3rd party. 75m+ voting 3rd party will result in them being FPTP

Any other methods that challenge their power and authority will be fought tooth and nail.

Yes, unfortunately both parties are going to do everything in their power to make sure we NEVER get any kind of proportional voting system, because they know they'd win fewer elections.

FPTP works fine if voters would pull their heads out of their ass and realize the duopoly doesnt represent them and support 3rd party.

Unfortunately this is wrong. In a FPTP system, the only way to make sure that a major party candidates doesn't win is to vote for the other major party candidate. Any vote for a 3rd party only weakens whichever major party candidate you most favor. This has been proven mathematically. A FPTP system will always devolve into a two party system. The only way to escape a rigid two party system is to use a proportional voting system.

a 3rd party only weakens

This is based on the assumption we would ever vote for corporate owned candidates. We dont most favor any of them. thats like picking out the few good pieces of corn from a steaming pile of shit

The reason so few people vote in the US is not because of apathy, its because they realize their lives suck regardless which color occupies the WH or halls of Congress

The reason so few people vote in the US is not because of apathy, its because they realize their lives suck regardless which color occupies the WH or halls of Congress

Yes they both suck, but one of them is almost incomparably worse than the other. It's a choice between things being slightly worse vs. things being horrendously worse. The GOP have literally embraced fascism. If you're not voting to keep them out of office pretty soon you won't have to worry about voting at all. You won't have the option to even if you wanted to. Do you want to end up like Russia? Because this is how you end up like Russia.

We didnt get to late stage capitalism with just republicans, dems and their ratchet effect has helped them. Red or Blue the working class gets fucked, the difference is blue prefers a blue fucking, despite neither showing up with lube

You need to pick your battles, one problem at a time. We need to save our democracy first, then we can fix our economy. The GOP are setting up to crown a dictator and to begin a good old fashioned political purge of anyone who has or might oppose them. That's the biggest danger right now. Once that's headed off then we can address the corporations and the wealthy executive class that have been gutting the middle class and sucking the working class dry.

First priority is preventing the GOP from cementing permanent rule and abolishing democracy. Then we fix our political parties by introducing proportional voting to allow for actual political representation. Then we fix our judiciary by un-stacking the courts and putting systems in place to check political power grabs and manoeuvering by the supreme court. Then we fix our police force by making many systemic changes to how police operate and their relationship to the courts. Once all of that is squared away then the board is set to start breaking up the corporations and returning to a healthy economy where every market isn't dominated by a half dozen (or fewer) megacorps.

If you allow the GOP to seize power nothing else is going to matter. We will cease to be a democracy and short of an armed uprising (and the odds of that succeeding aren't great) there won't be anything the public will be able to do to stop the oligarchs from finishing carving up and consuming the US. The US will end up just like Russia where a band of kleptocrats who have all sworn fealty to a dictator will have free reign to pillage to their hearts content.

I've been hearing these same bullshit claims for 50 years. Until the day the working class has the same political influence as a billionaire there is no democracy in this country. Stop protest voting for the duopoly and vote for something instead.

OK Nero, you keep fiddling while Rome burns. That view from your moral high horse is going to do you a lot of good when you're in a gulag for refusing to cheer for Dear Leader. A decade ago you might have had a point, but we're well past the point where this is just a political disagreement, this is now an existential risk to US democracy. Keeping the GOP out of power is literally the only thing stopping the US from going to same route as 1933 Germany. For better or worse though instead of going war crazy they're more likely to pull a Russia though and just cement themselves as the perpetual ruling class and begin looting and pillaging anything that isn't nailed down. But you go ahead and keep voting for people that are mathematically incapable of winning an election. I'm just going to hope you'd be a MAGAt otherwise so at least your waste of a vote isn't a net negative.

That's cute you think your party is gonna save democracy, the party thats sued to keep people off ballots, sued to keep RCV off ballots because 'blacks are too ignorant to understand it,' argued in court that voters have no choice who THEY choose as the candidate that they pick for their party. Refusing to allow a primary for their chosen candidate isn't Democracy. The derangement here is BlueMAGA thinking they are the moral majority in preserving democracy.

If Democrsts were sincere about keeping Republicans out of office then they need to vote 3rd party. If Biden can't win without us you have the moral obligation to do the right thing and vote for West. But we all know Dems first goal is not keep Republicans out of power, as Pelosi said 'we need a strong republican party,' their only goal is to keep the duopoly as a whole in powet

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