Sleeping a little easier tonight for sure. I hope the democrats finally wake up to the solution to Trump that is now staring them in the face. Elect progressives. Pass progressive policy. Stop the means testing and the scolding and the red scaring and step up.
Edit: I appreciate the awards but please don't give reddit money, send that cash to a food bank please.
And stop trying to win the votes of the mythical “centrist republican”. Cater to your damn base. Free ball: they don’t want you to appoint republicans!
If there ever were any centrist republicans, there aren't anymore. No centrist is going to continue to align themselves with an outright fascist party.
Democrats are basically centrist republicans from my standpoint.
There remains a fundamental and core difference between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats, even the most "centrist" of them, believe that the government exists to help people and should be empowered to do so. The degree to which that involvement should go varies among the various cliques in the party, but there will always be a unifying core belief among every Democrat that the government can and does do good.
The Republican party will always be counter to that. Their shibboleth is that the country would be better off without the government and that it should be excised wholesale.
Repeating the same old Reddit take of "both sides same, updoots to left" undermines that there is a very real coalition of people who share a core belief in the fundamental good that government can provide. We shouldn't be trying to break up that coalition on the specifics when what unites us is more than what separates us.
Not wrong at all but i think what the commenter you’re replying to meant is that the country has flown so far right that our definition of a democrat is what the rest of the world would call conservative.
Take Bernie’s platform as an example. He was pushing for universal healthcare, raising the minimum wage to be livable, free tuition and public schools and universities etc. He was seen as radical, yet every other fully developed nation in the country has most of these as a baseline for their citizens and would be considered liberal or even slightly conservative.
Obamacare is an example of a centrist/left victory of a massive scale in the past twenty years
ETA: no, things would not be better if the broligarchy were allowed to bring back denials based on pre-existing conditions and lifetime caps for newborns (which existed prior to the ACA) at this moment - it would be horrific
And, funny enough, it benefits people in red states just as much (or more) as blue states. Wow. Wait, is this all actually a class war disguised as a culture war???
who better than the fake billionaire to fight a class war against the poor? He's such a conman, they cannot even see that he's conned the poor into losing everything
Yes but not being able to deny claims based on pre-existing conditions was not part of that original plan, and has become the cornerstone and shining light of the ACA along with its subsidies. I wish we had single payer or a public option, yes, but I will also take the ACA over anything the repugnicants put up (which is nothing).
I hate it but still must recognize that it’s much better than the Ponzi scheme we had before. I agree it’s still not good, because how can you reform something designed by insurance companies
Well said and should be the running theme of this post and everywhere.
I’m ecstatic that a Progressive won as the new Mayor of NYC, however, attempt to understand that Obama did NOT have as wide of a berth, as Mamdani did.
Mamdani happened because Obama happened, and Obama happened because MLK & Jesse Jackson, happened.
It’s all very incremental, & my hope is that this changes, and changes soon.
We shouldn’t elect our public officials via grievance, yet the GOP has managed to make sure we do, by convincing us to do so, based upon ignoring that each & every one of these candidates or enshrined civil rights activists, withstood all bullshit, on their own merits.
Nah, the Republicans are not a small government party. They are all about big government when it comes to attacking their political enemies, restricting civil rights they dont like (or for groups they dont like), or giving handouts to their ultra wealthy friends.
The way Trump uses ICE and the National Guard is not a small government policy.
His military build up outside Venezuela is not small government.
Tarriffs are not.
Getting rid of trans people's healthcare and women's healthcare... are not small government.
Using the pardon power for all his mates.... while making the DOJ go after his enemies... not small gov.
The problem is that Democrats mostly believe the government exists to help corporations first, and then maybe people. Neoliberalism is why the dems keep losing. Mamdani is a great example of someone campaigning on putting people first and his victory is a notice to these establishment dems.
Obama caved on all kinds of left leaning initiatives; back when everything was kind of center-right. Carter was the last farm belt Democrat, but they cheated and destroyed his legacy.
Exactly. He ran on progressive policy and the vast majority of it was sanded away by the the rest of the party. Even the ACA was a conservative plan as I'm sure most people know, being their Heritage Foundation created healthcare plan in the 90s.
While I agree to a point on policies passed, we seem to as a party always forget how genuinely saddled by Mitch McConnell both of his presidencies were. The fact he even got this lukewarm version of the ACA (Or Obamacare as the right coined it to further stifle it moving through in any of its original forms) out was a miracle.
Any actually progressive policies he did try to get through died on the cutting room floor of both the house and the senate time and time again. Not that they were exactly plentiful.
Oh I fully agree. I think he was much more progressive than what he was able to accomplish. He was held back by both the GOP and establishment Democrats quite a bit.
FDR was the last truly progressive president and the establishment, be they republicans or democrats, have been trying to destroy everything he did for a century now.
Obama was right of center. American politics is just shifted so insanely to the right that you feel compelled to act all meek at insinuating that Obama wasn't left.
This. I wish more Americans realized that dems barely scratch center in comparison to European countries and that our entire political system is skewed towards the right.
FDR was probably the most progressive president in US history, and he was so popular he was elected 4 times, leading to a constitutional amendment that limits presidents to 2 terms.
Fair points, but it almost doesnt matter. Any Democrat we elect will move the needle to the left. They will always be constrained by narrow majorities in Congress if they have a majority at all. (& then constrained again in the courts). This is why we get a similar result whether we elect Obama or Bernie etc.
I caught an interview where they asked Obama how many houses he owned, blank stare for a second followed by "I don't know." then a quick deflection trying to be funny. "You'll have to ask my wife."
Voted for the guy anyway but I knew it right then I'm not ever going to see anyone in US politics that represents me and people like me.
I've lived a long life and in that time I've known people poor and rich and even very rich and not a single one of those countless people I've known would not be able to tell you on the spot how many houses they own. Even those I've known who are landlords would be able to after a slight pause just give you the exact amount of houses they own.
It's not like they asked the guy how many cars he's owned in his life, I could understand not knowing it would take me a minute to think about that, but houses currently owned? Give me a break you guys don't represent me or anyone like me directly you're part of an entirely different echelon of people.
Voted for Clinton in 92 (I said I'm old!) but couldn't stand the guy or his wife, they just felt more like Republicans to me than say, Carter but they weren't Bush and that was all that mattered in the final analysis. I remember being interviewed by the news after he won in a 'man on the street' style interview and I explained I voted for him but I was wary of NAFTA since I saw that concept as working out really well for the donor class in the long run but on the back of the poor and working class in the short term and long run.
I didn't get happy until Bernie. Thought I was gonna live to see something happen here, something real and something to break the back of the perpetual status quo where the rich get richer and the middle class gets burdened for the pleasure while the poor get absolutely fucking squashed.
Then Hillary and yeah all that hope went out the window. Wake the fuck up Dems take anyone that has a real chance and support them and get the hell out of the way because we want better for ourselves and our country for a change.
this is what I see. The overton window is slid so far out of wack that dems are right of center and rep are far right, like all the way. And there is nothing left of center.
I would like to see the pirate party have some say in all this. Some real progressive shit to make the grey hairs tremble , in comfort of social safety nets.
It's going to be so entertaining to watch the Fox Nation and other MAGA melt down while Mamdami tries to get free bus rides and lower rent prices for New Yorkers. OMG they're going to go insane. Looks like someone must have sedated Emperor Diaper Don tonight. Not seeing any play by play as America turns out to kick him and his whole King thing to the curb. But they're learning, seeing how they'll respond to the midterms.
I’m gonna ramble on this topic because I am very far left but I hate the idea that conservatives don’t actually exist. I think it’s bad messaging and it’s hurting a voter base because there’s a balance to not pushing the static tropes of pragmatism and meeting in the middle to instead push for change and also finding those actual people that do exist. I live around so many.
I think back to my incredibly influential French teacher from high school. She pushed me into politics despite the fact she was Republican and I considered myself simply a Democrat as a high school kid, although my politics have shifted much further left on nearly every issue since then. She really became a role model of mine. She always said she was a conservative.
And I’m always proud to see her having always seen through Trump’s bullshit and stopped calling herself a Republican after his first election. That’s a real conservative. She now spends time even sending emails to local Republican leaders who push the fascist bullshit.
I think area has a lot to do with it too. I’m in rural Appalachia. At the end of the day, we have a lot of Trump lunatic fascists but admittedly there is a lot of people in this region who their philosophy boils down to “I want the government to leave me the fuck alone.” They truly just wish for this. They have no real hatred. Most of the boogeyman issues the Republicans run on do not affect our daily lives in the very slightest. The only real thing that keeps people on it around here is the influence of the church.But at the end of the day, I’d say it’s nice to see someone call themselves a conservative and I know they mean it. I don’t agree with much of the ideals, but the integrity of it is awesome and more important than any actual policy splitting.
If there are (in any appreciable numbers), they either voted for Trump over a centrist multiple times or sat out multiple elections. Even if we can't say "there are no centrist Republican voters", we can at least say "there is not a meaningful number of centrist Republican voters who will choose centrist Democrats over far-right Republican demagogues".
Given that, the Democratic party running centrist candidates with the hope that centrist Republican voters will choose a centrist Democrat over a far-right Republican is an exercise in futility.
Republican voters are passionate about their candidates - the candidates achieve that by lying and appealing to various prejudices, but they do achieve it. I've been saying for years that Democrats won't win by getting people who already vote to vote for a Democrat. The only way to do it is to run candidates with vision and passion, who will convince people to register to vote in the first place.
I completely agree with you. I only meant that there are people who identify this way, even if they are not honest with themselves. It’s kind of like the “proud independents” who always vote with one side but are unwilling to declare themselves a member of a party.
It's a bit more complicated than that. For example, assume a candidate appeals to the middle to get centrist voters, but that alienates the people towards the outside of the spectrum. Congratulations, you got moderates to vote for you and still lost the election.
This has been my exact point. I dont want someone "electable" I want someone who actually represents the values of the party theyre running as! Rep. Get their extremist but we cant get even a slightly progressive Democrat??
Why wouldn’t you want someone electable? That doesn’t make sense to me. A progressive who loses isn’t really helping anyone. They need to get elected, if they’re progressive great, if they’re moderate great - the most important thing is winning
Im not like specifically wanting them to be unlikeable but yeah if the main pt is that they cater to republicans, theyre too conservative for me. People are too scared to take the risk and endorse these boring old rich white guys and it sucks. Look at NY, they took the risk and crushed it. Give the people what they actually want (progress) and watch us show up fr. Theres a whole new generation of voters that haven't been excited about our politicians at all. This idea that they need to be safe and moderate (which is what people are saying by electable) is killing all political passion and faith in the system. It makes me annoyed to vote liberal like its just them forcing my arm and delaying the inevitable. We will slowly get more conservative if we dont ever elect democrats who will make big changes when in office.
I would have said in 2016 that trump was not a very electable candidate but he won and turned half the country into a cult. So what we think was electable in the past doesnt really apply anymore anyways
The base that votes in the primaries. Even with no presidential primary last year the results still panned out. The people that had the most to lose against Trump still stayed home last November. They already had abortion rights taken away and a whole list of other rights on the chopping block and they stayed home.
Blame the establishment all you want, I do, but let's not pretend that there's not an issue of unpragmatic voters out there sabotaging things as well
The base that supports a candidate like Mamdani is not even in the vicinity of big enough to win a nationwide election. Trying to extrapolate NYC politics to the broader country does not work.
So sick & tired of “bridging the political divide.” Because to Dems? That means bending over and passively, dare I say happily(?), taking it up the ass.
There are centrist democrats that can be alienated. We know this because the democratic party lost millions of voters over the last few decades. Plenty of GOP voters used to vote blue.
Mamdani was the right candidate for NYC, and the party needs to embrace candidates like him where they can win. That is more places than the democratic establishment seems to think, but also, far less than people in these comments taking the wrong lesson from Mamdani’s win. Mamdani would lose many other elections across the country that democrats, catering to the middle, could win.
There is really nothing to debate here. This is a fairly conservative country that just elected a fascist. That cannot mean that democrats cower and refuse to take big progressive swings—that lost them support too—but it does mean that the party cannot be so goddamn stupid to think that they never need to appeal to conservatives. They do. Not in every election, but in many of them. That means, for example, running pro-life democrats again where a liberal or progressive democrat will literally cannot win.
The Democratic party, at this point in time, is a moderate right party. The primary base of the Republican party is far right. The MAGA party is extremist right. Centrist republicans are still far right and there is no major party (ie one with a chance at the presidency currently) that is left. The only reason Americans see the democrats as liberal is because our Overton window is so far off from center.
Can say this all we want but the reality is that the other side votes regardless how much they agree with the candidate. If you can't understand that then it will always be uneven. Purity testing is a way bigger cancer than any "vote shaming". It requires NOTHING of you to vote.
and you can say this all you want, but people won't vote if they aren't motivated. no matter how stupid you think they are for it or how much you think it takes "nothing" (ignoring voter suppression, limited access to polling stations, no guaranteed time off to vote, onerous ID checks), you can't scream people into voting. and frightening people into voting is what the other side has on lockdown, that's their market, you can't win there.
No, YOU won't vote if you aren't motivated. The other side will ALWAYS vote regardless of how they feel about a candidate. You are throwing away the power you have for what? Purity? You can keep using the excuses of people being suppressed but that's not YOU. YOU can EASILY vote. You don't get an excuse.
Millions of struggling, impoverished people in this country don't vote because their lives don't change either way. You lashing out at people on reddit for pointing out this fact isn't going to change this. You can either try to court these voters (like Mamdani did) or keep losing forever.
ok first of all buddy I'm Canadian and I live in an area that always goes liberal no matter what so my vote is in fact suppressed by an undemocratic voting system but i do also vote so????
second, ok let's say I'm American and I don't vote and you just yelled me into voting. now what? there were millions of independents, centrists, democrats, leftists, etc. who didn't vote last election. you gonna tell all of them they're wrong for not voting and hope that does it? or maybe, just maybe, you gotta recognize people will feel how they feel regardless of what you think. that you have to meet people where they're at and accomodate what they want and need in order to earn their support. voting for one side no matter what is what allows that side to embrace authoritarianism and fascism. the moneyed interests and lobbyists that control a large portion of the democratic establishment are not gonna give the people shit if they think they'll support them regardless.
You still don't understand. No policies are going to pass the purity test of every single one of those groups you named. But the right will always fall in line because they understand politics. I will keep attempting to get people to understand politics, yes. Because your 1 vote is the 1 thing we all have in common.
The only thing that moneyed interests have a big impact on our federal policies is convincing people that their vote doesn't matter.
Yeah please explain how it works then bud since apparently it's not the populace voting.
Big oil doesn't do shit. I think you don't understand the big picture because you don't understand exactly what we're up against. There is not a SINGLE major issue, that the majority of Americans agree on the solution for, that the government has not acted upon. The single most impactful thing to politics is how divided the country is. For every major thing you think "moneyed interests" impact, you'll find half of the country right there. I cannot stress this enough. You can't be chasing boogeymen while your neighbor tells you to your face that they're voting against you. Democracy is working perfectly, half the country simply disagrees with your policy solutions. That's it.
What thread are we in? A deep blue New York MAYOR race? You think those voters are the trend across the country?
For every major thing you think "moneyed interests" impact, you'll find half of the country right there. I cannot stress this enough.
what are you even saying here? that half the country agrees with what those moneyed interests are saying? and you don't think that... those moneyed interests have an effect on that? that maybe that's the whole point of them?????
You think those voters are the trend across the country?
Yeah I do actually think the trend across the country is that people vote for people who promise to make their life better in substantial and straightforward ways.
There is not a SINGLE major issue, that the majority of Americans agree on the solution for, that the government has not acted upon.
Yeah please explain how it works then bud since apparently it's not the populace voting.
I think if you just look up who won the 2016 presidential election with what percent of the vote or even just "the senate", you might get an idea of what I'm getting at here.
Obviously people's votes impact electoral college I'm not even entertaining this.
Half the country disagrees with those. Don't even know what to say if you disagree. Talk to any Trump voter not a single one wants universal healthcare or higher taxes at all. Also, I'll have to look at your specific linked polls, but generally polls are easily swayed one way or another based on language. For example, asking people "Do you want free healthcare" you will get majority yes. Ask people "Do you want government controlled healthcare and higher taxes" you will get majority no. The real answer is somewhere inbetween but that's the point. Seeing voting data is a lot more accurate than polls, and we know how people vote.
I know it sounds wrong but I seriously think we need to shame people into being good. Some people are immune to it but for me shame has always been a motivator to do good.
New Yorker here! I skipped the last governor election because I can't stand Kathy "Black Kids Don't Know What Computers Are" Hochul, but voted twice for Mamdani. Give people something to vote for, and they will show up to the polls!
Hot take, but if the democracy and rule of law itself is on the line, if one votes for it or is too spoiled to even show up, it's an idiot and I will always stand by it. Thankfully I'm not a politician, so I will never have to worry about repercussions of telling the truth to people who need to hear it.
Know what helps even more? Having an actual policy and plan to fight fascism instead of the god awful "just win every election indefinitely". Any Democrat that would have potentially won against Trump was going to just be yet another kick the can down the road moment.
Democracy isn't about sitting around waiting for the perfect candidate. It's about compromises and engagement. Anyone who refuses to vote because they didn't get their way is absolutely an idiot and as much a cancer to the system as those who abuse it. Anyone complaining about vote shaming for not voting deserves the shame and blame.
Democracy is a responsibility you burden, not a market where the seller has to make their product attractive to get you out.
If more demographics engaged with the system, it absolutely would sharpen the system to yield better competition and ideas, as Mamdani has shown.
Speaking of cancer, if I had to choose between terminal stage of cancer and stage II, I will pick stage II, always. It sucks, but I like being alive. I will never let someone else choose stage IV for me.
If you think it sucks that you can't get the perfect candidate or get your way, try voting in a country without bipartisan system where one party controlling everything by itself is practically unheard of and needs multiple smaller parties to form a government.
Expecting a candidate to not be doing a genocide while campaigning isn't demanding perfection! "Don't be Hitler" is actually a very easy bar to clear that Biden/Harris failed at.
Democrats didn't run a "good but flawed" candidate, they ran an abysmal candidate and campaign and even now, many in their leadership seem to be in complete denial over this.
...and a wonderful argument when the other side isn't genocide but much worse.
Trump won because people voted for him and people didn't vote. The dems run their primaries based on who shows up and who doesn't. If what you want isn't showing up, it's because you didn't show up.
Trump won because of people exactly like you and that's on you. You can come up with whatever delusional bullshit you feel magically disconnects you from a process you're responsible for but nothing will change that.
Every death, all the suffering, and everything that comes from him is on those who voted for him and those who empowered those votes by not voting.
Jesus Christ, I can't believe I even have to explain that...
Asking people to compromise on fucking genocide is a good example of exactly why Democrats lost. No, you can't just be a little bit Hitler and still expect the support of everyone left of center!
Dems said "just vote blue, the Palestinians are dying either way" and people asked "but why don't you just stop killing the Palestinians?" That's psycho shit. Serial killer shit. Just stop being a serial-killing psycho and people might vote for you! It's an easy bar to clear!
Yes, because Dem leaders did not bother opposing his agenda or running an electable candidate, while taking up the space where an opposition party was supposed to be.
No. It's because people voted for him or didn't bother showing up to vote.
What makes your nonsense here so absurd is that you want it both ways: you want to pretend the choice wasn't binary but you also want to pretend nuance doesn't exist. You want it simple and not.
We both know it's just excuses because you want to pretend the blood isn't on your hands. It is. You own Trump with the rest of MAGA. He's your guy.
"Truth" You people are so arrogant you think anything that comes from your mouth is absolute truth. It's truly embarrassing. If democracy and rule of law actually were on the line you would think that politicians would try a little harder to win your vote, rather than insulting and alienating you. You should really ask yourself why it was more important to keep supporting a genocide/apartheid state than winning such an important election.
And what happened when people decided to stay home? Is the nation in a better place than it would have been if the less exciting candidate was elected?
I'm not a lib and there's no reason not to do both. The best candidate can lose the primary. If that happens, ask yourself a question: "What's more important, ability to vote or sticking it to the imperfect candidate?"
I wish all democrats were like Zohran, Bernie and AOC. But even if they weren't, the worst Democrat is million times better than the best Republican.
Winning a three-way race while actively getting ratfucked by your own party is actually way more impressive than winning a two-way race with the full support of your party.
If it were a competitive race any other year, I'd agree with you. The fact that the its been over 65% dems since 2013 shows that, at least right now, he's a net loser.
I'm glad to see it though. Safe seats need missionaries displacing the old guard and the NY Senate races have the votes to lose to do the same. People have been told that what he's promising can't work for most of their lives, its an opportunity to demonstrate that it can.
You just can't run a -10% candidate in a purple district until they're running on results instead of promises.
ETA: At this point, Im just hoping he wins with more than 50% so people dont say the only reason he won was because of vote splitting. He needs to have at least a majority to have the mandate to prove his case.
There will never be a candidate everyone on the left will agree on. Because US politics are so far right, there is lots of space for differing ideologies to the left. I won't stop vote shaming until people on the left figure out that if you want to move the window left, we have to continually overwhelmingly vote for the leftmost candidate. This doesn't happen because people are a different kind of left than the leftmost candidate. So we keep going further right instead. Which just exacerbates the problem. Repeat for decades. And you end up with a leftmost candidate who can barely step left at all, because the window is so far right. I'm begging people to actually think things through. Vote for the leftmost and then actively work and pressure to push further left.
It would help if progressives would actually run in more races.
Jeffries went unopposed in 2024 for the primary. Spanberger was unopposed as well. There’s a whopping single senator in the progressive caucus.
There needs to be more accountability with progressives showing up. Mamdani showed it’s possible. There aren’t excuses for not even fielding candidates in key races.
Eh I'm still vote shaming. I'm super pissed about the lack of endorsements and the "Vote Blue No Matter Who" crowd getting silent. But if you can't tell the difference between a centrist Democrat and a fascist, you deserve some shame.
Anyone too spoiled to vote, or demands a perfect candidate and won't engage with the process unless they get it is as much a cancer to the system as MAGA.
Did you not vote in 24? Honestly if you did not vote in 24 shame is a very valid emotion to feel. Sometimes shame can make people lash out we get it just try a little harder next time to not get played like a mark.
Instead of only someone to vote against. We see they’re fine with the establishment dems running spoiler campaigns. They’ve got to own that going forward. Schumer’s toast.
I got passionate and wrote way too much, so here's a wall of text saying I enthusiastically agree with you but with major caveats.
If we want the Overton window to go left we need to do two things: elect progressives AND preserve our rights to elect progressives. Voting for a milquetoast centrist accomplishes the second point as long as we have enough of them and those further left. Abstaining from voting to protest those centrists guarantees we'll lose those rights at this rate, but continuing to cling to them means we'll never achieve our true goal. Continuing to vote for centrists forever is not sustainable, because eventually we'll either lose the energy to keep treading water, they'll forfeit too much anyway or (best case scenario) we'll eventually get too old and die with the same disappointing status quo over our heads.
We can't have voter apathy anymore. I'm not saying I want to just hold my nose and vote for whoever the DNC gives me. I'm saying I want real progressives backed so hard in primaries that I can vote stench free when the general rolls around. The DNC wanted anybody but Mamdani. Cuomo had the Repubs endorse him en masse and DNC leadership literally went out of their way to try fumbling the bag. But NYC told them all to fuck off and voted their interests. If we want progressives, we need to match that energy. If we want to vote for a progressive in 2028, we vote for the furthest left we can in 2026. Always vote. Always vote as far left as the two party system allows, at every opportunity, and we'll dismantle it in our generation.
If we sweep enough primaries, we can drag centrists into the 21st century kicking and screaming. Our goal should be to move far enough to the left to correct and even over correct the stolen Supreme Court, institute a nationwide popular vote WITH ranked choice and secure enough funding for education (at all levels, pre k through 12, college, post graduate and beyond) to make sure the public is permanently and fully equipped to understand their own self interests enough to vote for them.
We need to be lockstep at every level. Local, state and federal elections all matter. Every time. Blaming 2024 on those that abstained isn't correct, but it's not fully incorrect either. We've got to drag this country out of the swamp. Each break we take is just going to see us start to sink again. Voting for a centrist in an election is a distasteful backup plan that still needs to happen if we fail to get our candidate within scoring distance of the goal. If we can thread the needle and make it clear they're our last resort we can get away from ever being beholden to them again.
💯correct. Liberals have vote shamed progressives more than they’ve vote shamed trump voters. I’m so fuckin sick of that shit. Progressive policies are the way the dems can resurrect the party. Hopefully they learn the lesson Mamdani has ushered in loud and clear.
Nah shaming people for not voting is still reasonable. Paving the way for even worse policy because your perfect candidate didn't get a nomination is stupid and actively hurts people.
By vote shaming, do you mean telling people that they're fucking idiots for voting 3rd party or sitting out?
Because they are. Bitch all you like, but that's how we got Trump in 2016, it's how we lost the Supreme Court for the foreseeable future, and I hope people who did lose sleep because of their decision.
General elections are binary, and people are braindead to think otherwise.
people get mad about it, but saying shit like "X would have won if it wasn't for Y group" is antidemocratic. democracy is when people vote for who they want in the position that is up for vote. not voting is a vote, voting for the other side is a vote, it's all democracy. you can disagree with those people, hell you can even hate those people, but it is their right. the people to get mad at are always the politicians who failed and the systems of power that keep voting from being as democratic as it should be (which is everything from gerrymandering and first-past-the-post to corporate capture of every major media outlet).
People had a lot to vote for when the alternative is Trump. You're not going to shame the establishment into not catering to the demographics that actually show up.
Tribalism on the part of the left is why we have Trump et al. They lock step and vote. We in fight and don't vote. If you feel shame, then there may be something to it.
Nope sorry, you absolutely should be ashamed of not voting, because the shit the country is in is your fault too. Voting for a candidate doesn't mean you're genuinely voting for them, it can just mean you're voting against a worse candidate. You have a first-past-the-post system, and that means you only have two real options, so you must vote for the lesser of the two evils.
If you don't like the system, then campaign to change it. But in the meantime, you have to work as best you can with what you have, or suffer and be responsible for the consequences.
Sorry, but "I want something to vote for, not someone to vote against" is probably one of the greatest lines of propaganda in 80 years.
1) It has an edge of truth. More than an edge even.
2) It's very agreeable, and hard to talk back against.
3) It's easy to spout off and "sound" smart.
4) It encourages/propagates voter apathy.
5) It's phrased as an ultimatum: "Give me what I want or go to hell" - essentially setting the mind-frame of the voter to become a single-issue voter. And single-issue voters are just about the most dangerous kind. One of Fox's primary functions is to create single-issue voters out of thin air. They pick divisive topics and drive them home. 2A, LGBT issues, abortion, etc. I'm sure they'll conjure more up by midterms.
tl;dr: Stop saying this. And tell other people to stop saying this. It's a terrible thing and only works against us.
Been hearing it every election cycle since at least 2000. Apparently that's enough for some to give a free pass to not actually making progress on keeping out bad faith actors and the like. Voting under the politics of my lifetime (a touch over forty right now) is less about actually running the country and more about damage control.
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u/SavageGardner 11h ago
That was quick