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In an effort to gain
votes from moderates and republicanscampaign contributions from billionaires(Not even a dig, just the economic reality of modern campaign finance. What do you do, as a progressive running against a fascist, if you’re offered a chance to 10x your reach, and “all you have to do” is downplay your most controversial positions?)
(Edit: Quotes around “all you have to do”)
The thing is that they do not simply stop saying what they supposedly believe, they work towards policies that aren’t in the interests of their voters.
Oh yeah, the rest of the meme still 100% applies.
You know the four most
expensivedangerous words in the English language, right? “This time it’s different”.
Campaign spending has diminishing marginal returns: past making a voter aware of a candidate or an issue, it doesn’t do much. It’s not the decisive factor in a partisan, general election, where party affiliation & incumbency matter more. The relation between campaign finances & election outcomes is correlation rather than causation. Donors contribute to candidates likelier to win, and wealthy donors contribute large sums to improve their access to the winner.
In major elections where the voters already know the candidates pretty well, advertisement money is mostly wasted. An advertisement is unlikely to cause a voter to flip parties.
Money matters more in primary races & local elections full of unknown candidates lacking an incumbent. There, ads help raise awareness of candidates & issues voters hadn’t known about. Multiple candidates of the same party may run, so party affiliation isn’t decisive, and advertising matters more.
The democrats are owned by Israel and the same Zionist billionaires but any time I bring up this easily provable fact people always freak out and mob because I’m saying both sides are bad. It’s literally the facts https://www.trackaipac.com/congress
The meme mentions this like it’s a Democrat issue, but Republicans do the same thing.
For example, Trump disavowed Project 2025 policies as too extreme, but then obviously followed them very closely.
The issue is election winners are almost always the one with >50% popular support. So candidates are incentivized to align their policies with those of the median voter. This persists across different voting systems, so rebuilding it for that reason may not help.
But you can still elect a progressive by voting for them in the primary election (where they can be more authentic) or if the median voter becomes more progressive (more progressives vote).
So candidates are incentivized to align their policies with those of the median voter.
*The median donor. The median voter is way to the left of your average Dem politician.
he didn’t stop trum from getting elected to a second term
It’s over for establishment Dems in my eyes. I refuse to vote for any candidate that is a Zionist or a liberal. I voted for them my whole life and this is where it got me. I’d rather not vote and let MAGA destroy this country than allow those snakes into office again.
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Lol, please. I’m supposed to vote for the people that cozy up to the billionaire class, support imperialism, aren’t even all that opposed to our current fascism, and fully support a current genocide? I surely won’t lose any sleep for my non-vote. Put up progressives or GTFO.
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I’m not going to any camps… I’ll certainly take at least two with me.
Man, that’s some overtly defeatists stance. There still is time to stop them. There are people out there willing to die, to stop the worse from happening.
At the very least give them some support.
Seriously, what’s with democrats and their “well I told you so, my work ends here, see ya” position?
.world idiots get big mad at facts
Joe Biden changed nothing. Even if Kamala Harris won, nothing would have changed. Without changes people like Trump will always be able to win elections. So until the democratic party is willing to bring some real changes, I say let things fall fast, then something new can be built without the Republicans or democrats.
“I say let things fall fast”
You must not be in the crosshairs of the Trump regime… yet.
Well I’m pretty sure everyone on this platform is considered a domestic terrorist now because of NSPM-7. I’m still not going to vote for liberals or Zionists. I’d rather die fighting.
I see where you’re coming from, but “let things fall fast” is playing right into the hands of capital. Times of crisis aren’t storms to be waiting out; they’re opportunities for radical organization and action.
As long as you realize that radical action means changing the top brass among the democrats. There needs to be a viable plan for that happen. while there is some movement in that direction, changes are too slow, it is better for things to fall fast.
As long as you realize that radical action means changing the top brass among the democrats.
Nope, it means creating parallel workers’ organizations that don’t rely on bourgeois political systems. Expecting lasting change from bourgeois politics is a fool’s errand no matter who is in charge.
It is bourgeois political system that passes laws. Look at all the obstacles hinder change.
Joe Biden changed nothing.
really? Joe Biden continued disregarding the CDC with regards to COVID and a zillion other things he did different to trump?
Joe Biden continued disregarding the CDC with regards to COVID
His administration repeatedly said that the pandemic was over, you don’t need to wear masks anymore, you can go back to work, and then Omicron happened. None of that was at any point ever true. Biden himself caught COVID during the very press release he gave to say COVID was over in September of 2022! COVID/Long COVID are still billable conditions in hospitals; doesn’t sound very “over” to me! Everyone is always sick. They sell 4-in-1 swab tests OTC at pharmacies now. Is it really over? “Back to normal” happened with his administration’s blessings in 2022, and that playbook was primed as early as the second year of the pandemic in 2021, under Biden. Now no one cares about the most communicable disease in history that shows no evidence of ever being cleared, has no cure, and is still spreading and mutating to be vaccine-avoidant like a wildfire, not just the anti-vaccination crowd. Tons of opportunistic viruses re-emerge with new outbreaks of one terrible thing or another spreading every year because people are wrecking their immune systems catching COVID over and over and over, even while vaccinated. All of that happened during the Biden years. All of that continues to happen because the good blue man said we could go to the movies again. He is culpable.
what are your current daily covid prevention steps?
Written like someone who doesn’t understand the goddamn point of primaries & local activism.
I will be voting in the primaries, but if the same old trash moved to the main election, I don’t have to vote for either side.
Vote for people with actual integrity who don’t lie for popularity?
Watch out folks, there’s a lot of people in this thread who have been manipulated by the Democrats into saying you shouldn’t vote for the Democrats.
Wow, you’d think I threatened to kill someone with my comments being removed. Mods around lemmy are idiots. I hate this place sometimes. Ya’ll are no better than reddit.
So… vote for the fascists instead. Great work 👍
No, organize in orgs like PSL. Nobody is suggesting voting for the GOP, but instead realizing voting cannot fix a fundamentally broken system, and that it needs to be replaced.
Voting vs other actions isn’t a dichotomy - you can vote for the lesser evil to buy time, AND do the things that will make a real and lasting impact.
In our current system though, red team vs blue IS a dichotomy - using your vote you can nudge the counter a tiny bit closer to one side or the other; or opt out / vote third, which both equate to doing nothing and letting you’re countrymen choose for you, but the potential results are the same: red or blue.
So, you can use your vote however you want, but I’d recommend pitching that nudge away from the more blatant Nazis. …but also build those guillotines for use against hostile actors regardless of party.
What folks 100% should NOT do though is vote and then consider their ‘civic duty’ satisfied, which is ofc the sentiment OP is aimed at.
Voting for a different party of genocidal imperialists doesn’t actually buy time to organize, though. Both parties fund ICE, both wage war on the global south, both are actively against worker organization that stands to threaten the system they both stand for.
I personally do not care if someone votes, as long as they are also organizing. If someone is only engaged with politics via voting, then they have no leg to stand on when others advocate for voting third party and organizing in real life. If someone organizes and happens to vote DNC, I really could not care less, they can do that as long as they actually participate in party building.
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Why let the lesser evil win when we could have the bbeg? Commit to servitude on the most evil!
/s
