If you erased Trump and the Republican party tomorrow, Democrats would change their platform to accommodate their corporate masters immediately.
They used to be our “labor party”, how did that pan out? Unions are now down to 10%, and most of those are ironically cops and government employees. Unions were over 40% of workforce in the 1970s. Are Ds really that incompetent at opposition to Republicans? I don’t think it’s incompetence.
Minimum wage is seven dollars and change an hour; where in the USA is that a “living wage”, able to to feed and house a family of four (what the minimum wage is for)?. Maybe in Mississippi you can get by on that with roommates and no kids or even a freaking dog.
Good job
Unions were over 40% of workforce in the 1970s.
Industrial workers and in general employees of big companies subject to constant scrutiny can unionize more easily. So much of that is not due to politics other than moving industries abroad.
No, it’s really politics.
Did you forget what happened in the 80s to air traffic controllers? And what has happened repeatedly since then?
It’s 100% politics, as looking at any other country with unions CLEARLY demonstrates.
Who told you this tripe? Don’t listen to them. See for yourself
DNC: “That’s it, our candidate now supports the trans genocide too!”
Conceding to fascism is the only way to defeat fascists!
And other quotes from people who don’t realise they’re fascist tools.
people who don’t realise they’re fascist tools.
People who absolutely do realize that they’re fascist tools and love every second of it.
DNCs are most certainly not on the left, they never were, i dare say it they are REPUBLICAN rejects. aside from a few of them. center right is the parties main stance on most things. They are the defense while the gop is the spear. its too keep minority groups(women, pocs, lgbtq) from gaining significant support and power and overtaking the party from the status quo.
It’s not all Democrats though. Unfortunately the Democrats in charge are the absolute worst of the bunch.
Its not all democrats… brought to you by the same group who produced hits like “its not all white people” and “its not all cops”!
One of these three is not like the others: oh, right, one of them is an entire fucking class of people who don’t get to choose their skin tone at birth. Shut the fuck up with that. Cops and politicos get to choose where they stand. The fuck, precisely, do you expect people to do about the color of their skin?
My issue isn’t with white people, my issue is everytime someone accurately identifies an issue, there is always someone in the comments with the “its not all X…” except 95% of the people are not saying its all of them. It’s a distraction.
Your comment proves exactly what im getting at you got so upset that I suggested white people have some issue that you didnt stop to question if you even understood what I was saying. Im not saying white people are inherently bad at birth. I never even said anything close to that.
We need to be able to say democrats have a genocide issue. Full stop.
White people have a racism problem. Full stop.
Cops have an accountability problem. Full stop.
Politicians have a lobbying issue. Full stop.
Checking on your comment history, you seem like a reasonable person, with whom i probably agree on many issues. I agree with nearly everything you have said. However, since i know you’re american, just like me, allow me to try to give my perspective on why your statement on white people, writ-large, is problematic:
Every single person on earth is hardwired to discriminate against “the other”. You, me, Trump and <insert person you don’t find reprehensible here>. This instinct toward petty tribalism is the single greatest challenge we currently face as a species (aside, perhaps, from the fact that we’re allowing industrial capitalism to actively boil our planet).
Can you not see how the unmeasured response of saying “people with this color of skin have this problem” is, inherently, not just problematic, but actively defeats the purpose of what you’re trying to say? This isn’t the same thing as a positive statement like “black lives matter”. Yes, of course “all lives matter”, but clearly the fact that black lives matter needs to be explicitly pointed out. However, saying that “black lives matter” is not claiming anything negative about any person based on an immutable trait.
Consider the following statements common here in the US, each of which is something you should find reprehensible. In each case, consider the immutable trait, and what libelous problem is being inherently associated with that group of people:
- “Mexicans/Colombians have a drug problem”
- “The Chinese have a genocide problem”
- “Black people have a crime problem”
For each of these, a portion of the people with that immutable trait definitively do have that problem. There are Mexican and Colombian cartels. The Chinese government is perpetrating a genocide against an ethnic minority. Some black people are criminals. However, when you paint with such a wide brush, you don’t just perpetrate discrimination against the whole group of people who don’t get to choose where they were born, or the style of their governance, let alone the color of their skin. You actively alienate any people in each group who might agree with the existence of a problem, and you also ignore any context which shows the greater, actual problem:
- The systems of drug regulation have failed.
- Dictatorial regimes perpetrate genocides as easily as signing a piece of paper.
- Crime is a problem everywhere, regardless of skin tone, as are its underlying causes of poverty and lack of opportunity.
Obviously, each of those earlier statements (especially the one about black people. That one hurt to write) is deeply flawed, and utterly unproductive. Anyone painting an immutable trait as having a specific problem (aside from genetic problems) is inherently engaging in that same alienation, that same othering, as the people they find so reprehensible. Everyone has a moral duty to work toward ending the issues which plague our civilisation, but saying “you have a racism problem” not only misses the point entirely, but actively makes the problem worse.
I have no problem with calling out discrimination against a group of people, but making a statement like “men have a domestic abuse problem” is inherently unproductive and problematic, and sounds like nothing but picking a fight. “There is a serious problem with white people discriminating against people of different skin tones.” Vs. “White people have a racism problem. Full stop.”
In fact, I wouldn’t even take issue with the statement “We have a racism problem caused by white people”. Or “among white people”. That’s still painting with a wide brush, and is still problematic, but it isn’t directly implying that every single person with white skin is perpetrating racist acts.
Anyone engaging with the democratic party must contend with the fact that the leaders of the party are actively abetting genocide. But the fact that you were born with white skin does not imply that you need to engage with the problem of racism. EVERYONE needs to engage with the problem of racism, and bringing an immutable trait into it to call people out is inherently problematic.
White people and white culture are in positions of power. It is their foot on peoples’ necks, quite literally.
If every other time I turned on my TV there was a different ethnicity doing this i would call them out, but that isn’t what’s happening and to somehow act like racism within the black community is part of the reason the black community keeps suffering from white racism is just distasteful to me.
I don’t think that’s what you are trying to say but it is certainly adjacent to position and I’ve heard many white folks argue that or similar, but don’t worry its okay because they have “black friends” TM.
Just call a spade a spade.
Ah, no, I totally agree with everything you’ve said there. I think you might just be slightly misunderstanding my point. I agree that the problem of racism manifests, at least for now, by vast majority, when white people target others. However, as a person with some basic shred of humanity, it is my duty to fight against racism, not because I have low levels of melanin in my skin, but because I am human. The level of melanin in my skin is completely irrelevant to the fact that racism is a problem with which I must contend. Every citizen of this planet must face that issue. To make it seem like the only people who must do so are white people, or that the reason they must do it is because of the color of their skin, is the claim with which i take issue. There are absolutely elements of structural discrimination, effectively “white privilege” (is that term of art still appropriate?), of which it is my moral duty to be aware, and to actively rebuff. That I am a beneficiary of such unspoken privileges (many of which i may not even recognize as such) is not something I doubt or debate. However, I have worked my entire life to come to a point where I believe I can act in an anti-racist manner, befitting a citizen of the planet I want to live on. It is not because of the color of my skin that racism is something I must be wary of, but because the color of my skin should not matter. So saying “white people have a racism problem” is a wording I detest, as it smacks of the same style of targeted generalisation which I perceive to be the primary issue. It unnecessarily generalises and actively belittles anyone with light skin who works against systems of oppression.
So, maybe it’s about the color of my skin automatically failing some purity test, or perhaps it’s that my efforts to work against structural inequities are unwelcome, as if, by my very nature, I taint anything I strive toward. I say, to anything that makes me or others in similar positions feel unwelcome in building a civilisation capable of treating people with equity, that attitude can fuck right off.
Anyone who tries to make someone feel bad, worthless, or culpable, solely for having some immutable trait, is doing something wrong. Full stop.
“White” isn’t an ethnicity. Whiteness is a social construct manufactured (and manicured) as a means to enforce the very in-group privilege and out-group hatred you say (and I do believe you) that you despise and oppose. Whiteness is a nebulous and ever-shifting line that allows or disallows membership depending on what most benefits the core members (the ruling class) at any given time, under whatever given material circumstances. “White people have a racism problem. Full stop" is a 100% true statement because whiteness itself is an inherently racist construct. I am confident you mean well and are genuine in your desire to tear down racism, but doing so means recognizing the racism you still, perhaps unknowingly, believe and perpetuate.
But even if we set all of that aside, and go back to that little list you made as a frankly terrible comparison to other poster’s correct statement that white people have a racism problem:
“Mexicans/Colombians have a drug problem”
“The Chinese have a genocide problem”
“Black people have a crime problem”And add to that list the statement you had a problem with. Again,
“White people have a racism problem."
Can you spot the glaring difference? Why one of the 4 items of that list does not belong among the rest? If not, let me spell it out: Mexicans and Colombians (LATAM people in general) are a group suppressed by white people and white supremacist global hegemony. Chinese people are a group suppressed by white people and white supremacist global hegemony. Black people are a group suppressed by white people and white supremacist global hegemony. White people are a group who all benefit from the historic and current suppression of others and white supremacist global hegemony. White privilege is real, and whether one is opposed to it or not, every white person benefits from it.
You mention “tribalism” as being this foundational problem, but looking at it that way misses the most important aspect of the vast majority of conflicts of this world. Tribalism implies groups of more or less equal standing both otherizing their outgroup, but that’s not really an issue in the world in which we live, but it does benefit the ruling class when people mistakenly think it is. We don’t live in a world of tribes with equivalent power, coming into conflict starting from roughly equal footing. We live in a world of oppressors and oppressed. A world of tremendous asymmetry of conflict. The oppressor perpetrating violence upon those they oppress will never be justified, but the violence of the oppressed against its oppressors in its struggle to free itself from that oppression nearly always will be.
Finally, it is tangential to everything else in my comment, but there is actually one of the three items you listed that also stands out in the list and doesn’t quite fit, but for reasons that are… peripheral to the everything else being discussed, but still deserves to be pointed out.
“Mexicans/Colombians have a drug problem”
“The Chinese have a genocide problem”
“Black people have a crime problem”The nations of Mexico and Columbia do have a problem with drugs being produced in and distributed from their countries, not inherently because of their people but because of the nature of US imperialism in those countries. Despite the sick joke we all know the “war on drugs” to be, it is literally because of the US enforcing drug production in these countries that they have this “problem.” It is a problem of US imperialism. Likewise “black people have a crime problem” is also true in that US white supremacy has strictly imposed and enforced poverty on black people, with “crime” (in the problematic traditional sense of the word) is always an issue where there is poverty. So those two list items are problems, but they are themselves rooted in the fact that white people have a racism problem. That middle item in your list though? It is wholly fabrication. The Chinese do not have a genocide problem. I suppose we can still say that item exists because of racism, but where items 1 and 3 do exist in some real sense (but are rooted in the material effects of white supremacy), item 2 is just a grotesque fantasy without any material basis.
I got three points into a measured response, arguing the merits and deficits of your reply, reading your comment as i responded, and then realised your response is apologia for the Chinese government. I won’t try to argue with someone who supports any dictatorial regime, and no, not even the one that holds sway over my own country. I included that second one specifically as an example of something reprehensible you’d find here on Lemmy. I just found it. I hope you have a good day.
Former liberal here. I always felt I had a more wonkish bent, that pragmatism needs to be more front and center in politics.
But if I’m now in the leftist camp, it’s not like Dems are going to go anywhere but the way of the whigs if they don’t take some actual stances. They’ve lost all imagination. You can’t win on damage control.
You can’t win on damage control
No you can’t, but you can lose the fuck out of refusing to do damage control. That’s where we are right now.
Stand up a real left candidate. Get greater than 50% of the vote’s worth of people engaged enough to go vote and write in.
Refusing the DNC without putting in something that works is no different than voting RNC.
SO PUT SOMETHING IN THAT WORKS.
A percentage of Democrat voters didn’t even know Biden dropped out so had no idea who Harris was. I think asking that kind of person to be engaged with politics more readily leading a horse to water.
I think asking that kind of person to be engaged with politics more readily leading a horse to water.
I think that speaks to democrats’ uselessness at getting their message out.
At this point the wonkish pragmatism is that they need to be more progressive and actually take stances on shit. It’s clearly what works.
It’s just that at this point the DNC doesn’t care about winning anymore
Of course being pro genocide lost Harris votes. The DNC is fine with Republicans (including Trump) winning so long as they can preclude the left, which is the actual purpose of the Democratic party. Most of the base will happily be useful idiots and spend their energy punching left rather than allow any criticism of the party, all the while calling the left naive and blaming them for losing elections.
Never forget to point out what they did to Bernie when he ran for president or the crap they pull on someone just running for mayor like Madami.
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Is that actually preferred?
I dunno, maybe we should have an election to see. Oh, wait, we did. I guess you have your answer. So what should the Democrats do about that?
Field a candidate which is not evil?!
If they want to they’re the solution for the problem of their own making.
Yes indeed.
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Gotta court the rightwing vote 'cause the leftwing vote can just be corraled with endless repetitions of “If you don’t vote for us you’re voting for Trump”.
After all, that worked so well last time …
The last two times. 2016 and 2024.
In 2020, Biden actually promised policies that the left wanted. He won. Then killed the party’s credibility for decades by making it crystal clear that they were all lies and that the only thing he was interested in doing was breaking the law for netanyahu.
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Oh my friend, you read like an undercover right-wing plant. It’s fairly obvious to anyone with a conscience that genocide is the simplest and most important issue that a candidate could fuck up. And Harris did that.
Let’s compare issues. I would say that on various issues (immigration, defense spending, health care) her stances were certainly not left-wing. Center, center-right, pro-corporate, that’s what I would say. And these are important issues. But I think it’s also true that she could have maintained many of those stances and still win. After all, previous Democrat presidents did.
If you’re afraid to say that genocide is wrong, and don’t actively work to stop it, you deserve to lose.
It’s not even just genocide, it’s trust. Exactly how much trust should we put in a candidate who participated in supporting and covering for a genocide? Sure, she aligns with my issues slightly more than Trump. What good is that if she’s a liar too? It’s no damn wonder people didn’t show up to vote.
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That’s not how elections work. It’s way more complicated than identifying the lesser of two evils, especially when turnout is a factor.
It’s also not all about voting, it’s also about organizing and outreach. Sure, I voted for Harris. Did I make calls for her, put up signs, or canvas the neighborhood? Fuck no. The last thing I want to do is try to convince people to vote for a candidate I hate. Enthusiasm matters, especially for Democrats. Harris had a shit ground game, and that’s why.
I’m enthusiastic about voting against fascism, and I’ve done so in every election in my adult life. It’s really not that complicated. The only reason to make it complicated is increasing profit factor for media conglomerates, which I guess somewhat explains what’s happening to your country.
Republicans are liberal fascists and establishment Democrats are fascist liberals. There was no realistic “against fascism” option on the ballot. I took the harm reduction path and voted for the fascist liberal, but that’s irrelevant.
Yes, media consolidation was a huge factor. Russian influence operations were likely another. Both are dwarfed though by the impact of constant lies and betrayals from establishment Democrats.
I strongly agree that allowing Trump to win was a really dumb move. However, I do understand how people got there. It makes total sense that the Democrats lost, given their history and the campaign Harris ran. I don’t think that’s an “American” thing. We’re hardly the first to elect a demagogue when neoliberalism fails.
Of all eligible voters, around 2/3 didn’t vote for Harris. (1/3 stayed home or cast protest votes). Of that group, I have the least problem with those who were (de)motivated by a candidate who actively participated in the commission of a genocide.
then you should not be content with the lesser of two evils, and playing the blame game instead of joining us in attacking the dnc until it gives up what we want… instead of enabling the very pattern that got us into this mess to begin with. but here we are.
you probably blame people for not voting hillary clinton as well even though she promoted trump as a punching bag and still managed to lose. on top of all the other bull shit she was up to.
you are too focused on short term ceding of ground to a slow fall right instead of fighting against all rightward movement
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the brave pro genocide democrat lol, you people deserve a century of humiliation
century of humiliation
Is almost been 250 years actually
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Yeah I’m for pedophilia and rape too.
To be fair, you kinda have to be to support the IDF.
God, I wish I were called Soviet Robot too, that sounds pretty fucking epic
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Calls others bots, cant imagine people being able to do more than 2 things at the same time.
Blue MAGA proving they arent too different from their brothers in red
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I can get disgusted by genocide all by myself.
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Fun fact: everyone who doesn’t support the exact amount of genocide Harris did is actually a Russian. Especially if they’re spewing bullshit like “that crosses a line” or “Jesus Christ it’s literally genocide”.
Is the right wing push in the room with us now?
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🪞
How dare you spread that pedophile propaganda in here! I never…
Amazing.
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And the dnc trash is also pushing moderates.
We don’t want fucking moderates! We don’t want more status quo losers afraid to rock the boat and gasp actually improve the citizens’ lives.
moderate = centrist = corporate slave
It’s not even centrist. Democrats are center-right and Republicans are far-right, so the “centrists” in the US are three-quarters right.
The Overton window in the US has shifted significantly in my lifetime. As someone else pointed out, unions were pretty standard in the '70s and have nearly been eliminated now.
More like “willful corporate minion”
“Willful corporate whores”- FTFY. (no shade to actual prostitutes, who’s business transactions are way more honest than democrats)
Tell that to primary voter they seem to disagree with you.
You mean the primary voters who chose Bernie over Hillary, but were undercut by secret DNC insiders? I remember that quite well.
By undercut you mean outvoted, right?
DNC: Um, aktuly, the Dems are running a candidate who has repeatedly endorsed a 10-12% reduction in genocide over 30 years. What have you lefty shits ever done?
DNC: OH SO YOU HATE JEWS, DO YOU?! WELL I’M GOING TO VOTE FOR DONALD TRUMP!
Dems are running a candidate who has repeatedly endorsed a 10-12% reduction in genocide over 30 years.
With absolutely no enforcement mechanism and no penalty for failing to meet that goal, naturally.
Stop lying that Mamdani is anywhere remotely leftist:
- ICE still has deathcamps in NY
- Landlords exist
- Taxes
- Food & Housing isn’t free
- Pedophiles haven’t been guillotined
- Abolished prisons
- Eliminated PDs.
- Apartheid Religions remain
- etc. etc…
This right here is why I’m not convinced any politician would ever pass a leftist purity test.
What’s the rightist purity test?
A mayor can’t really do most of these, but also I mean yeah he’s a demsoc; it’s up to the leftists on the streets to force him to do good things.
THANK YOU. I THOUGHT I WAS IN /c/Progressive Politics FOR A SECOND. Do 24 people need to read theory or some💩?
Epitome of letting perfect be the enemy of good
Wait, what in miran senat is “leftist” about a Muslim Yorker that is working within a system‽
🔗
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’cause you downvoted my comment. I do plenty of black anarchism, twat.
The whole world doesn’t want to
Stop digressively victimizing your inaction, lib.
Oof. Try the decaf, bud.
If America’s mental healthcare was a person, it’d look just like this. I hope you get the help you quite obviously require.
🇺🇲 Doesn’t have healthcare. What kind of quip is this when there are deathcamps to demolish?
You’re gonna add a lack of reading comprehension to that already impressive resumé of yours? I’m not mad, I’m impressed.
I’d like to ask what is the color of the sky in the land where a mayor of a singular city has command over the federal government…?
The fascist* government he serves under*:
Red with a white dot and a black sun.
🔗And do unicorns still populate this land of make believe?
This response keeps killing me inside. I’m about to commit Aaron Bushnell.
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The candidates acceptable to leftists are unacceptable to the DNC.
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The US Empire isn’t democratic, revolution is the solution.
I have enough time to do both, thanks. I am not content to just sit around and do nothing but punch down until election day and happily vote for GOP-lite every fucking time.
No, you’d rather pre-complain about a choice that you can actively influence and hasn’t happened yet.
Literally complaining about actively influencing said choice using memery
I haven’t seen one yet that I really like, but it’s still 3 years out. This is the best time to talk about what you do or don’t like about a candidate or policy, and the worst time to settle.
Remembers bernie sanders. Yeah I don’t believe you. Different wings of the same bird.
Not “someone”. It has to be the DNC. And it need to show me the text where it broke up with Israel. And it needs to apologize to Bernie. Also I will still not like its candidate.
If I tried to promote a candidate on my own or talked to any other org, than DNC would think I wasn’t serious about how much I’m not going to vote for its candidate.
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Dumb fucks are people who have no other arguments than “vote blue no matter who” and “we told you so” or “you’re a russian troll if you don’t support our version of genocide”
See, how braindead that sounds?
You fuckwits would vote for Trump if he ran from DNC, because you tell yourself you’re so good at spotting “propaganda”, but eat up all the propaganda from your side.
You dimwits wouldn’t see you’re repeating propaganda by the DNC, if they hit you with a truck.
Fediverse isn’t the reddit echo chamber you circlejerk on one side anymore.
Source?
I think they’d get banned if they posted a picture of their ass.
Fair, lol
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You’ll get there someday, so long as no one takes the child locks off the sink cabinets.
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Incredible, pivoting from me asking for a source that leftists are a right-wing conspiracy theory to transphobia. Fuck off.
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No you
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Microwave pizza? You have two hours to get me a gourmet truffle caviar pizza, or I’ll eat a bowl of shit!
Isnt this literally what this post is complaining about?
I think the post is glorifying it.
So, you realize that what you’re saying here is, “The Democrats are so incompetent that getting them to adopt a position that a wide majority of their own constituents hold over the course of two years is an impossible and ludicrous.” You get that, right?
No. I’m saying that democrats already have the position that a wide majority of their constituents hold (as shown by the primary victories of corporate democrats time and again on a national level). The lemmy echo chamber doesn’t represent “wide majorities” whatsoever. Hillary and Kamala both lost by less than 5%.
Iif a few more idealists would have held their nose and voted blue despite the terrible candidates you would have problems right now of the type “the solar energy incentives are going to big corporations instead of homeowners” or “Kamala-Care offers too many loopholes and doesn’t provide a single payer system” instead of the current “the pedophile criminal is executing citizens in broad daylight while transferring 10 billion dollars to his slush fund and threatening war with Venezuela, Iran and Denmark”.
But at least you didn’t vote for an impure candidate, so you have that going for you… I’ll be enjoying my universal Healthcare, 14 months of paid maternity leave and 30 days of PTO over here. Peace!
I’m saying that democrats already have the position that a wide majority of their constituents hold (as shown by the primary victories of corporate democrats time and again on a national level).
OK, well, what you’re saying is demonstrably wrong. Recent polling shows that 65% of Democrats are sympathetic towards Palestinians, while 17% of Democrats’ sympathies lie with the Israelis. By the way, those numbers are at 41% to 30% with independents, so that means Democrats’ current position on Gaza is still 11 points underwater with those, “swing voters,” they’re always chasing.
However, if you’re using elections as your barometer, well, the Democrats own internal report (which the DNC tried to bury), shows that, “Kamala Harris lost significant support because of the Biden administration’s approach to the war in Gaza.” Also, if you think that, “primary victories of corporate democrats,” prove that being pro-Israel is a net positive for Democrats, “on a national level,” I’d like to point out that Biden didn’t face a real primary in 2024, and Harris didn’t face a primary at all, so Democratic voters haven’t weighed in nationally on Israel/Gaza since 2020. But if the local victories of folks like Mamdani and Majia are any indicator, then I’d say being pro-Israel is a pretty bad position to take.
Anyway, I’ll admit that I was so overwhelmed by how spectacularly wrong you were in that first sentence that I didn’t even read the rest of your comment, but skimming it now, I can see it the same, “lesser evil,” arguments I’ve been hearing since 2016, to which I’ll say, “no one gives a shit.” Would we be better off with Harris than Trump? Of course. That’s why I voted for her. But it doesn’t fucking matter. The, “lesser evil,” argument may be correct, but time and again it has failed with voters. You can bitch all you want about people not voting how you think they should, but at the end of the day, it won’t make a difference. Give them something they want to vote for in 2028 or lose.
What about the 240 years before 2024?
What about them? That question is so vague asking it without further context is meaningless.
If only lemmy kept context.
No one knows what fhe fuck you’re trying to say, dude. I made, like, six different points about the Democrats and the 2024 election and you replied with, “what about the entirety of American history?” What about it? WTF is your point?
Last microwave pizza I ate wasn’t impressive, it’s true. But the pizza wasn’t committing genocide or actively suppressing any of the things I am fighting for my life for (like healthcare that doesn’t make me homeless and the right not to be shot by fascist street gangs with state backing), all while telling me I had to eat it or else another pizza that was even more freezer burned would do all those same things but worse.
Yeah your analogy kinda sucks ass.
So the other pizza was a pie of shit, not a bowl? I don’t see that as a major problem with the analogy…
Anyhoo, enjoy the 3 years of shit ahead…, maybe even 7 (Trump 2028!)
Yeah anyone who refuses to recognise this “I didn’t vote for Kamala because she wasn’t a perfect person even though I knew Trump would then win”-rhetoric as Russian propaganda, is an idiot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2020_United_States_elections
My impression is that what should be simple (always “genocide no”) gets much more mealy-mouthed (e.g. “I’m totally pro Israel…but maybe let’s rein in the genocide…oh no I don’t mean Israel shouldn’t have the right to defend itself!") precisely when anyone who wishes to do good by getting elected is confronted with the reality that there’s a rampaging nationalist organization sandbagging and bullying candidates, promoting others for policy favors and effectively holding big chunks of the electorate hostage in elections.
In practice, that means when I see otherwise good candidates use their talking points or be evasive and spineless on the topic of Israel, I’m quicker to think that they might simply have chosen a different battle, than to think they actually believe that there’s nothing wrong.
More simply, if standing up to the nationalist bully will almost certainly end their career/role/office before they even had a chance to begin, how many do you think will divert from the issues they entered politics for just to be the one to take out the bully? I’m guessing it’s a small number.
So while I do see it as cowardly on a personal level, and personally I’d prefer to quit politics than to get pushed around and just hold my tongue or say their lines, I also assume that it’s a decision made under duress without further evidence to the contrary.
In short, calling candidates “pro genocide” and expecting individual candidates to take the bully head-on in any particular race feels unfair to me, or at least misguided since, if we actually want to change this situation, my generation really needs to have some frank chats with their parents about their AIPAC donations.
What am I missing?
Edit: typos swype errors missing words
I don’t think you’re wrong, what I think is that this is exactly the problem. On every actually important topic, what are any candidate’s options here? Be vocal and get destroyed by the establishment immediately? Keep quiet and wait for an opportunity to fix things later, that will never ever come? Keep quiet for so long that you get your brain scrambled by “working within the system” and lose every ideal you ever held? From precedent those sure seem like the only things that ever happen. If there are no options that actually work at all, then I’ll at least prefer the candidate who will say “genocide bad”.
Electoralism is a bandaid solution at best in the first place, but the bandaid isn’t even effective if you just play ball. Assume every last politician is suspect, demand the moon, brook no compromise, terrorize whoever happens to be in office into submission. FDR didn’t do the New Deal because he believed in it, he did it as a milquetoast compromise to an organized, insistent, threatening populace.
At least that’s what I think, anyway… This sort of thing.
you are missing all the other issues that were swirling around her as a candidate, but may have been swallowed, up until she double tapped her self on live tv backing a genocide and the wealthy that are currently sacking the nation, after the dnc attempted to push biden again who was also for the same reasons not popular AND doing it so late that they could push to skip a primary.
from a party that is doing its best to help the right while thinly claiming ignoreance.
I actually wasn’t considering Harris on this really at all but of course she’s the go to example usually, even though she’s now forever unelectable. I guess in my head she lost for many other reasons altogether greater in sum than Gaza.
But really I was referring to the much greater problem we’re facing right this moment not in the past. Would-be Dem politicians are right now facing battles with AIPAC supremacy.
I’ll just use Mamdani since we’re just getting things off the ground here. That took record breaking grassroots activism and was still use one upset in a long history of utter domination. AIPAC’s batting average is still ferocious.
Any blue candidate is liable to face them in some way. With Mamdani it simply wasn’t relevant to the job he was applying for and he stuck to that, bless him, and NYers believed him. Mazel. But dammit if they didn’t try to make his stance on Israel THE deciding factor of the election.
You could say Mamdani was a coward for not taking on the genocide in Gaza more fully. It’s true. But my question was specifically “is that really what we need from candidates this year?”
Because right now are tons of candidates right now being similarly put in these weird gotcha tribunals interviews and debates about allegiance to a foreign nation, albeit an ally, when IR and diplomacy is 100% irrelevant to the job they’re even running for. Is it really every candidate’s job to take a stance?
i would say that the gaza situation is a litmus test on the morals of any candidate. any candidate who would defend what we have done to others for israel can not be trusted in matters of morality, a trait that can not ever be permitted access to power in any means, and any power they currently have must be stripped from them.
sorry, but defense of continued genocide is a total non starter.
as for needing to appeal to Aipac money? if that is what is needed to win elections, then the cause is long ago lost at reforming the US via non violent means. but i dont think it is.
100% on all counts. But to clarify I definitely wasn’t saying appeal to AIPAC, and I’m pretty sure you’re smart enough to know that.
Edit: which is an unsubtle way of saying “that last bit was bad faith must-win-internet-argument behavior. you know it. feel bad.”
