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this post was submitted on 27 May 2026
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Chapotraphouse
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I don't think it would have made the genocide less evil. I think it would have made it slower than it is under Trump. If it's allowed to be carried through to completion, then yeah, that makes basically no difference. But if you're still fighting to stop it, it gives you more time to act, to put pressure on people, etc. While I don't think the democrats would be easy to break, I think you'd have better odds with them than with the republicans by a long shot, especially since upset with Israel over the genocide is more common with democrats from my understanding. Maybe it's unlikely, but I think it's got better odds than letting republicans in, especially when they're so determined to gerrymander and otherwise secure their power undemocratically. If the republicans effectively keep democrats out of power, it doesn't really mean much if democratic support for Israel collapses.
Based on what, though? There were zero restrictions on Israel under Biden and Harris. They didn't even acknowledge that a genocide was happening, much less do anything to stop it. When asked what she would do differently from Biden, all Harris could come up with was that she'd put a Republican in her cabinet (don't laugh!).
This is just another way of stating, contrary to the evidence, that Harris would have somewhat mitigated the worst of the genocide. If your goal is to stop the genocide, Biden whole-heartedly supporting Israel while observing the formalities of democracy is no different than Trump whole-heartedly supporting Israel while gerrymandering. Republicans keeping Democrats out of power doesn't make a difference if Democrats are going to rain mass slaughter down on the world, too.
Democrats by and large have failed to uphold the formalities of democracy, anyway. The bare minimum for doing that at this point would be things like jailing a bunch of the Trump administration and packing the Supreme Court, neither of which are on the Democratic agenda.
For example, this chart shows that the deaths in Gaza markedly increased in the first year of Trump's term. While Biden and Harris obviously didn't do near enough to try to stop Israel, Trump openly encouraged them to finish the job, and I think that attitude and brazen support contributed to that increase in deaths.
My point is that while the odds are still not great, we have better odds of making the democrats change course than the republicans, especially since so much of the anger with Israel stems from the democrats' base, not the republicans. By allowing republicans to solidify their position, we allow the most difficult to persuade party to secure long term power. We should do all we can to buy time and nudge the odds of success in our favor because it probably won't be any one factor that finally stops it, but a confluence of factors that all add up to enough to break the damn. Republicans are a completely lost cause on this subject, but there's a nonzero chance the democrats can be broken.
First of all, that chart is statistically incorrect; simply put, it's undercounting deaths by a factor of 10. Second, even by its own incorrect assumptions, it shows absolute deaths decreasing under Trump, the half-ceasefire literally is something Trump can hold over the dems, which explodes every harm reduction argument you're making
In addition, there was a short term "bump" in the confirmed deaths at the beginning of the ceasefire because the GHM could actually resume their activities for a short while and exhume bodies from clearing the rubble. The count is 10 times lower than it should be because Israel killed and entombed all the counters and destroyed all the hospitals where counting was done.
I'm happy to look at new information if you have good sources. I tried to do a relatively quick google for relevant data, but if I've accidentally chosen poorly, I'm open to being convinced.
Here is a source on the breakdown of casualty reporting:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(25)00522-4/fulltext
This was in May 2024 that collecting data was already becoming difficult due to destruction of infrastructure. 2 years of siege, bombing, genocide and destruction later. At the time of this publication, 35% of buildings were destroyed in Gaza. Since then there has been occupation, demolition, constant bombing, sieges and strangulation. These are direct deaths from Israeli attacks, already at 35,000 confirmed under these conditions 2 years ago. You won't get an "official count" higher than 70k because it hasn't moved in over a year. Nobody is counting anymore. Do you know what that means? The type of complete breakdown and death that this requires to happen? The purposeful targeting of healthcare and rescue workers and medics. Think of all the downstream deaths, from starvation, from disease, from pre-existing disabilities. Serious estimates put it closer to 250-300k at least. There are
https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/58/1262/561619/War-on-Gaza/War-on-Gaza/Gaza-population-fell-by-,-since-Israel-genocidal-w.aspx
The direct war deaths have dropped considerably since the October 2025 "ceasefire", with "only" about 500-1000 direct Palestinian deaths, however the genocide continues through deprivation and starvation and siege. Doesn't that make Trump the "slow genocide" "harm reduction" candidate compared to the 200k+ killed under Biden's watchful tutelage of dropping 200k tons of explosives on one of the densest populated area on Earth, with full military protection and support and supply? Leveling some 80%+ of all the buildings and slaughtering man, woman and child with your tax payer money.
First off, I'd like to thank you for being one of the very, very few to avoid being a raging asshole about it, and I'd also like to thank you for being one of the very few to bring new information to the table for me instead of just telling me to go find it without saying anything about where it would be.
You seem to have cut off here, not sure if something got lost.
I was aware of the destruction of infrastructure and the targeting of aid workers, but I've struggled to stay up to date with things in the last year or so as I've had a lot of strains placed on my time available to do so. While I knew this was impacting the ability to count, I apparently overestimated the effort to incorporate other information and provide a more accurate estimate, even if it's still pretty inaccurate. I figured it was probably not exactly right but close enough for discussion purposes, but that does seem to be incorrect.
I'll definitely agree that it at least gives Trump the appearance of being the harm reduction candidate, but I'm not entirely convinced Trump deserves credit for it. Trump is the one who said Israel should finish the job, who proposed the US come in and take control of Gaza after they "[move] the people out", and talked just a few months ago about how it's great real estate and wants to build skyscrapers there. Every word or action Gaza, except the fact that ceasefire started while he's in office, has pointed to him condoning or actively encouraging the ethnic cleanse. I think it's far more likely that global backlash has finally reached a point that, combined with the increasing horror of a more total ethnic cleanse than they've achieved so far, has forced them to enter a "ceasefire" where they can try to finish the job more quietly.
Now, that said, I will admit it is in line with my wish to slow things down and buy time for more effective measures. I will also reiterate that the only reason I wanted things slowed down was so that we have more time to use those more effective measures. From that perspective, the "ceasefire" is a win. It's just that given the greater context of Trump's words and actions on Gaza, I'm not convinced he deserves very much of the credit. But, like always, if you have any information that can contradict that, I'm open to reviewing it and potentially changing my mind. I won't lie, it'd be a bitter pill to swallow to admit Trump was better, but if someone can actually provide evidence for the claim, I'll accept it. I'm just hesitant to give him credit for what appears to be a coincidence to me.
Ultimately, I think it boils down to Israel started it while Biden was in office, and the opening was always going to be more violent given the event it was in response to, regardless of who in the US was in charge at the time. The very start, I think, is almost entirely Israel's fault with partial credit to the US for bolstering Israel enough to feel confident enough to do it. I wouldn't blame Trump for the opening of Gaza any more than I would Biden simply because from what I know, Israel seems to have started this independently. From there, yes, whoever was in charge should have done whatever they can to rein them in, and no, that absolutely did not happen, at least not to nearly the extent it should have, but just because Biden handled it abysmally doesn't mean Trump wouldn't have treated rock bottom as challenge to dig deeper. From what I've seen of him in every aspect of Gaza except the fact that the ceasefire happened, he's been as bad or worse. I think we'd have the ceasefire under Harris, too, at a minimum, and I'd be more confident we can pressure Harris to do more than I am about pressuring Trump.
The event where Israel gunned down a bunch of its own civilians with tanks and helicopters? That event?
how interesting that history started on October 7, 2023, the moment you became aware of the existence of Palestine.
I assume by absolute deaths, you mean the plain count, the raw numbers. Absolute deaths also decreased under Biden. It's hard to tell from the chart, but it looks like the proportional drop from start/inauguration is about 1/8 under Biden and somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 for Trump, so a larger proportional decrease under Biden. As for the ceasefire, I think it's more likely that's happening because global backlash is getting to be too much and risking their longterm political support as the younger generation grows older and starts getting into office, than it is for the same Trump who told them to finish the job suddenly grew a conscious and made it his personal priority to halt the genocide.
That said, I'll try to look into issues with the chart before I bring it up to anyone else.
No they didn't, you don't seem to understand what I meant when I pointed out Israel destroyed all the hospitals, the hospitals in Gaza and the health services were the only orgs counting the dead; when they were destroyed that meant there was nobody left to count the dead and as Israel intensified the genocide in 2024, it split the strip up and invaded whole cities (like Rafah)
It is ridiculous to sit there and pretend absolute death decreased under Biden because nobody was left who would count the dead or that Israel leveling whole cities somehow magically meant the people escaped, when they didn't escape when Israel was only leveling city blocks in the first few months
That's why the chart is nonsense; it's undercounting deaths and pretending Israel didn't destroy the healthcare system, which was the only system that could count deaths, meaning the chart is even worse than guessing; it's lying, intentionally or not
You see, you give the game away here, it doesn't matter why Trump pushed the ceasefire through; it only matters that he did and Biden didn't, but you're more concerned that the ceasefire makes Trump's prospects look better than the fact the ceasefire means less Palestinians dying every day
I could have been clearer when I spoke, so I guess that's my fault. You spoke on what the graph showed, so I spoke on that in response. That was not intended to be a refutation of your suggestion that the graph is incorrect. It was intended to show that I don't agree with the way you're interpreting, but I may have been misunderstanding exactly what you meant.
My point is that I don't think Trump pushed it through. I think Israel realized they had to clean up the appearances over there, so they started talking about a ceasefire, and Trump dove on the opportunity to take credit for it. That's not to say I think Israel is growing a conscious and stopping. I just think they've realized the optics are getting to be too bad, so they're swapping to something slower and easier to distance themselves from. This is the same Trump who said we should just move everyone out and let the US take over the area, who said Israel should just finish the job, and who, several months after the ceasefire began, talked about how Gaza is great real estate and how he wanted to build skyscrapers there. Trump is dumb as shit and even more callous, but the one thing he genuinely excels at is gaming the media cycle and making himself look good to at least enough people to keep him in power. At a glance, yeah, it looks like Trump actually went out of his way to do something right for once, but in the greater context of Trump on Gaza, it looks to me more like he just took advantage of a passing opportunity. If you've got any info that can refute that, though, I'm happy to be proven wrong.
Both odds are 0%. The Democrats are a Private non-democratic capitalist party bought out by people with more money than you. You don't get them to "change course" unless you have billions of dollars of capital because they are mercenaries who work for the highest bidder. Do you have billions of dollars of capital?
This is mostly true, which is why I almost agree with your assessment that both are 0% odds. We don't have the funding, but the backlash is getting significant enough to have a chance. Frankly, I'd put the odds at just a few percentage points tops, so still not great odds. I just don't think success is going to come from any one factor, or it would have happened already, so we should be getting as many factors as possible on our side, even ones that are rather minor.
That chart shows the deadliest months happening under Biden, a bump to about half the peak monthly killings under Trump, then the eventual "ceasefire" stage we're at now. The worst of it ended under Trump.
Considering they could have stopped Israel at any time, Democrats get zero credit for more killings happening on their watch and the eventual "ceasefire" happening on Trump's.
Not if we vote for them even when they commit the crime of crimes. If votes are conditional on them doing good things (or at least not committing crimes against humanity), they might do good things. If votes are unconditional, they'll do what they want.
I think the bigger factor in how much they get away with is the fact that they can always point to the looming threat of the republicans. If democrats started consistently winning, one, republicans would be forced to stop pulling so hard to the right, and two, they'd have to compete against other democrats, not republicans, and so trying to sell us on republican-lite very quickly stops being enough.
This is the incoherence of liberal electoral brain. If Democrats consistently win, then you, the voter, have even less leverage. Only close races are those where the voters "matter" to electoral parties. That's why presidential elections focus on "swing states", including the vast amounts of money going into ad buys and ground campaigns in those states. A Pennsylvania vote is worth way more than a California vote, i.e., a Pennsylvania voter has more leverage over the outcome. These are equivalent ideas, even though again, each vote is all but meaningless politically.
If Democrats simply win all the time, then y ou will rapidly learn to whom they actually cleave. Who butters their bread. It ain't you. I mean, you should know this already, but I guess it needs to smack you in the face or something.
This all sounds logical on the surface, but I don't think it pans out like that. Once Republicans stop winning elections, Democrats stop using that as an excuse to move right to court centrists and disappointed Republicans. Once Republicans stop winning, two things happen. One, the immediate contest moves to the primary, where everyone is most directly vulnerable to their constituents since turnout is especially low for these. If Republicans are crushed in the election instead of narrowly losing, Democrats thinking about reelection have to make extra sure they're palatable to the base because that's who's going to sink them and replace them in the primary. Two, since a first-past-the-post voting system always inevitably results in a two party system, if the Republicans prove themselves truly nonviable, the party dies, and another takes their place. The new party is obviously going to have to move left since right has proven itself nonviable, and so the contest moves towards left wing ideas.
Yes I know, this is your fictional baseless nonsense you keep repeating as if nobody has responded to it, including what I just wrote and that you haven't addressed. We already have examples where Democrats have won consistently and they didn't do this. You have examples right in front of you at the state and municipal level and Dems fight tooth and nail to prevent universal healthcare at the state level, they constantly bump funding for cops, they send cops after protesters, they cleave to Israel and use every bad faith excuse to go after pro-Palestine organizers, going after their schooling and careers, they implement austerity for social programs and dehumanize the unhoused. At no point did using the logic of always voting Democrat achieve anything, it is actually disenfranchising to think that way and tell others to do so.
Primaries are controlled by the parties in power, as is ballot access. The contest "moves" there in the sense that multi-party democracy is dead on its face in those places, as the Democrats can exclusively focus on punching left in the interest of their donors and connections. They focus hard on excluding even left liberals like Greens. They then move to trying to control those primaries to keep out challengers as best they can. Redistrict to remove left politicians, for example. And don't forget, the party is not a public thing, it is a private venture that can change its own rules basically however it wants in most cases, arbitrarily moving qualification thresholds to remove challengers. Do you think cutting off ballot access for left challengers is a symptom of perma-elected Democrats moving left? Do you have literally any experience trying to make something happen electorally? You have clearly never realized who your full set of political enemies are if you want, say, to end the genocide in Palestine.
In reality they actually try to engineer the primary so that they do face the less popular Republican rather than a slightly-left-of-them Democrat, Green, socialist, etc. Depending on the structure of the primary of course, that is their ideal. You have surely already seen this in how Dems fight hard to engineer contests to be not between themselves and a milquetoast socdem (e.g. Clinton vs Sanders) but instead be between them and some braying racist (Clinton vs Trump).
I have already pointed out that palatable to "the base" is antithetical to them and that it isn't even really a base, it is their left flank that they string along. Maybe you belong to that group, the only reason I qualify is that it's unclear you have any left wing politics at all. "The base" is who they manipulate into supporting them (you're trying to do that yourself), not who they actually cater to in policy. This is a basic lesson you should realize about the party: they don't deliver for their "base". They fight as hard as they can to avoid doing so. That dynamic is the most important one for understanding the Democratic Party and what it truly is as a political project. It's why they seem "incompetent": they don't actually want to do the slightly left things that would be popular, delivering material benefit to their people, because most of those policies would come at the cost of bourgeois interests. You can go and join the party and watch that dead end in progress if you'd like. See how much time they spend on donor lists and dinners and trimming planks and undermining primaries and conventions.
The Democratic Party wants a viable Republican Party. They literally say this openly.
You are trying to describe a realignment in the form of an entire party displacing another. This hasn't happened since the American Civil War. Do you have any unstanding of why that hasn't happened in 150 years? What about the bourgeois electoral system prevents this from happening even though FPTP allegedly makes it locally quasi-stable? Surely there should be examples of rupture at the state level, right? Why not? Who benefits from this not happening? What function does kayfabe opposition play?
There are left parties that have tried this. What is their experience? Do you even know.
Spoken like someone burying their head in the sand for 30 years
Could you point to the time in the last 30 years where Republican candidates and policies were nonviable enough to make them lose more than a single election? Every time Democrats get into power, people complain that they didn't do enough fast enough, which is a valid complaint, but then they reelect the god damn Republicans as if they had any chance of giving a shit. Clinton elected? Republicans take the whole Congress next time, and the next president after Clinton is a Republican. Obama elected? Republicans take half of Congress two years later, keep it the rest of his presidency, obstructing everything just for the love of the game, took the other half in his last two years of office, and the next president is a Republican. Biden elected? Whole presidency, Republicans control half of Congress and obstruct religiously.
In the last 30 years, Democrats have had about 2 years where they were not HEAVILY obstructed by Republicans with substantial power in a best case scenario. So when exactly in the last 30 years did we do anything to meaningfully force Republicans to stop pulling right? Looks an awful lot to me like every time we elect a Democrat, we bitch and moan about how they aren't everything we want and then elect Republicans. Every single fucking time in the last 30 years.
And you don't seem to get that this is by design. The purpose of a system is what it does.
There are many states that have had Democrat majorities (even supermajorities) as well as governor for multiple elections. They always have plenty of excuses for why they can't do things in the interests of common people vs. bourgeois interests.
Sorry to split this, but got interrupted and accidentally mixed things up and only responded to the last half. I'd edit, but if this takes long enough, you might respond to that, and it's just cleaner this way, so my bad.
You could also view it as Israel started it while Biden was in office, and he got the violence cut by 3/4 in half a year. Meanwhile, under Trump, the violence managed to as much as quadruple from when he came into office. Or, put another way, no month under Biden was worse than the first, compared to under Trump in which 2/3 months were more violent than when he came into office.
And again, I'm not saying the response was perfect or even good. I'm just saying there's a clear trend of things calming down under Biden and ramping up once Trump gets into office. Now, after Israel is facing global backlash and has been trying to squash it for multiple years, Trump gets into office when Israel is forced to come to the table in spite of himself.
This isn't Marvel superheroes kid. You don't get to just makes things up and say, "look how good they did maybe". While these death count trends can't be read in any of these ways, the basic fact remains: Biden pretend to work on a ceasefire, Trump got one rapidly. Now, even the ceasefire is largely bullshit, even that is more PR than reflective of on-the-ground reality, but that's the scraps that liberals were conned into accepting and the line that Biden wasn't willing to cross against Israel. The lie of Biden attempting a ceasefire is laid bare already, so you should know that him working to "cut" the deaths is fantastical nonsense, literally make-believe. Again, Biden was a staunch advocate for Israeli settler-colonialism and the ongoing occupation for decades and materially supported Israel in its genocide to the hilt. He was not "working against it, but not enough". He was working for it. He is a genocider. The guy you supported did a genocide and you still don't have humility about it.
It's time to drop the pretense that Biden just wasn't "good enough". He was a demon. The question is not how a good guy made a mistake, but how a bad guy conned you and how you're failing to cope with it.
Even though it's apparently a mortal sin here to admit that life has prevented me from devoting every waking moment to staying abreast of current events the world over, I'm gonna say that while I'm aware he has historically supported Israel, I'm unaware of evidence that he's endorsed the illegal settlements. Before you act like an asshole about it, reminder that I'm here willing to learn and openly inviting evidence that challenges what I thought I knew before I came in here.
I didn't say shit about him being a good guy who made a mistake. I called him less shit than the alternative. I understand that that seems hard to accomplish in terms of a genocide, but given we're still genociding and also invading Iran, supporting an Israeli invasion of Lebanon, potentially preparing to invade Cuba, and seized a foreign head of state... Maybe that wasn't an entirely incorrect assessment. The same people who want to tell me things slowed down under Trump with the "ceasefire" are the same people who ridiculed me for the fundamental idea of trying to slow it down while we work on stopping it in other ways.
You're still pretending to be a victim for spouting pro-genocider bullshit in ignorance. You even try to flip "they know things I don't and didn't appreciate my bullshit" into being our problem rather than yours. Perhaps this is spiritual Zionism?
Nobody requires you to know anything, actually. You can just, you know, shut the fuck up until you do. Learn to ask questions. Learn to learn. Learn that maybe you don't always deserve to have an opinion.
Though, I will point out that your hyperbole is revealing. It does not take much effort to know these things. People the world over konw them, it's not a full time job. But you have to be willing to start and to accumulate knowledge, not whine that you don't automatically know what's going on and deserve to share pro-genocider opinions despite not even trying.
What the fuck are you even talking about. I didn't mention "illegal settlements". But Biden has supported Israel to the hilt for his entire political life, and the premise of Israel is the settler colonization of Palestine. What do you think illegal settlements are? What does it mean when he gives them constant material support during genocide? When he brushes aside the supposed red line of killing Americans? You're not thinking critically.
No I"m not going to reverse teh way I treat you, you have not stopped beign combative. YOu say you're willing to learn and inviting evidence, but you are (1) responding to a bar I didn't set and ignoring the rest of what I said (being evasive) and (2) aren't asking for evidence. Do you know how to ask a question?
You absolutely framed Biden et al as people who could "do more" to "slow down" genocide, erasing their true role as active material proponents of the genocide. You absolutely did not frame them as those proponents, as enemies of Palestine. I am resopnding to your soft pedaling of Democrats' role and defaultism that they are not trying hard enough in the right direction rather than trying very hard in the wrong one.
See, you still can't frame this as a genocide begun under and supported by Biden. YOur defaultism on lesser evilism presumes taht the bad things are forwarded by Republicans and Democrats are just failing to oppose or be "less bad enough". In reality, Dems are the big bad in this situation, they did the worse thing, and you cannot cope with it.
See how we have to repeat ourselves because you don't read. I already responded to this in another comment. YOu just repeat yourself in various places because you don't read. The short of it is: you are blissfully ignoring the war crimes of Democrats to pretend that bad things happening under Republicans proves your opint. You wish to believe, again, in the default lesser evilism, and just repeat it over and over again, never actually asking how you'd do a more fair comparison, actively avoiding using appropriate language to attribute roles. THis is because you are a victim of propaganda, and you could escape it, but you have to stop resopnding to every comment and read and be honest.
Oh? What were you ridiculed for, specifically?
That chart reports official "confirmed" deaths. While they cite the WHO, the WHO is just acting as a middleman for Gaza health authorities, authorities who are working in conditions incompatible with giving an accurate count. Per analyses done since well before the last US presidential election, the actual number killed is likely an order of magnitude larger. And you should not understand any "trends" as simply a magnitude of killing, but also of killings capable of being recorded by Gaza health authorities. Such as... during a ceasefire after many people moved back to their cities and stations.
But there is a deeper problem here. What I just said has been known for literally years. Anyone who has been active against this genocide will be familiar with the fact that the 60k, 70k numbers are a gross undercount. So why are you coming here with the pretense that you are doing to lecture about why it's smart to support genocidaires when you have clearly sat this one out?
There was another point I was going to make in my previous comment in this thread but I opted to keep it short. But it is doubly relevant here: the purpose of lesser evil electoralism is to make you compliant and useless, to think of yourself as an individual where your most important political action is to know just enough talking points to believe that your vote for [X] party is both important and the end of your political life. So I am not surprised that the lesser evil advocates are consistently both the least informed and the most willing to lecture.
Biden was a vociferous direct supporter of Israel in its genocide and actively provided military, military, diplomatic, and rhetorical support for them. This is his genocide as much as Netanyahu's. Again, it seems that you have sat out this genocide, you didn't engage with it at all beyond what some talking heads told you to vote for, because understanding Biden's role was ubiquitous in our circles in 2023.
And your line about not "trying enough" to stop the genocide is their public-facing propaganda line. The "we are trying to get a ceasefire" lie, one hilariously revealed by Trump getting a ceasefire almost immediately, outflanking Biden from the left. What does it mean when a fascist outflanks your guy from the left?
Anyways, everyone informed on this topic knows that "trying to get a ceasefire" was a delay tactic, a non-disprovable (early on) claim to make while simultaneously providing heavy material support to the genocide.
Re: Harris, as the right wing empty suit and VP, she could only do two things: put her head down and toe the line or differentiate herself and say (surely false) words about how she'd take a harder stance against Israel. She did the former. Head down during genocide. Is that also what you did?
Then you misunderstand the situation entirely.
Your point is self-defeating. If you cannot make "the Democrats" change course by meaningfully threatening to withhold your vote, what makes you think they'll do so when you have promised to never use that leverage? What is your mechanism? Letter writing campaigns? Protests where Democrats send cops after you, hurting and disabling those with you? Do you think support for Israel is just a personal moral stance and they'll change their tune based on a nice slogan or some well-branded Instagram posts? I can tell you now: it is not. They lost the last election in propose rather than challenge the Zionist agenda. You're going to have to appeal to a greater political power than even withholding your vote to oppose genocide, which apparently is even too much for you to do.
"Base" means nothing. It really doesn't mean anything at all anymore. It's supposed to mean the core of the party, its foundation. In usage it clearly means, "the vaguely left wing people that are string along because we say there is no alternative". So sure, the more informed and empathetic people that more often vote democrat were more moved in the face of Democrat supported genocide. They threatened, openly, to withhold their votes if the party didn't change course. The party didn't change course. The party lost. Is the party pivoting now? Is it even outflanking Trump from the left now, when they can criticize in bad faith to their hearts' content? Nope!
See how they spit in your face, yet you ask for more?
It appears you do believe that political power stems from persuading elected politicians to do exactly what is against their own interests - power, influence, donor money, PACs, etc. and only once elected. Wouldn't want to make demands or "persuade" when you have any leverage at all, like your vote.
It is quite clear that you are not us, you are not someone who has done work against the genocide, or even deigned to learn about it, and instead are an advocate for the genocidaires.
The rest of what you say is repetitive and already addressed.
Comrade this is book quality shit
You make a very valid point on the death count. This is information I'd heard and forgotten, and in my haste to find relevant info for the deluge of responses, I forgot that and failed to investigate the info. That's my mistake, and I'm sorry for that. If you have accurate information, I would love to see it. Unfortunately, life has put too many demands on my time lately for me to keep up as well as I would like.
I understand that the lesser evil strategy, as you put it, is particularly unappealing around here, but I think the biggest problem is less so that people adopt the lesser evil strategy and more so that the greater evil keeps winning and remaining viable. Every time Republicans win an election, Democrats use it as an excuse to move farther right to court "centrists", and Republicans move further right as anything Democrats support must be vilified. This is compounded by the fact that Republicans benefit from voter suppression and gerrymandering, so as we grow electorally apathetic, Republicans win more and drag us farther to the right. Democrats basically exist to keep us from sliding back to the left, but they're highly reliant on having the pressure relieved when Republicans start pulling to the right, so I think that mechanism can be overwhelmed.
Aside from that, even if the Democrats were equally bad on Gaza, the US wouldn't have seized Maduro, wouldn't have invaded Iran, wouldn't be potentially preparing to invade Cuba.
As for the Trump ceasefire, from what I'm seeing, it's more slowed down than stopped. I thought trying to slow it down was a shitty option and really just endorsement of the genocide? Or is that only when we try to get Democrats to do it? Frankly, given what we've seen of Trump overall, I think the ceasefire is best ascribed to 2 years of mounting global backlash against Israel, not the guy who'd own the Gaza Trump Tower from the Israeli AI propaganda.
If you have any evidence that attempting to get a ceasefire under Biden was just a stall tactic, I'd love to see it. I've heard the accusation before, but I've never seen it substantiated.
On making the Democrats change, like I said, first step is stop making the Republicans a viable option. If losing an election was enough to change their mind, they'd have freely released the election autopsy report, owned the mistake, and started to pivot, but that didn't happen because it's still just as viable as it was because there's still just as much chance the dumbest third of the country votes right while another third sits out, and as long as Republicans keep winning, Democrats will keep sliding right to "compete". Hell, you yourself even admit that withholding the vote and costing them the election didn't work because they're not pivoting.
Persuade was a poor word choice, maybe. Forced. If things like protests didn't have a chance of working, they wouldn't bother brutalizing protesters or getting schools to force protests to shut down. If boycotting Israeli goods was ineffective, Trump wouldn't have tried blocking FEMA funds to states allowing or participating in boycotts. People in here probably also have some great ideas for ways to amp up the pressure.
Look, I'd love to be more involved. As is, I don't hardly have any time to myself, so god only knows why I spend what meager breaks I can get responding to people who tend to verbally abuse me for not being able to spend more keeping up with shit. But unless someone wants to help subsidize my bills, I'm barely staying afloat. I try to keep up, I try to learn from more than the corporate propaganda, I try to be mindful of where my money goes, and if I'm really lucky, I get to join in on a protest rarely. In a vacuum, yeah, there's so much more I could do, but unfortunately, I need to not starve. Maybe if people like me, who are trying to do what they can but have hardly any time to keep up with this specific thing on top of all the other terrible things happening, were met with less vitriol when we came in here, you guys could persuade some of us. You've been better than a lot of people, but you're still not above calling me an advocate for genocide just because you disagree on how to stop it. Not that my methods are flawed, not that it won't work, that I am actually advocating for genocide, so while I appreciate that you seem to have mostly tried to engage in good faith and I thank you for that, I'm also gonna have to throw in a "fuck you" for that.
No. No mechanism at all is forthcoming. You cannot explain the basics of what would actually happen to make them change. How a demand would be met. This is, as I have explained, because you simply haven't thought through it that far. You don't know. The point of your rhetoric is to try and convince people to vote Dem, not effect political change, so you have specific recommendations and explanations for the former and vague hand-waving for the latter.
Perhaps you'll develop the courage of your convictions and address this and acknowledge that you have no idea what the next step of your plan is. The part where you actually get things to happen.
Actually, American cops just kind of like doing that to people. And politicians are beholden to capital and that is who they are actually responding to. Broken windows is $$$ for the bourgeois class. The chamber of commerce won't give you money for your next mayoral campaign unless you put a stop to it.
Protests do not inherently challenge anything except for what is immediately in their presence or that has a direct material impact. Most are basically just parades for liberals to vent and obtain false catharsis. They need to do more, intentionally or accidentally, to have a chance of "working".
PS, what did Democrat-run cities and then Biden do in response to the BLM protests? Short term, long term? Did the policy demands result in those policies? Did they stay policy? Did the exact opposite policies get implemented?
That's the Zionist lobby. Perhaps you're familiar with it. They understand their project is heavily dependent on constant material support for Israel and use soft support as a way to secure it.
Trump happily uses any proxy for "enemy" constituencies to go after them. Boycotts generally do not work, not directly. Their primary value is in spreading consciousness and creating opportunities for organizing conversations. If you had ever done any work at all on this topic you'd probably be aware of this, at least a bit.
I'm sure they do but they don't mean anything unless they serve organizing.
No, you are being verbally abussd for pretending at knowledge, having a much higher bar for evidence from others than from yourself, acting in bad faith, and for repeating genocidaires propaganda in support of genocidaires. I was actually patient with you at first until it rapidly became clear you were full of shit and trying to weasel out of having honest conversations. You want to lecture, not listen, and the topic is an ongoing fucking genocide done by the people for whom you advocate.
You can always, you know, shut the fuck up. You don't have the knowledge to share opinions as you do. I don't get down on people who approach these topics with appropriate humility: humility in accordance with their experience. You are a political baby. Ask. Questions.
Anyways, you can see that I correctly clocked your lack of taking any action at all or developing knowledge on this topic. Why do you think I clocked it? Do you think you should change your behavior?
See the defensive posturing. See, I never told you to do anything. I told you to shut the fuck up about a serious topic that you don't understand but are eager to spread misinformation and wrong-headed, genocide supportive views about. I point out that it is obvious you haven't done anything on this topic because that would have exposed you to knowledge you do not have and because you obviously don't really even care about it. It's been 2.5 years and you're still playing catch-up on the early days propaganda and organizing messaging? Why the fuck do you think you can lecture is about this?
You'll recall that I patiently explained things in my first 3 comments before it became clear that you were bullshitting. Tolerating bullshitters saying things antithetical to correct politics is not good organizing or persuasion. It gives them the false impression that their views are respectable and that it's okay to interject like this without seeking understanding. You would be removed from the pipeline of any competently organized left group on account of this tendency. Maybe put into a front group where you can do less damage, but really folks that don't respond appropriately to correction eventually make themselves a big enough problem that they either get removed or create a split, wasting everyone's time and emotional bandwidth.
It is because you say to commit to unwavering support to vote for people doing genocide. You can't even quote what I said because you are too afraid of the reality, too defensive, to resistant to correction, even though you are dead wrong.
And you dig yourself a deeper and deeper hole with every response. Alienating every person you think, incorrectly, you are on the side of. You are not us. You have to change if you want that to be the case. You must destroy your liberalism, and that includes dishonesty.
Quote me.
Poor baby is now parroting my words rather than directly engage.
Then stop pretending you can lecture anyone here in this topic. You haven't earned the right to speak because you have not done any real investigation. I am not joking when I say you need to shut the fuck up. You haven't learned how to gauge your own knowledge or to have good faith discussions or even just take an extra minute to read and understand a two paragraph comment. 20 people explaining this to you isn't getting through. I am not setting a high bar for you here.
So let's keep it simple: shut the fuck up.
Right so again you are the easy mark for the cynical PR folks of the Democratic party. You think Dems move right because they lose elections? The implication being that they would stay put or move left if they win? Because they don't do that shit either. They only "move left" when the work is already done for them and it serves as a release valve for actual concerted, organized action, and this moves left are, 99% of the time, marginal and precarious - on purpose. They effectively don't happen with regularity. Furthermore, rub some brain cells together and ask why they are allegedly courting "centrists". Is it because they are considered people who don't always vote Democrat but might be "getable"? Isn't that the exact logic for why "left" electoralists should not vote for Dems until Dems court them?
But really, what they say is PR nonsense. They wanted to move right anyways and their strategists come up with excuses. The left wants things antithetical to the interests that control US electoral politics, the state, the daily lives of common people. So they need some rhetorical cover for why they can never do those things. Declaring for the 30th time that they have to court centrists to win lets them state an evidenceless need to stay away from left wing politics. There are actually many instantiations of this, I'm sure you're familiar with them and probably mindlessly parrot them as well.
And you have simply never questioned their PR, I guess, and think it's very answery to repeat it to those who have heard and analyzed it many times as if it is news to them. Are you able to read the room yet?
They are worse because they implement the same fundamental policies but launder it better in terms of the global liberal order and to folks like yourself who, is their morality weren't clouded by a geriatric demon having a D next to their name incompetently repeating these framings, might actually do something against genocide rather than rallying support for genociders. Liberal electoralism is where social movements go to die. Ever heard that one?
If it weren't for the more competently Dsmocrat-led liberal order you wouldn't see Libya go from the highest HDI in Africa to a failed state with open air slave markets or the intentional breaking of both Minsk agreements to push Russia into a corner, and then get the reaction of invading Ukraine. See, you likely don't even conceptualize those events as caused by Democrats because their PR is to launder them as if they are natural disasters or the impetus of petty great men far away, banking on you knowing jack shit about history or world politics.
While the larger political machinery of the US is Zionist, it is also clear that Biden and his admin had a deep ideological commitment to supporting Israel's genocide, one that is incoherent in the Trump white house. Guy changes his mind or tries to find a grift every other day, cares about perception in his own way and, oh right, got that ceasefire rapidly that Biden strung you along with. You actually cannot say that it would have gone down with nearly the magnitude under Trump. And the international fallout would have surely been even larger, fallout that could have materially forced Israel to make earlier concessions. Again, Dems launder horror as if a national disaster or petty men far away, but Republicans are more obvious in their violence and spur opposition.
I have been discussing the ceasefire to meet you half way because you are embedded in the false consciousness of smug bourgeois electoral brain. The idea that the ceasefire itself was barely anything but PR and a highly limited reprieve in the first place was true as soon as the first liberal shifted focus to it in 2023. And the Biden admin refused to even make that happen. Israel never honors ceasefires. You would know this if you knew the first thing about this topic. They stop when forced.
I think you are trying and failing to refer to something I've said.
There you go just believing made up bullshitting that you yourself came up with. Funny how Biden couldn't take advantage of that global backlash, huh? Hmm, what was he saying about Israel in light of that? Do you recall? How about his chief of staff?
The fact that the moment he was out of office and political will changed it happened. The fact that the US is the patron of Israel and can pull that chain whenever it wants but usually doesn't because it sees value in its attack dog. The fact that the Biden admin continued providing military, monetary, diplomatic, and rhetorical aid to Israel and couldn't make a statement on the topic without making it about blaming Hamas. The constantly shifting propaganda intended to minimize the genocide, whether it's those numbers you've gullibly repeated or the idea that hospitals were secretly military bases or that Israel wasn't bombing them.
Oh, and the various articles and quotes regarding jack shit being done in that regard, e.g. https://internationalpolicy.org/publications/the-biden-administrations-false-history-of-ceasefire-negotiations/ since apparently you don't know how to research anything that challenges the genocide apologetic horseshit you unquestionably repeat.
To be honest most of this is obvious, you just gave to put aside your kneejerk allegiance to a genocidal political party.
Yes you believe that the way to effect electoral political change is to promise to always elect Democrats and then things just happen once you give up the only electoral leverage you have. I've pointed out this self-defeating nonsense maybe 4 times and you avoid it because you have no response. Instead you just repeat yourself, which is a cowardly and dishonest habit.
lmao did you even read it? The embarrassing part of the report is that they even did it at all, it's like they took a drunk 15 year old and told them to go ham and paid them $300k or something for the trouble.
Establishing a disciplined voting bloc is not "the Democrats lose an election". You haven't even asked for any information at all about what a vaguely left but more realistic electoral strategy could look like. You just keep repeating wrong and bad ideas and I have to keep telling you that giving everything away all the time is not a way to build or exercise leverage for political causes.
PS the more realistic strategy will also ultimately fail but at least folks like you might learn from it and make connections to do more useful things.
Actually they are a smarter electoral bloc. While the more reactionary voters have horrible opinions based on a deep false consciousness, their politicians actually throw them red meat, as things like increased marginalization are entirely compatible with capitalism and even grease its wheels. Dems instead are constantly receiving and believing increasingly elaborate excuses for why none of the modest things they want can ever happen so it's time to get more transphobic to go after the transphobe vote.
The most constituency with the most correct political understanding.
Now you're repeating this nonsense within the same comment!
Admit? This is entirely consistent with what I've been saying.
Anyways I have to split this into two comments.
Biden said his red line was an invasion of Rafah.
2 months later, bombs were dropped on Rafah. Half of child's corpse was hanging off a building as she was blown up. Children were burnt alive in their tents.
Biden said NOTHING about it. False restrictions don't mean shit.
Yes, my point is that while democrats will also support Israel until forced not to, and while it's monstrous not to intervene without being forced, if we're going to have to try to force someone, I think we have better odds with the democrats. Still shit odds, don't get me wrong, but when you're trying to stop a genocide, you stack the deck however you can and in as many ways as you can until you can force the outcome you want.
When you're trying to stop a genocide you don't vote for parties that will continue it.
And as a result of that, Gaza is slowed down but still going, the US invaded Iran, gave Israel cover to invade Lebanon, abducted the leader of Venezuela, and may be preparing to invade Cuba. In exchange, the Democrats fought tooth and nail to not release the election autopsy report, they refused to acknowledge Gaza cost them, and they've made no move to pivot towards support. It sounds nice in a vacuum, but it sure looks like we traded a worse situation in exchange for... Basically nothing.
Both parties have been pushing for all those things for decades.
I'm doing my part to force Democrats to stop supporting genocide, by refusing to vote for them until they stop supporting genocide
Well let's look at how that worked out for us. Democrats lost, and Gaza was most likely at least a significant factor. Did the Democrats release the election autopsy report without fighting it tooth and nail for weeks? No. Did they acknowledge that failing to support Gaza caused problems for them? No. Have they shown that they're in any way attempting to pivot away from supporting Israel? No.
As long as we prove we're willing to elect rightwing candidates, Democrats will continue pandering to centrists and former Republicans. Democrats will move left when we prove that moving to the right nonviable, not when we elect a Republican every time a Democrat doesn't go left enough.
YOU KEEP REPEATING THIS FUCKING LINE SHUT THE FUCK UP. You have been told repeatedly why you are fucking wrong and you keep up this smug ass fucking attitude like you have it all figured out and you're the smartest person in the room. You don't. You're not. Humble yourself and take a long look in the mirror at how you can justify voting for people that vowed to do all of this and more. Fuck you.