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.

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.

I understand that the lesser evil strategy, as you put it, is particularly unappealing around here, but I think the biggest problem is [...]

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?

Aside from that, even if the Democrats were equally bad on Gaza

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?

the US wouldn't have seized Maduro, wouldn't have invaded Iran, wouldn't be potentially preparing to invade Cuba.

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.

As for the Trump ceasefire, from what I'm seeing, it's more slowed down than stopped.

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 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?

I think you are trying and failing to refer to something I've said.

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.

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?

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.

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.

On making the Democrats change, like I said, first step is stop making the Republicans a viable option.

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.

If losing an election was enough to change their mind, they'd have freely released the election autopsy report

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.

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

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.

while another third sits out

The most constituency with the most correct political understanding.

and as long as Republicans keep winning, Democrats will keep sliding right to "compete"

Now you're repeating this nonsense within the same comment!

Hell, you yourself even admit that withholding the vote and costing them the election didn't work because they're not pivoting.

Admit? This is entirely consistent with what I've been saying.

Anyways I have to split this into two comments.

Persuade was a poor word choice, maybe. Forced.

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.

If things like protests didn't have a chance of working, they wouldn't bother brutalizing protesters

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?

or getting schools to force protests to shut down.

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.

If boycotting Israeli goods was ineffective, Trump wouldn't have tried blocking FEMA funds to states allowing or participating in boycotts.

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.

People in here probably also have some great ideas for ways to amp up the pressure.

I'm sure they do but they don't mean anything unless they serve organizing.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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'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.

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.

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.

Not that my methods are flawed, not that it won't work, that I am actually advocating for genocide

Quote me.

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.

Poor baby is now parroting my words rather than directly engage.