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Voting is changing the Oil to keep the engine running (lemmy.ml)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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While Education and Organizing is building the parts for a new engine the rest of the year.

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[–] 53 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (16 children)

Copying and pasting my own comment from another thread:

If you want leftists to vote for dems, despite dems pissing on leftists at every possible chance and yelling at leftists to fall in line, I'll show you how.

  1. Point out that voting will never, ever, ever move the democrat party to the left. You cannot vote the party harder to the left.

  2. Point out that Republicans are going to remain fascists.

  3. Point out that voting third party is a spoiler vote and will result in fascists winning.

  4. Point out that the actual way to move to the left is to unionize and organize at the grassroots level, to apply bottom-up pressure on the top.

The answer is not to pretend that Biden is anything other than a Neoliberal Capitalist. Leftists will correctly point out that Biden is still a lukewarm neoliberal maintaining the status quo, and feel further alienated by being told they should love him anyways. That just encourages voter apathy.

Additionally, this meme is wrong. Leftists voted, it was the centrists and moderates that didn't. Hillary wasn't appealing in any way, so only the people who really cared voted. Hillary still won the popular vote, she just lost the electoral college, and Trump succeeded in riling up the fascist base. Do not blame Leftists for not falling in line for an extremely unlikable candidate, they did regardless. Blame Hillary for doing jack-shit to energize the base.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago (11 children)

    It would also help to acknowledge the people who voted for Biden in the 2020 primaries are selfish pieces of shit who intentionally voted against progressive and leftist efforts. Attempting to gaslight us into thinking "we're on the same side" when in fact these people intentionally fuck us over is ridiculous.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (10 children)

    It's certainly entitled, and I think a lot of it comes from liberals not understanding that both fascists and liberals have candidates that represent their views, but leftists do not. They lack the experience of having to settle for a lukewarm Capitalist and actually having to touch grass to attempt to fix things, while both Liberals and Fascists just have to vote for their respective parties.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    I don't expect a lot of understanding from the kind of people who voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 primaries. But my view is if the same people who have all this energy to try to shame us into voting for Biden in the general applied that to shitty decisions in the primaries it might start to have an effect. Right now people proudly say they voted for Biden in the primaries because the alternatives were "too radical" or whatever. If every time they admitted that they got shamed for being selfish pieces of shit it might actually make a difference.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    I'd love to think so, but that places far too much faith in the American model to allow for radical change from within. I voted for Bernie in the primaries, of course, but if Bernie had made it to power, realistically there would not have been radical change either, because he would have to fight the rest of the democratic party tooth and nail to get meaningful change accomplished.

    That's why grassroots movement is critical for actual change to occur, pressure from below must force the DNC's hand.

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  • [–] -3 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    Liberals do not have a presidential candidate in one of the major two parties. Corporatists and populist nationalists have a candidate (some might say two).

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago* (6 children)

    Sorry, but the DNC is textbook liberalism. What you call Corporatism is the end result of liberalism.

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  • [–] -5 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    Sorry, but that's a malicious tactic.

    Just because you believe that one ideology will lead to another ideology doesn't mean the original ideology is that, especially when the supporters explicitly reject what you believe is the inevitable result. Let me analogize it to other places where the same tactic is done: "advocating for drug decriminalization is advocating for drug abuse" "socialism is tyranny" "trans rights = drag queen story time" "housing homeless means you want more homeless". Whether or not Y is the result of X, if the misguided supporters of X explicitly oppose Y it is wrong to call them supporters of Y.

    Liberalism explicitly rejects corporatism, now you're free to believe the corporatism consumes liberalism because say corporations buy the judges or whatever. Leading to the destruction of liberalism. My belief, is that any utopian ideology, be it liberalism, socialism, or anything else really, will experience blight. That doesn't invalidate efforts to excise the blight, or the utopian goal in general. Liberalism is a goal, that requires work to be strived for, and can never be perfectly achieved, just like communism. And similar to communism, there's never even really been an effort to fully enact it.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I sympathize with what you're saying, but you have no evidence that the DNC explicitly rejects liberalism. They are an outwardly liberal party that is just as suspect to the problems of liberalism as any other liberal form would be. The consequences of liberalism are still a result of liberalism, after all. Liberalization of the economy directly led to what you call corporatism and what I see as just extended liberalism.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    No, but liberalism the ideology explicitly rejects corporatism. Neither the DNC or GOP have 1 ideology, but I think it's fair to say, every major DNC candidate at least since Gore has been corporatist.

    Liberalization of the economy directly led to what you call corporatism

    Maybe to some extent, but an illiberal economy still has a lot of corporatism. See Transnistria lol. And, in a perfectly liberal economy(which admittedly will never exist) there could be no corporatism, as there would be no state power for corporations to wield. In a less perfect world, a limited state, such as by strong constitution, limits the possibility of corporate abuse.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago

    Liberalism as a practical model and liberalism as an ideology are not necessarily the same.

    Letting the free market loose will absolutely result in a state, as Private Property cannot exist without a state, and as such larger Capitalists will build up a state to protect their interests.

    Even if you had a limited state with a strong constitution initially, the Capitalists will absolutely abuse what power they can to build up a stronger state.

    If by putting liberal policies into action results in illiberal consequences, then it's fair to call them consequences of liberalism.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    This seems earnest, but

    "advocating for drug decriminalization is advocating for drug abuse"
    It isn't.

    "socialism is tyranny"
    It isn't.

    "housing homeless means you want more homeless"
    It doesn't.

    "banning abortions means you want women to suffer"

    Now see, this one is actually true. The right will claim "nooo, of course nooot," but that's the only outcome. They don't want child care, they don't want welfare for parents or single moms, but they do want to ban abortions. This directly leads to parents who don't want to be, with to much responsibility to go to college, start a career or just enjoy their time. So, whether the right likes it or not, they want women to suffer. They want everything about the suffering, just without calling it that.

    The problem is not that X leads to Y. It's that, in the other cases, X doesn't lead to Y. If X actually does lead to Y, then X is by consequence a pro Y position.

    But if it doesn't, it isn't.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago

    You're kind of ignoring my point though, whether or not Y is the consequence of X, if someone genuinely supports X and genuinely opposes Y it is malicious to call them supporters of Y whether or not Y is the result of X.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Blame Hillary for doing jack-shit to energize the base.

    Damn right! Like, so many people who could have gone out and voted in 2016, didn't. Why? Because Hillary campaigned on "I'm not Donald Trump." And clearly, that's not good enough. If you want people to vote for you, you don't campaign on "at least I'm not the other guy!".

    And that's not discounting the shenanigans going on at the DNC in 2016. According to former DNC Chair Donna Brazile, essentially, at the end of Obama's term, the Democratic Party was broke. Flat broke and had debts to pay off. Hillary wanted to run for President. So, her people call up the DNC and say "We'll take care of your debts if you make Hillary the nominee." It was a Faustian bargain, as several key figures in the DNC were replaced with Clinton Foundation personnel. Essentially, they bought the whole DNC.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago

    Because Hillary campaigned on “I’m not Donald Trump.”

    It was worse than that. She campaigned on, "it's my turn to be president!" Her focus seemed to be entirely on being the first woman president because she was right after the first black president (who did not run on being the first black president).

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I think a lot of us are just scared right now. I know I've made some reactionary comments to people attacking Biden from the left out of my own sense of fear, and I'm a cishet white guy with a good paying job. I'm also a father of 2 daughters (one of whom may not be cishet, they're still figuring that part of themselves out). I feel sick to my stomach when I think about the Palestinians, and I feel sick to my stomach when I think of them inheriting a ruined planet, getting shot at school, needing or wanting a safe medical abortion at some point and a million other things that a vote for Biden is my only way to protect right now. I wish we had a more European-style, coalition-based party structure here, but we don't yet.

    There are some powerful stereotypes about the Republican party being more homogeneous and the Democratic party being a big tent with lots of internal strife. The saying goes, "Republicans fall in line, Democrats fall apart." That and the unreliability of polls and all of those polls showing Trump way ahead mixed with the shit Project 2025 is talking about...its a lot, and it's scary. I think that's where a lot of the browbeating of leftists is coming from...the fear that a lot of them won't vote at all or won't vote for Biden and what the likely outcome of anyone besides Biden means...which is Trump.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Yep, that's why I gave a guide on how to properly talk to leftists. I'm about as left as they come, and will begrudgingly vote for Biden, because I understand just how pointless trying to vote America to the left is. Every major concession from Capitalists came from revolutionary pressure, such as the Civil Rights movement.

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