I’m not even American, so it doesn’t affect me directly, but I am scared to death of a Trump presidency.
I am one of those people here who think that Biden is a far more competent executor of imperialist policies compared to Trump, but what I am even more afraid of is the early death of nascent left wing movements in America.
I am reminded of how the KPD getting its leaders murdered by Freikorps thugs during the Spartacist uprising (mind you, a much stronger party than any leftist movement in America today), and how its continued suppression paved the way to Nazi Germany.
Project 2025 will effectively embolden fascist thugs in America to do the same to the left wing movements, many of which are still in their cradle, and the death of leftist movements in their infancies will inevitably pave the way to a fascist America and undo many of the progress that had been made over decades.
The world cannot afford a fascist America. Imagine Hitler with nukes. The world will have to pay a much, much larger price as a result.
On this reasoning alone, I believe that Trump needs to be stopped at all cost. But many here have disagreed with me, and I need you to persuade me why I shouldn’t be afraid of Project 2025 at all. Even if the chance of that happening is 10%, I’m still not ready to gamble with it.
(I’m not saying we have to support Biden, I believe it is somewhat inevitable, I’m saying that we have to buy ourselves as much time as possible, even if it means strategic voting, to build a resilient leftist movement while delaying the inevitable for as long as we can.)
A vote for Biden is approval of Biden, it legitimises him.
Biden is committing genocide. Voting for him legitimises genocide, it trivializes and normalises it. From this point on, if Biden wins, Dems will only get more brutal. A democratic party that knows people don't even give a shit about mass murder, will be completely unhinged.
On the other hand you have project 2025, which the Dems have no plans of averting, and a platform that is more or less already being implemented. There is no left-wing movements threatening the state. There were left-wing movements under Trump, because he was reprehensible even to the liberals. The next republican won't be.
The Freikorps operated with the blessing of the SPD. In this analogy of yours, the democrats are the SPD. Giving the SPD legitimacy that they could then give the Freikorps was not a good thing.
Finally: whatever it is you think should be done, must be done now. We do not have the luxury of time. We do not have a few more years. The collapsing climate does not allow us to just extend time another election cycle. We cannot wait for a better presidential election.
You're misrepresenting the meaning of a vote in the general election of a first past the past voting system to select electors who will cast votes later after the result is certified.
If we're being really casual, sure, it's "approval." But what it really is is a selection of the best option out of what is available.
When the votes are tallied and the Electoral College outcome is finalized, it will either be President Biden getting ready for another four years or President Elect Trump getting ready to take office.
So our only choice here is between a bad four more years of Biden doing some good things because he wants to and some when he has no other choice, or a disastrous four years of Trump doing as many terrible things as possible as fast as possible, almost certainly ending our way of government.
We don't have the "luxury" of time but we have to live in the reality of time. Time is something we can't work around. It takes time to organize, time to work within whatever system(s) we're in, time to convince others to join us, ...
Whatever damage we do to the climate becomes more and more difficult to reverse, major and more difficult to adapt to, affects more and more people, as time goes on. But we have to plan for working in that scenario because we still don't have the numbers of people on our side.
I'm not arguing that we should "wait," either. We've seen that Biden can change his mind and change course. We need to work with that, get more progressives and liberals and Democrats elected from medical examiner to dog catcher to school board to state government to federal. And push them left every time. More unions. More corporate regulation. A four day work week with no reduction in pay, or five 6.5-hour days. Universal basic income. Lower the Medicare eligibility age by five years every 2 years until we have Medicare for all. End all fossil fuel subsidies, and transfer 75% of the subsidies to renewables and the other 25% to next gen power research. Give every worker a minimum of 3 weeks paid vacation and 6 months of parental leave. Provide for end of life care. Make abortion legal safe and rare and decided upon by the pregnant person and their doctor. On and on and on.
On foreign policy, basically support actual freedom and oppose oppression. (Not 1960s Cold War "support capitalism" CIA bullshit.)
We can take steps toward that with Joe Biden as president. Not as fast as you or I would want. But we'll get none of that, and probably the opposite of some of it, if Trump is elected.
How? If anything I'd argue the exact opposite
Democratic politicians in blue states may actually make a few half assed attempts at protecting marginalized people if they have Trump to force their hands into opposing him while with Genocide Joe in office red states will still implement project 2025 unimpeded and the libs will suck so hard at messaging as usual that chuds may even manage to take over a blue state
I hope you didn't waste time typing all that garbage from scratch personally instead of just copying & pasting it from somewhere.
Biden has been president for 4 years. Can you give me exactly one (1) thing that he's done for the left in that time period?
Lol was this before or after he crushed the rail workers strike? Pretty funny that the most "left" thing you can attribute to Biden is performative bullshit while he has actively worked on behalf of capital to limit workers' actions. What level of "left" does that make him?
Right before. And libs excused it by saying "but they got their demands!!" as if the point of labor organizing is to get some benefits and a wage hike ONCE then have it be illegal for the rest of time.
And they didn't get their demands, either. They got some shitty, watered down, pathetic version of their demands that the Biden administration and the boss-friendly union "leadership" told them they should be happy with.
"The workers must ~~emancipate themselves~~ beg for table scraps from the government"
"But 4 months later they got 90% of their demands"
Damn seems like a huge fucking waste of 4 months considering it was going to happen anyway, oh and look that 10% was all the health and safety stiff they went on strike for in the first place.
Did those goalposts come with the wheels already on or are they an aftermarket modification?
Go back to reddit you smug piece of shit liberal. That isn't even what "moving the goalposts" is you stupid fuck.
Did you also call it moving the goalposts when feminist groups said "Not like that!" as your psychotic politicians used their rhetoric to justify imperialist wars?
Because that's all Genocide Joe is doing, but with labor organizing instead of feminism.
Shut the fuck up about goalposts you debate pervert, this isn't a fucking game to us
A vote for someone is approval of them. It legitimises them. We're not being casual, that's just what a vote is.
You are voting for your representative. Your vote signals approval of said representative. Or does Biden come to your house after you've voted for him, to ask you "hey Jack, what kind of vote was it you gave me? Do you support me a lot or just kind of?"
Voting legitimises the government. The US has, time and again, used the fact that it's government is elected (never mind the fact that voter participation is low and popular vote doesn't matter) to impose it's will on countries which has "wrong democracies".
I stopped reading after your first two blocks of text, because it's clear you're just doing handwringing and semantics wrapped with some slight condescention. I'm not interested in simple rhetorical debatebroisms, and I'm not interested in your lib-cliches of pretending to acknowledge issues only to then trivialise and ignore them, whilst completely misunderstanding what is actually being said. Misunderstanding being the charitable interpretation.
I'm sure the rest of the text is you speaking about the climate in some dumbass manner and saying some dumb bullshit about how Biden "at least lets us work with him" or whatever. Probably something akin to "sure it's not as fast as you'd want, but at least it's something". The world is going to burn and you will sit in the rubble wondering what happened. I'll bet 5$ that you say some variation of "we can work on pushing Biden left"
It's clear you have no concept of how political power is wielded.
Shut the fuck up liberal
aaaand I stopped reading. If you think "not supporting genocide" is a purity test, then you're fucked in the head. Go vote for genocide, but don't pretend like you give a shit.
Another reason not read your drivel: You do not meaningfully engage with the arguments presented to you.
You do shit like this:
Once again ignoring the explanation for why your vote signifies approval. Not engaging with the arguments why. This makes it clear you wish to grandstand and condescend. If you wonder why you're being treated with derision, it is because you yourself began this interaction with a thick veneer of smugness. Therefore I and others treat you in the same way. You do not understand basic political mechanics, you do not comprehend basic reasoning presented to you, you are not interested in engaging with thoughts that are challenging your worldview, you are merely repeating the same tired lines again and again, hidden behind a facade of comradely understanding/engagement as a poor rhetorical trick to undermine those you disagree with. Fuck off back to reddit where this tired shtick isn't as obvious.
I do not wish to repeat myself, you are well aware why you are wrong on this point, as the material reality does not care for how you feel about the candidate. I don't give a shit about what you feel your vote means, I care about what it does.
The candidate will use your vote as an argument for legitimisation. I have said this twice already. You are clearly not interested in anything but soapboxing.
Go clap for Kamala Harris and Joe "pro-bussing" "Strom Thurmond Eulogizer" "Crime Bill advocate" "mass fracker" "Tara Reade redacted" "Union Breaker" "Mass Genocider" "Abortion Banner" "Trans People Can Get Persecuted I Won't Care" Biden continues to deport more people than Trump.
Almost, but not quite.
What a vote actually means is "I prefer the result I expect from this vote over the result I expect from the other vote."
If withholding your vote this time means they offer more next time, that's a result you might want. On the other hand, if you always vote blue as long as you slightly prefer the democrats, you give the democrats permission to move to the right, slightly behind the republicans, indefinitely.
in practice, though, they'll always find some way to gin up votes without offering substance. that's their whole job.
This is not true in the slightest.
Why would it be? The Democrats only need to be slightly less bad than the Republicans, and your vote is guaranteed.
Democrats are not the American Left.
What have the Democrats actually done?
The policies of the Democratic party are bought by corporate interests. The material interests of a corporation run directly counter to those of a worker. Workers want higher wages, companies want lower. Workers want public healthcare, insurance companies want private. Workers want less war, the MIC wants more. Workers want lower housing costs, hedge funds and landlords want higher. Who do the Democrats side with? What direction is America headed in?
Is this a democracy or a good-cop bad-cop routine?
Jesus Christ. Also, center right? Relative to whom, Saudi Arabia?
My brother how in the hell do you think the Overton window shifted to the right in the first place? It was because of tepid endorsement of ever more right wing political parties, because at least they're not as bad as the other guy hyuck
I could understand believing this if you lived in Cuba or Vietnam or China but you have the evidence of your own experience and you are just choosing to ignore it for reasons, idk what they are, vibes?
You know what, actually yes, hold people accountable for the crimes of the past, so that you don't just blindly believe them when they tell you things will be different now (and even when they don't)
Excellent point, this is why you should still make limited use of the electoral system to vote third party
Biden is doing a genocide
Political power grows out the barrel of a gun. Aiming mine at you
No, you can wrote as many paragraphs as you want to try to define how voting for somebody isn't supporting them but it's obvious bullshit.
Maybe you can manage to convince yourself but "just because I used my vote to say this is my choice for who should be president doesn't mean I think they should be president" is going to continue to fall on its face here.
I didn't read everything you had to say because who has the time for that, but wanted to respond to one thing that you said:
Whether or not you feel your vote is an endorsement, they will throw it in your face and treat it as though it is, without nuance. It is mentally excruciating to be told by political leaders YOU WANT THIS, YOU VOTED FOR US, as they carry out their most unhinged plans.
I am sure it has been like this forever, but never more blatant than in the last decade in the UK, with the most pathetic leadership on all fronts falling back on statements like this because they know they have no credibility.