this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2024
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Step 1: Vote for Biden now. Step 2: Vote for every Democrat. Do this until the Republican party is a smoking crater. Step 3:Then primary the fuck out of the AIPAC and oil-backed Democrats once you get past Step 2.
It's important to let the Democratic Party think they've got the levers of power, then shift the sands beneath them.
And of it doesn't work, at least you didn't get Trump, because no matter how bad the Democrats are, Trump and the Republican Party are so much worse.
Keep pushing it left until it's Democrats vs Democratic Socialists in the general election.
This is how you move the Overton window.
It’s certainly taking a page from the conservatives who moved it their way
They've been at it for the last 70 years and have been very successful, completely catching the left (the actual left) in the U.S. off guard. I don't expect the left to be able to drag the conversation back to the left in any less time.
I'm so happy to see someone saying these words. Please say more, I hope you're heard!
To play devil's advocate, this has been the strategy for decades and yet America has been moving to the right economically. Why would this time be any different? Would it not make sense that people with money would still be the ones the prevailing parties curtail to, not the public?
I've been doing this strategy for 24 years and I'm still waiting for it to start working.
IMHO it's because Step 2 (Blue No Matter Who) tolerates corruption, which loses moderates. There's a stable equilibrium between steps 2 and 3.
Nope it's because step 2. Vote in non presidential elections as well. Isn't being followed. As well as not following step 3. Stop whining about the Democrats we have, run as one of the Democrats we need. There are a ton of state and local offices Republicans win unopposed. I bet if we started consistently running and funding solid left candidates to run against the Republicans as Democrats. Take advantage of the Democrat parties resources. We could accidentally start winning. Even primarying neoliberals. The DSA is doing it in some places.
Wow! What a false, disingenuous argument. So standard operating procedure.
To start with. The slogan "Blue no matter who" isn't 1 decade old. Let alone decades old. You wouldn't make that argument if you'd payed attention to what's actually been going on. Or more importantly were being genuine.
Solidarity has been a major issue for Democrats for decades. And the actual left for a century. And this sort of shit is why.
Vote blue no matter who is absolutely part of the answer. And it's far overdue. But it's only a part. The other is voting in every election. Every single one. Not just presidential. Voting for president is honesty one of the least important votes a person can cast. Still important. But so many things are more impactful. No presidents agenda will be implemented good or bad without support in Congress. They make the laws, sign the bills, allocate the funds.
And the last part. Get off your whiny ass and run for office. I vote in every election. And I leave a ton of offices blank. Because it's a Republican running unopposed. I'd jump at the chance to vote for a DSA running as a democrat against a Republican. Or just about any other actual leftist for that matter. And I'm not alone. Hell I would even vote for an ml if you all could help yourselves. You know stop acting like capitalist. Trying to centralize power and jailing / killing everyone that disagrees with you.
Funny, because everywhere else I see you, you aren't playing devil's advocate, but being sincere in peddling this.
But surely someone who craves fascism would NEVER be disingenuous!
I absolutely do not crave fascism, that's completely unfounded and highly offensive. I have openly admitted my intention to vote for Biden, who I also harshly criticize. Unless, of course, you think voting for Biden makes you a fascist.
Rather, is it truly impossible to believe that a Leftist is tired of playing the same electoral game, and instead believes grassroots pressure is required from outside the electoral sector to enact change?
Entirely fuck off with that bullshit libel, that's extremely offensive and just a way for you to slander, rather than actually address the concerns I raised.
Finally someone gets it!
This is what I've been saying for years, but far less succinctly.
Some people have a hard time believing that the Democratic Party is not one whole monolith that always votes on party lines even when they disagree (that’s the other one)
It's crazy the people think like that when there are people like Ocasio Cortez Sanders Sinema and Manchin all in the same party. The Democratic party has been for at minimum the last 50 years a coalition party of everyone who was not an abject bigot or racist.
That terrorist Reagan had such a massive win with the aid of a foreign government back in the eighties. That it terrified everyone else. The Democratic party struggled for that whole decade trying to find a new formula to winning against that fascistic terrorist. And in their flailing the neoliberals were the first ones to regain control. And shortly solidified it leading to a lot of the dysfunction we're still facing to this day. But the party has never been a neoliberal monolith.
We don't need to erase Republicans to change how we vote. That is controlled at the state level. Should be really easy to do in blue states where Republicans have less influence.
Perhaps to late to change this coming elections voting system, but we can right now start making the organizations we need to push for it ASAP.
Imagine feeling free to vote for who best represents you, sure in the knowledge that if your preference didn’t win, your vote would still count against the Republicans.
I remember this strategy when it started with "Vote for Gore now." I've got the Kucinich for President bumper sticker to prove it. I do not believe this strategy will ever work, mostly because America isn't nearly as progressive as you think it is.
Us weirdos need to get used to being unhappy about the government because it will never be what we want because it's a giant group project and those always suck ass.
That would have more weight except people voting for Nader gave us 8 years of Bush by not understanding how a FPTP system works, so I don't know that Gore is really an argument against this so much as for it.
It's not an argument for or against voting blue no matter who. It's an argument against our shitty system that gives us such shitty choices.
This 3 step plan is more like:
Step 1: vote biden now Step 2: vote for every democrat Step 3: ????? Step 4: the republican party is a smoking crater Step 5: ????? Step 6: primary the fuck out of AIPAC and oil democrats Step 7: profit
You seem to think that voting will magically make things better, and that is why we are up shit creek right now. I don’t expect you to know exactly what happens in between, but I don’t get the blind optimism and the desire for inaction.
We didn’t get trump because people didn’t vote for clinton hard enough, she won the popular vote. We got him because all people did was vote. If our only tool to move left is voting, we’ll continue ratcheting right.
In summary, destroy your enemies then start destroying the least pure of your allies. Continue until you’ve made a better world.
— Hitler
— Stalin
— Mao
— This guy ⬆️
There's a bit of a difference between wanting representatives who aren't in the pockets of Big Oil and voting that way, and a Night of the Long Knives.
Yes, but not within the strategy that I described.
We need to become a one party state.
Edit: you want to give representation to people who would deny you representation if given the opportunity. How can you not see how stupid that is?
I checked this person's comments to see if there was any interpretation that wasn't an extremely creepy and authoritarian.
The most recent few are not promising.
Why? I commented something you didn't like for some reason so I must be a "creepy authoritarian?" What is the person I responded to advocating for if not a one party state. There are two major political parties in the US, that person wants the Republican party to be reduced to a "smoking crater." Two parties minus one party equals one party. That's about as simple as arithmetic gets.
Yeah, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of how things function. Did we end up with one party when the Whigs party went away? No. We had the Republican party become the other major player.
We need more than two parties, not fewer. We just need those parties to ideally be further left, where the majority of Americans are. One party systems you end up without any dissenting voice to speak up when something wrong is being done, so they are allowed to do whatever they want and end up dominating the people. A better system of voting allows voting based on what people actually want, not strategy, so there are a larger variety of voices more closely representing the people.
I think you fundamentally misunderstand how things function. If the Republican party is destroyed, Republican voters will fracture into multiple parties, dividing conservative voters and making it impossible for any one of the new parties to compete with the Democrats in our winner-take-all, first-past-the-post electoral system. The federal government would become a defacto single party system, with the Democrats being that party. Conservatives likely would coalesce around a new single party and join efforts to try and take on the Democrats, but that party would exist to do nothing but obstruct, like the Republican party today. So we would once again be in a situation where there is one party trying to represent a plurality of Americans and an opposition party trying to obstruct everything that party wants to do.
If we want a system of plurality and proportional representation, it would require changing not only the US constitution, but 50 state constitutions as well. How do you propose accomplishing that with two parties competing for control, when one of those parties wants only to obstruct?
Sure, over a short enough time frame, that's true. However, the power vaccum would quickly be filled by another party, and thus most people wouldn't consider the US to have a single-party system. It's the same way how you don't breathe in the time between every exhale and inhale, but people don't consider you to have "stopped breathing" because that's not a very useful conceptualization.
Which I acknowledged. Or did you stop reading after "defacto single party system?"
No, it's just that I didn't notice the part where you admitted you were wrong, so I felt the need to explain why you weren't correct.
Oh is that what you think you did? Interesting.
There's something simple here all right, but it's not the math.
By all means, enlighten me. What am I missing?
Getting rid of one party in a First Past The Post system would result in another party taking its place. Barring any mention of reforming how elections are held in America, it is not reasonable to assume someone advocating for dissolving one party wants the remaining party to be the only party.
Exactly. Get rid of the Republicans and another obstructionist party would eventually take their place, putting us right back where we are right now. You want to replace the first-past-the-post electoral system with one of proportional representation and political plurality? Fine, but how do you plan on accomplishing that with the Republicans, or some other obstructionist fighting you at every turn?
look buddy, you asked for an explanation, there it is
Here's an example for you: in my country, we don't have a republican party. We barely have a pure conservative party any more. But what we do have are 3 or more (depending on your riding) parties that you can vote for and not feel like you're wasting your ballot.
And there are sometimes even some good choices in there, because politicians are actually competing over sane policy rather than existential issues like whether we should or should not eradicate trans people. Which is just trying to legalize hate; it's not how a functioning democracy should be operating.
Oh yeah, this shit like this comment here is why the working class must never disarm.
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