this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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Well, they don’t, very specifically. They don’t have either chamber, the white house or a majority of SCOTUS.
That’s - that’s what the voting for them would do.
They have it within their power to listen to their base and stop supporting genocide. You consider that unthinkable.
But the whole point of your post is that they'll win if people turn up for them. They have the power to decide whether people will vote to unfuck us in the midterms. I'm saying people (at least people like me) will not turn up to vote for genocide. All they have to do is say "we're no longer going to provide weapons to Israel" and I'll be there. I'll spend my saturdays banging on doors. I'll spend my evenings making calls for candidates. I've done it before...and I'd love to do it again. It's fun and exciting and fulfilling. But not for this party as it is. And again, they know that, they're suppressing their postmortem report for that reason. Maybe folks like me don't matter, but obviously I think we do, and so do you if you're making a post like this trying to convince us to show up despite our principles.
I know you're trying to disengage and I'm sorry. I can't help myself; this is a smear that I can't just bear without responding to it.
Well your choices are to fight (vote Democratic) or not fight (not vote / not vote Democratic).
Sounds like you’re not going to fight and the reason is Palestine. That’s up to you, of course.
Is voting for a democrat the only way to fight republicans? News to me!
So like...I help organize folks supporting workers, resisting cops, protesting, etc. That doesn't count? It'd be better if I just sat on my ass and did all my fighting in the ballot box every two years?
Look, would it make you feel better if I said I'd be conflicted if I lived in a swing state? That I'm open to the idea that I might think differently if my choice not to vote actually mattered to the result of the election, rather than merely a signal to the democrats to do better?
In an election, for the purposes of determining who will govern - YES.
Well, my feelings being irrelevant, for a national office you should be open to supporting them because not everyone lives in your solid blue leftier-than-thou state. Or at least preface your denunciation of our only option accordingly.
If you can’t, you can’t. But on election day in November 2024 a bunch of people - for whatever reason - chose this most incompetent, corrupt, and demented timeline. And for those who did so because they hold high morals or standards - that’s ironic at least, if not unconscionable.
I'm not denouncing your decision, you're denouncing mine! I think it's fine for you to vote for a party that supports genocide if you think that it's the lesser of two evils. You go for it.
I don't understand what you mean that I should support the democrats from my very-liberal state because...other people don't live in liberal states? I don't follow, but if there's some connection there, I'm happy to hear about it.
The democrats chose this in 2024 (well, I'd say they've BEEN choosing it since Bill Clinton). They poll on this stuff, they know what policies will get them elected and what policies will lose them donors. They're the moral actors here; they're the ones that make the decisions that matter. We just get to say our opinion once every few years. I wish people like you would stop trying to put it on individual voters. Blame the people with power. They know how to win, but they choose to lose, because, for them, losing (or at least risking losing) is better than doing what they'd need to do to win.
And I wish you'd stop saying this about having high morals or standards! My standards are not very high. Don't arm a genocide. Pretty easy. Low bar. Low standards.
Okay, mutually assured denouncement.
Leaving aside the issue of downballot races, I think the position of denouncing a national candidate while at the same time expecting that candidate to win (because, blue state), and being okay with that; is a nuanced one. And unless you were going to lead with that, I’d expect it would simply come off as “no one should vote for them period” which is obviously a problem if they’re running against trump more so than your average non-demented, less-openly-corrupt, non-rapist candidate.
How can it not be on individual voters? Voters elect! The Evilcorps Party can do anything they want to do on the campaign except vote. They can’t be responsible for each individual’s vote because it’s individual. The responsibility necessarily lies with the voters, and when they fuck up so horribly the bottom of society drops out, it is very appropriate to blame them.
I never said anything like no one should vote for them period. I absolutely understand the impulse to vote for the democrats even in a solid blue state. I aint judging. I don't like being told I'm bad because I won't vote for someone who will fund a genocide.
And hey for downballot races I'm with you, there are some stellar options out there. There are some really cool people running for state and local offices.
Dear god if this conversation hasn't been nuanced, I don't know what is lol. Though I don't think "I won't vote for candidates that will arm a genocide" is an especially nuanced position. Frankly it's wild that it's even a contentious position.
I'll tell you how it's not on individual voters: individual voters don't get to decide what the party platform is. The party does. It's on the party. Their platform determines what they'll (hopefully) do, but also whether people will vote for them.
By this logic, we shouldn't blame Ford for the Pinto (dating myself). How could it not be on the individual customers? Customers purchase (they're the ones that give Ford power!). Ford can do anything it wants with regard to the design of the Pinto, but it can't buy the cars from itself. Ford can't be responsible for each customer's purchase, because it's their choice to buy or not buy a Pinto. The responsibly necessarily lies with the purchasers, so if they fuck up so horribly that they blow up in a defective car, it's very appropriate to blame them.
...er...anyway, no; car companies shouldn't make dangerous cars, and political parties shouldn't support genocide. They can choose to do or not do those things, and that's their choice, not the choice of the individuals who have to deal with them.
And the party is made up of . . . . . c'mon . . . . the party is made up of . . . ??
Of the voters, right. Yes. Voters have a voice in the party platform. It's not even all that byzantine to do - you show up at the meetings basically. That's how new (or old) ideas get in.
Now, party politics, yeah that's a thing in ANY organization whether it's the DNC, WalMart, or the boys at the bar. So those of you who are big into the "Democrats should do everything I think immediately because i think it" yeah that . . doesn't work. Working with others doesn't come naturally to a lot of the Lemmy left I notice. Compromise and letting people have wins and such like that aren't really accepted, or possibly understood.
So if Ford had a mechanism to let consumers say what they wanted in a car, yes, the consumers would be able to say they don't want cars to explode on impact. But Ford doesn't, do they. Ford car buyers don't have a direct voice. So the analogy fails. Not to mention the whole exploding thing was seriously covered up for years and years as opposed to being published openly and then voted on, which makes it even worse as an analogy.
You're very sweet, man. I really hope you keep at it and make the world a better place. If you want to call the ghouls running the democratic party voters (I'm sure they vote too), be my guest, but they're not "the voters," they don't represent the voters, and they don't listen to the voters. The voters don't control the platform...they don't even have a meaningful voice on the platform. No matter how many people show up to the meetings saying "we should not arm genocide," the platform will not change. You will be asked to leave, and if you don't leave you'll be arrested. And if, by the grace of god, you take over a caucus, the DNC can and will simply ignore you.
I'm all for compromise and letting people have wins and doing politics. But not around genocide. We don't compromise on that. It's not "because I think it" it's because of the tens of thousands of dead palestinians rotting in shallow graves with american bullets and shrapnel riddling their bodies.
People have approximately no impact on policy. You may be familiar with the Gillens & Page (2014) paper. It's obviously a little long in the tooth at this point, but I don't see any reason to imagine it's less true now. Customers probably have more impact on the design of a car, because focus groups are actually trying to get info to make you buy the car rather than not buy the car. However politicians don't care whether you vote or not, it's just that if you vote they need you to prefer them just a little.
And the particular analogy here is between the Ford Pinto blowing up and the parties arming the genocide of palestinians. So no, we don't have a mechanism to say whether we want that to be the policy, just like consumers don't get to decide if the Pinto being dangerous is a design choice or not. I'm not sure how the coverup is relevant to the analogy. The point is that the customers/voters don't have power to change the car/policy...so stop blaming them.
Anyway, the Ford case doesn't help you see what I mean? Sure it's an analogy, there are always all kinds of ways analogies don't work, but the point is that I'm using it to point at a way it does work.
Well I disagree, obviously, but it doesn’t mean there weren’t things like this: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/convention-floor-erupts-as-dems-restore-references-to-god-jerusalem-in-platform (apologies fir the source, it was the first one in my enshittified search results)
Which was obvious bullshit. But then look at 12 years later and https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/aug/14/democrats-have-officially-abandoned-god/ (apologies again for the source - ugh) and hey lookit that: forward motion.
Does it take too long? Yes. Is it ruled by 300 people who have jockeyed for years to be one of the leaders, yes. Like all human endeavor it is flawed. But it doesn’t exist without the people who make up the party.
We need to get money out of politics, kill the Slaver’s College, re-democratize voting, kill FPTP and a ton of other things. But those things won’t happen through a third party, or the republicans. They can happen through the Democrats if only we’d all agree for one goddamn day. Which is the point of the meme.
I don't mind the sources, it's got a sprinkling of schadenfreude!
Is that forward motion? Looks more like walking in a circle to me, and like the focus is absolutely not on the suffering of other human beings. Like..bandying about how much we reference god or not while we fund the extermination of palestinians.
If they win without changing, why would they change? The Democrats have shown us over and over that if they win, they take it for granted. When they win they think "well I guess I could scooch a little further right." Look I'm not saying they gotta guillotine the leadership (though that would be welcome and might in reality be required for my much more reasonable line in the sand), i'm just not going to vote for them until they stop arming a genocide.
So you’re a single-issue voter?
That’s a thing. And yes, if you don’t recall, the whole god bless the united states is a reaganism that infected all discourse and mutated into brylcreem and flag pins so specifically dropping it from the platform after spectacularly failing to do it as we wanted in 2012 is progress.
I'd love to be more than a single issue voter, but yeah I think that issue is completely overriding. I guess i'm a single-issue vote-withholder. And again, I'm not judging anyone who thinks otherwise, or are single-issue voters for the environment or whatever. I just object to being told I'm the problem when I'm not the one arming a genocide.
e: on reflection I'm not really sure that's right, though, in that if the republicans cut aid to nothing and the democrats cut aid to a thousand dollars, I wouldn't go vote for the republicans. It's not that it can't be overridden inherently or something...its about the scale. The scale is what makes it so overriding.
Well the opposite happened so - I mean republicans cut more than funding, they closed up the entire agency, leaving millions of people around the world without food and medicine, and the Democrats would have continued sending food and medicine. That’s scale.
And just to reiterate the genocide didn’t stop, and trump has sold the Palestinians down the river for thirty pieces if silver and a statue of himself plus the naming rights. So how did that even help? There’s no way Harris would have even come close to that. Much less start a War for our buddy Bibi and let Pooty-poot continue his own genocide.
It just makes zero sense to not try and make it better. Letting trump win - even for the ethical reasons stated - is worse.
Sorry, to be clear, in my edit I meant if both sides cut US military aid to Israel, not aid in general. And yeah cutting off USAID is horrifying. I don't think the scale is the same as the genocide in palestine (it's a lot less money, and I think that money spent buying bombs is probably more effective at killing than money buying aid is at saving lives, but I may be wrong about that), but no doubt that's one major difference. There are lots of differences, and I don't deny they matter. I just deny they matter as much as the agreement between the parties to help israel exterminate Palestinians.
I'm also not convinced Harris wouldn't have us invading Iran all the same; she was extremely hawkish on Iran. Just go look at what she was saying in 2024.
I also don't see any reason to think Palestinians would have been better off under Harris. Biden gave way more to Israel than Trump has (again, granted, he had more time to do so...i just don't see any reason to think it would ever go down). Maybe bibi and putin "feel empowered," and we're just gonna vibes that into assuming it's actually worse? IDK vibes don't make guns go bang, bullets do, and it's the bullets that I think are the same.
And as for how it helped; it hasn't yet. If the democrats announce that they're changing course on Palestine, then win, then follow through I'll feel like it's made all the difference in the world. I'm not holding my breath, but that's how it'll help. As I said, i don' think voting for the democrats wouldn't have helped either, so I'd rather try for the option that has a chance.
Do you support the genocide of Native Americans or African Americans? Because that’s still A Thing and not fighting the republicans furthers it.
Who said anything about not fighting republicans? I'm all for fighting republicans.
Of course they are still a thing, and the democrats are significantly better on those issues than the republicans are (still not great, but significantly better). Palestine is an issue the democrats are not significantly better on and it's significantly more dire and imminent. I don't think any indigenous or black people would disagree with that; it matters a lot of course, but there are at least 75,000 dead palestinians in the last few years. So...yes it matters? Yes we should fight the republicans? No I don't think we should accept the slaughter of Palestinians in exchange for progress on that?
You have to realize that this kind of question just makes people go straight to “death to America”, not “we have to vote for a more polite team to continue America’s long and bipartisan tradition of genocide, slavery, and imperialism”, right? Your framing is likely making people less likely to vote if that’s what you care about.
Well, I’m pretty sure those people were going to throw their vote away again anyway.
If some rando’s framing prevents someone from voting - ehh they really weren’t gonna vote anyway.
And, to be fair, if they’re saying “death to America” then letting the republicans run the table is a great way to accomplish that.
Even if that is the case, “republicans cheat” isn’t a great argument to get non-voters (not those who purposefully abstained) to vote.
So what you’ve accomplished here is that (from your point of view), leftists are more likely to vote Republican and (from my point of view) non voters are demoralized further by their lack of sway in a place where democracy is already dead, causing them to stay home. People don’t like participating in rigged systems where cheating is common. If you didn’t want republicans to keep winning, you should probably delete this post lol.
Sounds like some .ml stuff, alright
Sounds like some shooting the messenger stuff, alright
oh the messenger eh. The person who has no authority whatsoever? That person?
And who might that be?
Non-voters already have no motivation to go to the polls even with the current state of the world and you've just told them that it's not a fairly run election lmao. Why do you think someone needs to have authority to tell you the issue here?
I think you just don't like feeling uncomfortable with feeling like dems are going to lose yet again to the worst people on the planet if you don't anxiously post memes and comments in support of the democrats. They aren't organically popular. They need people like you to remind others that this system, like the divine right of kings, is a system that is will last throughout time. But this system is better because we get to choose the face of our abusers. It's the best we can do and we don't deserve better. Thank you for letting the livestock know their place.
No I mean the messenger in “shooting the messenger” is a person with no authority. That’s why shooting them is pointless.
Voters have authority.
You’ve got quite the complete dystopian take on elections, which is all cynical hyperbole and somehow wishful thinking, and must have taken awhile to refine so well done. But, you have the authority to throw your vote away to ensure the realization of that take so - okay.
I’m gonna go over here though where there's a way to make things better. Because that is possible.
I'm sure when leftists are blamed again for not voting for someone funding a genocide, you'll be all over the angry comments being like "no, you see, they told us this would happen explicitly, so it's useless to be angry at them!" and definitely won't join in on shooting said messengers. Leftists are simultaneously numerous enough to cost the democrats the election while also being not numerous enough for the democrats to want to move left to capture that block. The enemy is weak and also strong.
Do voters actually have authority? How many incredibly popular policies are ignored and how many incredibly unpopular policies are pushed through regardless? Princeton University said public opinion has “near-zero” impact on U.S. law. Should you just make a meme that tells voters to enact their authority on all those in the Epstein files if you believe their authority exists? Seems like voters have a singular ability to legitimize the authority of those who rule over us. You don't even know if I live in a swing state or not to ascertain if my vote actually matters. In your mind, should the only political people be those in purple states? Should people in solid red or blue states not coordinate about more helpful solutions other than voting for who kills endless people here and abroad? When democrats regain power and continue deadly republican policy, will you be too busy celebrating at brunch to care?
No they're just morons who demand to vote against their interests.
Yes! The votes determine who takes office, see? That’s how that works.
Well i’m suspect of any sociological determination but the simple answer is: opinion is not a vote. We don’t vote on the laws, we vote on the people who vote on the laws. So having an opinion doesn’t do anything to the law. It’s like saying public opinion has “near-zero” effect on the migration of the South African swallow.
Wow, you really - um. Yes? Voters do authorize people to hold office (and, by extension, deny others the authority to hold office) but the “ruling over us” part is just a weird way to say it. You see, governments are how societies agree to . . . Okay wait, so when people agree to live in society, they . . Okay let’s talk about the Constitution. You see they left this England place because it was bogus, and they were like, hey - if we don’t get some cool rules, pronto, then we’ll just be bogus too!
When trump is gone I am definitely going to go to brunch. But otherwise (and still) no.
Do you even know what leftist interests are? Maybe they're just against your interests which are more closely aligned with fascists than we feel comfortable attaching ourselves to.
The electors do that technically, not voters.
Cool, so voters get to choose the face of our abusers but have no control on their abuse since that's just an ignorable opinion. Great job. No notes.
Vibes-based political opinion presented as humor.
Unsurprising. I'll still be fighting for something better because I'm not a white supremacist.