Real leftists understand the principles of harm reduction. Voting for Harris, as voting for Biden would have done, has the outcome of reducing harm compared to trump winning. Sure, there will still be harm, but it'll be less, and that's incredibly important. It's basically the same foundation behind how we need to help drug addiction. Although Harris will likely cause even less harm than Biden.

Chances are that the "leftists" arguing for the purity test of Harris are people who aren't truly at risk in this election. They won't have their basic human rights torn apart if trump wins. They're leftists in name only.

Very often, I get the impression these “leftists” are disingenuous. I figure they’re Russians agents trying to cause instability, GOP astroturfers, or trolls who didn’t get care and compassion in the real world and need to see professional mental/emotional help.

I've noticed one very important detail:

Nearly all the anti-Harris posts are saying the same things in slightly different ways. When challenged almost none of them respond.

Harris 2024. Fuck the republican traitor filth.

Well realistically, what's to be gained from engaging with endless unrealistic purity tests? Of course we should always strive for the best we can. But we also need to come to terms with the fact that a lot of people can't or won't

Oh christ. How much of this anti-Harris sentiment is actually out there?

Most of the progressives I've seen are delighted that the party is listening for the first time in fucking ages. The whole "purity test" narrative was shown to be complete fucking bullshit when Harris dropped out and progressives accepted her.

But that won't stop centrists. They need to continue the bogus narrative that progressives can't be satisfied so they can keep moving to the right, ostensibly to capture the votes of Republicans, even though they know that Republicans aren't reasonable and won't accept the capitulation centrists call compromise.

Oh hey they wrote an article about us!

Some of the anti-Harris "leftists" are probably just trolls, bots and tankies doing the bidding of our foreign enemies.

“Certain leftists want a 100% morally pure option that doesn’t realistically exist in our political system right now. I wish it did but it doesn’t,” said Furey, who also shared his frustration on TikTok. “And it annoys me that rather than use their vote to make a difference in what ways they can, they throw their hands up and say screw the system. It’s a cop-out and completely against what we on the left should stand for.”

Bingo.

Is there a lot I don't like about Harris? Sure. So what though? The only other realistic option I have is so, so much worse on every single front. If I believe in making things better, that means doing what I can to avoid the worst possible options, and doing things that are effective. Voting Green, or for an independent isn't effective, not under the system we currently have.

We're just lucky she is not running for President of Lemmy

Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

Some of these “leftists” are conservatives who are afraid of the white supremacy rhetoric on the right so they cannot join the white supremacists outright, but they hate the gays, or trans, or don’t believe in climate change or something else.

I think the root cause is religion, I wish we could treat religion as a private thing and just remove its influence from public spheres in all countries.

Does it even make sense that someone else’s (doesn’t matter whose) storytelling or world origin myth should have this much public influence or authority? It’s unreasonable and borderline psychotic.

I'm voting Harris, for all the reasons outlined in this thread, but damn it chaps my hide that this is like the trolley problem where the trolly will go down the 100% evil track unless you pull the lever to go down the %25 less evil track. Everybody in here seems to think we shouldn't want a better track, it's just not practical or possible to do anything better.

Is nobody else here frustrated that the only alternative we have to the orange fascist is a prosecutor that put countless brothers and sister into the racist for-profit prison system for having weed? This is the alternative that progressives are excited about?

I read a line somewhere -I forget where- but it was something to the effect that always voting for the lesser of two evils means getting the second worst possible america. Are y'all so pragmatic that wanting anything other than the second worst america is automatically interpreted as a bot, or a Russian troll, or a stupid college kid in a Che t-shirt that only wants to endlessly critique?