The ruling class of America sees the mayoral elections of Mamdani and Wilson as more dangerous and threatening than Trump and MAGA.
That’s why they’ve been fighting socialist and communist ideology for over 100 years. It would give us real power in politics and they would lose the privileges afforded to them by the status quo.
Should have elected Luigi
He wasn’t only here ticket.
Watching the Mamdani election play out was wild. Seeing the biggest challenge being 2 people from the same side argue and talk crap for months was disgusting. Siding with Trump on top of it all because of how scared they were. They were so desperate they had no choice but to not even pretend anymore, like when Biden magically started winning against Bernie in 2020. The next 10 years will be even weirder as more people catch on.
Honest my ass. They lie almost as much as their orange hogfather
I don’t vote for Republicans. Never have, never will. I do engage with Democrats, and tell them my needs and expectations.
Which they promptly ignore
Yeah, I try to vote for the progressive during primaries too.
Man, Russian propaganda really did a number on your country
You are so blinded by western propaganda that everything that defy it is <insert a foreign danger here> propaganda.
US politics is a result of US propaganda
Still not entirely sure that propaganda didn’t originate from Russia. He and Putin are besties.
People blame Russians because the propaganda from rich Americans is so ever present it’s hard to notice. We’re like fish trying to see the water.
They spent $24 billion dollars over the past election. And that doesn’t even count all of corporate media. Ever notice how pretty much everything everyone on TV says benefits the status quo?
Sure, Russians are running whatever ops they’re running, but whatever they can do is a drop in the bucket next to multiple 24 hour news channels.
The lesser evil argument again. We can research democracy and try to explain to the self proclaimed democratic world leader how it works (btw usa is rated extremely low on the democracy index)
What y’all are yearning for has a name
Democracy
Don’t let them pretend you have that when you don’t
“Which of these two ways do you want to be fucked,” is NOT democracy. Democracy is when power is accessible and attainable to any citizen with good ideas who makes the effort.
Helldivers is not as far from reality as one would think: managed democracy
In a democracy, no individual has any significant political power. Political power is only accessible collectively. Having good ideas and making effort may not lead to the collective wanting to follow your lead.
At least in Canada we have an ineffective third party that capitalists don’t even bother to capture.
Some years ago I concluded that in my own value framework, Hypocrisy was one of the greatest sins, just short of things like purposefully harming others for fun.
So yeah, an honest greedy fucker who doesn’t hide they don’t give a rat’s arse about who they harm and how badly in the pursuit of their personal upside maximization is actually a better person (more precisely, a less bad person) than an hypocrite greedy fuck who won’t give a rat’s arse about who they harm and how badly in the pursuit of their personal upside maximization but try and pass themselves as caring and nice.
You see, they’re both doing nasty things to others for personal gain, but the latter is poisoning the well of trust and by hiding their true nature manages to do far more harm than the former before people catch on to it and stop it.
Further, as far as I know there is no positive reason to use hypocrisy: it’s only ever used to hide evil intent.
I suspect that alll in all hypocrites do a lot more harm to others than people who are just openly selfish.
That said, in the US Republicans too are hypocrites - notice how they promised all sorts of good things to people like farmers and then did the opposite.
Hypocrisy seems to be a general problem of big party politics.
[re-commenting with no instance shaming]
Every Marxist-Leninist user
No rational or decent person ever refused to vote against Republicans in swing states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States
The issue isn’t one of rationality or decency. The issue is of exhausting a constituency with barriers and terrorizing them with criminal liability while controlling the privatized mechanism for counting votes
At some point, its two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner. “No harm in voting” totally misses the problem at hand.
So what you’re saying is that you already have every “rational and decent person” voting against Republicans every election and that’s not enough to win.
That’s the joke, yeah. I can explain the reality if you want though.
Nothing lost by protest voting then
Reform is a tool deployed by the oligarchy to stay in power. It stops progress and results in incremental fascism disguised as a lesser evil. Reform gives the illusion that voters have a part in deciding political outcomes despite several studies showing voters have zero influence in politicians and their policies.
Cool cool, so why does voting vs not voting matter? What actionable alternatives would you suggest and why do those preclude checking a box on a piece of paper?
I’d argue that even an illusory vote has value as a public barometer. If 80% of a voter base is consistently voting against the incumbent party it tells you way more about their discontent than 80% not showing up.
You’re correct about that. In a chapter titled, Should We Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?, Lenin argues that there are a number of reasons why communists ought to participate in elections even if they aren’t an effective means of implementing change.
As you mentioned, elections can be useful for a public barometer, they can also be useful for promoting ideas, they can be used to test potential leaders for opportunism, etc.
The caveat is that those goals are only really useful in the context of an actual communist party. It doesn’t really do us any good to know that people are dissatisfied with the current ruling party if they just support a different bourgeois party. It undermines the ideas we’re trying to promote if we just sheepdog people back into the fold of incrementalism and lesser-evilism and having faith in the system. And it does us little good to test “leaders” who are already avowed anti-communists.
All of which is to say, there are reasons to participate in US elections, but not through the democrats, rather through a third party that actually stands for what we’re trying to promote, like PSL.
Really, the main reason that Lenin argues for participation in electoralism is for the sake of reaching people where they’re at in order to encourage them to pursue other, more useful approaches, such as strikes.
I appreciate the response, thanks for the perspective. From my view, I rarely see this line of reasoning in the wild. The “participation” in elections begins and ends with “Both parties bad. Vote for [the nebulous idea of] a third party”. In my opinion, if you can’t give a concrete name and put in enough effort to get it on the ballot then you’re not actually participating.
As a example: I heard complete silence from this portion of the left during the NYC mayoral race/Mamdani’s campaign. No mention of (let alone stumping for) a more progressive alternative. Now with his win, there’s no discussion about parlaying that turnout into other elections. Only attacks on his international politics (not sure why that matters for a mayor) or projected future failure.
Nothing about that approach indicates any good faith engagement with progressive politics in the electoral space. In that sense it’s completely indistinguishable from the right’s suppression and defeatism.
From my view, I rarely see this line of reasoning in the wild
As a example: I heard complete silence from this portion of the left during the NYC mayoral race/Mamdani’s campaign. No mention of (let alone stumping for) a more progressive alternative.
I’ve seen quite a bit of discussion about this, personally. Here is a thread on Hexbear from a week ago with people arguing back and forth over this point. And if you search “Zohran” you’ll find plenty of comments celebrating his win.
Only attacks on his international politics (not sure why that matters for a mayor)
It doesn’t really matter that much as a mayor, but it does matter somewhat if he’s treated as a leader, representing ideas beyond his official capacity. And that sort of thing is why Marxist participate in electoralism in the first place.
It’s a complicated issue.
Another Rosa Luxemburg fan I see. She spoke the gospel.
Reform is a tool deployed by the oligarchy to stay in power.
Its a political relief valve to limit the scope of corruption and the degree to which the public experiences pain. If you’re in the corona of folks who enjoy relief via reform, it is often enough to quell your desire to overthrow the system. If you’re not, it costs you support - often along ethnic or regional lines - in a way that divides your neighbors against you.
Reform gives the illusion that voters have a part in deciding political outcomes
Voters are deciding political outcomes. Large waves of angry voters do change policies by forcing the government leadership into a reform cycle. This is often preferable to violent confrontations between an increasingly unpopular state leadership and growing crowds of dissidents.
Reform isn’t an illusion. It has material consequences for a subset of the angry populace. Soothing this populace and winning them back to the establishment’s side is why reforms work as a mitigation of revolution.
The illusion is in the belief that reforms aren’t necessary. Government leadership pumped up on its own hubris will often exceed the limits of the institutional system and undermine their function. Because reform requires appeasing people outside your immediate interest groups, they can often be characterized as an act of weakness rather than a strategic concession. And leadership that relies on the impression of strength (and the overt displays of brutality) can abandon reform as a vehicle for tempering hostility to policy changes, leading to revolutionary movements.
studies showing voters have zero influence in politicians and their policies
Studies have shown a large gap between public opinion and public policy. What these studies regularly neglect is the popular rejection of ostensibly favorable public policy, often in the wake of a short term media campaign or sudden economic shift, which temporarily change their historically stated positions.
Consent can and does get manufactured. And this consent is reflected in subsequent election results.
You are confusing MLs with anarchists. MLs always think of the strategic importance of elections and choosing the lesser of evils.
That is absolutely not descriptive of the general comments and sentiment upvoted in the ML instance.
You should base what MLs is about by the writings of Marx and Lenin, and not by some randoms online.
That’s a little close to the “no true Scotsman” fallacy.
The comment I was responding to mentioned something that Marxist-Leninists do, not what the source material calls for. The self identified ML randos online are the ones most of us have exposure to, also being a rando online myself.
I suppose it might be similar to saying Christians are not very Christ-like.
You see, the DNC, leaders of the DNC, know that your only sensible options are voting for them or sawing your own legs off, and they know that the reasonable people know this and the loud people are not smart.
This means that any time they lose, they can use that opportunity to shift more towards the right, as they are for the most part old, rich, conservative people.
The only thing they actually fear, is people being consistent long term in both voting for them, and voting to replace them slowly with more progressive elements, but we’re back at the loud people being dumb and encouraging voter apathy amongst themselves and others because it feels cathartic to complain when this is exactly what the DNC wants. They want voter apathy so they can continue to shift to the right. If they kept winning, and progressives kept winning, they’d have no choice but to shift to the left.
It feels so obvious, but on this site, it seems you are seen to be crazy if you suggest anything other than some fantasy solution involving guillotines and a lot of “no, you go first”, or more self foot gunning.
I’m voting for/supporting anyone that runs a campaign like Zohran’s. You’re young and don’t have fucking dried up raisins for brains? CHECK! you have actually progressive policies you run on? CHECK!! you don’t take money from AIPAC or billionaire donors? Fucking CHECK!!!
- Kat Abughazaleh for Illinois? Fucking CHECK!!!
- Rebecca Cooke for WI? Fucking CHECK!!
This sounds like the type of idealism that leads to the situation we have now, unless you’re referring to primaries, or state/local politics (Note: they editted their comment significantly to include more detail after I posted this).
One major problem we have now is not having a system similar to Canadas “no confidence vote” if the current administration isn’t working we shouldn’t be stuck with them for four years while they are a terrorist to the country.
No confidence votes don’t quite solve the problem, and honestly, Canada, with our first past the post system, is headed towards the same eventual doom of America.
Instead we should look more towards proportional representation systems.
Anything that isn’t that inevitably leads to 2 shitty parties people have to vote for the least bad amongst.
Now to be clear, no confidence is better in that its automatically applied if a budget can’t be passed etc, and it stops complete deadlock, but we still have huuuuuuuuuuuuge gaping flaws.
Fair point. I think there are many options, but not just one, and always happy to hear more.
“The only thing they actually fear is people consistently voting for them” sorry, what? Sure, voting to replace them with more progressive elements, but they aren’t afraid of people voting for them, and to not only assert that, but then to say that it “feels so obvious” and provide no further explanation is beyond absurd.
“The only thing they actually fear is people consistently voting for them” sorry, what?
How can you be all “raw raw controlled opposition” yet not understand that it would entail not wanting to change the status quo?
If they keep winning, they can’t just keep moving to the right. When you combine that with replacing them with more progressive elements, this results in changing the status quo; something they don’t want.
It should be obvious because of the “raw raw controlled opposition” takes everyone here has.
If they keep winning, they can’t just keep moving to the right
Yes, they very obviously can. Because when they move to the right, they keep winning. Why would that prevent them from moving to the right? That doesn’t make a lick of sense.
You havent thought about it very hard then.
Who are they against when they lose? an increasingly big threat, so they can offer even less.
Who are they up against when they win? /Themselves and the more progressive elements that come to replace them.
Finally, at least some glimpse into this strange line of thinking. But you’ve got everything backwards.
When they’re strong, with no real threat, they have no reason to give us anything at all. They’ve proven that they can win comfortably on a centrist platform so there’s no reason to change that, either progressives will fall in line behind the “lesser evil,” or there aren’t enough to matter. They can even shut out progressive candidates from the party whenever they choose.
When they’re weak, they have no choice but to compromise on what they want to expand the coalition. They have tried, repeatedly, to expand the coalition right, and it hasn’t worked. They will therefore be forced to the negotiating table with us, or they will end up fading to irrelevance and being replaced.
You don’t have to compromise when you’re in a strong position. That’s what being in a strong position means.
Regardless, electing a centrist only ensures that the threat of the right will keep growing. Because we are in a state of decline, and merely maintaining that ensures that voters will be dissatisfied and will likely vote against whoever they blame, which will generally be the incumbent. The last few elections have gone D-R-D-R and personally I expect that pattern to continue, as long as both sides are dogshit and don’t fix anything. The status quo is what created the threat of the far-right so you’ll never break that threat by maintaining it.
But you’ve got everything backwards. No, it’s quite the opposite and when people like populate lemmy plentiful Ly think they’re pulling one over on the Dems so they will finally do what they want, they don’t realize they’re sawing their own legs off while the rich folks heading the DNC laugh at them.
Consider why they saw Mamdani as a loss internally/clearly fought against him winning.
When they’re strong, with no real threat, they have no reason to give us anything at all.
When they’re losing, they can’t give you anything.
When they’re winning, especially if they win sufficiently, they can’t just sit on their hands, and then you can apply pressure via a takeover of more progressive candidates.
The threat of losing is aok to them because it means the whole system just rachets back one step so they can promise you in the future that things will just go back to almost how they were before the ratchet.
This is literally something people here constantly complain about.
either progressives will fall in line behind the “lesser evil,” or there aren’t enough to matter.
What logic is there to this? Why would the progressives suddenly just hang they’re hats especially if they’re being voted in through primaries, state or local politics? It’s clearly a selling point within the DNC so that doesn’t math out.
When they’re weak, they have no choice but to compromise on what they want to expand the coalition. They have tried, repeatedly, to expand the coalition right, and it hasn’t worked.
You’re sooooo close to getting the point in this excerpt.
There are very obvious reasons that they do not want to expand to the left, and it’s what we’ve been talking about.
They will therefore be forced to the negotiating table with us, or they will end up fading to irrelevance and being replaced.
Forced by what forces? Once again, they’re fine with losing because you will be backed into a wall or people who aren’t idealists will be backed into a wall and they can again resume the ratchet mechanism.
You are negotiating at the wrong place. You have no such leverage as is imagined here.
The only way to move them left is by getting more progressives in Congress, as candidates, in state and local politics.
Anything else just 0lays into their plans to wait for republicans to fuck things up and then act like hero’s returning to slow “progress” and the status quo.
You’re thinking about this from a naive “we must hit them because they do bad” when it’s just not that simple and in fact they clearly are ok with you thinking that.
Regardless, electing a centrist only ensures that the threat of the right will keep growing.
This idea comes from the perspective that you can put up a progressive. You cannot unless you win in the primaries and they still won’t be your solution as even a progressive federal candidate still would need to pass laws through the house and senate and their various coworkers who don’t want things to move much.
They absolutely would have big impacts on the direction of various agencies for sure, so no small feat, but you aren’t getting any sort of sweeping change that would sway anyone stupid enough to think “well things are still bad so I’m not going to vote” etc.
The point is, no matter how you swing it, letting the democrats lose, hurts progressive goals.
Its not a position of power to lose progress just so that to the average voter, restoring some of the progress lost is the reason they are enticed the next time. Just not how it works.
Hence, no, you want to break the cycle of bouncing back and forth aimlessly as much as you can because this is what allows for the stall you hate and somehow think will simulateously pressure them to stop the behaviour that causes it.
You have to think outside of “I’m mad and I must punish the people I am mad at” and instead think about their goals and incentives.
They truly care less about many of the things you think apply leverage to them than you think they do, and I’d argue that they in fact depend on people acting like that for the reasons mentioned.
When they’re winning, especially if they win sufficiently, they can’t just sit on their hands
Yes they can! And do! Because they already won, without even promising to do things! You keep asserting random shit like “they can’t” “they have to” but there’s no basis for it.
What logic is there to this? Why would the progressives suddenly just hang they’re hats especially if they’re being voted in through primaries, state or local politics? It’s clearly a selling point within the DNC so that doesn’t math out.
What are talking about? They don’t need selling points to win over progressives if progressives are already reliably voting for them when they run on a centrist platform. I’m not talking about “progressives suddenly hanging their hats,” and I have no idea where you got that from.
Forced by what forces? Once again, they’re fine with losing because you will be backed into a wall or people who aren’t idealists will be backed into a wall and they can again resume the ratchet mechanism.
No, they aren’t fine with losing. Well, maybe they are, but if you’re “fine with losing” for long enough, eventually you’ll stop being a credible political force and be replaced by another entity that actually wants to win.
This whole thesis is just an extremely convoluted way to reconcile the fact that the Dems suck with justifying voting dem anyway. It’s more motivated reasoning than actual truth.
What they’re actually “fine with” is you continuing to give them the support they ask you for, despite it being part of your five dimensional chess strategy to own them. They don’t really give a shit about the difference between a loyal true believer centrist and a progressive as long as they both find reasons to vote for them consistently. It’s just silly to think that supporting and voting for a politician is anything but the exact thing they want from you, it’s basically a conspiracy theory. It’s just being a centrist with a bajillion extra steps in your reasoning to pretend otherwise.
No, it has nothing to do with “being mad,” or “naievity” or “they did bad so we have to punish them.” They will give in to our demands, or they will lose. And if they would rather keep losing, then we will simply replace them. It’s really a very straightforward tactic, it’s just a matter of understanding a very basic level of how to negotiate and also having the spine to follow through.
Frankly I think that your perspective is delusional and I’m not really interested in discussing it further.
Totally agree with you. I always view it as a big ship. It takes a long time to turn. If you keep voting left then it will keep moving left. But people say “both sides are the same” and then the right wins and the ship stops turning.
Plus since majority of the country is voting right, doesn’t it follow that a lot of politicians will start moving right? Why be far left if being a little left loses?
Ahem. If it’s a ship, we’d say it will change course to port/starboard. You’d also be surprised how quickly an aircraft carrier can jig a 180. Sauce: former sailor
Thinking more of a big container ship. Given your comment on aircraft carriers I’d love to see that in action! Military ships are built different!
Damn, he’s kinda got a point
It’s demoralizing that we have to wait out the old white men in order to have progressive thought.
8 Senators don’t vote the way you want and now EVERY Democrat is a fascist.
Embarrassing childish fucking nonsense.
And they just happened to be people retiring, convenient, no way this is with the blessing of Schumer and the DNC…
Dick Durbin is the minority whip.
If you don’t realize this represents the Dem establishment at its core and those 8 were carefully selected you are genuinely hopeless
Schumer and Ossoff we’re also orchestrating it, so they’re equally to blame.
Getting mad at all the others who are just as furious about the caving is idiotic though yeah
8 Senators don’t vote the way you want and now EVERY Democrat is a fascist.
8 senators vote the way you want and now you’re calling anyone who doesn’t love it a child. Standard centrist.
Amazing how they blame us for telling the truth and then lie to us and say we’re the morons.
I have a bridge to sell you.
So they’ll be called out by their Democrats in Congress, right?
And recalled soon too, right?
Or will they stay in office as they fuck over us by giving into Republicans? Putting my money on that one, personally.
you read a different meme than I did
Liberals will read any meme that calls them out and then hate progressives more.
Scratch a liberal…
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I never called myself progressive. And is that the dead dude or me?
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Show it then. Show it.
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“Liberal”
Lmao
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Says the guy crying and stamping his feet because someone has a different (and more accurate) opinion
I really don’t know how thin a disguise has to be before you question the fooled.
You know what they say, If it looks like a duck and smells like a duck and creates an anonymous police force to round up immigrants and send them to camps like a duck…
You don’t have to out yourself like this
“Fascist” is the terminally online leftist version of “woke”
Except it’s accurate and a real word.
I’m sorry blue hair a gay sex other people have scares you as much as genocide.
Tankies are fascists in red clothing.
Are these tankies here in the room with us?
Yes, OP is one of them.
