Let’s assume for a moment that what you’re saying is true. I’ll “steelman” you’re argument. Let’s assume that the criticism of Harris “from the left” played a large enough role for enough people to stay home.
What you are advocating for is that if a political campaign is bad, but “less bad” than the alternative, we should not criticize it. We should not demand the candidate for our party run on policy positions that we want.
You realize you are advocating for an increasingly worse and worse political choice over time. If no concessions are ever offered by politicians to their voters, and those voters still show up religiously, that is not democracy. That is a cult.
Not only that. But what you’re advocating for is impossible. You will never live in a world in which people don’t criticize a candidate that is “less bad” than the other candidate. You can, however, live in a world where the politicians that lose elections to historically unpopular candidates like Trump, are replaced by candidates that actually offer policies the voters of their party WANT. We are seeing this grow with DSA right now.
So, even if what you are saying was true, the solution would not be to shame voters. That literally will cause MORE of them to sit on the couch on election day. That’s just people. You can’t sustain a political party by being “less bad” than the alternative. People will stop showing up. People sitting on the couch when their politicians ignore their material needs is literally how democracy should work.
You’re saying the same thing I am saying. But you’re for some reason placing blame on potential voters doing exactly what they SHOULD do in a healthy democracy. You seem to want a party that has cult like loyalty as long as “the other guy is worse”. Well, that’s exactly how you get worse and worse political policy, constantly shifting rightward, for decades.
Ok. So things are working perfectly then with the upshot being Trump gots elected, and so we’ll probably never get reasonably fair election again? And we’ve already destroyed our global alliances, started unnecessary wars, sent the economy to hell, put corruption off the charts … and that’s just perfect.
You wanted to have a discussion about the influence of criticism in the elections. I yielded concessions to your point of view to make an important point about what you are advocating for. This is your reply?
Why do I even bother? You didn’t respond to a single thing I said.
Sorry. I’m just very frustrated. You are right in concept, but nonetheless we’ve ended up with Trump. So is it really right? Should we have ‘played the game’ and pushed all out for the better candidate and ignored the deficiencies to do anything to convince enough people to vote against Trump? I don’t know. But we’re fucked now.
I think our biggest difference in opinion is that you seem to think Trump brought fascism to America. Would that be fair to say?
I can understand that belief. But, I don’t blame Trump solely for the rise in fascism. He didn’t bring it. We are talking about a country that had an apartheid state of white supremacy when many of the representatives in office today were already grown adults.
White supremacy is a fundamental part of the American political system. If you always analyze your politicals based on an single election between two presidential candidates then what you are saying makes sense in a vacuum.
But, that is not how we got Trump. We didn’t get Trump just because he won the election in 2016. If Trump died from a heart attack in 2013 we very much would have gotten the same dominant Republican party. The Republican party and it’s tea party was ripe for the conditions of a politician like Trump. Roe V. Wade would have still been overturned. ICE would have still been expanded.
The Democratic party has been running on “lesser evil” campaigns since they lost to Reagan and abandoned the working class party of FDR.
Trump is leading fascism in America. He didn’t create it though.
Let’s assume for a moment that what you’re saying is true. I’ll “steelman” you’re argument. Let’s assume that the criticism of Harris “from the left” played a large enough role for enough people to stay home.
What you are advocating for is that if a political campaign is bad, but “less bad” than the alternative, we should not criticize it. We should not demand the candidate for our party run on policy positions that we want.
You realize you are advocating for an increasingly worse and worse political choice over time. If no concessions are ever offered by politicians to their voters, and those voters still show up religiously, that is not democracy. That is a cult.
Not only that. But what you’re advocating for is impossible. You will never live in a world in which people don’t criticize a candidate that is “less bad” than the other candidate. You can, however, live in a world where the politicians that lose elections to historically unpopular candidates like Trump, are replaced by candidates that actually offer policies the voters of their party WANT. We are seeing this grow with DSA right now.
So, even if what you are saying was true, the solution would not be to shame voters. That literally will cause MORE of them to sit on the couch on election day. That’s just people. You can’t sustain a political party by being “less bad” than the alternative. People will stop showing up. People sitting on the couch when their politicians ignore their material needs is literally how democracy should work.
You’re saying the same thing I am saying. But you’re for some reason placing blame on potential voters doing exactly what they SHOULD do in a healthy democracy. You seem to want a party that has cult like loyalty as long as “the other guy is worse”. Well, that’s exactly how you get worse and worse political policy, constantly shifting rightward, for decades.
Ok. So things are working perfectly then with the upshot being Trump gots elected, and so we’ll probably never get reasonably fair election again? And we’ve already destroyed our global alliances, started unnecessary wars, sent the economy to hell, put corruption off the charts … and that’s just perfect.
You wanted to have a discussion about the influence of criticism in the elections. I yielded concessions to your point of view to make an important point about what you are advocating for. This is your reply?
Why do I even bother? You didn’t respond to a single thing I said.
Sorry. I’m just very frustrated. You are right in concept, but nonetheless we’ve ended up with Trump. So is it really right? Should we have ‘played the game’ and pushed all out for the better candidate and ignored the deficiencies to do anything to convince enough people to vote against Trump? I don’t know. But we’re fucked now.
I think our biggest difference in opinion is that you seem to think Trump brought fascism to America. Would that be fair to say?
I can understand that belief. But, I don’t blame Trump solely for the rise in fascism. He didn’t bring it. We are talking about a country that had an apartheid state of white supremacy when many of the representatives in office today were already grown adults.
White supremacy is a fundamental part of the American political system. If you always analyze your politicals based on an single election between two presidential candidates then what you are saying makes sense in a vacuum.
But, that is not how we got Trump. We didn’t get Trump just because he won the election in 2016. If Trump died from a heart attack in 2013 we very much would have gotten the same dominant Republican party. The Republican party and it’s tea party was ripe for the conditions of a politician like Trump. Roe V. Wade would have still been overturned. ICE would have still been expanded.
The Democratic party has been running on “lesser evil” campaigns since they lost to Reagan and abandoned the working class party of FDR.
Trump is leading fascism in America. He didn’t create it though.