Democrats aren’t attacking Jill Stein because they think she is taking votes from Kamala Harris. No one I know who’s voting Green would consider a vote for Harris at this point. They’re attacking Jill Stein because they don’t want voters to know that there can be a worker-centered party to the left of the Democrats that supports popular policies like Medicare for All, a $25 wage and federally guaranteed housing.
There are 80+ million eligible voters who don’t vote at all because they don’t see the point. Democrats are okay with this, in fact, they don’t want any candidate to their left to appeal to those voters with popular policies.
The fact that the Green Party exists shows that the Democrats aren’t pushing the most progressive policies. Jill Stein’s candidacy shows that it’s possible to support reproductive justice AND be against funding and arming a genocide. That we can end homelessness if we stopped funding endless wars around the globe.
Democrats don’t want anyone to the left of them to exist because it’s the only way they can convince Americans that Dem policies are “the best that we can do”. To Dems, anything else is just “asking for a pony”.
Don’t fall for it. Despite Dem’s desire to have you think otherwise, things don’t have to be this way.
Another world is possible.
Fearmongering is the imaginary fence which keeps all Democrats locked where they are.
Once the dam breaks and the Green party has a winning chance voters will flock to Greens in droves.
They are definitely trying to censor Jill to keep the Greens from reaching the critical mass needed to have a chance at winning.
Democrats aren’t attacking Jill Stein because they think she is taking votes from Kamala Harris.
This is an incredibly dumb take.
This election is about triage. If you want elections to not be triage, you need to fix the conditions that make it triage before the elections ever happen.
What triage means:
Lets say you see a massive car accident at an intersection that’s known to be dangerous, and you have a medical kit in your car. (You have a medical kit in your car, right?) You have some basic trauma first aid experience. You have two tourniquets, two chest seals, a few packs of QuikClot z-fold gauze, and a combat bandage, along with EMS shears and a rescue hook. There are four people that have serious injuries. The first is conscious, has had both legs severed above the knees, and is blood is spurting from the severed limbs. The second is also conscious, and has a massive laceration on their left arm; a fractured bone is protruding from the laceration, and they are bleeding profusely. The third is not conscious; they have lost an arm and blood is spurting from the severed limb, have a penetrating chest wound, have a massive and profusely bleeding laceration on a leg, and significant head trauma. They are breathing in short, erratic breaths. The fourth person is conscious, and has a clearly broken lower leg with a laceration; they’re holding on to the laceration, and blood is seeping out between their fingers.
What do you do? Who do you help, in what order?
The person with the severed legs gets the tourniquets; they will bleed to death in less than two minutes without them. The person with the compound fracture gets the z-fold gauze and the combat bandage; unless the brachial artery is severed, they don’t need a tourniquet. You ignore the person with the head injury; you can’t treat the head injury, and the erratic breathing is likely agonal breathing from the head trauma. Using a tourniquet on them means that you won’t be able to use a tourniquet on the first person, which–in turn–means the first person dies from blood loss. Regardless of anything you do or don’t do, the third person will likely die. The fourth person does not need immediate care; their blood loss is not significant enough to kill them before paramedics arrive.
Triage is recognizing that you can’t help the third person–even though they will very likely die before paramedics arrive–and that the fourth person can wait until you’ve helped the first and second people.
The best you can do is help two people while a third dies. If you walk away, three people die. If you treat the person with the head wound, three people die. If you worry about the broken leg first, then three people die while you’re trying to help the one person that didn’t need emergency trauma care. Maybe you’ve been advocating for years to fix the intersection, while the city council has ignored you; that does nothing to address the immediate needs of the people in front of you.
This is where we are. There is no vote you can cast that is going to save everyone. No matter who you vote for, the genocide in Gaza isn’t going to stop. Stein won’t win, so she can’t stop it. Trump will accelerate it. Harris appears to mostly take the side of Israel. But by focusing on that, you fail to act in a way that can prevent other harms.
Most people don’t like how we’ve gotten to where we are now. But this is where we are, and railing against the system now doesn’t do anything to help the people that need help.
Meanwhile, you hand a couple more rounds to the sniper that caused the accident in the first place, who is actively and intentionally causing more accidents.
Lets say you see a massive car accident at an intersection that’s known to be dangerous,
The cause was already contained within the exercise.
You can either do what you can to help people now–knowing that there’s nothing you can say or do at this moment that will help the people of Gaza–or you can insist that you can help them and, in so doing, fail to save anyone at all. It’s your choice.
That is what triage is.
I’m going to be okay either way. I’m white, male, middle-aged, cis-, het-, and can pass as Christian and conservative if necessary. I own a home outright, have no significant debts other than student loans, and have sufficient savings and investments that I can survive the next four years regardless of who wins the election. Your choice to fuck everyone else over in this election won’t directly hurt me. It will hurt a lot of my friends, and I’m certain that at least a percentage of the LGBTQ+ people I know will die or be killed, I have no doubt that some of the undocumented people I know will be deported to countries they haven’t lived in for 30+ years, and I’m sure that my non-white friends will see a sharp uptick in violence directed at them. Meanwhile, the people in Gaza will still be murdered by Israel, because Trump and Netanyahu are both fascists.
You will accomplish nothing except causing more harm.
Tell your non-white friends, your LGBTQ+ friends, you female friends, that you didn’t care enough about their rights and their safety to help them. Say it to their faces. Tell them that it was more important for you to send a message than it was to prevent them from being harmed.
Good luck. You’ll need it. Hopefully we still get to vote in two years, and in four years.
Oh, I can say it to my own face, I’m trans. But I’ve also told all my trans friends that I’m not voting for Kamala, and have no difficulty doing so. There isn’t a single person in the world I wouldn’t look dead in the eye and say it to.
Your analogy fails to the account for the fact that you’re strengthening the very people who put you in that situation in the first place, so it is not a valid analogy (among many other reasons). You “accounted” for the cause in saying that the city council “failed to fix” the problem. In reality, they intentionally caused the problem, and doing your “triage” empowers them to cause it to happen more and more, neither of which you accounted for at all.
Today, Palestinians are the ones being “triaged.” Tomorrow, it could very well be us. By your calculus, if the democrats decide to throw us under the bus because they see us as too much of an electoral liability, you will still happily accept them as the “lesser evil” and all the arguments you’re using now to support killing Gazans, you will deploy then to support killing us. “The Democrats just want to sacrifice trans people, the Republicans want to go after trans people and gay people and…” Don’t try to pretend you wouldn’t, unless you’re prepared to explain why your “triage” analogy wouldn’t apply there too.
An injury to one is an injury to all. If we don’t stand up for Palestinians, if we allow minorities to be picked off one by one, then we are doomed because there will be no one left to stand up for us.
Oh, I can say it to my own face, I’m trans.
Good luck, because you’re going to need it if Trump wins. Being trans is difficult in deep blue areas now, and it’s going to be a lot harder if Trump wins. The very few labor protections that you have now are likely to evaporate under a Republican gov’t. And perhaps you’re okay with this, but how many of your friends are willing to be your sacrifice? I saw exactly what happened to the black transwomen in my area under Trump, and it was… Bad.
An injury to one is an injury to all. If we don’t stand up for Palestinians, if we allow minorities to be picked off one by one, then we are doomed because there will be no one left to stand up for us.
Minorities will be picked off in this election, whether you stand up or not. You can save some–specifically the ones that are in this country–or you can save none. That’s the reality we live in. This is the reality unless and until you can build a coalition that can win elections on it’s own, because that’s politics. This has always been the reality; disadvantaged people need to build political power by courting the people that have political power; women needed to convince men in order to get the right to vote, non-white people needed to convince white people to pass the various civil rights acts. If you take a no-compromises position, you will always lose.
That’s the “crabs-in-a-bucket” approach. We will never get anywhere if we’re willing to sell each other out and tear each other down to get ahead or protect ourselves. I’m never going to sacrifice solidarity with the oppressed in the hopes that our oppressors will be merciful. If I were that much of a coward, I wouldn’t have transitioned in the first place.
You say I will always lose with this path, but you don’t know that. What I do know is that I will always lose following your path. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the only thing that’s guaranteed to fail. Solidarity is the only viable strategy and the only one that makes any logical sense at all. As well as being the only moral position. You wanted to play that card of “look them in the face,” well I could never look a Palestinian in the face and explain why I’m selling them out just to save my own skin. They will level all their slings and arrows against us, but it is still better to stand against them together than to fracture and join them and fight against each other for a momentary respite until they inevitably turn on us.
Claiming that every victory every marginalized group has ever won was just handed down from above by appeasing the rich and powerful is absurd, ahistorical, and offensive.
Claiming that every victory every marginalized group has ever won
My dude. That’s the absolute truth. All the marches and riots in the world don’t win minority groups power unless they can get members of the majority group–members that have political power–to agree with them. You can talk about ‘human rights’ until you’re blue in the face, but rights only exist so long as they can be enforced. A powerless minority group can’t expect to enforce the rights that are supposed to be guaranteed to them, unless they have people with power that are willing to step up.
But again - by failing to be strategic, you will probably lose, and not just for yourself, but for everyone that’s even slightly marginalized.
I’m not going to discuss how I feel about you doubling down on “minority rights have always been handed down from above” because I don’t want to get banned, suffice to say I have no interest in discussing anything further with you.
Oh that’s possible, but I think the number of votes that she’s likely to get is so low that there are much better ways to try to win the election than worrying about her antics. But if Harris were to lose, it sure would be convenient to have someone to blame, and Stein’s an excellent scapegoat.
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This is so naive I’m gonna have to assume you’re a literal child.
So actually the way voting works is if you vote for a candidate then they get your vote and if you vote for another candidate, then that candidate gets your vote and if you vote for a third candidate, then that candidate gets your vote and if you don’t vote for any candidate then no candidate gets your vote.
Oh boy politics sure are complicated, huh? The only way your idea of ‘how voting works’ would in any way approach rationality, would be if you assumed that the democrats were somehow owed our votes. That doesn’t really make sense. The way it actually works is that a party - or a candidate - courts voters by appealing to their interests and presenting themselves as a reliable steward for advancing those interests. If a candidate or a party fails in this, then they lose. In other words: If you want people to vote for you, listen to what they want you to do and then do that. Kamala Harris’ campaign is a great example of what happens when you don’t do that.We don’t count the amount of not-votes a candidate gets, only the votes. But if it makes you feel any better we can say I’m not voting for Trump 1 million times and I’ll only be not voting for Harris 100.000 times. We can even say I’m not voting for him in swing states! Hope that clears your heart flutters just a little so you can cool your head and let go of those no-no words.
Or Trump will eradicate Palestine.
Okay sweetie, so there’s actually a genocide going on right now. You probably don’t follow the news, but palestinians are being put in concentration camps and mass graves. And Harris has said she will increase support! I don’t even know how it can get worse over there, but she has promised she’s gonna let it get worse.
Do you know what a genocide is? Probably not, because if you did you wouldn’t be running your mouth saying wacky stuff like your doing. The end point of genocide is extermination. The end result is Palestine being eradicated.
I know this can all be terribly abstract, so I’ll try to help you understand what is going on. Now sweetie this will be a bit scary and it does contain some no-no words and I’m sorry about that, but I do feel it’s necessary to make you understand. Still I don’t want to shock you or traumatize you, so I’m gonna put it behindthis little tag
Booh! Scared you! Teehee. Sorry for the prank, but it’s actually just a link to a discussion I had with a real meanie-poo >:( But I thought it would be better to give you a two-stage launch so you can really prepare yourself for reading some super scary stuff. Don’t want you to be too scared to go to sleep at bedtime, now do we?
and when you feel comfortable and safe, then you can just click it and read it. Maybe have a juice brick next to you so you can have a sippy if you get scared.
But from my perspective it’s due to not using our voices
Oh boy you sure are the first person to come with that analysis. You know liberal “democracies” are actually incredibly understudied, especially on the left. There’s barely any text on the faults of electorialism, so I’m super glad to see your little theory you brewed up all on your own there. Proud of you buddy. If you wanna expand your horizons a bit, then here’s a little bit of literature. Don’t get scared by the fact there’s no pictures! I know you can do it!
- The state and revolution
- Bourgeois And Proletarian Democracy
- Proletarian Dictatorship Vs Bourgeois “Democracy” (this one was even written by americans just like you! So it’s not foreign or super scary even)
- What is to be done
Now you can probably figure out since I linked you a few texts that I’m being a bit facetious. And you got me. Good on you again! Maybe you can use that big brain of yours and think yourself some humility, it would do you some good. Maybe assume that the bare-bones drivel (sorry buddy, but it’s really not very good) you’re serving us as some unique insight, isn’t really novel or unknown to us. We all exist in this society, we all see the same takes on the frontpage of reddit, we just… You know, think a little about it. We’re a little curious over here. A curious little group of people that likes to just look a teeny tiny bit deeper instead of just incorporating whatever the TV told us that morning. Maybe you should consider doing the same yourself.
You have to compromise and move things slowly forwards.
Aw buddy, did you discover incrementalism? I remember when I did too, it sounded real swell. Sadly it doesn’t really work, we’ve been hearing that stuff since the 1970’s. Really we heard it before that too. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you that, I know it sucks to learn you’re not the brightest bulb in the room. Hopefully this can be a learning experience for you!
Incredible I can just repost this comment more or less word for word you people truly are NPC’s.
Maybe you don’t take issue with washing your hands in a trough of Palestinian blood; maybe you don’t mind having your metadata in the list of collaborators that will be made-- but I take a whole lot of fucking issue with that. Death to you if you thought in your personal calculus that the genocide of Palestine as a state and as a sovereign people was a fair price for the security of your rights. You are choosing incorrectly.
Death to Amerika. Death to the collaborators.
It’s absolutely incredible that people think this is an actual sound argument.
I implore you, if you at all believe in a free Palestine, you will take action to vote for Harris.
Voting for a candidate who has vowed to continue a genocide will not, in fact, stop the genocide.
You have to work with the tools we have.
Bourgeois democracy will never willingly hand you the tools to dismantle itself. Nothing other than revolution will ever dismantle this system of genocide and working class oppression.
I really don’t understand how people keep forgetting that DONALDFUCKINGTRUP is the other option. He would literally nuke the area given the chance and has said as much.
DONALDFUCKINGTRUP
The incompetent fascist is more scary to you than the competent one? Why?
The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s plantation, cracker
How does that excuse the Democrats arming a genocide?
Did I say that it does?
Please do yourself a favor and look into the 50+ year history of the US sending arms to Israel. You’ll find that it’s not possible for the US to completely pull out of supporting them with military aid.
“Look at how long he has beaten his wife for. You’ll find that it’s not possible from him to completely stop beating his wife”
You’ll find that it’s not possible for the US to completely pull out of supporting them with military aid.
Then the US must die.
You’re justifying voting for a party actively involved in a genocide by saying the alternative is worse. So, yes you are absolutely excusing what the democrats are doing. At least have the decency to come out and say it.
You keep bringing up Trump every time someone points out that Democrats are gleefully enabling genocide, yet no one here has ever expressed the slightest interest for voting for Trump.
You’ll find that it’s not possible for the US to completely pull out of supporting them with military aid.
Why the fuck isn’t it?
You’ll find that it’s not possible for the US to completely pull out of supporting them with military aid.
Why not? The US has supported Israel since its formation, no arguments there, but so what? Why couldn’t that change?
Actually by not voting for Trump I am supporting Harris
if you at all believe in a free Palestine, you will take action to vote for Harris
How? Harris isn’t even allowing Palestinian Americans to speak. She isn’t even trying to appeal to them or acknowledge them.
I was idealistic when I was young too
Thanks for the compliment but my bad back calls bullshit on me being young.
How?
Because Trump is firmly aligned with Netanyahu and opposed to the existence of Palestine.
And Biden and Harris aren’t? Harris even parrots the lies about mass rape by Hamas and that Israel is defending itself.
No. Not like Trump. Not by a long shot.
Trump openly told Netanyahu to eradicate the Palestinians. Trump has empowered Israel over and over again. if anyone gained anything during Trump’s presidency it was Israel.
Trump openly
This is the real problem that libs have with trump. He represents and fulfills all of their ideals, but without the pompadour.
Trump openly told Netanyahu to eradicate the Palestinians. Trump has empowered Israel over and over again.
Exclusive: US has sent Israel thousands of 2,000-pound bombs since Oct. 7
Pay attention to the news, please. Biden sent Israel thousands of 2000-pound bombs, he is helping Israel eradicate Palestinians.
Try reading more than a headline.
Ok, sure. Here’s the second paragraph:
Between the war’s start last October and recent days, the United States has transferred at least 14,000 of the MK-84 2,000-pound bombs, 6,500 500-pound bombs, 3,000 Hellfire precision-guided air-to-ground missiles, 1,000 bunker-buster bombs, 2,600 air-dropped small-diameter bombs, and other munitions, according to the officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly.
Question for you, who has been the president of the US since October 7, 2023?
That’s better than what Trump has done and will do. It sucks but it’s the best option for the people in the area.
LLM bot??
No it isn’t. You can’t explain our situation to us, you have zero clue.
So is Harris.
That is a lie. The United States supports Israel because of its position in the region. To defend democracy and economies in the region, the US has to negotiate with the Israel terrorist state. Trump doesn’t give a shit about anyone in the region and has fully supported Netanyahu’s genocide. The current conflict is largely due to Trump’s actions as president and Biden’s inaction as president.
The US is overthrowing democracies in the middle east. wtf are you talking about
To defend democracy
the US has to negotiate with the Israel terrorist state
And by negotiate you mean unconditionally arm their genocide?
Trump doesn’t give a shit about anyone in the region and has fully supported Netanyahu’s genocide
Again, the weapons Israel is using for their genocide were sent to them by Biden, not Trump. https://www.reuters.com/world/us-has-sent-israel-thousands-2000-pound-bombs-since-oct-7-2024-06-28/
The current conflict is largely due to Trump’s actions as president and Biden’s inaction as president
Once again, Biden is actively arming this genocide. That doesn’t sound like inaction to me.
the US has to negotiate with the Israel terrorist state
This all checks out, because we all know that famous Bush quote, “We absolutely totally negotiate with terrorists”
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Imagine what would have happened if Biden / Congress didn’t continue military contracts
Had you been paying attention to the actual news, you would know that the US has been arming Israel for decades
Okay, and? Israel has been a genocidal colonizer state since its inception. Every previous president who armed them is a war criminal, too.
This is the most complicated international conflict in our lifetime
It really isn’t. Israel is a genocidal settler state living on stolen land. They should be abolished and the land returned to Palestine, its rightful owners. What part of this are you struggling with?
Not because the US supports genocide but because the US supports the destruction of terrorism in the region.
Oh fuck off. You said yourself they only care about Israel because of its position in the region. They don’t give a shit about terrorism, they’ve been actively funding terrorists and destabilizing the region for decades. It’s never been about democracy or fighting terror and you are incredibly naive if you still believe this. It’s only ever been about extracting as much oil from the region as possible as cheaply as possible.
You are choosing the person who is literally saying he wants to destroy Palestine over the person who is “actively arming this genocide”
Excuse me? I’m not choosing shit. Please link to me exactly where I said I was going to vote for Trump. I have never once expressed any interest in voting for him, not in 2016, nor 2020, nor today. No, refusing to vote for Harris is not, in fact, a vote for Trump. That’s not how voting works and you are a literal baby if you think not voting for a specific candidate is inherently a vote for another.
Biden and Blinken are still trying to get a ceasefire and support for a two state solution
They have never been serious about a ceasefire. Biden is still sending Israel all the weapons they need to carry out their extermination campaign. If he was even the smallest bit serious about enforcing a ceasefire he would stop sending them weapons to fire.
Oh well if they’re trying real hard to get a ceasefire I guess they’re just weak and incompetent. In which case why would I support them.
Tell me more about how elections work you seem to really understand democracy
I’m voting for neither Republicans or Democrats so that means I’m voting for both
It must be exhausting always rooting for the antihero.
As opposed to, what?, rooting for accelerationism? Trying to actually make things incrementally better isn’t good enough, so burn the whole fucking thing down (but of course in your fantasy you survive…)?
Things were undeniably better under Biden than they were under Trump. Obama was better than Bush. we keep trying to improve shit, and y’all are insisting that breaking it all is better than continual improvement.
Things were undeniably better under Biden than they were under Trump.
In what way exactly?
Real income is up. Gas prices relative to the value of the dollar are down. Employment is far, far higher than the last year of Trump being in office. Crime is down across the board, esp. violent crime. Inflation is back to the same levels that it was.
People complain about groceries being higher in price, which is true, but the real income has gone up faster than grocery prices. People say that they would rather see prices drop, without understanding that that’s deflation, and that deflation is the start of a death-spiral for an economy.
People perceive things differently, but that isn’t reflected in the reality.
Real income is not up relative to the cost of living. In fact, the situation today is worse than it was under Trump. Employment is absolutely terrible, and the dems have been cooking numbers, with latest report having been revised down by a stunning 800K https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/talent-acquisition/us-employment-gains-revised-down-over-800k-jobs
In fact, over a quarter of people are living in subsistence wages unable to make any savings, and nearly 60% of people can’t even afford a 1k emergency expense. Furthermore, nearly 6 in 10 U.S. adults are uncomfortable with their level of emergency savings, according to a new Bankrate poll. Before 2022, the percentage had been rising, from 37 percent in 2018 to 44 percent in 2020, 48 percent in 2021 and 58 percent in 2022. This year, it’s barely budged from 57 percent in 2023.
Crime is down across the board, esp. violent crime
[citation needed] especially one that explains what specific policies dems passed that caused crime to go down
People complain about groceries being higher in price, which is true, but the real income has gone up faster than grocery prices.
[citation needed]
People say that they would rather see prices drop, without understanding that that’s deflation, and that deflation is the start of a death-spiral for an economy.
People say they want their cost of living to go down. Seems to me that you’re the one who doesn’t understand what the implications of people not being able to afford basic needs are. Spending drops, people start defaulting on debt, companies aren’t able to sell goods, leading to layoffs, and that’s how economic crises start.
People perceive things differently, but that isn’t reflected in the reality.
Your comment is a perfect example of this phenomenon.
It’s exhausting having to explain commons sense to people.
Oh? What common sense
Common sense means stopping genocide by voting for a pro-genocide candidate
I hand you two plates of cat turds, common sense says you have to eat one of them. /s
Agreed 100%. I reached voting age in 2008 and I was one of those “both sides suck” idealistic young voters who voted third party. I did again in 2012 and again in 2016 thinking “Hillary’s already got this one, I can protest vote”. Nope, we ended up with Trump. Ever since that I will only vote blue no matter who, at least as long as the Democrats are the only viable party with some sense of normalcy. Third parties are completely unviable in the US election system. We need ranked choice for a third party vote to not be a throwaway vote. Until that happens, we can’t afford to pick “the best choice”, we have to pick “the best choice that actually has a chance”. Even if it’s not really the best choice. Very happy to have gone out and voted early last week. We need the blue wave. Once the Republican party is thoroughly stomped into the ground and made completely unviable can we focus on a truly liberal third party, but honestly we probably have a better chance of slowly moving the Dems left than we do a third party taking over. It may not happen in my lifespan but I’d rather see progress than regression.
LLM bot?
Once the Republican party is thoroughly stomped into the ground
Okay, so we agree. You should not vote Democrats if you don’t like the Republican party, on account of them thinking a strong Republican party is necessary, them inviting Republicans to join their campaign, and promising a Republican in their cabinet.
This what all you crackers look like to me at this point. How long is it going to take you crackers to cosign my people getting put back in trees, I wonder? I already have to hear you crackers making excuses for the carceral slavery system your Department of Corrections maintains. I’ve been hearing excuses for the concentration camps at the southern border for four fucking years now. How long? How long before I’m going to have to hear about you crackers escorting unvarnished and blatant Jim Crow back into the halls of our legislature?
You tell me that, peckerwood. 'Cause best believe: if you’d do this to Palestinians? We already know we’re on that list, probably right after the gays, anybody that looks Chinese('cause Amerikans can’t tell Asia’s manifold cultures apart) and the Mexicans.
Once the Republican party is thoroughly stomped into the ground and made completely unviable can we focus on a truly liberal third party
The Democrats will never allow that to happen. Nancy Pelosi Says U.S. ‘Needs a Strong Republican Party’
but honestly we probably have a better chance of slowly moving the Dems left than we do a third party taking over
Liberals said that shit in 2016 and again in 2020 and the Democrats have since only moved to the right. They’ve outflanked the GOP on the border and are actively supporting a genocide.
Ok, what is your strategy then? I don’t disagree that some prominent Democrats aren’t as liberal as we like, but Nancy Pelosi isn’t a government official anymore. As the old guard gets replaced, the hope is that we bring in more and more liberal people over time. Voting third party is ineffective no matter how you look at it, at least not in the Presidential election. If third parties want any hope of taking over they need to start small and win local and state positions rather than just trying to start at the top. Another comment here said the Green Party has 200 elected positions of like 50000+. That’s nowhere near enough influence on the ground to win a Presidential race.
Voting third party - waste your vote. Your vote means nothing. There is no chance that a third party wins a Presidential election and to think otherwise is naive. If you’re a young voter, voting for the first time, you may think this is a good option. I sure did, and if you vote third party I can’t stop you, but in a few election cycles I hope you’ll come to the same realization that it’s a waste of time. Hopefully your wasted vote doesn’t let something as evil as Trump’s Presidency happen.
Vote Republican - we definitely, actively, vocally, and happily continue to endorse Israel and genocide and probably stop supporting Ukraine at all and possibly even support Russia directly. We know what side Trump is on. Voting Trump doesn’t help the genocide situation at all. Things in the US will go to shit, that’s almost a given. Fascism gets worse on the global stage.
Vote Democrat - we know that there is at least conflict among Dems regarding Israel and Palestine. We know that they strongly support Ukraine and oppose Russia. They probably won’t stop supplying Israel, but at least there’s a chance that something will change. There’s also still the subject of control of the Senate, House, and Supreme Court - the President alone can’t do everything. It’s not a perfect situation, but few things in life are. We do know that things in the US will be much better under Dems.
Unfortunately, it’s going to be very very difficult to break the two-party paradigm without ranked choice voting here in the US. Do you see a serious path forward for the US that doesn’t involve supporting Israel? I don’t. At least not right now. Be serious. The US has too many interests (militarily and economically) in Israel. I’m open to suggestions as long as they are realistic.
We are not fucking liberals and the problem is that they are and that historically liberals have allowed fascists to take power. You Ave no idea what you are talking about.
Ok, what is your strategy then?
Nothing less than the revolutionary overthrow of the corrupt, genocidal US state.
As the old guard gets replaced, the hope is that we bring in more and more liberal people over time.
Remind me of the last time that worked.
Voting third party - waste your vote. Your vote means nothing.
Some democracy you’ve got there, huh?
There is no chance that a third party wins a Presidential election and to think otherwise is naive.
I’m under no illusions that my third party candidate is going to win. The point is to send a message to the Democrats that their unwavering support for genocide is going to cost them votes, maybe even the election. And if it does they have no one but their own genocidal asses to blame.
Vote Republican - we definitely, actively, vocally, and happily continue to endorse Israel and genocide
Who’s arming Israel right now? Who has vowed to continue arming Israel?
Grow a spine and stop supporting genocide.
Nothing less than the revolutionary overthrow of the corrupt, genocidal US state.
There’s a reason I asked for a serious answer. Good luck with that.
Shut your klansman ass up, techbro. You wanna talk about “serious answers” thinking supporting the genocide your plantation owners orchestrate is “a serious answer”. Here’s my serious answer, you want a serious answer: the Black nation coalesces and sacks everything from Compton to Portland on the North/South axis, then everything from Frisco to Vegas on the East/West; then when you stool-pigeon-assed crackers start getting huffy about it? We’ll start drone striking and rocket-launching cracker cities til you stop talking.
Clearly, it’s absolutely within the moral fabric of Amerika, since you cosign Israel doing it to Palestine, so we’ll do it to you and you don’t get to fuckin complain about it. How’s that for ‘serious’, klansman?
We’ve got a very serious person over here
Yes what’s serious is definitely putting your faith in a system with two options and if you don’t vote for the one then the other one wins and the system is destroyed (half the population doesn’t vote, the half that does votes for the destruction option). Sometimes even if you vote for the one the other gets to win because we don’t really care about votes. BTW we’ve been doing this song and dance about “keeping [villain of the week] out of the white house!” since the 70’s. Ask yourself this: If Trump truly was a threat to democracy, why have the dems done absolutely fuck all? Why are they completely unwilling to budge on any of their far-right genocidal policies? If Trump is truly this existential threat, why has he been allowed to exist for four years? Why did they try to run Biden, a man with obvious dementia, if Trump was truly this unique evil that will tear America apart? Doesn’t seem like the dems are very serious.
What’s super duper serious is going to argue with people who won’t vote for genocide that they should vote for genocide. The most serious people in the room do this thing where they for some reason decide to focus on third party voters (who these serious people also say is of such an insignificant size that they do not matter at all) instead of going outside and knocking on doors talking to the more than 50% that doesn’t vote
Online arguments are totally the sign of being a Serious Person ™Sooner or later the us regime is going to collapse. It’s fundamental tally unsustainable and just a good few crises away from imploding. And the best part is, you’re looking right at the face of pretty much every kind of crisis imaginable. We’ve got climate crises, disastrous weather events, fascist coups, exploding inequality, de-dollarisation, the defeat of american imperialism in west and east Asia, mass immigration and so on.
So the violent overthrow of the American government is actually more realistic than trying to improve the Democrat party from the inside. Certainly the former will happen way before the latter.
It’s sad to see people like you who, despite considering yourself old and wise,know so little about history and the world that you’ve convinced yourself that apathy is the same thing as seriousness. It’s cope. You’re coping. Every revolution that has ever happened has “seemed” impossible until suddenly it wasn’t, and there were always good little subjects like you to stand uselessly on the sidelines wailing and gnashing their teeth at the changing tides of history. Meanwhile, your very serious political ideology is doing genocide, cooking the oceans and pumping the planet full of PFAS. Very Serious, very sustainable, not childish at all to kill everyone over funko pops.
You think you’ve become mature, when you’ve really just become housebroken.
“The one who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the one doing it”
Good luck on voting your way out of fascism. That’s really working out well for you, isn’t it?
Hell of a lot better than “overthrowing the US regime” would that’s for damn sure, especially if Harris wins. Just remember the Jan 6th people wanted to do the same thing, if for different reasons. Look at how well that’s going for them. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
As the old guard gets replaced, the hope is that we bring in more and more liberal people over time.
We just today had the poster child of the “new guard” of the democrats coming out and talking about how great it is that nothing happens now. While we are one year into a genocide. While we are further building the wall and enforcing all the border policies that she went down to the border to have a photo op crying at.
Do you think AOC will save anyone? She’ll just go back to brunch while the world burns.
Voting third party is ineffective no matter how you look at it, at least not in the Presidential election.
If you can’t see further than a single election cycle ahead I guess. Consistently voting for the “lesser evil” will only make the “lesser evil” more evil. If there is a voting bloc that is strong enough to apparently scupper the democrats maybe they should try to appeal to them in any way rather than court the people voting for the “greater evil”?
Thought you were talking about Pete. He pretty clearly seems like the one the blues are grooming to take over next. He’s well-spoken and probably a much safer pick for liberals than AOC.
This is an interesting perspective that I haven’t thought of or considered.
Really now
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I feel like the real reason Democrats would be attacking her would be due to her happily accepting donations from Republican led sponsors, aiming to actively sway Democratic voters instead of specifically both, and the distance that she has from actual election given that she’s not on the ballot in a number of states and is posing herself as the anti-war candidate despite saying that Russia invaded Ukraine because they needed to defend themselves from nukes. Odd how it’s okay to be apologetic to Russia but not Israel. You must understand - as a third party they can claim to have a plan for world peace, but what members in Congress will sponsor those bills? Even if Jill Stein did become President, who is approving her policies?
All that aside – she does very little in between election years. The Green Party as a whole has accomplished less of its supposed goals while having far more funding than the SRA. I would also expect that the leader of the Green Party practice what she preaches, as her and her husband have stock in just as many oil companies as the Democrats do. So quite honestly, it’s hard to see her as anyone but a faux candidate who shows up to take money from Green Party voters, preventing actual change from happening with that money because it’s going into a candidacy that will go nowhere.
If she cared, she would campaign for her donations to be given to something that would actually have meaningful effects, and she would push for more local candidates to run. The sad fact of the matter is that the Green Party has candidates who start out Green then move to a different party and are completely happy taking donations from Big Oil just like Kyrsten Sinema.
To call the Democrats a joke party when the tactics of the Green Party have been laughable is just one reason why they aren’t taken seriously. Another would be this quote:
there are more open socialists in just the New York state legislature right now (8, all caucusing together, will be 9 next year) than have been elected total above the local level for the Green Party (5). even accounting for party switching, this expands to just 9 people in history.
We can also just look at the Public Office Holders for the Socialists and the Green Party.
In short – The Green Party is the vote of choice because there is a Presidential candidate, but they offer nothing else through the four years. People are asking where the Democrats have been for them, what about the Green Party? Why are they all too happy to take money from you but do nothing in between for local activism? People are saying that the Democrats only provide lip service when they say things like supporting a two state solution, but lip service from the Green Party is totally fine? The Socialists or the DSA seem to at least aim for actionable goals, but is there no support for them because there’s no Presidential candidate? We’ve also seen that they (Socialists) actually have a chance of being elected if they run on a democratic platform and push bills that we can be proud of, something that historically cannot be said for members of the Green Party.
I hope this provides some insight on why people, not just Democrats, don’t feel like the Green Party is a worthwhile option.
Good points. If anybody should be annoyed by the Greens campaigning only for the national election and going dormant the rest of the year it should be PSL.
A socialist party would be nice in u.s politics.
There’s a few running, that the democrats tried and failed to kick off the ballot in many states. Party for Socialism and Liberation is one.
The US greens are also an eco-socialist party. Ajamu Baraka is a great anti-imperialist / communist writer, and he was the green party’s VP pick last time.
I heard of greens, but as a party I hadn’t actually seen them or any of the others covered much. Usually you just hear about Republicans and democrats. Might just be censorship and lack of exposure in the u.s.
If they would actually do the work at the local level to get candidates elected in towns, counties, and states, then they might even be viable at a national level at some point. But if they won’t put in the effort locally, then all they’re doing is fucking over the rest of the country when they run nationally.
Congrats you described the green party with nearly 200 elected officials across the US.
Oh, wow, nearly 200 elected officials out of 519,000 elected positions, that’s, like, .04%. (Actually, slightly less.) How many of them are state-level legislators?
They need to do MUCH better before they start trying to field national level candidates.
They can do both. Publicity is 90% of running for office, and stein running at the national level helps down ballot greens.
Also that’s more than all I ther third parties combined.
It… Really does not. Stein is def. hurting Greens more than helping. Everyone that actually pays attention to politics and policy closely can see exactly what’s going on, and can see that Stein is working for Trump and Putin; that’s at odds with what the party claims to stand for.
No one with any attention on politics thinks Stein is helping either putin or Trump, despite the DNCs best propagandists shouting it night and day for a decade.
No, the independently wealthy medical doctor isn’t selling out for a few hundred bucks from an organization that was refunded as soon as it became obvious it was Russian backed. Quite frankly I think most of the attacks on Dr. Stein are pure cope for the fact she’s by far the most educated presidential candidate in history, and one of the most consistent as well.
“The most educated presidential candidate in history”…? Really? Are you forgetting Ben Carson then? Or is she the ‘most educated’ because of her undergrad work? (Oh, wait, almost everyone does undergrad work before they go to medical school.) Did you forget that Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar? Or that Barack Obama was a law professor as well as being a civil rights attorney and specializing in constitutional law?
Given that Stein’s own campaign has said they can’t win, but that they can prevent Harris from winning, it’s pretty clear that she knows exactly what she’s doing. The only 3rd party candidate that has had a snowball’s chance in hell of winning in the last 75 years has been H. Ross Perot.
Bernie Sanders was that candidate. He supports the election of Harris because he recognizes that it is necessary.
Bernie sanders was a compromise and a terrible one at that lol. Unlike blue MAGA we don’t engage in cults of personality, but are actually capable of critiquing our political leaders. Bernie supports genocide and sucks shit, why would I care what he thinks?
It’s the same shit every time with you peopleWho’s “we?”
Leftists, dumbass
They’re attacking Jill Stein because she’s running a campaign that will have absolutely no impact on the world except for enticing some number of would-be Harris voters to instead throw their votes away. If the Green Party were serious about change, they’d focus on races where they could actually win instead of actively causing harm to the party that is much more likely to actually do the things they say they want. Instead, they’ve basically outright stated that all they care about is hurting the Democrats. It’s a terrible electoral system that needs to be fixed, but until it is, third parties are always going to present a false option that effectively does the opposite of what their voters actually want.
Not only did the Democrats not deliver on the Green New Deal they promised, but they expanded the private prisons at the border https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/unchecked-growth-private-prison-corporations-and-immigration-detention-three-years-into-the-biden-administration
What does this have to do with anything? Yes, the Democratic Party is flawed. That doesn’t change the fact that voting Green will make my political desires slightly less likely, and will make my political fears slightly more likely, compared to voting for a Democrat.
I have an idea, how about everyone votes for whoever they like? Freedom of choice and all that. I personally don’t like racists and genociders, so Harris lost my vote and Trump never had it. I was actually willing to give Harris a chance after Biden dropped but she delivered one insult after another, she clearly doesn’t want my vote. Would you vote for someone who insults you or those you care about?
Of course anyone can vote for who they like, or not vote at all, no one’s saying otherwise. It’s Harris’s job to earn your vote, and she clearly hasn’t. But pushing third parties as the solution to any problem is going to do more harm than good until we get a better election system. It may feel better to vote for a party that more clearly aligns with your positions, but if they have no path to actually acquiring any power to make change, you’re doing nothing while feeling like you did something. Changing the policies of a flawed party that actually has power is much harder, and yes, there might be compromise or half-measures, but that’s an infinitely more productive path. (More productive than that is doing direct action outside of the electoral system entirely, but both things can be done at the same time.)
It’s not “doing nothing” it’s demonstrating that their “viable” candidate is not an acceptable candidate. You’re demonstrating that the people reject them and that we have the power to prevent their victory, putting pressure on them to earn the votes of the people, necessitating changes to be made and concessions given if they wish to stay in power.
Unless they can convince all of you folks to abandon your blocs and “vote blue no matter who”. Then they have free license to do whatever they want, and to let the other side continue being the bogey man that gets you to the polls, because without you your bloc is too weak to affect their victory.
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy; by saying you are too weak to effect change and arguing as much instead of demonstrating in solidarity with other objectors that genocide is a policy that will guarantee defeat for the Democrats now and in the foreseeable future, because the other side is unacceptable (which implies that your side to you, even if genocidal, is acceptable, because of the comforts you believe they are promising over the other side), then you yourself are participating in the thing that is making you too weak to effect change and in the process throwing those people who are subject to the genocide under the bus in service of your own comfort.
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You don’t have the moral high ground you think you have. You can’t scare me with Russia when the US and many Western countries are guilty of enabling a genocide.
Here’s what the Financial Times wrote a year ago:
“We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South,” said one senior G7 diplomat. “All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost . . . Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again.”
“What we said about Ukraine has to apply to Gaza. Otherwise we lose all our credibility,” the senior G7 diplomat added. “The Brazilians, the South Africans, the Indonesians: why should they ever believe what we say about human rights?”
Just four weeks before the Hamas assault on Israel, leaders from the US, EU and western allies attended the G20 summit in New Delhi and asked developing nations to condemn Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian civilians in order to uphold respect for the UN charter and international law. Many of those officials told the Financial Times they have had the same argument read back at them in demands for condemnation of Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza, and of its decision to restrict water, electricity and gas supplies there.
source: https://www.ft.com/content/e0b43918-7eaf-4a11-baaf-d6d7fb61a8a5
archive: https://archive.is/TxkRb
Am I reading the article right? My understanding of what I just read is that in 2016 some social media accounts with ties to Russia put out some pro-Stein statements and then a year or two later Stein was photographed sitting at the same table as Putin.
Neither of those two facts suggest to me that she is, as you put it, “another Russian tool”. Especially since the article itself says that there’s no evidence she knew about the Russian social media accounts boosting her and there wasn’t an interpreter sitting at the table with her and Putin.
Can you please tell me what I’ve missed? Is there more evidence that she’s a “Russian tool”? Because the evidence in the article you linked seems extremely weak.
The only tool here is you bud.
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I like that you specifically posted a right wing source that liberals spent years demonizing during Trump’s and Biden’s terms. It’s weird how right wing you people are just openly being.
Everyone the establishment doesn’t like is a Russian troll these days. Coincidence, or propaganda?
