No surprises on that list tbh
Thankfully they self-identify as those who need to be replaced
Saves a little time
If you primary these establishment fucks out you don’t have this problem.
This. We’ve seen what republicans want to do. We need to stop them and vote ‘not-republican’ when we can before the ability to do so is gone. The problem is we cannot stop there and only vote every 2-4 years for the least-bad option, we need to make better options. “Both sides” is reductive and hides the problem.
Get involved: find and support people who have your views for all offices: city, county, state, federal, maybe even HOA. Most of these are important. If the incumbent is not working for us, we need to fight them and suggest someone better. If the incumbent is unchallenged, then that’s a travesty and they need a primary, if the same party, or an opponent.
For the a while now we’ve seen the ‘left’ chase the ‘center’ and people like OP are mad at this. The solution is not ‘vote blue no matter who’, but that is a bandage to slow the bleeding and will resonate with the less-involved allies we have. The solution is to prove that we are the majority and push our own into leadership roles where they can make things better.
If you’re angry right now, run for office or canvas for someone who is. Being mad, depressed or just bitching online isn’t fixing anything. You can make things better, and it starts with finding a ‘blue’ worth voting for.
Not projection, just a flat out lie.
String them up next to the fash imo
This is one of those situations where not certifying the guy and just getting out of the way is an absolutely terrible idea if you enjoy your position. He got young voters out. The same people who are pretty decent at getting out and organizing for protests and with the way things are going these fish may grow teeth. Maybe not sharks, though no one messes with piranhas all the same.
18-25 has always, and will always be, the demographic with the lowest voter turnout. By a significant margin. Nearly every election, people seem to get this idea that “This time it will be different! The youth are really fired up this time! It’s important, so I’m sure they’ll turn out!” And then the election happens and they never even break 50%.
It’s not a messaging problem, or an outreach problem. There is essentially nothing that can change it. The issue is, and say it with me; 18-25 has always, and will always be, the demographic with the lowest voter turnout.
Nonsense. I think we can see in the Lemmy communities that 18-25 are hard core voters who . . . care about . . . voting . . uh
Oh shit.
it was like that with bernie, both times. and they are took distracted by social media to even care. pre-pandemic during trumps last year before '20 people were still freaking out abou being blocked on facebook, these were 18-20 somethings.
i think its for conservative gen z as well, they had also somewhat lower turnout too. trump gained alot of support from gen x, millineals and the oldest gen z men.
New York resident here. Hakeem Jeffries has always sucked. As does Kathy Hochul. Complete garbage.
Vote blue so, Maintain the status quo!
Why the fuck is schumer still in office?! Hes the very definition of a dickless, useless democrat. Fuck that guy, just get lost useless boomer, let someone who gives a shit take the seat.
Schumer is not the worse one, he’s trying to endorse Mamdani without using the word endorsement to not upset his donors: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5368933-schumer-jeffries-mamdani-nyc/
Comparing the mild cynism with the backstabbing idiots that are going to implode the Democratic Party puts him on “just a bit shitty” list in this case.
Fuck his donors. He should run with the money and endorse Mamdani if he’s such a good person
Who said anything about good person? He made it to lead senator of an unholy big tent coalition of a party. Of course he is a spineless butt kisser. Which is still better than a hypocritical backstabber.
Definitely not as bad as Gillibrand and her racist tirade she went on.
AOC will probably primary him. Schumer is at something like a 2 decade low in approval while AOC polls much higher state-wide.
money. same as the rest who vote pro-fascist
He’s WORSE than useless. Not only is he a Manchin level shill for fossil fuel interests, he’s said that his job is to “keep the left Pro Israel”, a statement so blatant that he’d call out anyone ascribing that sentiment to him for using the antisemitic “dual loyalty” trope.
There’s literally REPUBLICANS in Congress right now that are less awful than he is! Imagine that: the Senate leader of what the Dem leadership pretends to be the Left being worse than some actual fascists 🤬
Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, and Rand Paul of Kentucky voted against the BBB, for example
Though tbf, Paul is such an ancap shithead that his objection is that it doesn’t kill ENOUGH poor people, women, minorities, and combinations of more than one of the above.
That’s not how HE puts it, of course, but he’s smart enough to have gotten a doctorate and has been in politics more than long enough to recognize social mass murder and codified bigotry when he sees it.
And Thom was the only person in the world who voted for Ted Cruz’ amendment to the BBB that would have outlawed state-level AI regulation. And Susan Collins played dumb as bricks to justify not voting for justice in Trump’s impeachment. Schumer is Cheney level heinous (already a high bar). These fuckers are just broken clocks
There’s literally REPUBLICANS in Congress right now that are less awful than he is!
You had me til here.
Huge correlation with AIPAC being their top donors, fyi.
And that right there is the the key! Is Sirius about serving their corporate masters and their deep pockets
ORIN?
Find me a politician on the US national stage who isn’t funded by AIPAC.
Massie doesn’t count.
Can you please explain the last line? I’d like to be more informed.
What do you mean national stage? Because I can think of at least a handful.
I mean someone who’s actually been featured in national news, and would be known across the country.
For example, there is a New York state congress versus the US Federal Congress, they probably meant a distinction there because obviously state congressmen won’t get very much PAC money.
Oh of course; in that case then Sanders, AOC, Warren, Jayapal, Omar, Tlaib.
There are some others who have really low amounts of donations, like Tim Walz which I’ll let slide; but if looking at FEC reports of the top offenders like Jeffries and Schumer, they’ve got millions from AIPAC.
Ilhan Omar, Bernie Sanders, Rashida Tlaib, Summer Lee, AOC (though she’s compromised with the party leadership on Israel’s genocide to an abhorrent degree nonetheless), Ayanna Presley, Cory Bush (successfully primaried over it) and Jamaal Bowman (ditto), and everyone else not listed here.
They’re a small minority for sure, but they exist and pretending otherwise just feeds into the manipulative establishment “electability” narrative that they use to poison the public against progressive candidates.
I find it incredibly ironic and enlightening that the one Jewish congressperson I can name off the top of my head is on this list.
the last they want is non-aligned democrat to israel.
They’d rather throw the election to the republicans than see a democrat who isn’t pro-Israel.
NYC has a habit of choosing a REPUBLICAN quite alot.
It’s always been the same fear mongering strategy dems and Repubs have always used. Today it’s just very effective.
Did those politicians say “vote blue no matter who” or was that people online in an effort to avoid gestures broadly?
Genuine question, they’ve always been massive disappointments who would benefit from that.
Anyone who has ever used that phrase un-ironically is politically tone deaf, or a Republican agent. I get the sentiment, and even agree with it, but it doesn’t communicate what people who use it think it does. The kind of people who use that phrase are the ones I blame most for gestures broadly.
Not specifically, no. Though in 2020 and ‘24 they were definitely on about party unity
I specifically said “vote blue no matter who”, because while yes, there are Establishment Democrats that exist, Extermination Republicans are quite objectively fucking worse.
Because if Fascist 47 wasn’t in office, we could at least try to get shit done, instead of putting out 17+ daily fires.
Rebrand: Vote Blue, because what else can you do?
A lot actually but that would require people to get politically educated and we all know how well that has worked out.
And leave the house
Vote blue it’s the least you can do?
Lol, no. Miss me with that “blue MAGA” talk
I mean it might work with Luigi pic in the background. But we all know that won’t happen.
So what were we doing for the last 50 years?
Fascist 47 hasn’t been the president that long, and anyone with a brain knew he would tear this country down.
How was he able to do that? How does he have so much more power than democratic presidents? Genuine question bc all my brain says is that the dem potus’ don’t want change. 45/47 was able to really rock the boat the wrong way, why couldn’t 46 make this much change in the other direction? 44?..
How was he able to do that? How does he have so much more power than democratic presidents?
Dems and the Dem base run on the idea of an actual government with laws and standards. Dems sometimes violate those laws, but with plausible deniability in the vein of lawyers.
The GOP and the GOP base runs on the idea that hurting people is the highest good, and that laws are just a means to an end. They used to have more of the “lawyerly plausible deniability” strain about them, but Trump and his ghoulish following have dispensed with that, as they’re convinced that laws are a secret liberal plot to stop America from becoming a White Man’s Country once again.
Basically, the GOP doesn’t give a fuck about all the rules the Dems follow, and the GOP base won’t electorally punish them for it, because the GOP base is made of fascists.
One side is trying to govern, the other side is trying to win…
Because half the shit he’s doing is illegal and 46 would not break the law so fragrantly and repeatedly, and when shot down he listened to the courts.
Republicans have control of every branch.
Democratic voters usually punish politicians that violate laws and rule of law (see: Mayo Adams of NYC popularity dropping after his indictment), while republican voters don’t care about criminal activities, not even after 34 convictions with strong evidence.
Because after Trump’s first term, including the failed coup, when nothing happened to them, the republicans came to a startling realization: no matter what they do there are no consequences, because the democrats refuse to enforce any.
For decades they’ve worked to be either technically within the law, or carefully over the line in ways that are both deniable and difficult to prosecute. But during Trump’s first term, it became apparent they don’t need to do that anymore. They can do whatever the fuck they want and no one will impose any consequences. Even if someone stops them in the moment, they just get to try again.
And it’s all because democrats are too concerned with decorum and looking polite.
So why can’t democrats do the same? Cause you bet your britches the republicans will hold them to account if they start doing whatever they want. Republicans would love that. They would be thrilled to lock up most of the democrats. But given the opportunity and very real justification for doing so, the democrats just…didn’t do it to the republicans.
Three things.
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Trump is doing a lot of things that are technically within his powers as long as there is an emergency. Trump is declaring everything an emergency.
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A lot of what Trump is doing is trying to tear down parts if the executive branch. The only real recourse to that is an active Congress, but the House and Senate are governed by his party and can choose not to act while the President tears down everything.
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A lot of what Trump is trying to do is unconstitutional, but he’s got a neutered Supreme Court and would probably quote President Jackson if the Court consistently ruled against Trump.
-
You can’t possibly be equating the current situations with anything in the past
The present doesn’t exist without the past. Our current situation is just as much about the Dems failure to significantly alter the course of our country as it is the GOPs efforts to undermine democracy. One does not follow without the other.
Well for starters we haven’t had a Democrat senate supermajority without caucus since 1979, we haven’t even given them 50 since 2012-2013, and now everything is going to shit, so…
Democrats need to grow a spine and abolish filibuster. republicans already removed the filibuster for SCOTUS nominations, might as well go all the way so maybe we have a chance of fixing things.
fascists can just ignore the parliamentarian anyways.
I’m gonna repeat this again.
Have not had more than 50 in over a decade. Why would you allow the simple majority rule when you’re literally outnumbered?
Add them to the list.
VBNMW was always “we want to give you a shitty candidate, you’ll vote for it and you’ll like it.”
Ah, but if you said anything against the blue (but not in favor of red), you were the vile, evil… CENTRIST! (I.e. a label just applied to you to single you out for not blindly agreeing with the zeitgeist.) Seriously, the front page of Lemmy for a good while was just toxic political “VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO” and if you didn’t agree, you were just a problem.
In the general election, that’s what you should do. If establishment Dems don’t back their nominee, it doesn’t change how you should vote.
People who didn’t vote blue in 2024 actively chose a fascist regime. Anyone who doesn’t vote blue in all the upcoming elections (with a Fetterman exception, but he should be primaried) is endorsing the MAGA movement.
Hard disagree. If we continue the narrative that the US is a 2 party system, actively rejecting and backing other parties in fear “the bad guy will win” (a sentiment and view shared with the Dem/Rep parties), then we’ve entered a endless loop that only as we’ve seen over the decades, is a race to the bottom. We elected Biden because we didn’t want Trump and largely for no other reason. That’s not a good reason. And Biden even commented that he was perhaps too old (his words).
And it’s a fallacy, shared by the Dem/Rep, to fear-monger the “If you don’t vote for MY party, then it’s voting for the other party (the bad guys)”. This was a false narrative that was spread this election and several before it, to prevent anyone else from opposing the status quo. A vote for ‘not my party’ is not a ‘vote for the other party’. If I can’t vote how I want (speaking broadly here for everyone), then my vote doesn’t matter. And if my vote doesn’t matter, then I’m not being represented. And if you’re going to argue that, I’d like to point to the huge number of eligible voters who consistently don’t vote. If we cast non-votes as a vote of no confidence, we’d see a big change in things. But doing that means Dem/Rep would lose the seesaw swings in power they have come to enjoy.
So no, you shouldn’t just throw your vote blindly behind any side. Especially because the internet thinks you should (and again, that goes for Dem/Rep alike).
I voted libertarian in the last election. Not because I thought they had any chance of winning, but because neither party had a candidate I would like to endorse and instead of not voting I gave it to the libertarians to help them stay over the threshold for the next election.
The two party system is going to be the death of America.
You voted for Trump, and you have blood on your hands.
Only if they’re in a swing state. If they in a safe blue or safe red state, eh, have at it.
When the major party candidates include a literal fascist building concentration camps and sending people to torture prisons without due process and a wildly imperfect opposition party candidate, you for against the literal fascist.
People who chose not to vote for Harris because they weren’t “excited” to vote for her chose not to stand in the way of Trump, and they are responsible for him winning the election.
If you didn’t vote for Harris, you have blood on your hands and should be losing sleep over it.
i feel like the people on reddit that was blasting it all over, are propaganda(probably subterfuge from the right and tankies) i never felt a good vipe with those posts.
I dunno. I think a lot of regular people felt really strongly that it was critical that the Republicans not gain control of everything in this last election, and given how things are going at the moment, it’s really hard to argue that was wrong. Which is not to say that the folks criticizing the Democrats were wrong either! The Democrats’ feckless centrism and undermining of leftist candidates has been galling for years. The difficult truth is that the system has been so broken that really good people following genuine motivations were arguing on both sides of the leftist/Democrat divide. I was trying to cling to the hope that if we jollied the current system along, we could get reforms like ranked choice voting and the national vote interstate compact in place that would help shift the underlying incentives in the system away from the two-party system, but it’s probably really been irreparable for years now.
Of course bullying people was never going to be an effective tactic, and I never endorsed that. But that’s just regular tribalism and anger at the nonconformist. That’s just regular dumb human stuff.
Probably
The critical part of ‘vote blue no matter who’ is the voting part. That’s the game plan short-term when it’s election season.
That does not preclude criticizing the incumbents. Or even the candidates. But no matter how you feel about them, you vote for them to stave off misery, and encourage everyone around you to do the same.
Not voting for them sends a message, but it’s the wrong message - and that message is that the populace prefers the GOP. Stop fascism in its tracks and vote blue. Fight for actual progress by doing what you can to forward actual progressive candidates and policies. Like NYC is doing right now.
It boggles my mind how people seem to be incapable of wrapping their head around that concept, and instead continue to insist that we shouldn’t be voting for DNC candidates because — uh - it’ll make things better??? Somehow??? At this point, the willful ignorance is starting to smack of sealioning.
This this this this this.
I keep saying this refrain. The time to reform the party is after elections, until the primary (NOW). The time to vote for the party is during the election period. Sure, state your grievances anytime or all the time to get your politicians to listen. But handing the win to chaos to state your case gives the way to fascism.
Not terribly helpful when the party just ignores us until the election when it’s “too late.”
Well Mamdani is a sign that they (billionaires and establishment politicians) aren’t just ignoring progressives (if that’s what you mean by us), they are actively campaigning against reform, we are pushing back. I know it can feel helpless, but don’t just assume nothing is happening.
Not voting for them sends a message, but it’s the wrong message - and that message is that the populace prefers the GOP
Hard disagree on that. That’s assuming the intentions of the people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_are_either_with_us,_or_against_us
If you’re argument is that we need to be doing what’s right and pushing for progress, then why is that cast as something ONLY the “blue” can do? I don’t know how old you are to see how many times the “blue” has absolutely failed at their job, failed the people, but for no other reason than they’re in the right party, they keep getting voted in. But I’ve seen several “blue” presidents do anywhere from fuckall to the bare minimum in terms of progress/change.
There are other options to vote for that don’t just include the GOP as you seem to suggest. The US isn’t supposed to be just a 2 party system. It’s supposed to be dynamic; these parties are supposed to die off when they no longer represent the people. If you want progress and change, but keep doing the same thing that doesn’t seem to be all that progressive… are you making any progress?
FPTP voting results in 2 parties unfortunately. until the system changes, voting 3rd party does fuck all.
Hard disagree on that. That’s assuming the intentions of the people.
No it’s not. It’s acknowledging the fact that campaigning politicians largely view people as one of the following:
- With us
- Against us
- Someone we might be able to persuade to be with us
- Not relevant
If you don’t vote, they categorise you in that last one. It doesn’t matter what’s in your heart, what matters is how they perceive you. The only tool you have to change that is your vote.
I don’t know if you’ve been watching the current political climate in the USA, but ‘anywhere from fuckall to the bare minimum’ is drastically, ridiculously, absurdly better than what the GOP is doing when they are in power - and when first-past-the-post is the only voting method, and elections are as tight as they are, you can whinge all you want about the morality of voting for someone who doesn’t actually represent your interests, but not voting blue helps the GOP win.
The system is broken, yes, but harm reduction is the name of the game when it’s the only choice you are given.
Save the moralizing for primaries and local races. We’ve seen what happens when people withhold their vote, and what happens is fascism.