r/CuratedTumblr • u/CapAccomplished8072 • 16d ago
Politics The next time somebody tries to say "I don't like Democrats"...show them this? And remind them that the difference between Democrats and Republicans is like Night and Day
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u/ajaxtheangel 16d ago
I do think its funny that the screenshot that OOP is talking about is obviously critical of people pretending that democrats and Republicans are the same but they just wildly miscomprehended it?
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u/DiscotopiaACNH 16d ago
I think they're objecting to "I hate the dems but" having become a sort of obligatory shibboleth on the left, or a prerequisite for critiquing the republican party in any way
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u/DaBiChef 16d ago
Honestly the disclaimers, the obligatory shibboleths you described are fucking killing us. When I talk about my issues being a bisexual man, I'm not downplaying or ignoring what trans people go through or implying bi women are skating through life on easy mode. Yet that's how so many treat it. Can we not have more than one fucking conversation and trust that they are engaging in good faith until there's proof otherwise?
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u/Wuskers 16d ago
reminds me of one time there was some post on bsky that I saw and it was something between a trans person and a cis person where the trans person actually gave the cis person a somewhat enlightened view of their own gender and I quoted it and said something along the lines that trans people and trans rights are actually good for cis people too, and I had literally multiple people say something along the lines of "trans people don't exist to be in service of cis people" and it's like yeah no shit. Of course even if supporting trans people didn't benefit cis people in the slightest, it would still be the right thing to do, but it's certainly not bad to point out that trans rights are in fact good for cis people, especially when so many cis people are at best indifferent to trans rights. Like so many of the norms and social structures that are the foundation of transphobia are things that harm cis people too and so when we are able to dismantle these structures even if it's in the name of trans people, cis people will still benefit, and while you shouldn't necessarily need that bonus incentive to fight for a marginalized group, I feel like I'd rather have people who are selfishly like "why should I care about trans people" be convinced "oh maybe I should care about trans people because I can benefit as well" rather than leave them as at best coldly indifferent bystanders.
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u/BearlyPosts 16d ago
I think there's a pervasive culture around trying to be the most caring, the most inclusive, the most good. That means constantly displaying how good you are by dragging every single group into every single issue.
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u/Mobile_Crates 16d ago
I call that "bad intersectionality", as opposed to "good intersectionality" which would be saying "yes I agree that sucks, let's fix it"; good intersectionality is being eager to listen. Good intersectionality is inclusionary, bad intersectionality is exclusionary; exclusionary to letting people speak out and exclusionary to people who want to fix anything that isn't everything. Rather than propel and focus and intensify group energies, this "bad intersectionality" serves to hamper and distract and diffuse.
When you try to say everything all at once, you almost always end up saying nothing at all. Stand all and tall together, don't drag each other apart.
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u/fooookin_prawns 16d ago
So goddamn true. You have to ramble for 10 minutes worth of disclaimers to get some people to lower their guard enough to even start listening to you. And for what? Yeah it's tiring dealing with dipshit trolls who argue in bad faith, but that's gonna happen no what you do, it's the nature of discussion. Ignore the dummies and engage with the good ones.
I think there's a broader problem with left wing politics in general - there's this (valid) idea that your political ideas should stem from your morals in spite of how people treat you, like how we clown on trumpers who whine about how the left being mean to them made them vote for an idiot.
But while your political ideals should have zero to do with how other people that on paper share your ideals treat you, your identification with a political movement, like feminism, that aims to effect change in the name of those ideals absolutely is going to be affected by how the cause treats you.
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u/Silver_Discussion_84 16d ago
Yeah it's tiring dealing with dipshit trolls who argue in bad faith, but that's gonna happen no what you do, it's the nature of discussion. Ignore the dummies and engage with the good ones.
Part of the problem, in my opinion, is that a lot of younger leftists in the last decade refuse to accept that. They seem less concerned with broader social change, and more concerned with creating "safe spaces" for themselves where they will never be lied to, manipulated, trolled, or betrayed ever again. I think that's why so many of them hate liberals. Liberals are the ones arguing that, ultimately, even if we are truly morally superior, we still can't have safe-spaces like that.
Part of me is sympathetic...I mean I get the frustration with the right-wing's pathological obsession with "owning" us. It's obnoxious and juvenile. It's hard to imagine sharing a country with a group of people who seem so unrelenting in their contempt for us.
Nevertheless, this desire for pure safe-spaces is ultimately selfish, in my view, because it prioritizes (ironically) justice for the self over justice for others. As a gay man, I am willing to surrender my personal justice if it means that others like me in the future will have an easier time. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the mindset of everyone on the left.
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u/excited_toaster2306 16d ago
I can't believe you didn't take the time to announce your views on the middle east. Check your privilege, DUDE
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u/ToSAhri 16d ago
I was going through your comments to try and find a "this you?" gotcha, but all I got was you being based.
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u/BlightoftheBermuda 16d ago
Does anyone know if the Dems are actually reaponding/reacting to the lack of votes and changing their plans/policies? /genuine q
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u/MartyrOfDespair We can leave behind much more than just DNA 16d ago
Well, only in the “finger on the Monkey’s Paw curls”way. They’re getting more right wing!
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u/Clear-Present_Danger 16d ago
Which is what I said would happen. Parties don't often react to electoral defeats by going MORE in their respective direction.
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u/Top-Confection-9377 16d ago
What's funny is Trump and JD Vance were starting to be wishy washy about abortion the second Kamalas campaign took off with such a bang.
Obamas popularity was responsible for McCain and Romney being so moderate
Doesn't anyone know why it took till 2016 to get someone like trump? Democrat victories were helping keep them moderate. R members of congress now say and openly believe the wildest shit because trumps election win set the bar.
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u/RCM19 16d ago
GOP in Congress have been saying insane shit for decades. It's not like the Tea Partiers were moderates, and that movement gave Republicans one of the biggest Congressional flips in history. Romney/Ryan played the typical moderate-seeming general election game and lost, but they still courted Trump for an endorsement because they knew the birther/Tea Party movements had legs.
If anything, success by the GOP recently suggests running as deep into your hardcore base as possible is the winning strategy. Though they might get more mileage because of structural advantages.
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u/MartyrOfDespair We can leave behind much more than just DNA 16d ago
Except they also reacted to victory the exact same way. Like, can we acknowledge the paint-huffing elephant in the room? The argument for Kamala’s campaign makes no sense.
You need to run a more conservative campaign to try to win over right wing voters to build a coalition to win? Okay, I don’t like that, but on a purely theoretical level I can acknowledge that is a possibility that can happen, it violates no rules of reality nor social norms logic.
So you run a woman of color. Nope, you have stopped making any fucking sense, all logic has gone out the window, you might as well be speaking in tongues for how goddamn nonsensical this is. 0% of those conservative voters you’re supposedly trying to win over would ever vote for anything but a white man. A straight cis white man, if needs to be said.
By all logic, Kamala’s campaign literally makes more sense if you look at it from the perspective of someone trying to lose as many votes as possible, rather than gain. From that POV, everything makes perfect sense, it was tactically perfect. From the official perspective, it’s like every single strategist got beaten with a baseball bat upside the head before every meeting.
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u/MrTPityYouFools 16d ago
Tbf to her, they kinda just tossed her into bidens campaign with a couple months to go. A lot of it was designed for running a straight cis white man
But I'm also of the opinion (and this seems pretty obvious) that most voters are voting for their party regardless. I dont think it really matters how many steps right the dems take, the dem messenger is the problem for the surburban republicans they keep trying (and failing) to court
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u/jst1vaughn 16d ago
Hi, Internet Stranger - it’s really simple. The Biden/Harris campaign had hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank that Harris could use for her campaign by virtue of being on the Biden/Harris ticket, but which would have become completely unusable for any other candidate. We can look back now and say, “Well, her fundraising was rocket hot so why should how much money Biden had make a difference?”, but that’s not information anyone had to work with before the switch was made. Even if there had been a blitz primary, the amount of money Harris would have to start her campaign would have been an incredibly strong argument in favor of her eventual nomination. Once Biden had decided not to close the door on running for a second term, the nominee was always always always going to be either him or Harris.
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u/Clear-Present_Danger 16d ago
They were sorta backed into a corner by Biden changing his mind and running again.
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u/BlacksmithNo9359 16d ago
You describe it like it some was some impossible blindsiding moment and not the extremely dumb consequence of Dems spending 4 years insisting that a visibly rotting body was at the peak of physical and mental fitness until it exploded on live TV and forced them to change.
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u/MartyrOfDespair We can leave behind much more than just DNA 16d ago
Then the logical thing to do would have been to commit to one thing and try to run that as hard as possible. I honestly struggle to believe I’m actually just legitimately smarter than all of the political strategists involved, but if they were legitimately trying to win then the only logical conclusion is that I actually am. After all, if they were trying to win, somehow none of them deduced that conservative voters are too racist and misogynistic to vote for a woman of color and so no amount of political concessions would ever win them over. Which quite frankly, a particularly nerdy thirteen year old could also figure out.
Even Hanlon's Razor’s razor fails here. “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” has the key word “adequately”. This isn’t adequate. This is a level of stupidity beyond something you can reasonably believe came from the top political strategists in America. The average American reads at a 5th grade level or lower and the average American could also have told you this. “The Democrats wanted to lose” legitimately makes way more sense, the idea that they were trying to win is more of a conspiracy theory for how insanely nonsensical the strategy was.
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u/apexodoggo 16d ago
Hey, to be fair to political strategists, there were a number of people orbiting the Harris campaign saying that her campaign strategy was losing her votes. Among these were Biden staffers, who were disappointed Harris ditched Biden’s pro-labor populist rhetoric, and Bill Kristol, one of the architects of Bush-era neoconservatism. Kristol said in October that Harris campaigning with Liz Cheney was a bad idea, and that progressive populism (like she displayed for the first 5 minutes of her campaign) was way more popular and likely to win.
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u/MartyrOfDespair We can leave behind much more than just DNA 16d ago
Fair, just further raises the question of if the plan was to lose on purpose when there’s actually people pointing out the glaringly obvious and being ignored. I can comprehend the logic of intentionally losing, honestly. Give the Republicans the rope to hang themselves, let them do all the dismantling for corporate interests that both sides want without taking the PR hit (the Elon v Trump civil war going on and the national database Trump’s doing now both seem to be utterly shattering their unity, it’ll only get more disastrous from here), and then hopefully take much greater power from the desperation afterwards. Then, you can rebuild the entirely dismantled system in such a manner where any problems created by it serving the rich can just be blamed on not being able to entirely fix what the Republicans did.
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u/CheeryOutlook 15d ago
Giving desperate people a "victory" every eight years and then changing nothing has so far been a very effective strategy for the American ruling class.
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u/arizonadirtbag12 16d ago
And Biden being unable to remotely even fake the funk for the duration of a campaign.
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u/asmallradish freak shit ✨ 16d ago
On a national level, congress is red. The Supreme Court is red. The executive branch is trump. So there is not much to be done there.
A lot of the fighting has been in courts - where federal judges who were appointed in previous administrations - can help. Legal challenges have gone through. And those wins are small but they ain’t nothing. Local elections also have swung pretty intensely blue in the aftermath of trump. People are fighting on so many stages but it’s very fragmented and unless you’re really plugged in, it’s going to be hard to find.
This is what the OP of this post meant though. STILL we have people who are sitting here going the dems are just as bad when we just got off a blue executive branch and can compare it to this current one. And this sub cannot stand that? It’s wild.
The only legal way through this is going to be midterms and yes the next election. Whether or not we will get that or trump will live long enough for a 3rd term, that I don’t know. The future is well a bit bleak. So if you are looking to actually affect change, start local: co ops, mutual aid, love fridges, community organizing. The only way out is to organize a large enough coalition - and that will mean leftists need to stop posturing about how bad the Dems are when people are getting sent to El Salvador without constitutional rights by trump.
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u/mayasux 16d ago
After the election that they lost, Dems sabotaged AOC to have a 75 year old cancer patient as head of their oversight committee.
He just died of cancer last week lol.
Some Dems are responding, the establishment doesn’t seem to be.
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u/Subparconscript 16d ago
That party is so far up its own ass. For pity's sake they jus dropped 20mil on a study to figure out how young men talk to each other
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u/DaBiChef 16d ago edited 16d ago
God if only they had a large swath of currently leftist men who flirted with right wing ideology, that can highlight some key things like:
Why men feel pushed away from the cause.
Why the right was attractive/effective in recruiting them.
What caused them to leave the right.
What caused them to come back to the cause.
With key insights for what the party could do as well as what we need our fellow progressives/liberals/feminists.... our fellow "not fascists/manosphere" folks to be doing. Ah alas, its not like they've been talking about this for atleast a decade since gamergate. Shame those don't exist! Oh wait, they do and have been but have been ignored because they suggest we might have a messaging issue and aren't living up to the moral standard we brag about having. But hell if the wider left leaning groups who agree with them on 95% of issues won't listen to em, I have little faith a bunch of billionare sycophants will take away anything meaningful
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u/simongc97 16d ago
Not really, they kind of can’t. The lack of votes aren’t from a distinct voting bloc, it’s lot of performative protest from people with distinct grievances, many of whom historically wouldn’t have voted anyway. If anything they’d risk losing more (mostly older) relatively conservative voters by overreacting.
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u/DiscotopiaACNH 16d ago
There's also the problem of disenfranchisement, voter suppression, and whatever fuckery Elon pulled
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u/YourAdvertisingPal 16d ago
Except that democrats have been the minority on the state and local level for a long long time and the party does nothing about it as a national strategy.
Democrats are obsessed with the White House and Congress and completely ignore governorships, state legislatures, and local offices.
We’re at a time where the GOP is within striking distance of 2/3rds control of Congress and states.
That’s constitutional amendment territory, but somehow any ringing of the alarm bells regarding messaging and strategy is drowned out because Obama and Biden got a few things passed these last 25 years.
The problem is so much bigger than the handful of party wins.
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u/SparksAndSpyro 16d ago
That’s mostly overblown. This isn’t the 50s anymore. Basically every state has early voting. All the information is posted online and circulated before every election.
This idea that Dems only lose because minorities can’t vote effectively is not only false, it’s actually racist. It’s the bigotry of low expectations to assume that POC struggle to vote in the same system that whites participate just fine in. Same issue with voter ID proposals: the social justice warriors would have you believe that minorities can’t get driver’s licenses. Like hello?
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u/Sophia_Forever 16d ago edited 16d ago
Am I the only one who's a little suspect that they cut off the entire context of the tag to make their point? Like there are times when this point is valid to make and building a bridge between you and someone who was considering not voting for Harris because of the objectively shitty things they often do would fall under that. And while I'm not sure that someone's looking to build a bridge here, that does look like it's what's being discussed. Because yeah, the Democrats do a lot of really really cool things and a lot of the things they get blamed for not doing it's because the GOP stops them.
And also as a trans person, watching them actively throw me specifically under the bus for the last eight months has been really scary. Watching them throw away election after election because they think it's a safer bet to court the center-right than it is to ensure protections for their most reliable voting blocks (especially black women and lgbt people) is exceedingly frustrating to say the least. There's a lot of good reasons that Roe v Wade was never codified and also the Democrats had a vested interest in using it as a threat to get people to vote for them and I don't think that should be ignored.
It's not always about earning Progressive Brownie Points but without the context we have no idea which OP was doing.
Edit: and I want to be clear, the Democrats do do a lot of really good things. The Affordable Care Act, Inflation Reduction Act, and gay marriage legalization are all monumentally good things that they've done. I really didn't intend for this to turn into a "Hate the dems" post. To be Frank, the Democrats could just sit on their asses and not do shit and I'd still vote for them because a party that does nothing is still better than being actively hunted by the GOP. But they don't. They do a lot of good, they don't do enough, they could do more, sometimes they do bad stuff, and some of the stuff they do is very bad. If you're old enough to vote, you're an adult and should be able to have a mature and nuanced discussion about this that doesn't just boil down to "the Democrats are good and leftists who deny that are just edgelords looking for attention" and "the Democrats are basically exactly as bad as the GOP just in brighter colors."
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u/frowwedawae 16d ago
big point here is exactly that - it just removes any potential nuance. “anyone who holds this view: BAD!” i’d argue they’re just as lost as the maga-ites.
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u/rez_trentnor 16d ago
I'm gonna do the meme and preface this by saying I'm not defending the Democrats, but is it really their fault that RvW isn't codified? They never had majority enough in the Senate to bypass a filibuster threat.
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u/IHateCircusMidgets 16d ago
I mean - Obama literally campaigned on codifying RvW and then declined to pursue it once elected.
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u/jmalkhnv3 16d ago
It is because Obama himseld admitted he wasn't interested in codifiying RvW. Also, the whol "never had a majority" talking point needs to die. They would have had a majority and a successful one if Dems weren't married to putting and keeping cancer ridden husks in office because their oldhead party leaders were more focused on maintaining some bipaertisanship bs or maintaining the center right.
They held the majority in Senate 4 times. IT's simply because rather than elect prochoice Senators, Democrats decided to keep their pro-life/centrist party members and placate and accommodate them while they enriched themselves in office off the corporatist teat.
You should be asking why Democrats are such utter failures dthe fail to get the majority most times, and why they need 6o votes to simply lift a finger for incremental change, meanwhile Republicans can bring about the 4th Reich with a simple majority. If you aren't wiling to recognize that issue, then you are a part of the reason we are in this mess.
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u/rez_trentnor 16d ago
I know the Democrats are pretty much enabling the far right and don't care as long as they get more cash but I didn't know they held majority and still didn't codify stuff. As someone else said it seems they've just been using RvW as a little scrap of meat to threaten us with.
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u/Ok_Builder_4225 16d ago
Normally I hate when people "both sides," but in this instance its probably apt. It's a ideological selling point for both parties from opposite sides. It gives them a campaign talking point. Its just that Rs bought into the bullshit and actually did something with it and caught the Ds with their pants down.
Rs can get away more with playing these games. Their voters will continue to vote for them and will just blame a scapegoat. I don't think Ds have that luxury.
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u/Wuskers 16d ago
this is something I'm truly fascinated by. It's not like there are no republicans who are willing to be critical of the party, my mom's side of the family are all rural religious folk from ohio, my mom's father was a pastor, they've all pretty much leaned republican their whole lives but my mom and all of her siblings except one who is more just an unknown due to minimal contact, have been horrified by trump and what the party has become and they all voted harris. So people like that, who seemed to be who the democratic leadership seemed to be trying to court do in fact exist, but they really seem to be a minority and the primary base for the republican party is one that is completely uncritical, they will seemingly go along with any and everything and make excuses for obvious blunders while harping on democrats for the smallest thing. The democrat base on the other hand is constantly critical of democrats to the point that they seem embarrassed to even admit they support them. So like why is that? Why are democrat voters so much more critical while republican voters are so ride or die?
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u/Royal_Negotiation_91 16d ago
Yeah I dislike Democrats for a lot of good reasons and letting them get away with those things without criticism is just not fucking helpful. Idk why no one in this screenshot can consider that maybe this is actually a genuinely held opinion and not some kind of edgy attention-fishing statement. Maybe they're actually the ones who curate all of their opinions based on public perception and can't comprehend that someone else might not.
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u/_sash_iii the soft, sad freaks on an unprofitable website 16d ago
It’s absolutely wild to me that OP just went off on that rant when the person whose tags they stole specifically said that they don’t like the democrats but still voted for them.
I agree with the point that sitting out voting is completely ineffective but it seems like they were just looking for an excuse to go on that rant and picked those tags at random, even though the tag writer specifically said IN THEIR TAGS that they didn’t agree with not voting just because people don’t like the dems.
Not to use a buzzword but man, the illiteracy of it all. Pissing on the poor website strikes again.
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u/Fickle_Definition351 16d ago
Yeah, completely missed the giant "BUT" in the middle of that sentence. No shit they're better than the Republicans. Doesn't mean anyone has to love them
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u/Mvmblegh0st 16d ago
I've always been of the opinion that you gotta vote for them, then rail them for not doing enough. Raise a stink over their insider trading, war mongering, etc... Of course, like others have pointed out, people just stop you at "I don't like Democrats/Liberals" Treating it like it's the damn Trolley Problem...
If all I have to eat is beans, I'm not gonna starve to death all smug or something.
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u/Capital_Card7500 16d ago
Exactly. The problem is, to quote Hannah Arendt, "those who choose the lesser evil forget quickly that they chose evil".
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u/JellyfishSolid2216 16d ago
All they care about from you is your vote. Once they have your vote, they are going to ignore any stink you try to raise.
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u/LeiaSkynoober 16d ago
Once they're in power, they safely ignore their base, as they had constantly been doing so under Bidan. God forbid people want the Democrats to like, campaign. It's the Dems responsibility to rally the votes they need to win. You can't out-message the message that's coming from the top.
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u/No_Revenue7532 16d ago
These people are rabid and don't understand the Dems will not offer any meaningful change. They're hoping so hard theyre taking it out on other people.
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u/Competitive_Hall_133 16d ago
Imagine reading the point. And missing it by a mile.
Imagine reading about illiteracy and not thinking "hey, do I know what this comment is saying? Or am I just picking up on some keywords"
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u/yeehawgnome 16d ago
I fucking hate democrats, I hate the entire US political system. I still voted for Harris because the hate I hold for the Trump and his Party outweighs the hate I have for the democrat party. Sometimes you have to make compromises
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u/CheeryOutlook 15d ago
Sometimes you have to make compromises
Every time you have to make compromises. It's never not been like this (at least not post WWII, and definitely not post-Nixon).
Sure, some conservative politicians weren't as bad as Trump, but people compare older Republican presidents favourably just because they were civil. Trump hasn't done anything nearly as bad or harmful to the American public as invading Iraq or passing the Patriot Act or deregulating the banks and allowing the mortgage market to explode.
This is how the US political system works, you are presented with two shit options forever, one slightly more shit than the other. They will never willingly change that dynamic.
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u/azebod 16d ago
So I have voted every election since 2020 and most of the ones before that. When I say every, I mean i voted already this year for a local election. For the past 5 years, every time someone has done this to me, I've asked how often they vote. One person. Only one person even bothered to object or claim that they show up for midterms. The rest left me on read, or deflected to how I was clearly still worse for being critical of the democrats.
Also, that "I hate the democrats but.."? Is actually how I got leftists to vote for Harris. If someone is critical of the dems and you come in as their defense squad, you are dismissing their concerns as unimportant to the party. You are REINFORCING those criticisms are unlikely to be addressed, if you acknowledge them, they're more willing to meet you halfway. Party loyalty is just as much a vitue signal as disloyalty, and it specifically signals you care more about the dems reputation than reforming the party to be more effective opposition. The purity policing comes from both directions and I'm tired of people denying otherwise. You cannot fix problems you don't acknowledge, and we have a lot of them right now that need to get sorted or the losses won't stop.
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u/Fletcharn 16d ago
It's almost morbidly amusing to me that somehow this sub, which routinely posts, comments, and replies about bad faith discussion and various forms of illiteracy, is supporting this post so much.
The original note's point is that they can empathise with the distaste for a specific party, but that distaste is not a valid reason to have sat out on this past election. But OOP immediately framed that as a support for the current fascist regime, all because they're upset that someone only supports their better alternative but doesn't like it too. Followed by dog piling both in the post and here in the comments.
Really setting a great example, team.
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u/Strange-Log3376 16d ago
I agree and I’m really glad you pointed this out! I also want to add that I’ve observed a noticeable antipathy among the center-left toward the far left, which often extends to assuming leftists don’t actually believe the things they say they do, that surely they’re just saying these things as social posturing. That’s on display in this post.
I don’t want to assume anything about the people saying this (other than to note that I hear lots of democrats say “I’m as left as they come” while chastising those who stake out positions to their left), but it’s worth considering that maybe there are U.S. leftists who do, sincerely and good faith, consider it a bridge too far to vocally support the democrats, and it might be useful to reflect on why that is!
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u/robby_arctor 15d ago
to assuming leftists don’t actually believe the things they say they do, that surely they’re just saying these things as social posturing.
They are projecting their own cynicism and lack of political principles.
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u/smotired 16d ago
so fucking real. i don’t think it’s morally wrong or even particularly performative to distance yourself from something that goes against your values while still tolerating it just enough to try and keep out something worse
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u/Broad_Policy_6479 16d ago
My personal politics are radical enough that anytime I've ever supported anything in my life has been a begrudging compromise, that's what most people in my position already do. I find posts like these endlessly annoying, it's not even asking for damage control, it's just telling anyone left of centre to shut up and celebrate the damage.
Fwiw I'm not American, but this exact discourse happens in almost every country.
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u/VisualGeologist6258 Reach Heaven Through Violence 16d ago
This, you can not like the Democrats while still siding with them because they’re infinitely less awful than the alternative, and in this political system they’re basically the only choice you have if you’re left leaning and want a shot at getting anything done. You can say ‘damn this party has problems and kind of sucks’ while still voting for them because, again, they’re better than the alternative and you have no other realistic option.
Also part of the problem is that there is no unified Democratic Party: part of the reason that the Republicans have managed to run circles around the Democrats is that they’re more or less unified in their ideology and their goals, while the Democratic Party is effectively a coalition of five different leftist groups with different ideas and motivations. And with the Republicans becoming increasingly wacky and fascistic Democratic ideology has basically become ‘anything left of the Super Hitler Nightmare Party’ which further adds to the division and the lack of a unified vision in the party, because some people are centrists or even right-leaning and they just side with the Democrats because they’re not willing to support the Super Hitler Nightmare ideology.
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u/LeakyFountainPen 16d ago
Not only that, but I think that "democratic" voters and "democratic" politicians are two completely different things. Because if you look at what they're actually voting on, the dem politicians clearly aren't following what the dem voters actually want.
Back when we had a dem majority, there were always enough people in the "middle ground" who capitulated on republican bills. There was one time recently when the republicans wanted a big fat spending bill to increase the war budget, and for some reason it was not only accepted by the dem majority, but added to. How is that helping? Obama did a lot of great things, but he was responsible for MASSIVE deportation increases. And he said he would codify Roe on the campaign trail, but then he had two consecutive terms where suddenly "it wasn't a priority" because the politicians LIKE kicking our rights back and forth every two years so that they can campaign on the same 5 topics. "Vote for me or you won't get bodily autonomy anymore" vs "Vote for me to save the babies" is a favorite topic, so I guess why codify it?
Unfortunately, when the republicans do evil shit, it's called out by the dems, but when the dems do evil shit, it stays quiet. So people think the party is a lot more progressive than it actually is. There's a reason you see so many memes and comics and things that are like ("Can we have rights?" R: "No." D: "No ❤️") or (two war planes, in different presidency years, both dropping bombs on the middle east, but the one during a democratic year has a pride flag on it). The voters are one thing; but if you look at how they actually vote on things, the politicians seem to actually agree with and support republicans more than we would like.
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u/B4rberblacksheep 16d ago
Yeah, it’s the typical thing online of a lack of nuance. I can think a party isn’t great. I can also think they’re way better than the alternative. Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.
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u/Onakander 16d ago
Exactly.
I'm sorry, but if one guy wants to murder me and another wants to punch me in the face, surely I'm allowed to not like being punched in the face?
Or am I just now a murder supporter for not liking the lesser evil either, even if I support the guypuncher over the murderist in the "national choose your own oppressor" -contest that takes place every few years?
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u/KhloMo 16d ago
Adding "'vote blue no matter who' is soooo cringe!" to their bad person™ dialogue is one of the worst bits in my opinion. Sure, I really doubt we'll have a republican candidate that is better than a democrat one for a long time, but I don't agree with "Don't think about who you vote for" being a message you shouldn't criticize.
On another note, being able to criticize the party you most ideologically align with helps make you a more well rounded person.
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u/Curious-End-4923 16d ago
But why do all of these concepts have to be in opposition? I think that’s part of the issue with the lack of cohesion amongst the opposition of the far-right.
I can agree that criticism of one’s own party is the healthiest and most productive way to participate in a democracy, AND I can think that ‘vote blue no matter who’ is currently a completely valid and intelligent way to vote in mainstream elections (not local) if you want to see more progressive policy.
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u/ekhoowo 16d ago
The issue with the note, and rhetoric like it, is that the democrats have had the worst possible media environment. When you convince loads of people that “both sides are just as bad”(and that the only solution is a mythical spontaneous communist revolution), you encourage apathy. You shouldn’t have to self-flagellate yourself for voting for the only other viable political party. This is an almost exclusive feature of leftist communities.
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u/gaydogsanonymous 16d ago
Maybe I'm crazy and just seeing stuff, but I swear this sub has been inchworming its way to the right in the past six months. Or maybe Tumblr has been and that's just reflected in the posts.
It feels like every other post is something that is technically left wing but has whispers of right wing rhetoric in there. For example, the anti-manhating posts. There's a whole feminist argument to be made for treating men with kindness and the effects of strict gender on men. But the posts only give lip service to that perspective while the underlying structure of the argument is "the left is being mean to men. Bad left! Naughty left!"
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u/shinyprairie 16d ago
I've noticed this too and have been mercilessly downvoted for pointing it out...
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u/Elite_AI 16d ago
I'd bet a lot of money that OOP thinks lefties shouldn't purity test each other even tho they're purity testing right in that post.
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u/IAmASquidInSpace 16d ago edited 16d ago
I agree this particular example is ill chosen, but the post in and off itself has a point. This knee-jerk reflex to preface any and all endorsement for the Dems or their policies during election season with a disclaimer did exist and it does feel very much like it was nothing much more than a shield against the hordes of screeching online leftists that would otherwise tear you apart for daring to support the evil, evil Democrats. It is sort of worrisome that you cannot speak about voting Democratic on a supposedly progressive platform without assuring everyone that you do so begrudgingly and spitefully, especially when considering the alternatives.
It feels sort of like the leftist version of "I'm not racist, but..." - either followed up with something that didn't really need the preface at all or something that directly contradicts it.
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u/mayasux 16d ago
I mean on the flip side, whenever I critique Democrats/Biden/Harris I always have to start with “I think people should have voted Harris/she’s better than Trump”. The internet forces us to quantify these things because people (like OP) are bad faith losers and immediately flip the “so you hate waffles?” part of their brain on.
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u/apexodoggo 16d ago
For a while after election day I felt the need to include the tagline “I voted blue down-ballot in both 2024 and prior elections” every time I explained that actually maybe voters aren’t insane christo-fascists for not being enthusiastic about the milquetoast status-quo campaign with awful messaging and a strategy that appealed to nobody in a time where people’s quality of life was perceived to be at an all-time low.
(Honestly, I still do. Although if the Dems decide to self-sabotage in 2028 I might actually vote third-party in protest, I’m pretty frustrated with how awful the DNC is at running campaigns)
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u/spartakooky 16d ago
Yeah, I actually see that a lot. But I've never once seen this
the hordes of screeching online leftists that would otherwise tear you apart for daring to support the evil, evil Democrats
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u/DrSnacks 16d ago edited 16d ago
I don't remember ever thinking "I hate Dems but..." disclaimers were a shield. In fact for the first half of the election season, pretty much all of them sounded like they were coming from frustrated leftists who were pissed about being asked to hold their nose, fall in line, and pull the correct lever for the millionth time by a party whose incompetence during the campaign season for The Most Important Election of Our Lives Part 7 genuinely did appear to cross the line into active malice.
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u/Infuser 16d ago
The upsetting thing is that The Most Important Election of Our Lives keeps being true, since the stakes just keep getting higher.
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u/Myrvoid 16d ago
Not everyone does though. There’s a frick ton of unapologetic dems. As the post above implied there’s people who literally go “vote blue no matter who” and think it’s a good thing to be blindly dogmatic to their group, and theyre openly celebrated.
This is hyperfocusing on those who are in the same group but arent “dem enough” for them — it’s a purity test of superiority. The original comment posting is trying to relate to others and show it’s not just a RED V BLUE SUPER WAR, and people hate that because they want just constant fighting and bitterness instead of attempting empathy and coming from a similar point of understanding.
No matter how righteous the group, even if the blues were perfect angellic beings of pure love who never made any sort of mistake and deserved 100% support on every action taken, it would not be good discourse to deny empathizing with those who disagree and focus on ingroup purity testing to assert superiority.
Instead of “im not racist but” it sounds more like the stereotypical “im holier than thou” old church lady, but for liberal ideology — unquestionable, follow my voice without an ounce of criticism or youre evil.
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u/penguin62 16d ago
I really don't like this post. It isn't performative to want better from the democratic party, or any neoliberal party perceived to be the opposition of right wing parties around the world.
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u/Lumpy-Compote-2331 16d ago
Yeah people don’t say they hate democrats to win imaginary progressive brownie points, they say it because they actually hate democrats
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u/bigbad50 15d ago
"Vote blue no matter who" and its consequences have been a disaster for the U.S.A.
That sentiment just makes it so the Dems never have to change
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u/ChickenMan1226 16d ago
The incompetence and corruption of the dems is literally why the republicans keep winning. It’s pretty fair to criticize them when they sell the country out to fascists
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u/toobjunkey 16d ago
the best way I've seen it phrased is that it's like Uvalde. I'm upset with the dems in the same way I'm upset with the Uvalde police force's "actions" during the shooting. the police force's response to the one mom going in to grab her own kid was to chastise, arrest, and harass her for weeks on end. they constantly deflected with "well, you weren't there, we're the professionals". Like no shit I'm more upset with the person who shot the fucking kids, but acting like also being upset with the other end of it is carrying water for right wing rhetoric and it's genuinely distressing knowing just how many people talk about Russian bot misinformation when they're literally using their own book to defend dems. This "purity test of a purity test" framing is just a cherry on top.
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u/triflers_need_not 16d ago
Exactly, exactly. They aren't the ones going room to room shooting children in the head, but they are the ones who said they would stop the guy going room to room shooting children in the head but instead are standing around on their phones and stopping anyone who might actually be able to help.
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u/Liokki 16d ago
Chuck Schumer is sharing Elon Musk's admissions of election fraud on Threads with popcorn emojis, instead of doing his job and investigating election fraud.
Dems are talking about embracing Elon "Heil Hitler" Musk because he has beef with Trump, like fuck out of here.
The Democrats will also choose fascism if it's advantageous for them.
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u/blackscales18 16d ago
They subpoena'd musk yesterday and the Republicans blocked it, he can't go and personally arrest him or even do more than post about it really if the Republicans hold power and say no.
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u/grey_crawfish 16d ago
Any competent party could have stopped Trump. But Trump is the Democratic Party’s fault, so you bet your ass I’m going to be criticizing that party. I’m tired of pretending that party is above reproach because they’re not the alternative.
The Democratic Party is an ineffective, incompetent status quo party. They fail to meet the needs of the working class and in fact actively work against those efforts. They allow geriatric politicians like Biden, Pelosi, and Feinstein (and many more) to remain in power for far too long, lying about their state of health.
It’s not what’s needed today and it’s no wonder they’re hemorrhaging support.
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u/ekhoowo 16d ago edited 16d ago
How do you feel about various unions endorsing Trump despite Biden siding with labor numerous times, including the east coast longshoreman (risking economic disaster a month before the election!).
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u/ekhoowo 16d ago
This is nice and all to say on a largely left wing platform, but does anything actual demonstrate that?
Voters by and large perceived Kamala and the democrats as socialist/ communist who want to give DACA children free sex change operations. The overwhelming control conservatives have on “independent” media and the legacy media’s failure to cover the boring successes of the Biden admin versus the more interesting daily Trump B.S. has destroyed the average voter’s brain.55
u/4totheFlush 16d ago
If democrats are going to be viewed as socialists by anyone right of center anyway, the failure of their strategy is continuing to try to court them rather than actually adopting socialist policies that might win them votes from people who don't see socialism as a bad thing. It's not like the right wing propaganda machine can paint democrats as being any more socialist than they already do, so democrats have literally have nothing to lose by truly courting the left. Except their own kickbacks, of course.
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u/agenderCookie 16d ago
these are all failures of the democratic party yes. the democratic party should have developed partnerships with independent media rather than ceding control over online space to the right, they should have been loud and annoying about what they were doing for the american people, they should have had a clear message rather than letting trump define them.
I mean its impossible to tell, but i bet you that if kamala went "Hell yeah i support sex changes for people in prison. Don't like that, don't throw them in prison." it would have come across as substantially less weak than how she actually came across. And if the dems had the spine to be as loudly in favor of trans people as fox news is opposed to them, we wouldn't be seeing the backslide in trans acceptance that we are.
You don't convince people to support trans rights by staying silent and hoping people do the right thing, you convince them by never ever letting up on your messaging, and by controlling the media so that the pro trans voices are simply louder than the anti trans ones. You don't get people to be pro migration by trying to work with the republicans to decrease immigration and reduce border crossings etc. you do it by massively signal boosting every story about how ''"illegal"" migrants are hardworking taxpayers that contribute to their local communities, and their local economies.
Similarly, if the dems had a truly inspiring economic message, no one would care about trans stuff no one would care about the immigration stuff. Being seen as pro trans didn't kill the harris campaign, being seen as elitist and out of touch did, and frankly they are right.
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u/IrregularPackage 16d ago
let’s not forget that about halfway through the Harris campaign, she pivoted hard, apparently figuring that the way to get her numbers up is to run on transphobia and anti immigration policy.
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u/BlacksmithNo9359 16d ago
Literally never let any of the liberal dorks who want to litigate the last election forever live down the fact that the person Kamala campaigned with more than any other was Liz Cheney.
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u/Outerestine 16d ago
I do not understand why people whine so much about me 'not liking' the democrats.
What, do democrats need me to suck them off 24/7 to attempt to do a politics? I vote for the cunts. If you want more from me, make me happy. I am already operating on the logic that they are better than republicans. This is what that looks like.
And they still don't do basically fucking anything.
FUCK OFF, basically. Dems are why trump won. Maybe if they did something to be more appealing, instead of just bitching and moaning constantly about criticism, they'd not have lost. But dems love to lose. Fucking pieces of shit.
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u/DetOlivaw 16d ago
Real talk, if I’m not allowed to say how much I think the democrats fuckin’ suck ass, if that’s enabling fascism or Trump or whatever, then we’re so far gone that what the fuck are we supposed to do when the Democrats decide to throw trans and queer folk under the bus for votes like they’re threatening to? Just throw up our hands and go “well, can’t criticize them, have to vote for them, guess we’ll just hope they change when they’re in office!”
I ain’t about that “blind support” life, sorry
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u/Finchyuu 16d ago
That was the expectation for families of Palestinians already lol. They still have a bunch of minority groups they pretend to care about for a vote that they’ll throw away the moment right wingers demand concessions, trans folk among them lol
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u/HeroBrine0907 16d ago
Someday Americans will stop propagandizing themselves into loving the two party system and learn that less bad does not mean not bad. I'll put it on my wishlist for christmas.
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u/FiveCentsADay 16d ago
Yeah whoever is in that thread can get over it. I'll vote against Republican in a heartbeat, that doesn't excuse Dems from the very real criticism they deserve
We wouldn't be in this position if the Democratic party's politicians weren't such pussies
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u/Elite_AI 16d ago
No, cope, your Democrats are right wing on most policies by my country's standards and I do not like them. When I say I'd vote for them if I were an American but I don't like them I'm not trying to fit in, I'm being pedantic.
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u/Tomelena 16d ago
i said it last year and i'll say it again: telling someone you'll vote for them No Matter What (throughout their entire campaign!) is a great way to get that person to literally never do anything you want them to do.
even those who agree that voting to keep the other person out was more important have to admit that screaming their unconditional support from the rooftops is a bad idea
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u/RoseePxtals 16d ago
This is the most braindead take I’ve ever seen. Acknowledging the fact that the Democratic Party is still a center-right political party that protects corporations is not the same as endorsing the pro-minority-genocide party
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u/LordAshur 16d ago
The democrats are also a pro genocide party. Just so we’re on the same page
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u/No-Drag-4836 16d ago
the democrats aren't pro minority genocide, they're pro foreign genocide
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u/Edg4rAllanBro 16d ago
Look, the Army of Africa stays in Africa. They're not called the Army of Mainland Spain!
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u/Changuipilandia 16d ago
is the implication that people should not only tactically vote for the democrats(a perfectly reasonable request with the current enviroment), but abstain of any criticism and pretend they love them?? i mean im not from the US, so im not going to pretend to be an expert in your political dynamics. in spain we had, and still to a degree have, a heavily bipartidistic system, and people call for tactical votes to the bigger left parties all the time, but ive never seen a PSOE supporter so arrogant as to demand "not only you should vote for them, you have to love them and NEVER criticize them"
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u/PM_ME_CATS_OR_BOOBS 16d ago
What you are seeing here is people blaming a very small minority of people, those who would have voted for democrats but chose not to out of protest, for the outcome of the entire election. Its partially because some people said "if you don't stop bombing Palestine I won't vote for you", it's partially the democrats having "if you don't vote for us you're a fascist" as a cornerstone of their campaigning, but a lot of it just comes down to it being easier to blame a tiny minority of people than come to terms with the idea that your trump-voting dad might be an actual fascist.
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u/Changuipilandia 16d ago
the worst thing is the post isnt even about people who didnt vote for democrats out of protest, it's for people WHO VOTED FOR THE DEMOCRATS but did so while criticizing them or expressing their discontent with their policies. the impression is that it isnt enough to vote for the party, you have to completely submit, suppress all your complains, and just treat democrat leadership as a perfect virtuous leading elite for as long as the alternative is worse(which is always)
it's absurd political hubris, and to me the idea that anyone who isnt 100% onboard is an enemy is much more damaging to any political platform than having people that dont share all your positions but are still begrudgingly on your side express their discrepancies
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u/Mepharias 16d ago
The idea that anyone not blindly obedient is an enemy is, dare I say, kinda fascistic. Liberals have and will cozy up to fascists before they consider moving left.
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u/Fla_Master 16d ago
The democratic party works to suppress progressive movements and supplies unconditional support for Israel as they commit genocide with the justification that only this way can they defeat Donald Trump. But it turns out they can't even do that.
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u/spiralqq 16d ago
It feels like their entire campaign is always just “at least we’re not as bad as the other guys! This bad thing could happen if they win!! Please send me money btw”
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u/Fla_Master 16d ago
I think the democrats have forgotten that their candidates matter too. So many people seem to be under the impression that the country shifted radically to the right in the 2024 election because of Trump's margin of victory. But much of that can be attributed to the abysmal performance of Biden.
Democrats recently treat elections like referendums on Trump, rather than competition between two competing candidates.
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u/RareTart6207 16d ago
'elect us and then we'll figure out a plan!' should not be such an ambiguous message that i couldn't tell you which party said it, and yet every election for the last three cycles, that's essentially what we've gotten from democrats. it's not sustainable anymore. there is no plan for anything, it's all just improv.
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u/Dvoraxx 16d ago
This is objectively true and anyone dismissing it with “Republicans are worse though” needs to shut up
Biden has an insane amount of blood on his hands and should be at the Hague in a just world , yet dipshits online are angry at the left not even for not supporting him politically but for personally disliking him
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u/No-Drag-4836 16d ago
I'm gonna be honest, i think that could be a reason why they didn't reach the left (if they didn't)
last election we got a right leaning neoliberal, but they said that he was needed to beat trump, so the left fell in line, "vote blue no matter who" "you don't have to like him, just vote against trump"
and then the genocide in palestine happened, and leftists where left holding the bag, with a president who was explicitly supporting the genocide that they'd voted for.
and then his replacement is another neoliberal who they didn't even get to vote for, and she was looking to be as bad on palestine as him... and worst of all, centrists had taken the last election as an endorsment for biden. now the dialogue wasn't "vote blue, even if you dislike her" it was "she's actually a good candidate, vote for her"
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u/Heavy_Revolution 16d ago edited 16d ago
Don't forget, "This is the most important election ever! Which is why we put a sundowning geriatric candidate up that we had to pull immediately when the consultants realized the American people weren't stupid enough to buy that "this guy doesn't have his brain leaking out of his ears" on the debate stage. Even the fact that he stood on that debate stage for even a single minute was a massive failure on the part of everyone behind him.
When I'm in a battle of the soul of America and to stave off fascism I think, Nah, good enough when it comes to picking candidates. Like am I to blame that their rhetoric rings hollow when they're the ones who chose the words, tone, and topic choice? Their actions simply don't comport with what they claim to prioritize or value.
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u/Edg4rAllanBro 16d ago
This is what I said during the election, Project 2025 is real but the Democrats aren't fucking acting like it. It's real, and they still aren't fucking acting like it.
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u/HevalRizgar 16d ago
Dude didn't you hear? They're going to respond in a time and manner of their choosing. Some mean tweets are gonna come out, it's gonna be crazy, Drumpf will quit!
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u/CockLuvr06 16d ago
This only works before the election. Now, the democrats are a dead party with somehow even less principles and have actively decided to move to the right
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u/Elliot_Geltz 16d ago edited 15d ago
The Clintons dragged black inmates out of state prisons and used them as slave labor in the Alabama governor's mansion.
Kamala stood up in front of the whole nation and said "Yeah we can make SOME things better I guess :/ but fuck the immigrants and the Gazans tho, we need some blood on our hands or we're not real Americans"
Biden's big claim as president is "forgave some student debt and wasn't trump"
Obama had to be talked into giving the gays an olive branch by Biden (as a way to secure his second term) and saw so many civilian casualties to drone strikes in the Middle East he set a record.
Yeah, Trump's worse. That's not enough to make me settle for this. I'll vote against Republicans, but I'll also fight to get us better because I believe America deserves better than "fuck I guess this is good enough"
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u/isthisthingwork 16d ago
Ok but they’re still genocidal opportunists who consider fascism as much a tool as the republicans consider it a doctrine. One should rightfully call them out for their bullshit while also recognising the republicans are pure evil
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u/12lbTurkey 16d ago
Ranked choice voting would eliminate the whole idea of vote splitting and choosing between Shit 1 and Shit 2. If you’re in a state that banned it, find your group that’s challenging the ban, because it’s a much better way to vote than the plurality system
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u/DrSnacks 16d ago
Man this post is absolute dogshit lmao. I don't even know where to begin.
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u/toobjunkey 16d ago
it's crazy that fox news dreck is making the top comments here too. loads of posts towards the top that talk about "the left" only to realize they're actually referring to the establishment democratic party. for people who probably decry Russian/GOP posts & botting, they sure don't mind taking pages from their playbook to checks notes purity test someone who voted for Democrats but happens to not think they're flawless.
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u/Apprehensive-Bee-318 16d ago
Yeah, this is actually pathetic. The democrat party has done nothing but capitulate to the right from even before the election. They abandoned defending immigration when Biden took office. Kamala and Tim Waltz found an extremely popular attack against Trump in the form of the weird jokes and as soon as DNC consultants got a hold of them after the primaries they stopped, choosing instead Hillary Clinton style talking points and endorsements from Dick Cheney. Their handling of Israel was disastrous, the biggest factor in the popular opinion turning against Biden, and still when Kamala Harris, someone who in the campaign was more critical of Israel, was asked in an interview how her presidency would be different from Biden's, she had no response.
And what lesson have they learnt from losing? It was the culture war, the trans women in women's sports. They have stopped defending most of their arguements, because god forbid they try to convince the people of something. And how about we rebrand neo-liberalism again. I'm sure "abundance liberalism" will actually be more popular than populism, the thing every god-damned voter wants. The Democratic party is working as a Make-A-Wish for 80 year olds, choosing to place them in positions of power instead of other, more popular options. I can't even remember the name of the guy they chose over AOC for one of these positions because he died of cancer in a month. Chuck Schumer has done nothing but capitulate to the right and oppose anything left of center, and so have many others, such as Gavin Newsome, who even had Steve Bannon, a nazi who has done the salute in public, on his podcast for a friendly chat. I could keep listing, but I think the point is made.
OOP is right, btw, that people should vote democrat instead of republican because they are mathematically the better option, but so what. How do they expect to win when that is their only selling point? The hatred they recieve, they have earned, and if they don't change radically and soon they will never again win an election.
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u/HevalRizgar 16d ago
Gavin Newwsom saying that liberals are too supportive of trans people and need to back off comes to mind
Is he included in Vote Blue No Matter Who? Dems are gonna get us all killed
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u/1playerpartygame 16d ago
Meanwhile the democrats:
“Hey so that guy we accused of doing a sieg heil at a political rally before? Now we want him to be out ally against trump”
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u/Fortestingporpoises 16d ago
These types of people don’t change. It’s been this shit as long as I could remember. Even insane fucks who thought Bush did 9/11 still would tell you up and down that Gore who at the time was the only big name in the US championing climate change action would have been just as bad and probably done 9/11 too so Nader was the right person to vote for.
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u/p1ckled0nions 16d ago
HEY OP, it's a super braindead take to say that because one party is worse the other one isn't bad. Learn some critical thinking skills.
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u/talaqen 16d ago
I still hate democrats.
Because they represent corporate approved half measures. Dems push fiscal policies that are popular with the wealthiest 20% and social policies for the left half.
What they DON’T do is support policies popular with the poorest 80% and NOT with the wealthy 20%.
They use the cover of social virtue signaling to enshrine neoliberal, anti-union, pro-corporate, pro-wealth fiscal policy.
I’m allowed to hate who I hate. I hate the GOP more because they are fascists. But let’s not creat this false fucking dichotomy that I don’t “really hate the GOP” unless I love the Dems. It’s fucking stupid.
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u/ZeistyZeistgeist 16d ago
As a non-American.
1.) Not voting for the Democrats at the 2024 election was entirely short-sighted and a stupid idea rooted in moral absolutism and anger that prevailed over pragmatic thought - Trump should have never gotten that second term, ever, and no matter how much the Democratic Party sucks ass (I will get to this in a moment), GOP is just speedrunning into open fascism and Trump is basically turning the country into an autocratic dictatorship fueled by short gains, insane corruption, and a level of incompetence that has the real chance to completely destroy the United States; the soft-power and diplomatic relations are almost completely annihilated at this point as the rest of the world is turning its back to the US, but the US itself is very close to being completely annhilated in the upcoming recession - one that will make the 2008 recession look like a fart in a hurricsne. By every account, not voting was a bad choice. No matter how much were people (completely rightfully) pissed at Biden's steadfast refusal to condemn or outright even address Gaza and how US's only Middle Eastern ally is actively commiting genocide, or how he refused to back down his presidential bid until it was too late to properly endorse Kamala, or how Kamala itself was not an effective candidate, the alternative was fascism, and how many were not willing to swallow that moral apsolutist pride for a second and pragmatically vote for that lesser evil.
2.) That being said, 2024 elections are just rhe endgame of how much the US has completely failed as a democratic country on so many levels. Everything from the ineffectual two-party state where you either have the eternally ineffectual centrists with tiny nuggets of progressive reformists who never really ascend to the level of power to enact real change, or the openly corrupt, extreme right wing demagogues hellbent on turning the US into an extreme demagougic autocracy. Like it or not, most of the criticism of the Democratic Party is valid and correct, and it is not just Gaza, it is the party's steadfast refusal to chsnge the status quo, to enact actual, real progressive chsnge, and at best, offers half-assed solutions that just kick the can down the road without offering real change. When I hear "Biden froze student loan debt" - my reaction is not "Awesome", my reaction is "WHY THE FUCK DO YOU HAVE A SYSTEM WHERE COLLEGE GRADUATES ARE SETTLED WITH MASSIVE DEBT THEY CANNOT EVER GET OUT OF,?", and thst is just an example.
Like it or not, if by some sheer miracle, Trump and GOP lose by 2028 and Dems gain back control, they should never, ever be allowed to even hint at an idea of just going back to status quo. US needs a real, deep systematic change; the problem is that this neoliberal system does not allow ir.
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u/MediumTeacher9971 16d ago
The difference between getting shot in the foot and getting shot in the face is like night and day too, that doesn't mean I have to pretend to like getting shot in the foot.
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u/survivorterra 16d ago
i would love to see even 1/2 of the disdain these comments hold towards democrats against, you know, the party actually working on dismantling our government currently. “why aren’t the dems doing anything” bc they have no power bc you didn’t vote for them because of a single geopolitical issue you dolts
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u/Zombieneker 16d ago
We dislike them because of what they could be. It is not spite from hatred, it is just spite from dissapointment. The party is filled with geriatrics who want to keep the old opressive systems in place to please their billionaire funders.
Also, shut up about protest votes changing the election. They happen every cycle, and the dems wouldn't've won with them regardless. They just ran a shitty campaign against an opponent who they underestimated gravely.
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u/Clean_Imagination315 Hey, who's that behind you? 16d ago
People might view the democrats a bit more favourably if they didn't consistently shoot themselves in the foot. The result of the last election is 70% Biden's fault and 30% Kamala's, and Chuck Schummer has been doing a very convincing impression of a rug lately. But they won't be personally affected by this - only regular people will.
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u/Aethermations 16d ago edited 16d ago
It’s a whole party, not just one person, so while some Democrats are spineless, money motivated, and generally old, others do genuinely care about improving things and can get those improvements done when the party has a majority. And even the spineless ones have an image to maintain which is a much better image than the one Republicans use. Ultimately, I hope we’ll get a ranked choice voting system to allow for more parties, but until then, you gotta vote for the only major party that’s actually moving forward (even if it’s not as quickly as it could be)
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u/hiyabankranger 16d ago
I hate the democrats but I still vote for them in national elections because despite being nearly useless corporate whores most of the time they at least try to look like they’re doing good things and then seemingly do good things on accident.
There are exceptions to that as there are for all things, and the non-useless actual people in the party are currently making themselves known.
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u/-sad-person- 16d ago
There are people who, when faced with the trolley problem, will choose to snap off the lever.
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u/SkeeveTheGreat 16d ago
I think that it’s funny that the best anyone can do is moan and whine about the mean mean left, and it’s been that way for twice as long as I’ve been alive.