When you compare Biden to Trump vs. the effects on the Palestinians, were Trump president again, he would not just help the Israelis exterminate the Palestinians, but encourage them to do so quickly- as he’s already told Bibi to “finish it”. So your dichotomy is more than a bit disingenuous .

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    If our only standard is not a Republican, then everytime Republicans lower their standards, they lower the only other option’s standards too.

    It’s not fucking sustainable.

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      You know I hear people say this and and yet the Democratic Party is further to the left than it was under Bill Clinton. So how does it follow? I mean I hear people say stuff like we keep moving further to the right and the Republicans certainly are, but I see a Democratic party that’s for gay rights and that didn’t use to exist. I see a Democratic Party that’s that’s talking about higher taxes on the wealthy and trade regulations and consumer protection Acts. None of that was true in the '90s. In the 90s the Democrats said the era of big government is over. Now Democrats are supporting good government policies. We can certainly support better government policies, and I personally would like to see them go much further , but I can’t see a scenario in which the Democratic party isn’t further left than they were.

    • Deceptichum
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      5 months ago

      Voting the lesser evil still leads to evil in the long run.

      • agamemnonymous
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        5 months ago

        You got a practical alternative you’d like to share with the class?

        • AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today
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          Vote in your local elections, and support (or directly work to pass) election reform laws, particularly related to ditching the electoral college.

          Not necessarily saying it’s the alternative, but it’s a start and local elections have larger personal impact most of the time.

          • agamemnonymous
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            5 months ago

            I agree with all of this, but it’s not an alternative, it’s just an additional vector of action. My question is about alternatives to Biden for president in this election.

            • AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today
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              Well, that’s up to the DNC. They could put almost any other prominent dem and they’d probably beat Trump. The DNC also has the ability to change the candidate after the election but before the electoral ballots are cast, at least as far as I understand their rules.

              Trust, I understand your point. The primaries are over, and that’s where the different candidate should have been chosen. But unfortunately, the whole not knowing any viable alternatives line of thinking is what got the DNC into this mess in the first place.

              • agamemnonymous
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                5 months ago

                Yeah, I think any other Dem candidate is a gamble: you lose out on the significant incumbent boost, you only have 4 months to campaign if you start now, and you risk losing momentum on the moderate vote. This isn’t an election I want to gamble with, especially with the recent SCOTUS ruling. Everything said and done, I don’t think the benefits outweigh the risks.

                November 6th is when we should start pushing for significant changes. 11th hour fuckery isn’t going to help this cycle.

                • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                  Yeah, I think any other Dem candidate is a gamble: you lose out on the significant incumbent boost

                  Except Biden has a 37% approval rating…

                  That’s Jimmy Carter level…

                  Do you know what happened with Jimmy Carter’s second term?

                  An incumbency only translates to a boost, when being the incumbent is a positive thing.

                  2/3s of voters don’t think Biden is a good president. 56% think he is a bad one.

                  We can’t afford to hope enough people hold their nose for him.

                  This is bigger than any one person, even Joe Biden

          • JimSamtanko@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            But all the people whining about gEnOciDe jOe are only upset because its and election year. They disappear after November and don’t show up again until 4 years later.

            • Adub@lemmy.world
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              Trump used Palestinian as a slur & they are laughing with him. Not sure how serious anyone is supposed to take them.

              • JimSamtanko@lemm.ee
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                Well, they’re serious about urging people to not vote against MAGA, so…. There’s that.

          • agamemnonymous
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            I’m all for socialism long term solution. I’m confused as to how that is an alternative to voting against the present greatest threat to socialism that can be voted against. What is the material implementation of “socialism” which provides a timely alternative to that action?

            • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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              op commenter was talking about a long term solution.

              socialism begins with the organization of the working class. this organization can be used to press your boss and the government in an effective way in the short term.

              this ‘pressure’ can look like a strike, but its not limited to it.

              • agamemnonymous
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                Again, actions I support. These actions, however, are not mutually exclusive to voting in elections for the lesser evil. In fact, these actions are more substantially suppressed under the greater evil. The rational action then is to use all avenues available to oneself, including but not limited to voting for whichever of the two dominant parties is less detrimental to action on other avenues.

                One of the two dominant parties is objectively worse for the organization of the working class. Vote for the less worse party, while you organize and pressure the powers that be.

                • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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                  are not mutually exclusive to voting in elections for the lesser evil

                  I agree with that. This case though, presents two very evil options. You guys have been legalizing child labour again, building a theocracy and doing an ethnic cleansing in the middle east under the supposed lesser evil. They are accelerating fascism regardless of who wins, vote if you will but other avenues must be pursued if you are to keep your thin veil of civility.

      • JimSamtanko@lemm.ee
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        When the choice is between the lesser evil, and losing our democracy, having our LGBTQ+ friends and family lose their rights to exist and feel good in their own skin, our sisters, mothers, and daughters losing their body autonomy…

        I’ll take the lesser evil- ANY FUCKING DAY YOU ASK.

      • explodicle
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        But NOW we’ll start organizing… more than we had been previously! I swear we won’t declare victory and do basically nothing political at all for the next 4 years.

        • Clent@lemmy.world
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          This is a proposed political idea. It doesn’t make it true and doesn’t make the statement that are options are reduced unless we all allow it to be true.

          If the Republican decide to burn all gay people, one cannot claim to be a democrat because they simply want to gas them all.

          We decide where the line is drawn. Ignore the propaganda that tells us we have no control over the process. That apathy is how the window shifts, not because the republicans shift.

        • bolexforsoup@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          The Overton window is a way of framing change in the baseline ideology of a population. It is hardly a “law” or dogma of any kind. On its own it’s meaningless, you can’t just couch an argument in “…because of the Overton window.” It’s also got its valid detractors like broken window theory and such.

          • DessertStorms@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            Lol, I wasn’t making an argument that anything is “because of the Overton window”, the OP of this thread is literally describing how the Overton window works. You, and that other person not liking or understanding it, doesn’t change that, nor the fact that what op described is demonstrably happening in politics right in front of your fucking eyes, and only “doesn’t follow logic” if you’re aggressively wilfully ignorant.

      • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
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        Not in terms of pure logic but definitely in practical terms. You don’t get far in humanities if you only follow pure logic.

        • Clent@lemmy.world
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          So is societal which means it’s not a person or group but all of us. It isn’t just this one thing everyone on the left likes to point out as if that absolves them from having any personal responsibility in the matter.

          The concept causes itself to exist by acceptance that it is inevitable.

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      In exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised… This victory fund agreement, however, had been signed in August 2015, just four months after Hillary announced her candidacy and nearly a year before she officially had the nomination.

      Emphasis mine. It was a captured field, with a performative primary - Hillary/‘s campaign abused their position against a broke DNC and elevated herself above all others.

      • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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        Emphasis mine. It was a captured field, with a performative primary - Hillary/‘s campaign abused their position against a broke DNC and elevated herself above all others.

        Supreme court also ruled that this was fine and very cool, very legal.

    • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
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      This is why young people need to vote in every election especially the local ones, even the ones that seem insignificant like a school board election. The only way for a Bernie to win a primary is if such a candidate is not an outlier. The entire party needs to move to the left and that starts from the ground up. Since people need to get exposed to more left wing politicians so left wing ideology becomes more normalized and at the moment it’s not.

      When young people vote you get people like AOC and Omar into office. The only way to get a Bernie elected is if there are more AOCs and Omars filling seats in local, state and the federal government. From the school board all the way up to the Senate.

  • The Assman
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    Too young to remember how bloodthirsty Hilary was as secretary of state. Member when “we came, we saw, he died tehe”?

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      A lot of retrospective handwringing forgets this, or the vile comments that came out during Bill’s multiple sexual assault allegations.

      Hillary was not the right candidate to fight Trump, Jeb Bush more likely. After Obama, returning to an establishment candidate was a mistake, and I don’t care if “it’s her turn” after stepping aside in 2008. Politics has real consequences for people who don’t vacation in the Hamptons.

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    It didn’t all happen in 2016. Fascists have been quietly diminishing the power of the electorate for decades now. We’ll keep on having “the most important election of our lifetimes” until we manage to undo the damage. IF we manage to undo the damage.

    • doingthestuff@lemmy.world
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      The problem is fascists, but it is also compounded by neolib Democrats never reducing government authority either, but often even strengthening it, knowing full well that power can easily be seized by the extreme right at any time.

    • Narauko@lemmy.world
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      If the choice is between genocide and genocide + fascism, and there is no viable option 3 without genocide, then the argument is still embrace the genocide or democracy ends. The alternative is embrace genocide and who really needs all this democracy anyway?

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      Yeah I’m not sure how to take this post. The image is clearly both-sides-ism but the text of OPs post on it appears to be calling that bad.

      This posting format makes sense in specific subreddit/communities like /leopardsatemyface or /whitepeopletwitter. But here it just makes it unclear what the intended message is.

    • MrMcGasion@lemmy.world
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      As someone who voted 3rd party in 2016 and regrets it. While you are technically correct, the last 8 years have shown that there is so much more on the line than what I was protesting against with my 3rd party vote. I didn’t like Hillary Clinton’s positions on war. And sure, my vote probably wouldn’t have mattered all that much as I live in a very red state, but every time the Supreme Court does some bullshit, I feel a bit of regret that I didn’t use my vote to support the best candidate who actually had a chance.

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    If he had more votes in the primary, then that could have been true despite the superdelegates. As it would be true for any other candidate.

    But he/they didn’t, and here we are moping over something that didn’t happen years ago while the USSC lays the final stones in the foundation for an actual dictatorship.

    Bold strategy. Let’s see how that works out.

  • wieson@feddit.org
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    There are some elections between 1929 and 1939 that would be more consequential.

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    The DNC failed to put in a non-establishment candidate, so the Republican voters made it happen.

    That huge failure continues to haunt this country while the DNC and the Republican voters double down on their mistakes.

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    I love that I get to choose whether Palestinians get the slow death of starvation and disease or the fast death of bombs and bullets

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      Just straight up memory-holed the summer of 2020? And the election I guess, since people did turn out and Clinton got more votes than Trump? Let me know how blaming people for living in an undemocratic system works for hyping up voters.

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    Given enough time, shitty Twitter hot takes pollute everything. Interesting implication that somehow Hillary might have a less pro-Israel policy than Biden.

    Also: She’s cray