Despite all the doom scrolling, Harris has a comfortable lead in the electoral college right now.
The time for vibing is over. It’s too late to change anyone’s opinions (especially because national level events like debates are over). Harris will finish her Media Blitz soon (including a Fox News showing) while Trump retreats into his shell hoping no one notices how damn stupid his mouth is.
This is the time for doing. The focus should be on voter drives and other get out the vote pushes. It’s mid October, and the October surprises are against Trump and in our favor.
It’s not the lead we wanted but it’s a lead nonetheless. Don’t talk yourself out of believing this lead because of a bad poll or two.
The vast majority of those deplorable candidates are still losing and Democrats are still pushing forward, albeit PAINFULLY slowly, with a productive agenda. The red wave never happened, and despite the absolutely horrible examples that slipped through like MTG, Republicans are generally NOT winning. All of that goes to hell if we let the ONE apparently “charismatic” one take control again.
You’re right about Starmer. And the people who deeply care in the UK should be working towards building up a viable alternative right now. How many progressive candidates were you helping build a support base for in 2021? How much were you donating to their campaign funds? How much were you canvassing and campaigning and getting names out there?
Right wing extremists do not actually care what Democrats do. If Joe Biden decided to throw out all the immigrants, give everybody assault rifles, and outlaw abortion, and publicly send out bibles, they STILL wouldn’t be on his side, and in fact they may actually entirely flip ideology just to be contradictory. Because Republican supporters, no matter what they say, it isn’t about POLICY for them. It’s about POWER, and you are not going to take away their pursuit of it through more action on EITHER end of the spectrum.
This whole argument reeks like parents who scream at their children when they spill water because “It’s the only way they’ll learn.” The children already know they weren’t supposed to spill that water, and Democrats already know their choices aren’t God’s gift to progressivism. So like that parent, all you’re accomplishing is giving everyone the promise of years of trauma followed by decades of therapy IF they’re lucky enough to make it out on the other side, all so you can feel like you made your position on the spilling of water perfectly clear. I’m sorry, but I don’t find that compelling or reasonable.
I will give you this… I appreciate your HAVING and SPEAKING your opinion, as much as I think it’s nonsense, as opposed to the anonymous downvoting cowards.
I also fucking appreciate real conversations on the internet. I think what we’re talking about isn’t actually that different… my main fear is that underwhelming neoliberalism ends up crushing people so much that fascism emerges as the only other option. Corporate bullshit is extremely dangerous and, up here in Canada, underwhelming Liberal policies in the past year are making it likely that our next prime minister will be a transphobic asshole. It is a frustrating situation to be in because there are real policy decisions we could have made to actually improve living conditions and voter representation and our government just refused to do so… in this coming election our two likely choices are to keep the shitty government in power or switch to the fucking assholes. I prefer the shitty government of course - but this game doesn’t end until the assholes win and each election is more desperate because the Liberals continue to underdeliver.
Anyways yea, I absolutely loathe getting downvoted to oblivion with no conversation and I’m happy to have one with you!
I may disagree with the main thrust of your argument, but I respect that there’s some truth to it, even if in my cynicism I think it’s ideologically unrealistic to expect better, and do agree that it’s a massive disappointment that we can’t get more progress.
Edit: But on the flip side, it is POSSIBLE this isn’t some crappy alternative - this just might be the best we can do. I would like to believe there’s huge support for progressive action that would help people, but I’d also like to believe 50% of my country isn’t Nazis, and that’s also incorrect. If the realistic option is small, frustratingly tiny steps towards positive change, I’ll choose that every time.