this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2024
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It's too late for that. You guys had Williamson in the primary, but I'm apparently the only one who voted for her.
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It's unfortunate that we have to take the time these days to consider whether the constant drum of gloom and doom is actually genuine concern or straight up astroturfing. It certainly does seem like the people who constantly spout this stuff and ignore all evidence that they're completely off base are being a bit disingenuous for some reason, though.
Sure, man.
When your 80 year-old parents have to borrow your car to drive for DoorDash because if they don't they'll starve, then maybe you'll understand why some of us, despite the fact that we're progressives (NOT neoliberals) might actually like for Dems to use their power for good someday.
Instead of making and breaking promises and then shoveling money into war and child genocide.
Not a man.
My apologies. Just a figure of speech here in the US.
Worth remembering that many responses in politics are made impulsively due to frustration, and angry, impulsive arguments tend not to be well-researched. We're all tense, here — it's hard not to be, these days.
Yeah, that could be. But it's also worth remembering that disingenuousness is literally the conservative playbook right now. Sometimes a duck is actually Ed Gale in a costume being voiced by Chip Zien, but other times it's just a duck.
Who is going to bother astroturfing beehaw, right before we switch platforms of all things
If I were strategizing for the Trump campaign I would absolutely be trying to target smaller leftist-specific spaces to pull them away from the Democrats and inject talking points of benefit to the campaign. Beehaw has small numbers, but it has a very leftist and pretty vocal user-base. It's a small pool that it wouldn't be hard to change the narrative in by injecting the same opinions over and over again. Which is what we see.
It makes way more sense to focus on small communities like Beehaw where a small number of messages can have a larger impact on the thinking of people who use it regularly, than exclusively on huge social media spaces like Facebook and Twitter where they're shouting into the void.
Get some talking points stuck in the minds of a small pool of people, get them to normalize it, and they'll spread it for you.
I'm not who you were replying to, but:
It's not so much that Trump and Kamala are the same. They aren't, obviously – and for the record, the video agrees – it's more that the Democrats here don't really fix anything the Republicans break. Sure, Kamala is pro-abortion, et cetera, but how certain can I be that she'll actually act on the principles she espouses? If the Biden admin is anything to go by, I can expect the occasional half-measure at best. Meanwhile, there are solid odds that she will continue to fund or otherwise enable the genocide in Gaza, at least tacitly.
I'm going to vote for her, but not because she's going to help me or anyone I care about. I'm voting for her because it is harm reduction; Kamala may be a neoliberal pro-cop warmonger, but the alternative is neo-Hitler. As far as presidential tickets go, I don't have much of a choice, here.
Personality-wise, definitely.
Politically, not as much as you'd think, judging by how we always end up being ruled by conservatives.
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Obamacare isn't universal health care. The access it promises only exists if a person can afford to be price-gouged for their health care, and the majority of this nation can't.
It doesn't matter what your stance is if you're content to just let the worst happen and then use it to raise money, which is what Democrats did. (The cost of our bodily autonomy was $80 million, in fact.)
Again, it doesn't matter what your view is if you have power and choose not to wield it. By default, Democrats have sided with corruption by doing nothing to stop it.
You must not be familiar with US foreign policy then.
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Look, I get you strongly disagree with them, but please don't fall into the trap of thinking people who disagree strongly with you aren't real.
Anti-capitalists have many, many issues with the Biden admin and Democrats generally, for a whole host of reasons. It doesn't mean we want Trump to win, think he's equally as bad, or want you to not vote. And it most certainly doesn't make us paid shills. It just means we want better, and we are often frustrated at how "better" is never an option.
I can't speak for what Flash Mob's beliefs are directly, but I can absolutely say I've been in a similar position. It is beyond aggravating to have no options that actually represent your beliefs, but to nonetheless have so many people around you insist that you should be happy about one of the awful options because the candidate in question – who is doing the things you hate – sometimes pays lip service to what you actually wanted. Or because it's a woman doing it, now. Or, most frequently, because the Republicans managed to dig to an even deeper circle of Hell this time.
Our options are terrible, and we're pissed about it. But it doesn't make us not real. All that accusations like that do is prevent people from being understood.
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For the record, I 100% agree.
Until the 49% that vote the party line every single election decide to vote Libertarian or Green, that is what we're going to get.
It doesn't matter that this time the conservative in sheep's clothing is a woman and a person of color. The result will be the same.
Unfortunately, I don't think voting is going to be what changes any of this, sadly. At least, not on a federal level.
That, and I don't think I want to see the Libertarians win either, if I'm honest.
Same. The Libertarians are scary in their own right.
The point is, nothing will change without the upset of the established order.
I mean, think about it. A week ago 99% of voters were arguing for two clearly brain-damaged candidates who support child genocide. Both sides also theink they're the good guys.
Generally I agree with you, but a week ago (and even before that) 65% of Democrats were against Biden continuing in the race, not arguing for him.
I do think that the DNC isn't going to budge without a voter revolt (which this essentially was, though not nearly far enough), but I think throwing that support to Libertarians or Green Party is a mistake; they're no more beholden to actually act on voter demands than anyone else, and making one of them President means either a) abandoning any hope of party-line support from congressional democrats, or b) forcing a coalition-building exercise in congress, which is more likely to make them shift Rightwards.
We need to do to the DNC what Trump did to the RNC, from the Left. Kamala isn't that- obviously- but Biden and the DNC (once again) fucked us out of being able to do anything about that (and not just because of Biden's belated withdrawl, but because they didn't hold a real primary in the first place). Kamala's saving grace is that she at least is more likely to beat Trump, which Biden had no chance of.
And frankly, there aren't any good candidates I can think of to banner a reform movement now that Bernie is too old. I'd love for AOC, Omar, or Tlaib to run, but I don't get the impression they want to. And apart from them, I'm not sure who I actually believe would reform the system. We need that person, or we're just going to risk handing power over to another Sinema.
I remember being very excited for the Obama presidency in 2008, and then as the years wore on he showed himself to be a billionaires' president the same way Sinema showed herself to be a fascist. He expanded the US war presence throughout the world, legalized torture, militarized the police, brutalized Occupy, and made absolutely sure that the big banks didn't suffer any negative repercussions for destroying the economy. He had the power to codify Roe and didn't do it. He had the power to enact universal health care but opted to side with the billionaires and make it more expensive instead. He could have filled a SCOTUS seat but was more concerned about counting his money than fighting for the nomination.
That's what we're getting with Harris. She'll say nice things, and while we won't see her killing our citizens in the same way as a Putin or an Assad, her neglect will accomplish the same result, as it has since the last president we had that gave a shit about people: LBJ.
I understand why conservatives are excited for Trump and the lite-conservatives are excited for Harris, but we're sitting on nearly two decades of a $7 minimum wage, so I don't know how anyone who works for a wage can be excited about more Democratic or Republican rule.