The Allies allied with Stalin to defeat Hitler.
Then the West crushed communism.
The Accelerationist’s Dilemma
In the meantime, really evil shit consolidates its hold on society.
You haven’t thought this through very well
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I guess I’m confused. It feels like there are two or three totally separate things being claimed in this thread. I really don’t see much evidence that the republican party moved right because the far right willfully refused to vote for the lesser of two non-evils or whatever.
I think people should vote for who they want to. But the ones who are going to vote for Trump in one way or another and also want credit for fulfilling some kind of long game (while ignoring the real-life consequences to actual vulnerable people) should stop looking for credit imo.
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Bingo
Wrong
Also, irrelevant: see, The Squad
Characterizing Trump as “right” completely misses the point. Trump is a one-off. He’s a “unique political talent”, and the only reason the RNC countenances him is because he wins.
Itt we reject utilitarianism 
If you’re saying the GOP didn’t move to the right, I don’t know what to tell you. If you mean specifically that they didn’t follow the exact path I’m outlining, I agree. The Tea Party had a ton of money to go out and at least credibly threaten to primary insufficiently right-leaning candidates. That’s not available to the left, some impressive victories in solid constituencies where the eDems were slow to respond notwithstanding.
We specifically do not do that, unless getting vaccinated even though the needle stings is also rejecting utilitarianism.
If the goal is to change the party long term, then this is what has to happen. We must build a progressive bench, all the way down to school boards and park districts. Because that is EXACTLY what the Tea Party/republicans did, and it worked. We’re seeing the consequences now of 30 years of strategy.
Democrats suck at this. This forum sucks at this. All this energy we spend on the presidency, meanwhile the Rs are filling town councils, county supervisory boards, state houses, and congress with deplorables, who then move on up the chain.
Go check out this site. The party isn’t gonna do this. We have to do it at a grassroots level:
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This is a major factor also, I agree wholeheartedly.
So, let me get this straight:
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RBG is hearing arguments about access to birth control from a hospital bed.
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The DOJ is being run by people who claim they can’t bring a successful prosecution against a guy who pled guilty and where the judge has already expressed shock that he wasn’t charged with more severe crimes.
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The response to a nationwide pandemic is being driven by pillow magnates and tv hosts
-And one of the few universal governmental goods that actually works relatively smoothly (the USPS) was just turned over to a crony who will try to use that organization as leverage to extract favorable media coverage from one of the few remaining bastions of old school legit journalism
And we’re seriously having Galaxy Brain discussions itf about, “well, how much better is Biden, REALLY?” and "well, wouldn’t it maybe be better to throw a hissy fit and not vote this time and then MAYBE somehow the eDems will understand why they lost and they’ll be nice to AOC in 2024?
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Not the most charitable framing, but kind of. How much better is Biden, really, iyo? He’s been bullied into a tepid commitment to removing the Hyde Amendment that’s clearly at odds with his lifelong hedging on reproductive rights, he’s been talking for decades about ‘reforming’ Social Security and he’s surely been responsible for caging many more children than Trump via his Crime Bill. All you’re telling me is that he is in fact the lesser evil, which I don’t dispute. What I’m saying is that allowing LoTE to fully determine your vote normalises that ‘evil’.
Look at the Democrats. Look how at odds they are with what their base wants, at how popular some of those desires are, and how unwilling the Dems are to accommodate those desires. Isn’t politics supposed to be about the will of the electorate? And isn’t it in fact about “Here’s what our donors want — oh what, you want the other guy?” And every time you accept that, you confirm it as the normal way of things. If your vote can’t be withheld, your desires do not matter in the slightest and will never be a factor in decision-making.
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Biden became the nominee by winning a bunch of primary elections. It’s coherent to vote strategically if you think that it will increase the chances of getting what you want, but you can’t whine about the will of the people while you’re doing it. For one, primaries allow the people to select their party’s candidate, so by threatening to defect from your party’s candidate, you’re actually trying to compel other voters to choose differently than they prefer. Also though, you can’t aggregate preferences in any consistent way in the presence of strategic voting, so there is, fundamentally, no will of the electorate to champion.
Re: how much better is he really?
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despite his personal reservations about abortion, I have no doubts that under a Biden Presidency (a) he will nominate judges that he believes will uphold Roe, (b) he will do less to enforce the global gag rule. Would he swallow some Hyde-esque language if it was put dropped into a big, “must pass” bill. Probably, but I think most of the Dems would, even the most liberal ones.
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on judges more broadly, I’ll take 60 year old centrist ABA approved types (Biden) as a significant improvement over 35 year old Federalist Society hacks who’ve never even been first chair in a deposition (Trump).
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On climate change, simply getting back into the Paris accords, reigning in some of the sell off of national parks and investing more in green energy are improvements. Will they be "enough:? Probably not, but, (a) I don’t think any Dem would be able to get a sufficient plan through and (b) I think the scale of the problem is big enough that even “small” differences between Biden and a Trump 2nd term have massive impacts in terms of lives saved.
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Basic competence matters. Presidencies aren’t defined by the stuff you run on. They are defined by how you deal with the crises. Give me a pandemic response led by Ron Klain instead of Jared Kushner. Hell, even an economic crisis response led by Larry Summers is orders of magnitude better than one run by Larry Kudlow and the Dow 36,000 guy.
So, yeah, Biden is better. Not just less evil, but better.
Re: The game theory, “but Dems will never move left if they know they always have your vote argument.” This assumes that withholding an individual vote is a good signaling mechanism, and I just don’t buy that. Throughout the entire campaign, the eDem line about Bernie was, “well, he certainly has very vocal supporters, but I’m just not sure if these young folks are reliable enough to turnout in big numbers.” So, what happens? Bernie gets a lot of votes, but not enough new voters to prevent him from getting waffle crushed in all of the states where good, reliable, older African Americans show up for every election and this time they showed up for Biden. That’s why the party coalesced around him. Because the folks who show up every election, the ones who volunteer as poll workers, the ones who run souls to the polls, etc, those folks were behind Biden. So, the party decided that it had to listen to those folks.
While you see the risk in having the party take the left wing for granted, I think there is also a risk in being seen as unreliable. If the party doesn’t know whether the left flank will show up, one possible response is to move left. But, another plausible response is to tack right to try to capture more conservatives or the boring centrists who might not have defined ideologies but who show up to vote b/c it is a civic duty.
Tl/dr: yes, Biden is better. And the way that the eDems might interpret my withheld vote are too uncertain to think that it is a viable signaling mechanism to motivate their future behavior.
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I would also be curious to know how Biden was bullied into a commitment to remove the Hyde amendment by the powerless left. I was told this wasn’t possible.
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The left abstaining from general elections isn’t how to push the party left. Turning out in substantial numbers for the primaries is. Throwing a temper tantrum and threatening to blow up the world isn’t going to move the party left.
You hate the eDem ghouls? Primary them and win or wait for them to die.
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And in the meantime you must absolutely vote for the less abhorrent sexual predator
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No, I’m trying to alter the electoral landscape such that the eDems are no longer correct to assume they have the left in their pocket. No amount of telling me I’m trying to do various other things is going to change that.
There’s a bunch of broadly social-democratic policies that consistently poll in the high fifties at least. The eDems have made it clear they prefer losing with Handsy Joe to winning on that platform. Both of those things remain true even if ‘the will of the electorate’ is a fuzzy term.
They’re already doing that. And they’re emboldened to do that by the very reliability of the left. And unless and until the left stops showing up no matter what, they are entirely correct to do that, given their aims, and will continue to do it. My suggestion may not work, granted. It has a better shot than just not trying.
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