I’m comparing Obama to Biden. That criticism could just as easily apply to the former.
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So it would have been better for AOC, and all her supporters, to decline to vote at all to punish the Dems? Would that have been more or less helpful in moving the Dems left?
AOC won, dude. All I’m saying is that I don’t think the circumstances of her victory allow for that approach to scale up nation-wide. It probably can’t even scale up to NY state.
So what? The argument is: what moves the party left, abstaining from participation or trying to primary the eDems with left candidates. Which do you think works better? Why?
Assuming both will work to their maximum possible effect, primarying people, obviously, because it involves either taking actual power or directly extracting policy concessions. But I mean, which works better for getting rich: working hard or winning the lottery?
Working hard works better. Your analogy is backward. Primarying with left candidates and deploying grassroots initiatives is working hard. Sitting on your hands hoping the eDems will magically produce a more liberal candidate is analogous to buying long shit lottery tickets.
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There’s an awful lot of hard-working people who are poor as fuck might disagree with you. But regardless: my analogy is my analogy and as such is right-way-round; AOC is a winning lottery ticket. Even the surrounding districts are likely losing ones.
And as I said, it’s not either/or. By all means primary any and all vulnerable shitlibs.
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I don’t think you and I are in the same argument. People here are literally talking about voting for eDems or not voting for eDems. It’s literally either/or.
Yeah… the idea that you can move the party left without being able to win primary elections is nuts. The left has ONE big advantage it can bring to bear in winning primaries… it can actually draw talented candidates that pull passionate supporters. It turns out that left leaning candidates can actually raise a lot of money, but more importantly they can get a TON of volunteer time.
If the left wants to win elections and execute their agenda (I do not identify as any tribe, because that way lies stupidity IMO) they need to actually do stuff. Lots of stuff. Talking about what should happen and wringing our collective hands about how evil the right/center is doesn’t move the ball forward.
I disagree with skydiver about what actually matters, but let’s be real: she did more to get her guy elected than most of the rest of this forum did for Bernie combined. Her vision is way more likely to get executed than ours as a result.
An awful lot of you are living in a fantasy world where if other people just saw things the right way everything would be fairy tales and rainbows. They don’t see it your way, and they disagree with you about the correct conclusions to draw from the same facts that you see. It isn’t that they don’t understand your views it’s that they disagree with them. People are different. If you want things done your way you have to be more numerous than them, and you have to actually win real world elections. The only elections you have a snowballs chance in hell of winning by yourselves are primaries, literally every other election will require getting different viewpoints to see you as the lesser of two evils.
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Then I don’t understand what you’re saying. Primarying eDems does not involve voting for them.
You have to vote for the lesser of two evils if you lose the primary. That’s the system. If you don’t show up for the general it becomes LESS likely that you’ll win primaries not more likely. Your punishment for not doing enough to put Bernie over the finish line (and I’m talking particularly to young people who didn’t turn out… I did my bit by voting for Bernie on Super Tuesday despite him being like my 3rd choice) is that you get forced to vote for Joe Biden in the general. You don’t have to like it, but if you don’t you’re a piece of shit full stop.
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The original line of argument was about how to move the party left, by declining to vote for centrists or by engaging more in primaries. The proposal is that not voting is self defeating. But by all means please continue to construct irrelevant analogies for a nonexistent argument.
You absolutely do not have to vote for anyone, either in the primary or the general.
Thinking like that is exactly why Bernie isn’t the nominee. You’re right of course. Have is a strong word. I stand by my statement that you have to or you’re a piece of shit though. After the last 20 years of watching this country rot from the inside out I’m pretty convinced that whatever makes people think that staying home on election day is OK is pure evil. That little voice telling you not to bother is made of pure selfishness.
I’m an atheist and pretty nihilistic so if you tell me that philosophically you don’t think anything matters I’ll agree in principle, but taking an hour or two out of your life every year or so to make sure the country is headed in what you consider to be the right direction is a pretty small ask.
Honestly I don’t care if you have to stand in line for 12 hours to vote. It’s at most once a year. Suck it up and go. If there’s a 12 hour line at your polling place it’s probably because it’s really important and the other side is trying to cheat.
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The argument exists if we’re having it. You say: look at AOC, I say: that’s an exceptional case that doesn’t offer a scalable strategy. My saying that seems to be aggravating you, but I honestly don’t know why.
I don’t think most people who abstain from voting think about it too much. There are exceptions, obviously.
Elections should last a full seven-day week, that would increase turnout a fair amount, I’m pretty sure.
There you go with the should again. Should isn’t reality. If you think something should be a certain way you have to do more stuff than the other side to change it. It doesn’t change by magic. It changes because usually hundreds or more people poured in gallons of blood sweat and tears.
The world doesn’t give a shit about how things should be and it never has. Tell the thousands of years worth of downtrodden peasants you’re descended from about how things should be.
I agree that the world should be a better place. That just doesn’t matter at all until people put in the effort to make what should happen actually happen.
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Fuck off you bloviating, condescending prick.
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I donated a lot of time and money to my preferred candidate. Maybe you did too. You’re in here making excuses for why you shouldn’t have to eat your broccoli. I don’t want to vote for Joe Biden either… but it’s really fucking obvious he’s the lesser of two evils.
You’re in here talking about how turnout would be higher if the world was the way it should be. It isn’t. Stop crying about it and do your civic duty. Or don’t. But if you don’t know that you are in fact a piece of shit and you should (there’s that toxic word again) feel lousy about it.
But again what should happen has very nearly no bearing on reality, so feel free to feel any way you want. You can justify absolutely anything to yourself if you try hard enough. Nobody thinks they are a bad person… except maybe @JohnnyTruant lol. I’ll give him credit he’s winning the self flagellation Olympics around here. I’m also 99.9% sure he’ll drag himself to the voting booth come November bitching the entire way.
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