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Democrats Vote

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  • Time is a flat circle, except the cycle comes back around again every second. The same conversations over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Had at such frequency, with such vitriol, it is totally indistinguishable from pure noise. It's like a root canal for your brain.

    Someone brings up wanting to not vote, on some principle. Could be Gaza, could be them not so slowly capitulating to the right on every issue since FDR got out of office, to the point that we're now running george dubya 2 as president. Then someone says, ah, well, you should vote democrat anyways, because they're better than republicans. Then we get one of two answers, we either get, ah, well, no they aren't, or, they aren't better on this one particular issue that I care about, so fuck it, right. Which is not a super convincing counterargument. Or, we get the real argument, we get the deeper dive into the actual political process, which we all collectively understand to be completely fucked as to basically be unrecoverable, and yet still, somehow, this is a source of constant disagreement. Usually because people who don't know any alternative have deluded themselves into cynically caping for the same broken system as some form of what is basically escapism.

    Ah, not in a swing state? You live in a population center? Seems like your vote doesn't matter, better luck next time. Ahh, you don't live in one of like, twelve counties in those swing states? Ahh, well, seems like your vote doesn't matter, either, because of gerrymandering, so, sucks to suck for you. Ahh, well, guess the electorate decided to pick someone different than what you voted for, so, better luck next time. The democrats lost? Ahh, well, if only the left had turned up to vote. You just gotta vote, and then we'll be granted such an overwhelming victory that we will be able to implement all of the milquetoast reforms you've ever wanted! The democrats win? Ahh, well, time to pull to the right twelve more degrees, since we've won the race, and now whatever the voters care about doesn't fucking matter at all. The democrats win, but then the supreme court decides to veto the recount because the voting system in a single state was so totally and completely fucked? Ahh, well, looks like we gotta go kill a million fucking people in iraq for oil money, champ, sorry about that.

    It's especially fucking insane because the idea of voting for them in the first place is an acknowledgement that we live in a FPTP system where you cynically have to vote for the lesser evil. Every other qualification and quality that the system has, which makes it worse? That shit doesn't exist. We're taking the most simplified, common idiot stance, here. It is so insane that I struggle to think that it's not just bad faith drudgery. Out of the 350 million, only like 5% of that are people who even approach mattering, and, as we also know, it's kind of dubious even then. So, if those are the only people whose votes matter, and we all FUCKING know that, then why the hell am I inundated with constant removed and moaning and whining about how I just simple NEED to vote democrat or else nooo nooo we're going to be plunged into literally a hitlerian dystopia like handmaid's tail? Look around you, look at what is currently happening.

    Oh no! Another democratic senator has decided to stand in opposition to this bill, narrowly swinging the votes around and keeping us deadlocked into an eternal hell where nothing except bipartisan things like border spending, foreign policy, spending on the military industrial complex, banning shit like tiktok, and the basic foundational elements of neoliberal economic policy ever get done. Whatever shall we do? Guess the answer is just to vote harder!

    If the democrats did actually get an overwhelming victory, you wouldn't get FDR again. They've been very clear about exactly what their policies are, and they've calculated that position as a way to push the buck as far in favor of their corporate sponsors and themselves as they can get away with, while both winning, and also presenting a constant war to the public where it's a struggle to get anything done. The narrowest margin of victory is actually a boon, in that circumstance. It means they can both run on unpopular policy and they can make it look as though they're trying to get things done and oops whoops they're just narrowly failing. If they somehow got a massive win on that platform, probably through some absolutely massive unforced error by republicans. I don't even know what that would look like, at this point. They would probably all have to collectively catch a disease and die simultaneously, and I think that would probably also spell chaos for the nation. You wouldn't see the dems suddenly run to the left, after that,, because the left would have basically no leverage over them, no bargaining power, no hand in their win. You especially wouldn't see them drift to the left because THAT'S NOT WHAT THEY'RE FUCKING CAMPAIGNING ON. SO THAT CAN'T BE WHY THEY GOT ELECTED. The only way they would get that majority in the first place is basically through them moving to the left to begin with, which as previously described, they will never do, or, worse off, and what they are currently trying to happen, is if like, 40 - 50% of the population suddenly drifted super rightward and became neocons.

    No democratic party politician is some secret communist that, ah, once they get an 80% majority, after enough election engineering, enough rightward drift, enough calculations that they can get into power unilaterally, then, suddenly then they'll become a communist. The most you might see is that republicans, after losing so badly, might make a better run at implementation of actually populist policies, but then that's kind of obviously a nonstarter for them because they're ALSO owned by corporate entities and they're ALSO doing this same exact gambit. The idea of getting a huge win somehow also relies on the utter delusion that you can outflank the republican party from the right, or, outflank them with your competence at right-wing policy. You could maybe outflank them in competence, but that's both not a good thing, obviously, and it also wouldn't matter to their core base of delusional evangelical suburban whites that have an outsized amount of voting power and oil money.

    The reason some people think this, if they even do, and aren't just assuming whatever cynical position they have to in order to push things around, is because they're idealistic and totally delusional about the incentives the system naturally produces. How people in power go through many filters that all but guarantee they'll be acting in their own self-interest by the time they reach the top. There's no secret leftist that is going to reach a presidential level of power and then suddenly come down and save us all. I'd love to be proven wrong there, but it's not fucking happening.

    And you know what's the worst about all this shit? Every election cycle, every single time, at the one time when there is the most political interest flaring up in the population, we are met with this fucking insanely dumb conversation that we have over and over and over and over and over again. It eats up space that could otherwise be reserved for actual serious conversations about strategic voting, how to look into local policies and politicians and how to vote for them, where those resources are, how to organize, how to gain political leverage, how to unionize your workplace, how to stage a protest, participate in a protest, when a protest should even be done and what amount of political leverage such an act might buy you. None of that ever gets talked about. Instead we need like a year out of every four where the only political conversations anyone is capable of having is this repetitive overly simplified bullshit. This ideological poison which totally stymies any serious dialogue. And then turn around and wonder why nobody except the dumbest and most aggressive sacks of shit on the planet, that are obviously just taking out their anger issues actually want to talk to you about this shit, sacks of shit like me. It's insane. I don't understand how we keep falling down the stairs. I don't understand how this keeps happening.

  • What I don't understand is what harm is being reduced by doing "harm reduction"? I get maybe one or two election cycles the candidate isn't ideal but after decades of horrible candidates that increasingly become more right wing over time it seems that no real harm is being reduced. Working class people are are still starving under Biden and likely will under Kamala, simultaneously the Capitalist class continues to aquire obscene amounts of wealth. Meanwhile we're all supposed to go along with the idea that Neoliberalism is the only option while so called "radical leftists" (social democrats and social liberals) are too extreme for government. This election cycle we're offered a candidate that has promised to encourage fracking, likley will not offer any federal protections for women and other minorities, openly supports Israel, and is overall a spineless corrupt career politican that for some reason we're all supposed to nod our heads to and say "yup shes the face of the American left". If we keep doing "harm reduction" soon we will all be reduced to nothing.

    • It's not about harm reduction, it's a slow boil towards fascism. We're all just frogs in a pot of slowly heating water, except frogs actually will jump out before they boil to death; humans aren't that smart.

      Every four years the centrists say "vote for us, because the Other Guy is worse!" And they're not wrong, especially since 2016. But they're also not even pretending to be on our side anymore. Everyone says the Republicans have taken the mask off and aren't hiding their evil, but it is the Democrats running a candidate who is openly working with members of the party of greater fascism, it's the Democratic candidate who is pro fucking fracking the earth, and it's the Democrats (as well as the Repubs) who aren't even bothering to lie to us about wanting to stop the genocide that our tax dollars are directly funding.

      However, I have to say that I'll be voting for the party of lesser (or at least slower) fascism come November. Not because I agree with a single thing they're doing (since their platform is still "We're not as bad as the Other Guy"), but because they threw us exactly two bones in dropping Biden and giving the VP to one of the few Ds who actually looks progressive (where he can do the least damage, of course).

  • Reminder: you can find instructions to check your voter registration here, as well as voting resources for your state.

    • That site is busted. I'm registered but it tells me it has no record after sending me into a loop of putting in my info. Republicans probably pushed fascist updates to it.

  • People don't vote because politicians don't materially benefit them. When politicians provide significant support to regular ass people in way that materially benefit them you will see more voters turn out, not when you whine to them about them not voting. If politicians wanted this to occur, our state reps and their staffers would be in our work places, talking to people, giving them reasons to be involved with the political party apparatus, and providing material aid to the poorest and least represented among us with their own hands. We have bad voter turn out because shitty, myopic politics breeds political disinvestment. This post has it pretty much exactly backwards.

    Anecdotally, I have friends from MA who don't give one fuck about politics. Haven't voted in years despite me telling them, messaging them with voter registration status, and locations, giving them every resource they need to make it as easy as possible. None of it mattered. Two of these friends in the last year have told me they want to vote for Governor Healy because they intend to use the free community college program, unprompted. Went out of their way to tell me. Another friend told me they like their state rep because they showed up at a union rally for their union and my friend realized from talking to the politician personally that the rep was a socialist who just happened to have a D next to their name.

391 comments