You cannot negotiate with authoritarians. You cannot negotiate with fascists. They don't stop until *everyone* complies.

MLK Jr once said it wasn't the KKK holding progress back, but the white moderate. In this day and age, moderate democrats/center are the absolute definition of what MLK was warning us about.

MLK Jr. is speaking about people who claim to be allies but insist on doing nothing and rebuking the Civil Rights movement at every turn.
- Which today are moderates and fake progressives/democrats. The players changed as the game remained the same
- People like that exist today and they're in DNC leadership positions.
  
  They do. I just see it used far too often as a condemnation of 'moderates' in general, when MLK Jr. had no problem with working with people who were far more moderate than him... as long as they were willing to go forward, and not backwards or remain in place.
MLK Jr doesn't exactly have his finger on the pulse of modern politics but I'm sure he'd slap anyone who decided to not vote or vote for Trump in the last election.
- He would've slapped the Democrat Leadership from moving even more to the Right (with things like getting close to the Chenney Family) all the while one of the main strategies of the other candidate was to promise to solve the problems of the working class.
  Yeah, Trump was lying his ass of, as usual, but clearly a lot of people saw "candidate that promises to improve my life" vs "candidate that doesn't even do that and cozies up with elites" and voted for the former or just thought "they're all liars" and didn't vote - relying on "fear of Trump" for the incumbent to get votes from an electorate which is economically crushed after 4 years of that incumbent's policies even while de facto telling that electorate that "we don't care about you", all while the opposing candidate tells the "I care about you" is the very opposite of an intelligent strategy.
  So the supposedly "leadership material" at the top of Democrat Party applying for the position of "leader of the nation" literally followed the worst possible strategy when it comes to the vote of the low politically engaged working class (who don't live in the "couldn't give a shit about economic inequality" permanent online identity wars battlefield that is American "politics" nowadays), yet according to the Democrat Party tribalist club fans, the fault couldn't possible be of their incompetent, priviledged and "detached from what's the real world for most people" leaders and the fault is all with "leftwingers".
  If America actually does keep on having free(-ish) election, people supporting this narrative are just making sure that after one or two Democrat Presidential terms, another MAGA type gets power again folowing the exact same strategy as Trump and they'll probably be a more effective version of Trump.

I think there have been a lot of articles showing the protest votes didn't move the needle in a way that could have impacted the outcome, but I'm prepared to be shown I'm wrong.

Yeah, in the key swing states, Harris actually received more votes in 2024 then Biden did in 2020. What happened wasn't people choosing to vote third party or abstain because "both parties bad". It was that Trump was exceedingly successful at convincing otherwise non-voters to vote for him. As terrifying as that is to think of.
- Well, that or the vote rigging that Trump literally announced that they did actually happened.
People who voted for Biden in 2020, but refrained from voting Harris in 2024, overwhelmingly named left-purist reasons, and numbered in the millions
- 29% of the votes Harris lost were due to her support of genocide. (Source: yours, technically IEMU but that's where there numbers are coming from)
  She gained 8M fewer votes than Biden (Source infinitebanjo, I CBA looking it up)
  29% of 8M is 2.3M Numbered in the millions: 2, technically true I guess.
  Trump gained 2.5M more votes than Harris. (Source: PBS)
  The population couldn't vote Democrat, they were run over by the bus Dems threw them under. Blame most those most in power.
  Now I don't want to blame 9-11, but it certainly didn't help
There’s a good chance we’re a week away from Trump sending out squads to round up anyone he deems left.
If you can’t see it I definitely can’t show you.
- What you just said doesn't follow from the point octopus_ink was making.
  
  Why not?
  Every protest voter and non voter contributed to the reality we’re currently living in.
  
  I think you've fundamentally misunderstood the point.
  The margin that Trump won by, was higher than the number of "Leftist protest voters", unless you're dishonestly counting every non-voter in the country as a Leftist protester.
  
  8 million more people voted for Biden in 2020 than harris in 2024. Thats way bigger than Trump's margin of 760k. Trump didn't even win a majority but a plurality.
  
  I can’t tell which side you’re trying to argue there, because the results of a different election entirely aren’t particularly relevant to either…
  
  I'm sorry that you don't see how the most massive decline in participants of one party, ever, from one US election to the next has anything to do with the concept of protest voters throwing the election to Trump.
  
  I don't, because nothing in that statistic proves or even demonstrates anything whatsoever about the roles of protest votes versus any and every other factor affecting an election.
  If you're going to claim that leftist protest voters only existed in 2016 and 2024, but all capitulated to the Dems in 2020, then go ahead, but the statistic you're quoting doesn't prove that in any way.
  
  I think what changed between 2020 and 2024 is the average person is such a moron that they forgot how bad a Trump admin would be. The world doesn't blame Trump for whats happening in America, they blame Americans for choosing this.
  
  I feel like a lot of leftists figured Harris was horrible so they might as well teach everyone a lesson and sit the vote out helping Trump ultimately win.
  I said helping, not being the cause of.
  It’s like you’re arguing that just because you voted Trump your vote wasn’t the deciding one so he’s not your fault.
  But between the protest votes and the non voters they definitely caused Trump to be elected.
  
  I said helping, not being the cause of.
  At which point the facts backing up your anti-leftist tirade become so weak as to be meaningless. You're ascribing a level of responsibility to Leftists that you're quite happy to let literally everyone else in the country off the hook for, including people who actually voted Trump.
  
  Between the protest voters and non voters we’re past eighty million.
  Are you claiming that twenty five percent of the potential voters are meaningless?
  
  This is the ~~second~~ third time this thread that your reply reads as though you literally just haven't understood the post you're replying to. The first time round I was happy to explain myself in more detail, but now it's starting to feel like you're not making a good faith effort to read before typing.
  
  If you believe that you’re not reading or understanding what I am saying though.
- I can see it alright. My vote 3.5 years from now doesn't impact what Trump does next week though. How Dem leadership reacts when he does it might impact that vote though.

Maybe the Democrats should have stopped running such terrible centrist candidates in pursuit of Republican voters. Idk why tou are blaming leftists instead of the millions of disillusioned voters who see both oarties as nothing more than tools for the billionaires.

Both sidesing this is the laziest of arguments.
The democrats should have been able to run a half empty can of rotten crab juice against Trump and win.
Instead I'm here questioning the average intelligence of voting age Americans and wondering how long the education system has been failing us.
- Well, that's clearly not the electoral environment we live in.
  If you want to win office, you do actually have to communicate a positive idea of the future. Obama didn't win by saying, "I'm gonna continue basically all of George W. Bush's policies". Even though that's what he actually did, he still had to campaign on something a little more marketable than, "I'm not the other guy".
  
  Obama was way more effective at diplomacy than Bush, he managed to recover us from the 2008 financial crises, he introduced the 72 hour holding limitations for the ICE, and he effectively led the 58 DNC and 2 IND to pass Medicaid Expansion for tens of millions of Americans in the breif 60-ish day timeframe before the Republicans gained a 41st seat in special election.
  To say Obama was a continuation of Bush is akin to brain damage which prevents you from remembering what sort of president Bush was.
  
  And he renewed the PATRIOT act, continued to use GITMO for illegal detention, and posthumously decided any male civilians killed by his drone strikes were actually combatants for reasons of because we want them to be.
  The real brain damage is pretending that a few differences completely negate the absolute mass of similarities and continuity between the two administrations.
- Idk what to tell you if you are just now realizing that voters are uninformed. People hate politics. And people know that their quality of life has been deteriorating rapidly for the past 5 years. Democrats said that they weren't going to change anything, Trump said he was going to change EVERYTHING. That same dynamic is happening all across the world right now, and liberals refuse to realize that no one is buying what they are selling.
  "vote for us, we aren't outright fascists" is clearly not a winning strategy, but liberals continue to use the same playbook. Just look at Keir Starmer and Macron and tell me that this is a purely American problem.
  
  The quality of life has been declining since 2016 but it had a brief uptick for a couple years in 2021.
  I'm not holding my breath for the progressives to put their dick away and form a party or put candidates up so I'll keep backing the non-GOP party that has a chance.
- The democrats should have been able to run a half empty can of rotten crab juice against Trump and win
  Sure, but they shouldn't have actually tried to

This feels like it should be progressives telling leftists and centrists to cast it in the fire. The leftists say they're both the same and the centrists say we need it for the economy.

Progressive is kind of a funny label because it’s not really distinct from the other two categories, despite also occupying a sort of middle position. Ultimately most progressives are either leftists or liberals, but despite these differences they agree on a general short term political vision.
- In my opinion people who oppose human rights are not leftists so there is no distinction between liberal and leftist.
  
  I think that’s a valid position but it’s not how the term has come to be used. Usually liberals support capitalism, leftists don’t. That’s the main distinction, at least as far as how people use the word in this space.
  
  I think more people on this platform are using it correctly than many of us realize. I think there are many unironically anti-human-rights activists who want the USA to deteriorate further.
  I also have never seen any modern system other than capitalism in practice, so by your definition leftists don't even exist.
  
  Huh? Are you saying it’s impossible to live in capitalism and be opposed to it?
  
  We're talking about what's leftism not what's possible. If you promote a system where more people suffer, such as forcefully dismantling capitalism, then you're not progressive.
  Most people who claim to oppose capitalism cant even describe what it is.
  
  So you think capitalism is the best possible system and there’s no point in trying something better?
  I don’t think you’re a leftist then.
  
  I think Capitalism is the only system ever implemented at large scales and that fighting it into something else is like trying to move a river by hand. Be better to just heavily regulate it in a stable democracy.
- if that were true, Harris would have more of the vote.
  
  How so?
Yeah.
Maybe if the progressives are telling them to toss it into the fire but the progressives know there isn't any fire yet because they haven't been bothered to make it.

Pretty much