Or we can go directly to the bottom frame like we’re gonna do - but go ahead and keep rationalizing why your moral pedestal was too lofty to vote for Kamala.
Only fascists can be accurately represented by Kamala Harris.
So you really think we’re better off with Bonespurs? Cuz realistically he was the only other viable choice, and reality trumps moral purity pedestals.
Too many commenters here do not understand anything about how any of it works, especially how first past the post voting works. Progressives do not seem to understand that the system has not rejected them, but the voters have.
It is mostly relentless propaganda for the oligarchs that has captured the country. That’s the problem, and it is not fixed by any of the suggestions here.
IMO the only way around this problem in the USA is to either (A) get a third party to the point of legitimacy where people will take them seriously be winning seats in the house and senate, and eventually running for the presidency, or (B) win a primary in one of the two major parties. By election day there is nothing to do but vote for the least worst option.
Gotta switch to Approval Voting for single-seat elections and the proportional variant for legislatures.
Not sure this makes sense. I think the window shifts right as people continue to vote right.
From the Wikipedia article about the Overton window:
The most common misconception is that lawmakers themselves are in the business of shifting the Overton window. That is absolutely false. Lawmakers are actually in the business of detecting where the window is, and then moving to be in accordance with it.
With no scale this is absolutely meaningless
lol, get this nerd. It’s not meant to be a scientific graph like a Moody diagram for calculating things from, it’s illustrating a concept which it does perfectly.
Ok. So apply this to 2016. The left choice was establishment neoliberal who if had won would have put left leaning judges on the Supreme Court ensuring the court for decades. Since she lost a far right extremist won who captured the judicial branch. I guess this doesn’t count because people didn’t vote for the lesser evil. Or does it?
So the following election again was establishment neoliberalism who won and basically had the most progressive policy’s of the last century. I guess that moved us right?
Next election, let’s see, establishment neoliberal again. Hard to pinpoint if she was more left or less left because she ran a campaign catering to “on the fence conservatives” but was part of a very progressive administration.
Maybe this what happens when you don’t vote for the lesser evil. That’s all I see.
“Joe Biden has the most progressive policies of the last decade” - incredible.
I can think of zero politicians with a further left policy platform than Joe Biden. Think of all his progressive moves, like allowing the overturn of roe vs wade, Joe Biden who railed against school racial integration policies, Joe Biden author of the 94 crime bill, Joe Biden who continued building the wall, pro union Joe Biden who compelled the train unions to accept the companies deal. Joe Biden who lends his support both materially and in influence to right wing governments in Ukraine and Israel, supporting genocide in the latter. Etc etc. A real hero of the people this guy, fly out the red flag.
like allowing the overturn of roe vs wade
Voters did this by not voting lesser evil
Joe Biden who railed against school racial integration policies, Joe Biden author of the 94 crime bill,
This was not part of his presidential administration and not my claim.
pro union Joe Biden who compelled the train unions to accept the companies deal
And went back and got sick days for the union after the deal was signed. Only president to march with the union.
Biden who lends his support both materially and in influence to right wing governments in Ukraine and Israel, supporting genocide in the latter. Etc etc. A real hero of the people this guy, fly out the red flag.
I never made the claim he wasn’t a neoliberal. I only cited the fact that he was the most progressive president we’ve seen in the country for as long as I’ve been alive.
This is true, but it’s also STILL WORSE to vote for the greater evil. You need to change the options available to you to fix this.
It’s also true that you get backlashes normally if the system doesn’t get to far out of wack. FDR wasnt right of Hoover Coolridge and Harding. Sure one can argue overall we were shifting to the right… But we were NEVER going to be left of center so long as the U.S. existed, because the constitution is built on capitalism. Capitalism has a slow decay, can it be fixed? Maybe. Is it fixable now, maybe not. Could we have fixed it if we followed Carter with a closer to center President instead of Reagan, A LOT easier to have done it then… It took 60 years to get taxes on the rich to this point.
I don’t think the constitution is very capitalist tbh
Honestly I’m just at the point where I’m sitting back watching this country be torn apart. Everything anyone ever has done is wrong but also maybe it’s right and everyone acts like they know which is which. The country is entirely divided when the war within itself kicks off I’ll be just on my porch watching because I’m done trying to make heads or tails of this mess.
You know what they say, evil happens when good people stand back and let it happen.
I’m not privileged, they just won’t attack me or my family yet. /s
Quote from Eddy Burke, Edmund’s less fancy-worded relative.
Let’s see your tune in 4 years lmao all you fuckwits who stayed home did was force everyone to live under the authoritarians right now. You sacrificed marginalized groups because of a complete lack of perspective and selfish bullshit.
You have four years every year to push for candidates you like. Local and state offices. So many opportunities to volunteer and donate. Then you all show up having done NOTHING during that time, strolling up in the general election endlessly bitch and moaning. I’m so fucking sick of it.
Change takes work and time. Sitting around whining online doing nothing for 3.5 years then showing up in the general is not putting in the work. It’s being entitled brats.
Out of interest, what do you do to push for progressive reform? Because if it’s phone banking for right-wingers, I’m not sure that counts.
I currently volunteer with and donate to the EFF and CSE, and I worked both of Bernie’s campaign. If your goal is to flip the script on me you’ll need to find another approach. Or you could try actually engaging the points.
Yes it was overly angry and ranty but I am tired of repeating it and this election was frustrating as fuck.
It was genuine curiosity. There are people like you was my point. Perhaps not enough, but not everyone has the resources to be an activist. And it should hardly be surprising that people stayed home this time, considering what was on offer.
Yes it’s a privilege to be able to do what I do. But I guarantee you almost every person who goes online writing comment after comments about how “there are simply no good candidates” could’ve donated a few dollars or phone banked at least once for someone. If you ask them who they would have wanted instead they can’t even answer that because they don’t know. They just get mad at the establishment during the final hours then disappear for a few years and never try to do anything about it.
Again though, I really can’t blame people for being disillusioned with the democratic system in general, right? We’ve just been through a generational moment where any viable left opposition in the West got shit-housed into oblivion, and AOC is giving us a great lesson in what succeeding through the proper channels means in practice. And what has been the response from the political class more generally? To move even further right!
It’s a miserable situation ofc, and I don’t blame you at all for venting. But neither do I blame people for venting despite doing nothing else. Sanders raised a lot of money, and a lot of volunteer hours, and what did it yield? And the fallout from Corbynism has been as bad if not worse. Many people got blacklisted over it, and several door knockers ended up in hospital — why would anyone want to put themselves on the line like that again, especially when the potential gains are so meager?
Dgmw, I too wish that people would channel their anger through effective organizing, but imho it’s become a lot less clear in recent years what that would mean.
We’ve been living in an authoritarian right wing country for 25-50 years. Historically the tactic of “we must sacrifice [insert marginalized group here] or it’ll get worse for us all!!!” has been very effective.
I find it very hopeful that this was the year that people were finally very vocally opposed that tactic and think it’s a good sign going forward that things might actually get better. However, that is reliant on people like you waking up to the fact that no amount of time and effort put into reinforcing the sacrificial machine will ever change its fundamental nature and that what you view as “being entitled brats” is often simply refusing to participate in the death, enslavement and marginalization of others.
Is active resistance better? Yes! But token resistance while actively reinforcing the authoritarian right is worse than nothing. The vast majority of those “opportunities to volunteer and donate” are doing just that; a $5 donation to “lesser evil INC.” is still actively funding evil.
Your frustration and anxiety for the future is perfectly valid, and I appreciate that you are at least a little mad about the state of things. But I would ask that you step back, reevaluate, and redirect that rage and start punching up instead of looking for who to punch down at.
Trump is not the person to learn this lesson with. Romney, McCain, all of those would’ve been fine. Trump is an incredibly unique threat.
Yeah, the longer it takes the worse it gets. That’s one of the points the parent meme is getting across. But that response tells me you missed what I was saying.
Reread and try again.
Don’t patronize me asshole
Not the intention. How would you prefer I had responded?
this is stupid.
a system where you get served only two options to vote for but are held responsible for the outcome instead of those who limited the available options in the first place?
eh yes, you are right, this is stupid.
as a completely unrelated sidenote:
“winner takes it all” is the actual opposite of democracy, no matter how the voting was done, and this fact can already be read 1:1 within those 4 simple words 😉
this is stupid too. Democracy is mathematically impossible. Condorcet’s paradox and all that.
Care to explain?
The argument is when there are more than 2 options a majority of people would not have selected the “winner” over any of the other individual losers. Therefore majority rule is an illusion, democracy is self-contradictory!!!
However, by reducing the options to just 2 you no longer have the same result and “democracy” is more “self-consistent”. You can do this in a fair/Democratic way by “simulating” the pairwise interactions (IE ranked choice voting, pairwise majority rule, etc.) or by establishing a false dichotomy (2 party systems, left v right spectrum, etc.).
This is not ‘not a thing’ but it’s a really old idea and is largely solved (ie. Distributed networks like the social media platform we are currently on, or stuff like this).
However, the claim isn’t entirely misplaced as modern social institutions refuse to implement any of those methods because it would be against their best interests as those in power are deeply unpopular (yes, especially your favourites whoever that may be). So yes almost all “Democratic” systems you interact with on a daily basis are inherently self-contradictory on the most cursory of examinations, but they dont have to be.
the link you shared is paywalled, curious about it but can’t find it anywhere else. Could you link as pdf?
I just wish those campaigning were required to provide policy ideas/plans for what they want to do, and where they want the money to come from. In an ideal world I would give the candidates 0 face time, possibly even no names to the public at first. (Would never work but would be interesting)
The options get a set of questions framed around current events, past events, and possible future events that they would give detailed responses to how they would have, would currently or would plan for those events. No party affiliations known. Eliminate contenders from the list by most accepted answers from the lists bringing it from say 50 candidates to 25, then 10, then 5, the 3 then 1. The election period is 6 months. No prior rallys, no posturing, no ads, and no names tied to the responses so no one cares about popularity.
The President is whomever wins 1st, Vice President 2nd, and 3rd place is placed on stand-by but works directly with both members to stay informed. If at any time a person makes decisions as president that the other 2 do not believe coorelate with the responses they gave to the people, they call an emergency vote to veto that directive, and recall a ranked choice vote where the population votes for all 3, where the 1st takes the presidency, 2nd VP, 3rd taking the back seat.
Would be fucking crazy, but at least itd be more fun than what we have now…
I don’t think it’s crazy in the slightest and see no reason why it “would never work”, it’s just not a conservative idea. Why did you feel the need to minimize it so?
It’s certainly an intriguing idea, but its not as good as the current system. It’s a hyperreality of voting that would simply exaggerate flaws of the current system.
First off, good luck keeping anything anonymous. And, even if you could, candidate anonymity is a horrible idea, because you’d have even less accountability and more campaign dishonesty than you have now. Without anonymity, politicians have to at least try to fulfill campaign promises if they want to get reelected. But with anonymity, I can get elected and not follow through on campaign promises because when I run for reelection nobody knows which candidate is me and I can just lie again.
You’d probably also seriously exacerbate political capture. In the interest of putting forth the best policy proposals, people like presidential candidates would certainly outsource writing to powerful lobbies that have the top policy analysists and writers. And these lobbies or other groups would almost certainly only offer services in exchange for certain favors once the candidate is in office. It would lead to massive corruption, more than we’re already seeing, because at least without anonymity we can put names to faces and prompt some honesty.
Plus, you’d cut out so many candidates. Not everyone excels at writing. Some candidates might articulate their plans best in real time and on a stage (like JFK, or Reagan, etc.). Demanding that everyone only write and publish policy proposals removes the ability to gauge how good they’d be in office, interacting with staff and other world leaders.
Combining anonymity with a bracketed system would also create an echo chamber, where candidates learn each other’s messages every round and the survivors shift to mimic the most popular message to bolster their odds of making it into office. In the end, all 3 people will sound the same in a desperate bid to copycat the clear winner and steal votes. Which obviously creates issues for voting again, like the aforementioned Condorcet’s paradox.
Also, voter engagement. We can barely get people to turnout when they are emotionally won-over by a given personality candidate, it would probably crater if voting were a purely rational process as @lifeinmultiplechoice suggests. If you take after John Adams or Rousseau, this isn’t entirely problematic because you don’t believe in carrying out the principle of “the will of the people” in a literal sense (not to say J.A. was Rousseauian, he obviously was not, but they overlap in this area of restricted voting). But if you are interested in accurately representing “the will of the people” in a non-gnostic sense, this is obviously an unsatisfactory system.
This isn’t meant to dismiss @lifeinmultiplechoice out of hand, I admire the imagination. I think they’re onto something when they point out that technology has sort of… swapped lenses on the camera of Democracy. We can seriously reinvent Democracy in ways that overcome previous hurdles due to all our technology now… we just don’t know how exactly yet.
Oh my. You win the argument today!
Thank you, thank you for taking the time to put together such a meaningful and well thought-out comment. We are all slightly better off because you paused your surely very important work and gave us your insights.
I live to please.
Funny that a lot of people see this shit and immediately go but Dem and Rep, this shit applied for a lot of countries that have more than 2 parties. When the more popular parties are all shit people go with “lesser evil”.
Incidentally that’s also the effect of not voting for the lesser evil, you can just cut out the two steps in the middle then.
So if you don’t vote for the lesser evil it gets salty and joins the evil? Yeah i am not voting for that psycho manipulating abusive shit.
So if you don’t vote for the lesser evil it gets salty and joins the evil?
Not quite. If you don’t vote for the lesser evil, it loses influence, which means the greater evil has it easier to shift things over in their direction and control the narrative. They’ve won after all, so clearly that’s what the voters want. The lesser evil will take cues from this.
(It should also be said that this whole meme only really applies to shitty 2-party systems. In a proper parliamentary democracy, you have more realististic choices than “greater evil” and “lesser evil” and don’t have to play this stupid game at all.)
The two party System is more a consequence of first past the post than the system they are voted into.
If you look at Canada as an example in the last 30 years the parties on the right have amalgamated and have been rewarded for it as the vote splitting on the left is what gets them elected. It’s just a matter of time until the left follow suit and then 🎉 two party system.
Yeah, I agree. FPTP is a horrible system that will inevitably lead to this kind of situation.
The same shit happens in systems with more than two parties. You also have the problem to think about rallying behind the main party on the left or right side vs. one that is closer to your ideals but probably wont become part of the government coalition. In Germany, where i am from, we had 12 out of 16 years under Merkel with a “big coalition” of the conservative CDU and the social democrat SPD. All that happened was the SPD moving more and more to the right. Now we had a coalition that was supposedly progressive but collapsed hard as well as the Green party and liberal party FDP also moving strongly to the right. We now in 2024 have policies among the supposed center/center-left that used to be fringe far right by German standards. This is why voting “tactically” or for “the lesser evil” fails. It gives a false sense of what is demanded by the people.
Also for the narrative control just take the win of Biden in 2020 as a counter example. Despite Trump holding office the Dems managed to win.
I’m also from Germany and I don’t think it’s a similar situation at all. In our system, it’s absolutely possible and doable for a new party to arise and gain influence. You don’t have to vote for the lesser evil, you can find a party that actually suits you and there is a realistic shot of getting it elected if enough people want it to happen. We’ve gotten 2 new parties in parliament over the last decade (I don’t like either of them, but that’s beside the point). And yes, we have a general shift to the right in Germany as well, but that’s more due to the actual attitudes of the population, a generally weak left and things like Russian influence. Contrary to the US, voters can absolutely reverse that trend though.
In a system like the US, that’s almost impossible. Let’s say the democrats split up into left-wing democrats and right-wing democrats. Half of the voter base goes to either party, so 25% of the population votes for each. However, elections are “first past the post”, so even if the left gained a lot of voters and reached, say, 35%, it will be a total victory for the Republican party. Any party that can’t get an absolute majority of votes is powerless. The momentum for a new party to get to power would have to be insane.
Also for the narrative control just take the win of Biden in 2020 as a counter example. Despite Trump holding office the Dems managed to win.
Well, yes, but pretty much exclusively by running on a lesser evil “We’re not Trump” platform. Had the Trump presidency never happened, it could have been way more about actual policy.
Then they don’t need to worry about your vote and are stuck competing for the remaining voters
Well, they would get my vote if they changed their policies and behaviour. If you vote them no matter what they dont have to fight for it. (Note i am not a US citizen but the same principles apply. I have similar dissapointment with the formerly progressive parties in my country moving to the right)
And we can also observe this empirically with the current election. The Dems were so tone deaf that they thought to compete over Reps not too happy with Trump, fielding people like Dick fucking Cheney as their advocates. Meanwhile they lost a lot of votes they expected to just have secure because they expected the voters to be blindly loyal hence irrelevant to their strategy.
Voting for lesser evil is important although the lesser evil is still evil
You are 100% correct.
Look at OPs meme and ask the obvious question: “Why is this moving to the right, and not to the left? Aren’t both options equally possible?”
The answer is that it moves to the side that wins elections.
“Why is the right winning elections” is the much much better question to ask. In the meantime, do everything you can to move the center in the other direction one step at a time, and that doesn’t come about by losing elections while standing on principle.
That’s what I’ve always thought, it feels like the dems instead of compromising on ideology they should look for policies that benefit the rural Americans that feel increasingly excluded from the society happening in cities. Just throw them farming subsidies for small to mid sized farms, benefits for undeveloped land, agricultural loans for the energy transition to help them conform to new climate regulations.
Then maybe even throw in benefits for rural fire departments and so on are all democrat ideology policies. When the right becomes unelectable people move left.
Voting for non evil is the way to go. By keeping to vote for the lesser evil, you get it to become more evil while keeping non evil out of power. This is how the system games you.
Yes! The problem is, non-evil is not currently on the menu. So I think one should limit the rate of evil increase by voting for the lesser evil.
The evil is sowing doubt in people voting. Representatives fail to represent sometimes, or even often. But not voting just means they don’t represent you at all, and don’t care that you exist when they represent you.
If people didn’t show up and vote for their local officials, and state government officials… They have sabotaged their city/county/state/country.
All of these representatives start somewhere. If we don’t follow and support the local ones that are good, they never get a shot at being say a congresswoman who can break the majority of super majority and help move politics in whichever directions we want them.
(Cause guess where they come from if they aren’t politicians moving up… Either A. Rich or B. funded by the rich.)
Yes! This is a form of organization. Which I think is a requirement for getting a more progressive government.
I think depends on the voting system and the election. US has a really bad system with FPTP voting. In that case tactical voting should be used for governor and president but representatives should be voted by the heart to build up better support for third party candidates.
It’s also very important to vote in primaries and and party national conventions because those votes affect national policies way more than the elections themselves.
US is very presidential heavy but voting in local elections really counts and allows third parties to slowly build up enough support to create a hung parliament where voting system concessions can be made.
I like to think of it in a “market” way. By voting there is a signal into the market, that their is a demand for a certain political direction. So “stocks” with that profile increase in value. This might be individual politicians, specific laws, parties, or general ideology/values.
Politicians want their portfolio to be attractive, so they get more votes. As a result they will adjust their portfolio of political positions accordingly.
If you vote “tactically” you send a false signal into the market. So instead of getting more politicians to represent the ideas you like, you reinforce them in the ideas you don’t like, as that had more buy signals. On the flip side if you send your sell signal, by removing a formally loyal vote from them, you can show them that their portfolio has gotten lopsided.
The difficulty is to think these things longer term. It is not just this election cycle, but 8 years, 12 years maybe even 20 years ahead. The way media and politicians like to represent elections got more and more pointed towards just this single one being the one and only. This is not just a problem in the US, but also countries without FPTP. Also the reporting got less about the specific policies and more about the how and who, turning it into a show of game of thrones, rather than a fight for the best ideas.
That’s all true, by voting for minor parties you do entice the established parties to grab some of their policies. This does not address the fact that in FPTP a fractured ideology loses because of the spoiler effect. If you get 5 parties with 10% vote share. Dems on 20% and Republicans on 30% it’s a Republican win even though their ideology doesn’t resonate with 70% of voters.
You need tactical voting to get the majority of seats in this case also and in a situation where everyone would vote tactically against Republicans they will be pro voter reform since it’ll reduce the power of a united right wing.
You dumb fuck.
Couldn’t you see that people are sick of “the lesser evil” they just let the greater evil win?
I think you need to look at the above the graph and try again, maybe with less f****** around and more using your brain.
Oh well it’s in a doodle on the internet, must be gospel-grade truth.
Is that a thing you have to apply to some formal committee for?
Or do we have to ask you specifically whether or not it qualifies?
Ooh maybe there’s ASCII symbol for it like ® or © ?
This is a lie. People just spread this to trick you into not voting so the Republicans win.
The effect shown isn’t untrue, but the conclusion doesn’t follow from that.
This is a lie spread by corporate elites that want to make sure both parties align with their interests instead of having Democrats create a popular platform and win on that basis.
Did you learn nothing from hanging on to Biden until even the billionaire donors got scared by his dementia?
How many people did you vote for that weren’t Republican or Democrat in your local elections? If you didn’t vote for them (3rd party, new party) there, don’t expect them to ever exist as a presidential candidate. You can’t even qualify to be on the ballot if you don’t have the party established. You have to petition on all 50 states to be shown there and you will likely be denied on many.
If you don’t like the Republican or Democrat party, a solution would be to get local candidates to run under a new party that fits your views better, still you would NEED to vote for whichever of the 2 parties fits your views best in the presidential vote to SLOW the movement right/left/up/down whatever… And establish that party in enough city’s/counties/states to take seats that matter there. Once known… Then and only then would it be viable to split the vote, and you likely lose 4 years to a hard push into the directions you don’t want… While the final negotiations and realizations of merging or replacing/allying with the lesser evil party.
Likely meaning a pledge that you would hold primaries that would endorse each other if the winner of a primary shows more people. But you cannot and will not win a presidential election if you split the vote and don’t endorse each other
or voting third party in a backwards outdated voting system like that of the US
Do you mean that democrats are not centrists?
In most other countries your 2 parties would be classified right wing and extreme right wing.
Thank you!
Every time someone says this they exaggerate the positions further and further to the right, and it becomes less and less true.
You think I did that?
I’m Danish and here your 2 parties would absolutely fit the categories I described. No exaggeration what so ever.
You perceive it going the opposite direction of whatever you are.
