The Democratic party is the Graveyard of Social Movements
The neat part about voting is that even if you do it you can get fascism if the rest of the country are a bunch of fucking idiots.
I empathize a bit, but it’s not like democrats haven’t been getting more leftward either.
The truth is though that ultimately, politicians are gonna be malleable to those who are going to vote, both because of the very simple “if I focus here, I will be more likely to get the most votes while providing due change”, but also because the idea of democracy is based in the trust that publics will emerge to voice their concerns to the politicians.
Most politicians are just not online enough to gather the discourse that we would be experiencing, and also there’s the whole issue of not knowing how much of it is foreign interference in a trench-suit pretending to be the voices of the locals. That’s why direct calls to voicing these concerns to local politicians, and being willing to hear them out as much as they hear you out matters a lot. Some do forget over the years, but a lot join politics because they genuinely want to make life better.
Here is the education that you need to take over the Democratic Party:
David Hogg, the new Vice Chair of the DNC, has allocated $20M to primary out the old, and replace them with youthful progressives to create a true opposition party.
Democratic primaries only see ~20% turnout in congressional elections. 30/50 states have partisan primaries, meaning you must be registered as a Democrat to vote in the Democratic primary. This was a contributing factor in Bernie’s 2016 loss.
Rather than progressives and leftists fracturing over third-parties, we need to all block vote progressives into the Democratic Party through primaries and replace the deadwood centrists that have been content with the status quo.
Check your state’s primary type here: https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_election_types_by_state
You cannot take over the Democratic Party. It will just change its own rules before you get the chance. The people running it are all feeding from the same donor trough, either as politicians or consultants. You think they will let you just take the trough away? Friend they make the party rules! They will just change them! They already did this against Bernie, an imperialist socdem, someone who isn’t even a real threat to capital (just the insurance industry) and they thwarted that even when it had momentum and kids allowed themselves hope for healthcare without poverty. This is the basic nature of capitalist parties: they are beholden to capital, not the people, and certainly not you or I.
By the time the Democratic Partu is “taken over” by anything, it will be because it has found a way to make capital happy by adopting a policy that costs them nothing. Which means we win nothing of serious value and the spiral of capitalist degrading conditions continues.
In the meantime, what role do these reformers actually serve? If they can’t change what needs yo change, what other effects do they have?
Well, they mostly just convince people to have false hope for the party, delaying its need to crash and burn and be replaced, ideally with something more effective than a bourgeois electoral party.
This was a contributing factor in Bernie’s 2016 loss.
I am from the Bronx. I was a registered democrat my entire life. Somehow when my wife and I went to vote in 2016, after making sure we were registered, we were turned away from the polls because “we weren’t registered”
2 years later I started receiving the letters and was suddenly registered again.
The reason Bernie lost in 2016 is your fucking party threw us off the rolls because of who we are and where we lived. Your fucking party stole that election. You are full of shit and it is you that is a fascist enabler by making an excuse for corruption.
As someone that voted Bernie in 2016, we didn’t have the votes in 2016 for Bernie to make it through the primary. The country itself was not as progressive in 2016 as it is now imo, especially so for the Democratic base.
For Bernie to have even had a chance to win the primary, the election format would have needed to not be First Past the Post. He was a victim of vote splitting found in First Past the Post and then establishment Dems allocated their voters votes to go towards Hillary. I don’t think it was fair what happened to Bernie especially with the DNC, but I realize now it was a flaw of the system itself that makes it extremely difficult for a progressive to win a Democratic presidential primary. I think it makes zero sense why people can’t pick their favorite candidate(s) first and then pick backup ‘safe’ candidates for elections. Also there is the issue of some states excluding people not registered with a party from voting in the primary. I feel it is a bad move to prevent these voters at the primary level since non-affiliated voters are usually the ones that ultimately decide the elections and they can give input ahead of time if they would vote for that candidate in the general election.
Having ranked robin voting, STAR voting, or score voting would help prevent a popular candidate like Bernie from losing by default to a ‘safe’ establishment pick.
It’s not my party. I’ve been left of the Democrats since the 90s. It’s the party that more closely aligns with my values between the only two that can win a US Presidential Election.
I believe you, and I’m sure you’re not the only one with that problem. I didn’t say it was the reason Bernie lost, because I’m fully aware of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Hillary’s collusion, but it was a contributing factor.
I volunteered to direct foot traffic for the general election, and chatted up several other volunteers about the disappointing results of the primary. They told me that they couldn’t believe how many registered independents and no party affiliation voters they had to turn away. Apparently partisan primary requirements aren’t common knowledge, so I’m sharing this information to prevent other people from having the same experience.
What you described is a big issue. I feel it shows just how much there needs to be a push for change nationally and within each of the states to lobby the Democratic Party for change. Some states have open primaries, some have closed, and others have semi-open primaries. It makes no sense for states to not just be semi-open or fully open for primaries, as closed primaries just further alienates the party from potential voters.
It’s not my party
It’s enough your party that you’re willing to do genocide denial for them
Lol, and this was the establishment Democrat response:
Hilarious that Carville claimed progressives have purity tests in the same breath
Yup. Carville wants to preserve the “schism” between progressives and liberals. That’s how you know it’s the right move. We need to shift back the Overton window.
David Hogg
Be unarmed if you wish, but don’t choose for other people how they defend themselves.
The Democrats will not defend us, the justice system will not defend us. We are on our own.
Soooo Dems won’t make it better but least won’t make it worse. If 2 party then easy choice.
Shame people didnt do this 20 years ago and voted gop out of existence.
twenty years ago people gave the Dems a super-majority; they used it to lock in the fascist policies of the Bush admin and give a massive hand out the wealthy.
911 kind of destroy any semblance of reason in the country. Everyone was angry. Tried to talk reason? Just look at Dixie chicks and boondocks version of MLK.
that insane mindset never ended and still goes on to this day. It’s why Americans can bomb Yemen for 40 days straight and not even be aware of it. It’s why they can kill millions of muslims and arabs in their forever wars and not give a single shit. It’s why they can commit genocide
That’s your excuse? Seriously?
“Shame people didn’t vote Dem 20 years ago, the gop wouldn’t be around!”
“They did”
“Yeah, but 9/11 had happened only a decade earlier”
excuse? Hope maybe but now I doubt it with young boys being Tate trolls.
Naa country hadn’t healed yet for 10 years after. Now? I dont think 911 is a factor but nation has other issues made apparent by Trump.
the islamophobia of the 911 years obviously never went away because we have done multiple anti-muslim genocides and killed millions of muslims since and learned nothing
Yeah I think you are right there but I want believe the sacrifices made for “security” are wearing thin. Wanted to talk about privacy rights 16 years ago and they call you traitor. Least fox news would which is what I watched at the time.
So why did you say "Soooo Dems won’t make it better but least won’t make it worse. If 2 party then easy choice.
Shame people didnt do this 20 years ago and voted gop out of existence."?
Cause people keep hating on dems instead of seeing dems for what they are. Opportunists Lesser evils than also need to be removed. But GOP is worst they need to go first. We need Truce with dems until gop is gone. then let’s go tear them apart. But people keep getting angry and shocked at dems bs and then refuse to vote and let gop win. Which is arguably worst outcome.
At least vote third party people!
Good luck convincing the Democrats to agree to a truce.
We need Truce with dems until gop is gone.
Wrong. Aligning yourselves with the “lesser evil” makes you evil as well and compromises your entire project. When you work with the billionaires you don’t have the wheel. You will do their bidding and be smeared for their actions. The only way to defeat the two party system is to attack both parties simultaneously, otherwise you are only reifying it by participating in the back-and-forth stalemate
You need to zoom out. Imagine you’re looking back at this moment from 100 years in the future. If people said “the Dems won’t make it better but at least they won’t make it worse” and just kept the system going, do you think it will ever lead to progress? Will the whole system ever improve?
You need to look for a solution outside of that system. Stop looking for lesser evils in the ballot box. First, look to the people immediately around you and try to join local organizations that might be directly working to improve their conditions (soup kitchens, women’s shelters, etc). Then, organize labor: figure out how to join a union, if there isn’t one read the IWW (or any other big union near you) manual on organizing your workplace and find support to start organizing your workplace. Then from there, your objective should be to take the workers’ struggle to the national and international stage. Change doesn’t come from the ballot box, it comes from building alternative power structures ourselves.
I agree with all you said. No it won’t improve just give time for gop to age out. Since they are actively making things worse. Least dems aren’t trying that hard to deport people or remove renewables.
Though I think change could have happened if 20 mil people voted third party or for Harris instead of sleeping in. Seeing Trump lose twice would have been a great catalyst for changing gop.
Least dems aren’t trying that hard to deport people or remove renewables.
Biden deported more people than Trump 1 did. Biden placed tariffs on solar panels and renewables made in China and continued Trump’s trade war
Well you right on that. sorry I wasn’t clear. I mean deport us citizens not just migrants. If trump does deport us citizens wanna bet a dem will not undo it?
No familiar on the solar tarrifs biden did so I cant speak on it.
Don’t make me tap the sign again
???
25 years ago the Democrats won the election against Bush and then Gore gave up. They personally handed the presidency over to the republicans. Democrats like to lose even when they win. Then 21 years ago the Dems ran on a platform of “we’ll kill Muslims more efficiently than the Republicans.”
Democrats don’t want to win. Their primary purpose is to prevent a left from existing.
Also don’t forget Nancy Pelosi’s statement about the country needing a “strong republican party” last year. These people are ghouls and aren’t to be trusted.
Oh bet they need a strong gop. Of course they do they need thier boogie man. Without the gop guess who’s the most right wing popular party now? Can’t rack in that donation money without them.
Soooo Dems won’t make it better but least won’t make it worse.
Obama oversaw the largest decrease in black household wealth in american history
Not because of housing crisis? I seriously don’t know what specifically he did.
From what i read Obama maintained status quo and was not as progressive so the people most to gain from reform became the ones most victimized. He didnt actively do anything good or bad.
Is having the power and doing nothing worst than someone actively taking it away. I want to say yes but I also think the rapist is worst than the guy that just watched.
Bailing out the banks was an actively bad thing. That’s what gave the banks the power to barrel through with the rampant foreclosures that annihilated PoC wealth.
This is like saying FDR was great because he saved capitalism from destroying itself. If they had done nothing at all it would’ve been better in the long run because the crisis would have destroyed capitalism and we could finally move on to a system that puts human need above the acculumation of endless wealth.
Besides, this is completely ignoring the pillaging of Libya that took place under Obama, where Libya went from a forward-looking (yet flawed) democratic country to a failed state ruled by human trafficking operations and various statelets that control oil fields. It’s the only place with open air slave trafficking markets. It ignores the occupation of Afghanistan that also took place under his watch. The expansion of the surveillance state, Guantanamo, the US-Mexico border camps, the support of Israel during 2012’s Gaza bombings, the drone strikes in Pakistan and several other atrocities.
he didn’t close guantanamo like he promised, and there’s a direct throughline from that type of policy to the modern day use of CECOT as a detainment blackbag site. He could have pushed back but he didn’t, he gleefully joined the blob. So now the fascist blob controls everything
So it seems you feel dems are going to make things better vs me saying they won’t make things significantly worse?
The point is to never let ratchet go right at any cost.
But Maybe yall are right and its all too late Trump will push the country sooo far right and next dem will keep it going to no ones surprise. Guess we will find out together.
The problem with having 365 million people or so in a sick society that encouraged and rewards destroying each other is that things get worse automatically.
Dems doing nothing makes things worse. Reps doing nothing makes things worse. Its a prisoners dilemma where the only winning move is to kill the cops and hope for the best.
If al gore won we’d have still invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, it would just be in bush jrs first term in 2004 that we invade Iraq.
You are Probably right though im sure gore would have pushed for renewables. Thats like his whole thing.
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but at least won’t make it worse.
Any arguments for harm reduction were gunned down in the streets of Gaza.
"Gaza? never heard of it.
Lalalalalalalallaal cant hear you. Head in sand.
Genocide? Innocent lives?
No no no insurgents even that baby and those reporting and uh its in the Torah…"
I could do narcissist prayer but It disgusts me to go any further.
But they did make it worse, their policies led directly to where the US is now.
But they did make it worse, their policies led directly to where the US is now.
It’s so fucking ridiculous!
In the past 30 years Dems were in power 2/3 of the time, so they very obviously did contribute to the state of affairs that led to Trump being elected twice!
Or if the country moved rightward regardless of what team the President represents, then it means voting in this system is only ceremonial and completely useless activity.
Either Dems are enablers of Fascists or voting is useless, there’s no third option.
Well biden won by 20 mil and then those votes went away and didnt even go third party. So seems like disenfranchisement than country moving more than moving right.
disenfranchisement
Which democrats let happen without pushback
It’s also extreme disillusionment. Everyone is checked out and realizes Democrats are genocidal frauds now
Well that’s the truth but at least vote third party. If im right then dems will follow the votes. They see 29 mil suddenly happen for third party ill bet my hat they will change tune. Im convinced they go right cause those are the people that vote.
I’m convinced they go right cause those are the people that vote
You do realise that it’s a big part of a politician’s job to mobilise the masses to vote?
historically speaking people with power are dumb dumbs and/or go for low hanging fruit. Hence DNC courting all those republicans voters in last cycle. Old ppl vote more comparatively.
Soooo Dems won’t make it better but least won’t make it worse.
So seems like disenfranchisement
So the Dems did make it worse by being terrible at running the country during the 20 years they’ve been in power over the past 30 years?
They fucked up strategically: creating the material conditions for the rise of Fascism
and they fucked up tactically by running two terrible candidates who abetted genocide in Gaza, and couldn’t even be bothered to promise a feeble social democratic programme (which would be less than the bare minimum), and because of this tactical mistake they’ve lost to fucking Trump who is very clearly an idiot.Calling it a fuckup implies that Democrats actually care about winning elections and developing the country, which is debatable after all these fuckups and all their anti-left rhetoric…
So what’s your plan on this?
What do you mean my plan?
The topic is:“Is there such a thing as the ratchet effect?”
Yes, there is.
I’m not American, I just hate both the US power elite and the bootlickers making excuses for them. Fuck them all, because they make the world worse for the rest of us…
I could go on and on about EU neoliberals as well, but that’s not the topic at hand, and they are basically behave like vassals to the US anyway
The function of a ratchet is to make an object go in one direction more easily. Democrats fulfill a function in propeling the country rightward. This was arguably not true 80 years ago but post-Reagan they are part of a process of rightward movement. Voting for and legitimizing them is moving the country right and making things worse.
I get not voting dem so please vote for a third party. And do not sleep on it.
Just never vote gop.
Im not hoping for dems to change im hoping they stay status quo long enough for gop to die.
i can assure you the commies are not implying you should vote GOP
As said by a wise man, a silent majority does not exist in policy.
The absolute highest priority in American politics should be getting rid of the 2 party system. I’m not going to pretend to know how exactly, but I think a good step in the right direction would be some form of a ranked voting system.
This has to be the most brain dead community on Lemmy, still pulling this “Both sides” bullshit
You might not have noticed but 90% of these posts come from the same user
Look at this guy, believing there’s actually 2 sides
Welcome to .ml, you’ll get the jokes now.
I don’t know on which community we currently are, but this is the most accurate depiction of what’s actually going on. Democrats serve the corporate elite and don’t really bother turning it left.
Stop with this braindead serve the elites meme. Dems last admin passed tons of left wing legislation that benefited everyone.
Intersting, I do not remember any means of production being turned over to the workers? I dont remember a law passed to remove the scehdual F capabilities, I do not remember stuffing the supreme court in retaliation for Roe being overturned. Heck I do not even remember stufing the Postal board of governors so full that it would fire DeJoy and ensure a reasonable PMG for over a decade… Please enlighten me, what left wing actions must I look at
You aren’t wrong in that the democrats prefer the status quo but it’s far from both sides being the same. If we have to pick a side, and if we are still pro democracy, we do, there is only one correct choice.
Now if we can convince that side to then use the victory to change the rules, then so be it. For example, Ranked choice voting would be great, but let’s get more states to use it before expecting the highest office in the land to adopt it.
pro democracy
one correct choice
Pick one.
Now if we can convince that side to then use the victory to change the rules, then so be it.
The democrats are only in power for at most two years, and that’s assuming there’s no quislings like Lieberman or Fetterman or Manchin or Sinema in them. So they’ve barely got enough votes to move the needle on anything, and voting is low on the priority list.
And after two years the Republicans win one or both houses of Congress and maybe the presidency, and then undo everything.
This has been repeating my entire life, and now it’s getting to the fascist endgame.
The system itself is broken and failing. It’s not going to help us.
Now if we can convince that side to then use the victory to change the rules, then so be it.
What if Democrats not only don’t change the rules to improve the democratic process, but they also fail to even talk about significantly improving their constituents’ lives? What if they also can’t be bothered to take climate change seriously? And what if – after all that – they do genocide?
I used to think like you do, but at some point in the last decade or two Democrats stopped being a worthwhile option. The party will have to be either radically changed or smashed in order for any major progress to happen anytime soon.
we are still pro democracy, we do, there is only one correct choice.
Western “democracy” in a nutshell. Catch-22 could only dream of such absurdity.
The most braindead instance is still .world. It’s basically reddit in a nutshell
You had a choice OP
- Vote to maintain a bad status quo
- Vote to make things a billion times worse via fascism
- Start a revolution
Instead you chose secret option d. Make ‘both sides equally bad’ memes to justify the acceptance of fascism.
Always vote against the fascist. Or revolt.
This fact doesn’t really invalidate the initial statement though.
We would not be experiencing what we are currently experiencing presently if the Dems won. This isn’t an endorsement of the Dems, just reality
I view voting as a means to steer us to possibilities. Revolution and change won’t come through the ballot box but who gets voted in can influence that one way or another.
The Democrats suck but there’s a huge difference between voting for boring corporatists and 100% concentrated evil. Don’t make me tap the chart.
I’m not American but there’s so many socialists on here refusing to vote for the lesser evil because they don’t offer the right candidates and advocating revolution.
why not take a page from the right’s clearly successful playbook and vote more in local politics and primaries. Maga managed to turn the republicans into exactly what they wanted this way, but the American left just sits there waiting for someone to start a revolution.
well I understand it might be late now and elections might not do much going forward, but jesus it’s like the only option you guys saw is voting for whoever the parties put toward or revolution.
I mean… I’m not in love with the idea of “blocking movement to the left”, but I sure as fuck would take that over the freespin to the right we are on for now. Like, I get that Dem’s need to step their game way the fuck up because you don’t win elections by being the “second worst choice”… but still. If we didn’t want accelerated fascism…
Up until the moment we have enough confirmed support for a progressive movement, status quo is a hell of a lot better than accelerated fascism; if only to buy more time to build the aforementioned progressive support. I’m all for actual leftward movement, but gambling on unconfirmed support is stupid. Even the liberals understand that, in their sports-team monkey brain.
The left has no plan sufficient to deal with this. I hear vague rumblings about strikes and revolutions and the power of the working class united, but the working class isn’t united yet. There is no organized, validated plan to effect that revolution. There’s no leftist Project 2025. That’s a natural consequence of the commendable independence of leftists, but it has the unfortunate consequence of being tactically untenable. The right uniform under the banner of their dictator, the left squabbles about trivialities.
It’s not that I wish it to be so; I would vastly prefer the left to have a functional plan to secure power. But it is the reality; I see neither such a lab, nor the necessary organization to implement such a plan. That’s why we vote lesser evil. We strive for the stationary phase of the ratchet to avoid the freewheeling phase, because we don’t yet have the organized strength to break the pawl from its housing.
Once we have that organized strength, and not sooner, we can break the pawl. Sooner, and the ratchet spins freely to the right.
And how’s that working out for you?
A bunch of shortsighted cosplayers with no sense of praxis or political literacy protested the do-nothing Dems and we got the freewheeling fascism MAGAs. How’s that working out for you? How’s the glorious revolution coming?
So it’s not working then?
But I assume you’re going to keep doing it anyway. All while continuing to accuse other people of being short sited with no sense of praxis.
Flagrant hypocrisy! This was your plan, not mine. How’s it working? Did a third party win? Did we end the genocide in Gaza yet? Don’t equate your plan’s failure with our recognition that it failed. You gambled, and this is what we get. Own it, maybe learn something about implementation.
Yup, looks like I was correct; you are going to keep doing it anyway, while desperately projecting your own failure onto others.
Keep up the “I’m rubber you’re glue” act buddy, it’s age appropriate. I wanted Trump to lose, you wanted Harris to lose. You got your wish, this is on you. Or keep blaming everyone else who tried to warn you that it was a stupid idea, how dare they point out the glaring flaws in your strategy. Let’s see if that makes a leftist plan materialize.
Blocking movement to the left is why you’re left with a rightward trend. Not just because the right itself “moves right” but because Dems’ political nature breeds false consciousness and confused disillusionment. Dems promise basic things like a student debt jubilee and then do a little weak attempt at it. So then people leave them behind. Even worse, Dems help create the degrading conditions that provokes an anti-liberal backlash (liberalism being the dominant ideology of capitalism, not just US Dems), and then Dems work their hardest to fight the associated leftward shift. But not the right: their radicals are useful for crushing that new left, as the left is anticapitalist.
Most importantly, the bourgeoisie electoral system provides an illusion of control. You don’t actually choose the lesset evil. You just throw in a vote for candidates preselected for you by capital and the party (a party in which you have no say) who will never actually be able to fight the right or adopt anticapitalist positions, and will therefore never be left. You, and the people, are not in control in this scenario. This scenario just provides consent for what capital wanted anyways, just with two different flavors: genocidal fascism with a good PR team for the theoretically empathetic and genocidal fascism with an okay PR team for braying hogs.
You didn’t have a choice, the economic system in the US concentrates power in the hand of people with money and they are fascists. If it wasn’t 2024 it would be 2028 after 4 years of congressional stalling. The path the US is on is predetermined, they don’t have to fix every election to the vote, they fix a percentage of them over the course of decades to push the policy to the right.
You’re not wrong. But if I had cancer, and a doctor gave me a way to delay the inevitable, I would take it. Maybe it can’t be fixed, maybe it’s totally fubar. But I don’t have it in me to just give up and willingly let people suffer without a fight.
But I don’t have it in me to just give up and willingly let people suffer without a fight.
Unless those people are Palestinian, then fuck 'em.
I get why you are pissed off, and have every right to be. How both parties of the American government have treated the Palestinian genocide is beyond reprehensible, immoral, inhumane, and frankly disgusting. And that is only a small slice of the harm caused by the US across the globe. All of which I condemn wholeheartedly.
But Trump is actively making it harder for anyone to help slow, stop, or otherwise prevent additional unnecessary death and suffering. So while yes, the genocide would have continued under the Dems, there may yet have been innocent lives that could have been saved that will now be lost. When faced with saving 1 out of a 100, or 0, I believe that 1 life is worth saving. I even have the audacity to hope we could have saved more than just 1 out of 100.
I don’t intend to give up on anyone, but I also have to accept that my power is limited. So doing what I can to prevent the genocide from accelerating, in the hopes that it gives even one more child a chance to escape, is worth it to me. Maybe it isn’t the best strategy, but it is the best I could do with my time and ability to affect change to the best of my knowledge. I certainly would have preferred if the US electorate had united to solve these problems long ago, and we could have used our collective force for unambiguous good, but when even my parents won’t listen to me on the changes I think the country needs to make, steering the entire country in the right direction is beyond me at this point. Despite that fact, I still can’t just bury my head in the sand and say “sorry Palestinian child, I could have done everything in my power, kicking and screaming, to give you a snowballs chance in hell. But instead I felt it was more important to give up to the feelings of despair”.
I get that a lot of folks, yourself included I assume(?), believe that abstaining from voting or voting 3rd party would send a strong message that we will not be complicit in the countries support of a genocidal regime. And I can see why that would be your strategy, maybe in 100+ years that kind of strategy would actually amount to more saved lives, I can’t say for sure. But what I do know is that in the short term, our collective inability to keep Trump out of office has made many things worse for many people, minority groups most of all, and has made sure that the Palestinian genocide has only accelerated with the enthusiastic support of the US government under the Trump administration.
But with all that said, I hope that you haven’t given up either, and are with me in doing the best you can to help anyone you can to the best of your abilities.
and has made sure that the Palestinian genocide has only accelerated with the enthusiastic support of the US government under the Trump administration.
No, he hasn’t. The genocide was every bit as “accelerated” and the supporting of the US government every bit as enthusiastic under the Democrats, and you only think otherwise because liberals were engaging in mass genocide denial and apologia when it was their team doing it. In this sense, Trump has been better for Palestine, because at least now liberals are actually acknowledging what’s happening.
This also torpedoes the “lesser evil” argument for me, because how can I trust people to vote lesser evil when they won’t be honest with themselves about the evil the democrats were doing?
There’s so much Democrat bootlicking in here, the comment section smells of wet leather and shoe polish.
