We’ve known that people don’t vote rationally in a democracy for almost three thousand years. Why do you keep expecting this to change?
If you want to win elections you must both appear morally superior and promise material gains. Making morally bankrupt rationalizations just turns the masses away.
Every time someone made the argument “yes we’re sponsoring genocide, but Trump will be worse” you lost votes. You just made people more nihilistic.
The alternative is what every progressive has been screaming about for over a decade now: Actually campaign on popular progressive economic reforms. Actually appeal to the base of the democratic party instead of chasing centrist republicans.
And stop repeating this abuser mentality of constantly lowering our standards. That depresses voter turnout better than the Republicans could dream. The masses don’t vote unless they are optmisitic.
What an insane reversal of historical reality: Both Obama and Biden ran on promising progressive economic reform and won. They dissappointed when it came time to deliver but they still won.
Clinton and Harris explicitly didn’t promise anything other than being “not Trump” and ate colossal shit on live TV.
So where are you getting this idea that progressive economic reform is not electable? Is it because it fails in democratic primaries? Is it because the party itself tries to stifle it?
I’ll just point out that the Democratic Party controls the state caucuses. Bernie did better in the cuacus states than he did in the ones with with an election. Yeah, the Dems were trying to stop him so much.
When the fuck did I mention Bernie? You’re not understanding the point I’m making. I’m not saying “AOC 2028, Medicare 4 All”. I’m saying promise them the fucking pony if you want to save democracy. Go ahead and run Gavin Newsom! But he better be promising something like student debt relief or raising the minimum wage if he wants to win. He doesn’t even have to do it!
But no we’ll never do the obvious tried and true tactic because even the implication that Bernie might have been even partially right is disloyalty to the party.
But for love of all that is holy please stop think “just not Trump” is an electable candidate. It may be for democratic party loyalists but not for the general electorate.
Your comment perfectly represents the moral bankruptcy of the Democratic party. The obsession with elections and compromising, even when the midterms are almost two years away.
A proper opposition party would hammer the substance and put the institutional failures on full display. If you don’t have principles, there’s no point to winning power anyway.
Have you considered that maybe moral bankruptcy isn’t the most effective way to win elections, at least not if you’re presenting as the slightly-less-right-wing option? The Democratic party is broken, nobody is buying their shit any more, and that’s why someone like Trump can get elected. There is no opposition party. It’s not a problem that will get fixed by ignoring it.
I love the way you write off all the Asians who were getting killed by the Japanese. To say nothing of the US Merchant Marines who died delivering food and weapons to Murmansk. Stalin was the Donald Trump of his time.
Your far left candidate has lost how many times in a row now? Maybe you helping the far right will keep that losing streak going as your country’s politicians recognize the far left will just keep losing. If you want to stir to the left, you don’t go right, like your country just did this election.
Do you really think calling them hypocrites is gonna work when it hasn’t the 5000 other times?
Dems don’t need to go after republican voters or smear republican. It’s been shown that obviously does not work. They need to be a party people want to vote for.
In WW2 the most progressive people on the planet lined up to get help from the racist Americans and the British empire because they saw Hitler was worse.
If you need to be coaxed into fighting Trump, you’re not anti-fascist, you’re desperate for attention.
BTW, I donated to Bernie in 2016, 2020, and 2024. It was the Progressives who failed me, not the Dems.
I’m mostly just confused by what you’re even trying to say about my post here? I said stop doing what doesn’t work and start doing something good? And your response is… uh… hitler was bad? I don’t?
Also, if you think the dems have nothing to do with progressives losing, then lol.
To think progressives are dropping the ball, but not the DNC, who has sued 3rd parties off ballots, pushed back as hard as they can against progressives(including spending DNC money against progressives in primaries & running attack ads on 3rd party), certainly is a DNC style take.
To say “not being trump” should be enough is fucking wild. That is the epitome of democracy huh? “You can’t vote for a good candidate, or one that would represent your ideals. You must vote based on who you hate most! You have to support the system that forces this! it is good! and balanced!”
I mean, if you think it’s progressives, the group who actually shows up to vote THE MOST, and who also do tend to vote Dem are to blame then I’m glad the DNC propaganda is working for you I guess.
But like, literal studies have shown progressives show up more %wise to vote than any other group. And also you can look at vote numbers and see left 3rd parties are like 1/3rd the votes of right 3rd parties, showing most progressives do still vote dem. A lot who do not are in places like California where Dems gonna win anyways, or Florida where Dems gonna lose anyways since they literally gave up on Florida since the last Governor election.
Too lazy to find the studies again because I’m busy. You can google it if you don’t believe me I don’t care.
Again, people not showing up to vote is the DNC’s fault for not being a party people want to vote for. If they cannot energize the vote they lose. They have not since Obama. They’ve refused to learn from that because money. They are the ones who are allowing Trump. Not progressives. Progressives control almost nothing. They have no say in the DNC. They cannot stop them from doing stupid bullshit. They’ve tried, but rather than learn and adopt progressive policy from Bernie or 3rd parties the DNC has decided to alienate them as hard as possible including fighting against them. They’ve decided they’re owed their votes anyways so they don’t need to appease them.
And Im not saying they cannot be. Im saying I don’t want any opposition to be run by folks who are so undereducated that they think there is something wrong with America attacking a group of people who have “Death to America” in their slogan and are attacking innocent sailors in commercial shipping lanes.
These people have been having American and British bombs dropped on then for 10 years by now, via the planes of America and Britain’s ally, Saudi Arabia.
WTF do you expect from them other than hatred for America?!
Do you expect some kind of thankfulness for the whole “I might be randomly killed tomorrow when the bus I’m traveling in gets hit by an American bomb”? Because that would be like expecting Americans to be thankful to Al-Queda after 9/11 (only worse so because far more civilians have been killed in Yemen with American bombs by America’s ally than in 9/11) rather than hate the hell out of the fuckers that killing innocent people.
America’s actions in Yemen have basically been the equivalent of helping Nazi Germany bomb the shit out of France and the Résistance Française and then shifting to directly bombing the Résistance themselves with little care for collateral damage by using “they hate us” as an excuse.
It’s like the whole Iran situation:
American Politicians: “They hate us for our freedoms”
Iranians: *Hate America because after Iranians rebelled against and overthrew a bloody dictator - the Shah - Americans overthrew Iran’s first Democratic government and reinstated the Shah, who only came down after a bloody Revolution were the meanest and most extreme types of all - the ultra-religious - overthrew him again.*
And ditto for Palestine which is very much a similar situation but even worse.
I mean, you gotta be quite the tribalist muppet or extremely insular (or, more commonly, both) to keep on believing the same decades old style of excuse from American Politicians for killing people in far away lands which itself justifies giving tons of taxpayer money to military suppliers for weapons and ammo (the real objective) instead of putting it in Healthcare or Education, because there is no way you can’t put 2 and 2 together otherwise.
When and how exactly have the Houtis bombed American soil?
In the post you’re replying to I literally made the point that these people being angry at America is the same as Americans being angry at Al-Queda for 9/11, so I literally treated as equally understandable that both people are angry at those who bombed them, which is the very opposite of what you claim I meant.
So you’re replying to whatever fantasy is going on in your mind rather than my post (which said the exact opposite of the fantasy you spun claiming that was my take), which means all those comments of yours about “lack of self awareness”, “holding a stupid double standard” and “that being a racism premise” apply to the only source of that imaginary “argument” you were criticizing, You.
So it’s okay to try and kill Americans so long as they aren’t in America?
You are still arguing that we shouldn’t be bombing them, despite the fact they’re bombing us and arguing that their bombing us is understandable because we’re bombing them, even though we’re only bombing them because they’re bombing us.
When and how exactly have the Houthis bombed American soil?
(You seemed to have forgotten to answer the very first line of my post during this goalpost moving maneuver of yours)
Further, when exactly did he Houthis “try and kill Americans” way back over a decade ago to cause America to start providing Saudi Arabia with bombs to bomb them with and keep doing so for a whole decade in the full knowledge of how they were being used?
You seem to be holding the “racist premise” that when America unilaterally acts in ways that kill non-Americans, those non-Americans aren’t entitled to fight back against America and its interests, which is literally you “holding a stupid double standard” and displaying “lack of self-awareness”.
Why isn’t the US doing anything to stop the genocide in Gaza? “Death to America” is nothing compared to enabling a genocide which both the current and past administrations are guilty of. Enforcing a naval blockade on Israel is hardly criminal when Israel is intentionally starving and slaughtering Palestinians.
But even if the Houthis are as bad as you claim, even worse than the US or Israel, how does that justify targeting hospitals and civilians?
You didn’t respond to the part about targeting hospitals and civilians. The moral conclusion here is the same as with Israel’s targeting of civilians in their so-called “war against Hamas.” Hamas and the Houthis are terrorist organizations that grew out of victimhood and justify hatred against their oppressors in the name of resistance. They are victims, but because they aren’t perfectly moral in their resistance you condemn their entire people to indiscriminate bombing. The saddest thing about this is that it won’t eliminate the terrorist groups, only bolster their support and make them more resentful.
And the largest terrorist organization - the US military - will continue its campaign of terror, creating ever more.
The Houthi are the reason why the civil war in Yemen started. They are not victims they are the perpetrator of crimes against everyone else in Yemen. They are the victimizers and you seem to not have any understanding of this. Have you never looked into the Yemeni Civil War and why it is called such?
Hamas and The Houthi are entirely unrelated groups with entirely different goals. You should not conflate them. The Houthi will sell ypu arms, likely will not sell you drugs or kids. Hamas will sell you arms, drugs and kids because they utilize a vast criminal network to finance their war while the Houthi get funds from Iran.
That’s because all of that is immaterial to my point which is that any opposition party in the USA should not be lead by people who think the Houthi Militia are worth supporting.
The Houthi have no moral high ground in a war they started just like America could have no high ground in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
That’s because all of that is immaterial to my point which is that any opposition party in the USA should not be lead by people who think the Houthi Militia are worth supporting.
That’s a very convenient principle to have when opposing the indiscriminate bombing of civilians is conflated with support for terrorism. Just because I don’t think we should be bombing them doesn’t mean I support the Houthis, and I don’t have to align myself with them to acknowledge that they are right to enact an economic blockade against Israel to pressure them to stop their genocide.
Again my point was that I would want any opposition party in the USA to have enough awareness of global politics to know The Houthi Militia will not get US support
The Houthi are not making a blockade. They are murdering sailors on boats and claiming solidarity with Palestine.
Again my point was that I would want any opposition party in the USA to have enough awareness of global politics to know The Houthi Militia will not get US support
And again, there’s a whole lot of room between giving the Houthis US support and bombing every civilian who happens to be in close proximity to them.
The Houthi are not making a blockade. They are murdering sailors on boats and claiming solidarity with Palestine.
Which is worse, violently resisting a genocide or enacting one? I don’t think the Houthis should be murdering sailors, but even though they are overzealous in this instance they still clearly have the moral high ground, not because they are particularly moral but because the bar has been set so low.
Yeah but you know “whatabout …”
Apparently two things cannot be bad at the same time.
Do you want to win an election or do you want to be morally superior?
Everyone in America heard the Republicans go on and on and on about Hilary’s emails. That’s where they are vulnerable.
Shilling for a 3rd Party at this late date is silly at best.
Late… date? Does the 24/7 campaign cycle mean we can never discuss how we can get the unrepresented in our country involved in the political process?
No. It means that it’s impossible to organize a viable 3rd Party before the next election cycle.
Do you have any idea what it take to get a candidate listed in all 50 states? Or how much money it would take to get a candidates name out?
Get back to me when you have an actual plan to start a3rd Party. Include the names of the candidates you’ll run for every House seat.
We’ve known that people don’t vote rationally in a democracy for almost three thousand years. Why do you keep expecting this to change?
If you want to win elections you must both appear morally superior and promise material gains. Making morally bankrupt rationalizations just turns the masses away.
Every time someone made the argument “yes we’re sponsoring genocide, but Trump will be worse” you lost votes. You just made people more nihilistic.
And what is the great alternative?
It’s not like you can create a Third Party in the next 24 months; the Left had four years to make sure Bernie got nominated in 2020 and they blew it.
Stop screaming about the Dems are until you have an actual plan to stop Trump.
The alternative is what every progressive has been screaming about for over a decade now: Actually campaign on popular progressive economic reforms. Actually appeal to the base of the democratic party instead of chasing centrist republicans.
And stop repeating this abuser mentality of constantly lowering our standards. That depresses voter turnout better than the Republicans could dream. The masses don’t vote unless they are optmisitic.
Thank you for proving my point. Screaming for a decade and zero progress.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
What an insane reversal of historical reality: Both Obama and Biden ran on promising progressive economic reform and won. They dissappointed when it came time to deliver but they still won.
Clinton and Harris explicitly didn’t promise anything other than being “not Trump” and ate colossal shit on live TV.
So where are you getting this idea that progressive economic reform is not electable? Is it because it fails in democratic primaries? Is it because the party itself tries to stifle it?
I’ll just point out that the Democratic Party controls the state caucuses. Bernie did better in the cuacus states than he did in the ones with with an election. Yeah, the Dems were trying to stop him so much.
When the fuck did I mention Bernie? You’re not understanding the point I’m making. I’m not saying “AOC 2028, Medicare 4 All”. I’m saying promise them the fucking pony if you want to save democracy. Go ahead and run Gavin Newsom! But he better be promising something like student debt relief or raising the minimum wage if he wants to win. He doesn’t even have to do it!
But no we’ll never do the obvious tried and true tactic because even the implication that Bernie might have been even partially right is disloyalty to the party.
But for love of all that is holy please stop think “just not Trump” is an electable candidate. It may be for democratic party loyalists but not for the general electorate.
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Your comment perfectly represents the moral bankruptcy of the Democratic party. The obsession with elections and compromising, even when the midterms are almost two years away.
A proper opposition party would hammer the substance and put the institutional failures on full display. If you don’t have principles, there’s no point to winning power anyway.
By your logic, no one who opposed Hitler should have taken aid from the capitalist and racist Americans or the British empire.
Look at the real world. the GOP is using every dirty trick imaginable, but we should lose with dignity and honor intact.
Have you considered that maybe moral bankruptcy isn’t the most effective way to win elections, at least not if you’re presenting as the slightly-less-right-wing option? The Democratic party is broken, nobody is buying their shit any more, and that’s why someone like Trump can get elected. There is no opposition party. It’s not a problem that will get fixed by ignoring it.
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I love the way you write off all the Asians who were getting killed by the Japanese. To say nothing of the US Merchant Marines who died delivering food and weapons to Murmansk. Stalin was the Donald Trump of his time.
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Do you want to win an election? Because what the DNC is currently doing hasn’t worked very well for that.
Your far left candidate has lost how many times in a row now? Maybe you helping the far right will keep that losing streak going as your country’s politicians recognize the far left will just keep losing. If you want to stir to the left, you don’t go right, like your country just did this election.
What far left candidate?
The left that’s too far from winning.
Yeah, they ran a Black woman and got fewer votes than the White guy.
Almost like the Progressives stayed home.
Yeah, it’s almost like progressives aren’t interested in identity politics, and stayed home when the supposedly-leftist party told them to shut up.
Yeah, Progressives stayed home in 1968 because they couldn’t support Humphrey and we got Nixon.
They couldn’t support Hilary and we got Trump.
They couldn’t support Biden/Harris and we got Trump two.
So much progress.
Maybe when people think literally Hitler is better than you, you should take a step back and try to figure out what you’re doing wrong.
Progressives are simultaneously not worth it for the democrats to represent, but also are 100% to blame when blue conservatives lose to red ones?
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Do you really think calling them hypocrites is gonna work when it hasn’t the 5000 other times? Dems don’t need to go after republican voters or smear republican. It’s been shown that obviously does not work. They need to be a party people want to vote for.
I’ve been saying it for a while now.
In WW2 the most progressive people on the planet lined up to get help from the racist Americans and the British empire because they saw Hitler was worse.
If you need to be coaxed into fighting Trump, you’re not anti-fascist, you’re desperate for attention.
BTW, I donated to Bernie in 2016, 2020, and 2024. It was the Progressives who failed me, not the Dems.
I’m mostly just confused by what you’re even trying to say about my post here? I said stop doing what doesn’t work and start doing something good? And your response is… uh… hitler was bad? I don’t?
Also, if you think the dems have nothing to do with progressives losing, then lol.
I’m responding to that idea.
If you need to be coaxed into voting against Trump you’re not anti-fascist, you’re desperate for attention.
And progressives like AOC and Omar managed to win inside the Dem Party.
Like I said, I’d love to be able to vote for an actual Progressive. Too bad they keep dropping the ball.
To think progressives are dropping the ball, but not the DNC, who has sued 3rd parties off ballots, pushed back as hard as they can against progressives(including spending DNC money against progressives in primaries & running attack ads on 3rd party), certainly is a DNC style take.
To say “not being trump” should be enough is fucking wild. That is the epitome of democracy huh? “You can’t vote for a good candidate, or one that would represent your ideals. You must vote based on who you hate most! You have to support the system that forces this! it is good! and balanced!”
I’ll pass dude.
Is that what you’d say to that guy who is sitting in a jail cell in El Salvador right now?
I’ll pass dude. You’ll just have to wait until I get a candidate I can believe in?
I wish I had that privilege.
I mean, if you think it’s progressives, the group who actually shows up to vote THE MOST, and who also do tend to vote Dem are to blame then I’m glad the DNC propaganda is working for you I guess.
But like, literal studies have shown progressives show up more %wise to vote than any other group. And also you can look at vote numbers and see left 3rd parties are like 1/3rd the votes of right 3rd parties, showing most progressives do still vote dem. A lot who do not are in places like California where Dems gonna win anyways, or Florida where Dems gonna lose anyways since they literally gave up on Florida since the last Governor election.
Too lazy to find the studies again because I’m busy. You can google it if you don’t believe me I don’t care.
Again, people not showing up to vote is the DNC’s fault for not being a party people want to vote for. If they cannot energize the vote they lose. They have not since Obama. They’ve refused to learn from that because money. They are the ones who are allowing Trump. Not progressives. Progressives control almost nothing. They have no say in the DNC. They cannot stop them from doing stupid bullshit. They’ve tried, but rather than learn and adopt progressive policy from Bernie or 3rd parties the DNC has decided to alienate them as hard as possible including fighting against them. They’ve decided they’re owed their votes anyways so they don’t need to appease them.
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And Im not saying they cannot be. Im saying I don’t want any opposition to be run by folks who are so undereducated that they think there is something wrong with America attacking a group of people who have “Death to America” in their slogan and are attacking innocent sailors in commercial shipping lanes.
These people have been having American and British bombs dropped on then for 10 years by now, via the planes of America and Britain’s ally, Saudi Arabia.
WTF do you expect from them other than hatred for America?!
Do you expect some kind of thankfulness for the whole “I might be randomly killed tomorrow when the bus I’m traveling in gets hit by an American bomb”? Because that would be like expecting Americans to be thankful to Al-Queda after 9/11 (only worse so because far more civilians have been killed in Yemen with American bombs by America’s ally than in 9/11) rather than hate the hell out of the fuckers that killing innocent people.
America’s actions in Yemen have basically been the equivalent of helping Nazi Germany bomb the shit out of France and the Résistance Française and then shifting to directly bombing the Résistance themselves with little care for collateral damage by using “they hate us” as an excuse.
It’s like the whole Iran situation:
And ditto for Palestine which is very much a similar situation but even worse.
I mean, you gotta be quite the tribalist muppet or extremely insular (or, more commonly, both) to keep on believing the same decades old style of excuse from American Politicians for killing people in far away lands which itself justifies giving tons of taxpayer money to military suppliers for weapons and ammo (the real objective) instead of putting it in Healthcare or Education, because there is no way you can’t put 2 and 2 together otherwise.
They had the slogan before the war.
The Houthi are 100% without question the reason why there is a civil war in Yemen. They started the war.
They aren’t doing this for solidarity abd even Iran has told them to fucking stop
Whenever I see this argument, I am stunned by the lack of self awareness.
We bomb them, so it’s natural that they want to bomb us.
They bomb us and we need to accept it and self-flagellate over past wrongs.
You hold a double standard and a stupid one at that, considering how much more we can do to them than they can do to us.
The premise is, frankly, racist. You treat the Arabs as if they’re too stupid to think in the long term, to look beyond short term retaliation.
When and how exactly have the Houtis bombed American soil?
In the post you’re replying to I literally made the point that these people being angry at America is the same as Americans being angry at Al-Queda for 9/11, so I literally treated as equally understandable that both people are angry at those who bombed them, which is the very opposite of what you claim I meant.
So you’re replying to whatever fantasy is going on in your mind rather than my post (which said the exact opposite of the fantasy you spun claiming that was my take), which means all those comments of yours about “lack of self awareness”, “holding a stupid double standard” and “that being a racism premise” apply to the only source of that imaginary “argument” you were criticizing, You.
So it’s okay to try and kill Americans so long as they aren’t in America?
You are still arguing that we shouldn’t be bombing them, despite the fact they’re bombing us and arguing that their bombing us is understandable because we’re bombing them, even though we’re only bombing them because they’re bombing us.
When and how exactly have the Houthis bombed American soil?
(You seemed to have forgotten to answer the very first line of my post during this goalpost moving maneuver of yours)
Further, when exactly did he Houthis “try and kill Americans” way back over a decade ago to cause America to start providing Saudi Arabia with bombs to bomb them with and keep doing so for a whole decade in the full knowledge of how they were being used?
You seem to be holding the “racist premise” that when America unilaterally acts in ways that kill non-Americans, those non-Americans aren’t entitled to fight back against America and its interests, which is literally you “holding a stupid double standard” and displaying “lack of self-awareness”.
Why isn’t the US doing anything to stop the genocide in Gaza? “Death to America” is nothing compared to enabling a genocide which both the current and past administrations are guilty of. Enforcing a naval blockade on Israel is hardly criminal when Israel is intentionally starving and slaughtering Palestinians.
But even if the Houthis are as bad as you claim, even worse than the US or Israel, how does that justify targeting hospitals and civilians?
That’s not America’s job and it isn’t as if the Houthi are doing anything other than lipservice.
it’s a great reason for the USA to not see them as an ally. Did you really need that explained to you?
You didn’t respond to the part about targeting hospitals and civilians. The moral conclusion here is the same as with Israel’s targeting of civilians in their so-called “war against Hamas.” Hamas and the Houthis are terrorist organizations that grew out of victimhood and justify hatred against their oppressors in the name of resistance. They are victims, but because they aren’t perfectly moral in their resistance you condemn their entire people to indiscriminate bombing. The saddest thing about this is that it won’t eliminate the terrorist groups, only bolster their support and make them more resentful.
And the largest terrorist organization - the US military - will continue its campaign of terror, creating ever more.
The Houthi are the reason why the civil war in Yemen started. They are not victims they are the perpetrator of crimes against everyone else in Yemen. They are the victimizers and you seem to not have any understanding of this. Have you never looked into the Yemeni Civil War and why it is called such?
Hamas and The Houthi are entirely unrelated groups with entirely different goals. You should not conflate them. The Houthi will sell ypu arms, likely will not sell you drugs or kids. Hamas will sell you arms, drugs and kids because they utilize a vast criminal network to finance their war while the Houthi get funds from Iran.
That’s because all of that is immaterial to my point which is that any opposition party in the USA should not be lead by people who think the Houthi Militia are worth supporting.
The Houthi have no moral high ground in a war they started just like America could have no high ground in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
That’s a very convenient principle to have when opposing the indiscriminate bombing of civilians is conflated with support for terrorism. Just because I don’t think we should be bombing them doesn’t mean I support the Houthis, and I don’t have to align myself with them to acknowledge that they are right to enact an economic blockade against Israel to pressure them to stop their genocide.
Again my point was that I would want any opposition party in the USA to have enough awareness of global politics to know The Houthi Militia will not get US support
The Houthi are not making a blockade. They are murdering sailors on boats and claiming solidarity with Palestine.
And again, there’s a whole lot of room between giving the Houthis US support and bombing every civilian who happens to be in close proximity to them.
Which is worse, violently resisting a genocide or enacting one? I don’t think the Houthis should be murdering sailors, but even though they are overzealous in this instance they still clearly have the moral high ground, not because they are particularly moral but because the bar has been set so low.
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I am in agreement with you, my sentiments were directed to the original poster.