"Both parties are the same!"

There's nuance, because leftists saying voting isn't going to change anything meaningfully as far as moving towards the left is still true.

I just don't know why the Onus is never on Joe Biden himself. Why is it that we feel like he doesn't have to earn any votes at all?

"Am I so out of touch? No, it's the voters who are wrong."

Voting for someone other than Biden or not voting is an absolutely acceptable option, and I’m not pretending to be a leftist when I do so. I have Ranked Choice Voting in my state, but even if I didn’t, I would vote for who I most want in office because I have no faith in either democrats or republicans to fix the most important issues currently plaguing 99% of the people. Vilifying people for voting third party — when third parties are currently the only viable presidential and congressional solution apart from a violent revolution — is misguided.

Democrats are not your friends; you deserve better.

Exactly. There's one terminally online radlib here that I blocked because they were just shit-slinging for daring to suggest both voting Biden and unionizing, organizing, protesting, etc. As a leftist, we must work from without the Democratic party.

Speaking purely from a leftist perspective, I'm actually of the opinion that Anarchist principles of building up parallel structures actually may be more applicable to the American political climate, even if you're more of a Council Communist, Libertarian Socialist, Marxist-Leninist, etc. The US is seeing rising Unionization, and dramatic impacts from it, so I think Syndicalism actually has some revolutionary potential, unlike waiting for a Vanguard Party a la MLism.

Just my 2 cents.

We have to protect people who would be targeted by Republicans.

How's that going? Republicans are enacting all manner of bigoted policy. What are the Democrats doing to reverse their hateful shit at the federal level?

I’d love if we didn’t have to worry about fascists, but we don’t have that luxury. As long as they’re a hair’s breadth away from power, we pick the option that opposes them.

We don't have that option. We have Democrats, who will always care more about decorum and procedural bullshit than they ever will about protecting anyone.

There's no chance they'd ever let an actual Socialist into office within the 2 party Capitalist system.

Accelerationism works both ways, I suppose, but there legitimately are fascists in the republican party.

If Pig City was being constructed under Trump, the resistance to it would be ten times stronger.

I think I once would have believed this but I do not anymore, and I wouldn't be willing to bet the lives of all people who aren't white, heterosexual cis-men on a resistance suddenly appearing. If anything, it seems like people are more willing to normalize, or at least look away from, atrocities than I would have ever imagined in the past.

I think it's the sane option when said candidate is 80 years old.

Most people are in a care home or dead at that age.

Look I get it, I also wanted someone different than Biden in 2020.

Bloomberg or Delaney?

"Democrats are running on a disgusting fear-mongering campaign! I know so because somebody sometime said something on twitter! ...although I wasn't paying that much attention, too distracted doomscrolling while fondling my confirmation purity bias."

The longer that centrists scream that anyone who doesn't like Biden's support for genocide must be a Trumpist/Russian/bot/child/etc, the more I think that they looked at the genocide and were like "fucking finally!"

You never heard "we need to stop trump" or "help us stop trump" from democrats? Being not-trump has been the party platform ever since he got elected, to the point where they adoringly talk about any republican that has argued against him, even scumbags like john bolton.

Don't tell that to all those weekend armchair political quarterbacks, though, you'll be bombarded by a barrage of "mUh PuRiTy! bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL aMiRiTe!" confirmation-biased autistic screeching.

And that this will keep being the case until Democrats move so far to the right that we have two functionally identical parties or the lesser evil finally loses and we have only one.

Not without ranked choice voting in place first.

In primaries, yes. In the presidential election, no. That's how we get DeSantis.

lol okay bruh. Go ahead and shoot yourself in the dick.

Found the GOP shill

5 day account calling people bots. Sus.

It really depends on what fields you're comparing. For example, in terms of climate change, both parties, policies will result in the destruction of the planet. Period.

When people say that, they're saying we need radical change to stop the problems right in front of us, and neither party is doing that.

Or maybe people plugging their ears and pretending everything is some giant misinformation campaign against their home team because they think they deserve the win without trying are being shocked to find they don't have the support they think is owed to them for simply not being fascists.

If everything you hear is just some fake person with no real problems you miss the people actually complaining about their legitimate ones and feel forgotten about and at best don't vote and at worst vote for the side that agrees that it would be fun to pick on the people perceived as above them.

Biden should at least run debates or else people are just going to be in exactly their own bubble of awareness and have his results of his presidency to work with and hopes and dreams of the other and people suck at objective looks at reality and are much more willing to believe in fairy tales than you think.

And I know my statement makes everyone foam at theouth cause "How dare I say this!" But it is what it is. You must look reality in the face of you want to have any hope controlling it.

Yeah, Biden doesn't have to support genocide. He can do the right thing. He just chooses not to.

Can you convince me to vote for Biden without bringing up Trump?

What would be the point in that when Trump is the only other candidate who has a chance of winning? The rational thing to do is to compare and contrast them.

If you're not going to vote for either of them, you might as well not vote at all. You're not going to have an effect. Decades of people voting third party have not gotten any third party anywhere. Not even when Ross Perot tried it and he actually had a decent chance.

That doesn't make any sense. You're basically saying that you refuse to look at a suite of potential consequences of your vote. That's not responsible at all.

Just to name a few:

Continued support and funding to Israel with only the most tepid condemnation as people became more aware of their genocide against Palestinians.

busting the railway union which arguably, if their demand had been met, may not have had the disaster in Ohio. A move rivaled only by Regan

Despite being told that we had to fight for “kids in cages” nothing has actually come to fruition on that front

I’m here for the dark humor. We fucked.

In Biden's case a major factor is his catering to the Israel lobby his whole career. They really disliked Obama since he was known to attend pro Palestine events and apparently knew what the deal was. Biden as his VP pick was basically his signal to donors that he would govern like an establishment Democrat, and that he did.

What else do you expect from a colonial imperialist state?

New colonies at the very least. Haven't seen any new colonies created imperially in a couple hundred years at least.

Biden literally instructed the DEA to reschedule cannabis already. This kind of rulemaking requires actual policy studies, as the courts have repeatedly stated that it can't be done capriciously.

It's crazy how people know every fucking awful thing the government does but never the stuff they ostensibly support. I'll say it again - the biggest problem with progressive US politics is the cynicism and engagement gap

I'm pretty sure the executive branch can't unilaterally decriminalize marijuana. And especially not force states to decriminalize it.

I get that the FDA could reclassify marijuana, but the real issue i think is that Congress needs to get on the ball and deal with legalizing it . There are laws on the books that have to be dealt with regarding sale and distribution and banking issues.

The marijuana thing is a no brainer. It's political malpractice they haven't done anything on that front.

Agencies within the executive branch have quite a bit of independence, which is a very good thing, because if they didn't, Trump would have done vastly more damage than he did.

My brother in Christ, that is not the right thing.

A second Trump term is everything you hate about Biden plus more shit. Biden still the lesser of two evils, you should vote for him.

But I will say Biden is a fucking moron for doing so many unpopular things late in his term. I guess some of these geriatric Dems would rather punch down on the left than secure democracy against it's biggest threat in decades. I get the frustration.

Who is running third party for folks to rally behind? Moreover, who is running that would somehow overcome both major parties' candidates by drawing enough away from them to win or in some way effect a change in process?

Let me know when there's a third party candidate worth my time. Jill Stein has done nothing to earn my vote, and unless she addresses her anti science remarks, she'll never get it.

Great plan. Everyone just needs to listen to you, and all our problems will go away!

Everybody needs to vote for who they honestly think the best candidate is. If that's Biden, vote Biden. If that's Jill Stein or Cornel West or whoever the Libertarians are running, then vote for them.

Vote your hopes, not your fears. Or, as Jill Stein said, "Don't vote for the lesser evil. Vote for the greater good."

How you vote isn't going to impact the two party system, because there's still only two realistic outcomes. Democrats win or Republicans win. Withhold a vote from one party and you empower the other party.

Not to mention, our third parties actually maintain the two party system. They don't oppose it. They criticize mainstream politicians for corruptions and then go rub shoulders with Russian oligarchs. They have no intent to actually win, it's just a grift. If they were serious about becoming a player, they would have invested in a 50 state strategy to build up a local presence everywhere. And then from a solid base, gradually win elections and climb up the ladder. Instead, they waste all their money on the presidential election and hope you don't realize that if they do win, they have no representatives in Congress.

Realistically, ending the two party system as a new party within that system is unlikely. You'd need to massively build up local. Instead, we're better off co-opting the parties. Do what the Tea Party did and hijack the party to go where you want.

Change comes from within

They didn't have those majorities for a long time. Runoff elections and deaths gave them a two month window or so. They passed Obamacare with that, and had to remove a single payer option to get the last necessary votes.

But also, the Democrat party was a lot less left in those days. There were a lot of Manchin types of conservative Democrats. We've never had the votes for electoral and ballot reform. We needed to build on our majority in 2010 to do it, and we instead we lost the majority entirely.

I’d say the RNC has had a hostile takeover that’s going to lead to a schism, versus an evolution. Post/Reaganism was an evolution that the RNC did very successfully co-opt. Trump’s populist rhetoric has been damaging to the status quo for vested interest, both political and corporate. The tea party movement fizzled out because Obama was popular and had majorities, so their impotent rage didn’t have a strong figurehead until Donnie in 2016.

I don’t see the progressives changing the party - see: Talib’s censure, Bernie being sidelined until late, or how intra-party caucuses like the squad or the black caucus falls in line. On the right where gridlock is a feature, the house freedom caucus can force an embarrassing number of speakership votes until their ultimatums are met, and be lauded as heroes. Progressives and their voter bloc want a progress, and so have to play ball with the DNC.

Remember that DoMA went away from a court case, not primary legislation. The ‘gay vote’ was seen as reliable by the DNC, because it’s not like the right is opening its arms to those voters, so there wasn’t any political capital spent on that issue. Just lip service all through the Obama majority years

DNC was sued over the Bernie Sanders 2016 politicial era. DNC is considered a corporation.

Justice Democrats were the "progressives" elected to change the Democrates, if you follow how they vote and talking points changed over the years, the party changed them not the other way around.

Sabby Sabs had the lawyers of the DNC Fraud Lawsuit.

DNC Fraud Lawsuit Lawyers Speak Out! Why Marianne & RFK Jr. Can't Win (Interview Clip) [55:31 | May 15 2023 | Sabby Sabs]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi4XKwdVSNo

They’re one of the two 800lb gorillas in the room, you think they can’t move public opinion or make policy? Yes the states run their own elections parallel to the feds, but that just means they pass 51ish laws instead of 1.

If you told the American electorate, who is chronically pissed off with the Congress and vacillating on the President, that under STV they could pick their actual favorite AND a safe/tactical vote? I think even Republicans would take that with both hands.

A perennial gripe of rural America is that state and/or federal government don’t prioritize them, the urban vote gets preference. Minorities, gun owners, migrants, small business, etc all can spin the same story with different players. Why wouldn’t they want to pick someone closer to their values or needs than a candidate who appeals to a different voter bloc instead?

The machine is set up in such a way that this does not matter. It only turns to the right.

How do we do that without voting?

Victorian? Sorry, no. Late Enlightenment, Georgian, or US Colonial periods are more appropriate terms.

I'm all for ranked choice voting, but eliminating FPTP and a two party system doesn't fix as much as people pretend it does. Using Bernie Sanders as an example, if Sanders found a way through the primaries he would have stood a good chance in FPTP. But he would have stood no chance whatsoever with ranked choice voting, because he would have been overshadowed by objectively more popular candidates. The truth is Biden got into office because he was popular. He wasn't my choice and he wasn't many of your choices. But all over the country there were aging Biden supporters that looked at him like he was the only option. Ranked choice voting doesn't really change that. A great many Biden supporters hated Bernie. Bernie Sanders wouldn't have won a general election in ranked choice, because he wasn't popular enough and had no moneyed interests behind him. If anything FPTP presented the best option for Sanders to get past the post exactly because overall popularity doesn't matter as much as just being slightly better than the other guy in a general election and voter apathy in the primary.

Additionally, having lived through several ranked choice votes in local elections I haven't seen even a slight improvement in outcomes. The same moderate milquetoast candidates win time and again with messages that exploit fear of change more than hopeful messages of the future.

We would have to get money both out of politics and out of journalism before someone further left has any chance of winning nationally. We also need to do the grassroots work to change peoples minds on policy in general, and put good politicians up and down the ticket. All the paid fearmongering around left wing policy does more damage than FPTP ever could, imo. Changing voting structures doesn't change voters policy views.

because the alternative to voting for lesser evil is having the guy that thinks the Holocaust wasn't a bad thing run things, you may want to change the voting system, but you ain't doing it when you're dead

Once fascism is no longer a threat then you guys can worry about spinning up new parties.

And fascism will never be less of a threat, because the Democrats we're stuck with keep trying to appease fascists instead of treating them like the threat they are.

Seriously we need ranked choice voting not just people voting for third parties. Third parties lead to Orange Hitler when first-past-the-post voting system makes 3d parties into non-viable election spoilers.

If we can get to 5 and make the evil pentagram of US politics...

Did you mean for this to be read in Sideshow Bob's voice?

100% how I saw it day 1 and very fitting

I feel like that's the intent, so yes.

Mastodon is on a much, much larger scale and userbase than lemmy. I think its ready for primetime. Im just mad it federated with Threads

Have you ever tried just not going on the internet?

Profiles like Tiedrich need that huge user base, they basically just post inane lowest common denominator diarrhea for people to say "this" to.

Has anyone attempted to add a discovery algorithm in a fork of Mastodon or one of the mastodon alternatives? I keep seeing that listed as a downside but I wonder if there's any work that has gone into giving people that option. Haven't really thought it through, tbh.

There are good videos explaining this point, Adam did a good one, valid point but as long as people cling to that site there will never be an alternative.