• @audiomodder
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    1227 days ago

    Because, they’re saying, WINNING sure didn’t do progressives any favors.

    FWIW, we ran Hillary Clinton as a moderate candidate and lost.

    • Skua
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      3127 days ago

      If neither winning nor losing does progressives any favours, then there’s no issue with trying to make the least bad realistic option win

      • @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        1227 days ago

        Only if you never think more than an election ahead.

        If you don’t, and always blindly vote D just because it’s not R…

        How is that different than what lead the Republican party to trump?

        Why do you think it’ll be different this time?

        • Skua
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          2227 days ago

          Only if you never think more than an election ahead.

          So how many elections are you expecting that the Dems must lose in order to start fielding candidates you like, or for another party that does so to take their place? It doesn’t matter how many they lose if it never moves the needle your way, so you’ll have to be quite persuasive that this will achieve something that’s worth capitulating to the American right for a decade or longer.

          How is that different than what lead the Republican party to trump?

          Because of the actual outcomes during the four years between each election and the fact that you can protest and write and whatever else you want for improvement during that time. Your vote does have to be your entire political engagement.

          Does this suck? Yes. Does the Republicans winning do literally anything to fix any of it? No. For that you need the Overton window to shift so far that the Republican party dies and the new two-party system has the Dems on the right, or you need a new electoral system. Neither of these is accomplished by the Dems losing.

          Why do you think it’ll be different this time?

          I don’t think it’ll be different this time because the candidates have already been picked. We already both know what the options are. Unfortunately, “no different” is a lot better than the other option. That’s why I’m advocating voting for damage control on the day. Vote against the worst option, because that’s how FPTP works.

          • @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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            527 days ago

            So how many elections are you expecting that the Dems must lose in order to start fielding candidates you like,

            Mate, I’m one person. Not millions.

            It’s not about my personal morals and how much genocide I’m ok supporting.

            It’s a lot easier to change Biden’s mind about how he governs in 6 months than change millions of people’s minds about how he governs, right?

            Unless you think Biden just won’t listen to his constituents even if it means letting trump back into the White House.

            Do you think he doesn’t give that much of a fuck about America?

            Why be mad at a social media account, when you’re apparently not mad at Biden? The one individual with the power to easily prevent trump from winning.

            All he has to do, is listen to his voters.

            If he can’t do that now, why does he deserve either of our votes?

            • @skeptomatic@lemmy.ca
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              827 days ago

              You seem a little daft. So I’ll help explain in easier language.
              Trump, bad.
              Biden, bad.
              If Biden win, u get 4 years to protest and complain about policy until your voice is maybe heard, and either way then see new candidate options.
              If Trump win, u no get chance for new candidate after 4 years, cuz he’s a fucking psychopath and won’t give up power. And solidification of more and more power will entail recruitment of more and more zealots which is a path he has shown he is willing to take.
              It will show other power hungry nutjobs coming up that the Trump method works and to get even more radical in future campaigns/movements.
              Then the future zealot-Maga-NeoNazi mob will take complete control as they’ll be planted in all key aspects of government and military and police (already there most likely) and they will normalize hate and start rounding up all the types of humans they fear/dislike or that don’t agree with their views, and they’ll commit fucking genocide on your home fucking soil.
              So if you vote for Biden, there is genocide but you’re not complicit simply because you pay taxes.
              And if you don’t vote Biden, there is even more genocide, but possibly to people you know and love, and you are complicit because you failed to act, and you can kindly fuck off with that dumbshittery.

              • @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                227 days ago

                If a weatherman says we’re getting two feet of snow, do you get mad at them because the snow would negatively effect people’s lives?

                Do you spend time and energy trying to convince them the bad thing they’re predicting is a bad thing?

                You think them not talking about it means it won’t happen?

                I just don’t understand what leads people to thinking like you, but I guess someone had to burn all the medicine women for witchcraft. Just didn’t expect this to make such a comeback.

                • @skeptomatic@lemmy.ca
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                  227 days ago

                  Lol what a response…
                  Weather? Burning witches? Tha fuck are you on about?
                  None of that nonsense is a worry.
                  Didn’t quite grasp it, eh?
                  Kinda makes you look like you have an agenda…
                  Aw well, I tried.

            • Skua
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              627 days ago

              So your hope is that by threatening to not vote, you and likeminded voters will get Biden to change his positions sufficiently for you to vote for him before the election? That’s not what you said in your first comment, and you being only one person is equally applicable to this or to what I said.

              Why be mad at a social media account, when you’re apparently not mad at Biden?

              Who said I’m not pissed at Biden? But I’m not talking to Biden right now.

              All he has to do, is listen to his voters.

              If you are stating you won’t vote for him, you’re not his voter.

              If he can’t do that now, why does he deserve either of our votes?

              It doesn’t matter if he deserves it or not, unfortunately. I’ve already put forward my position that in FPTP, you effectively do not vote for someone, you vote against someone.

              • @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                227 days ago

                So your hope is that by threatening to not vote,

                Man…

                If the weather channel says a tornado is coming and to go to your basement, do you ask why they’re threatening you with a tornado?

                • Skua
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                  527 days ago

                  So this is an unstoppable mass movement with no actual intentions and you’re just being swept along?

                  • @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                    227 days ago

                    I mean yeah.

                    Millions and millions of traditionally Dem voters aren’t going to vote for Biden due to his words and actions.

                    You can’t convince them all to hold their nose, Biden isn’t even trying to, he’s just chasing donations from the wealthy even tho his ad spending with the money isn’t moving the needle.

                    Trying to convince everyone to shut up and vote for Biden is the same as yelling at a hurricane

                    But if you join the hurricane, it might be strong enough to move Biden far enough left he can squeak out a victory against the worst president in American history.

    • @TacticsConsort@yiffit.net
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      1127 days ago

      I’m gonna say (as someone that was sucked into the psychological torture machine that was the conservative media loop in 2016) that Hillary didn’t lose for being a moderate. Trump was by far at his strongest in 2016; his insanity was a basically unknown factor and he did a legitimately great job seeming to flip the bird at ‘the system’, and the conservative propaganda machine had a LOT of points to attack Hillary with that had nothing to do with her moderate politics. Trump promised the world and had all the charisma to sell the world too, and Hillary… I honestly can’t remember anything about her platform at all.

      In my personal opinion, Hillary could absolutely have won that election if the Democrats hadn’t been complacent about it. Maybe not a landslide victory, but I think it would have been a very solid win.

      • @shikitohno@lemm.ee
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        927 days ago

        Hillary had a weird double-whammy of underestimating the appeal of Trump for many that led to losing control of the monster she helped make, along with having a long list of insults ready for anyone who didn’t want her to be the Democratic candidate that didn’t endear her to the voters who could have made her presidency for her. Whether it was calling them deplorables, broadly dismissing any criticism of her within the party as rooted in misogyny, or accusing them of being unrealistic idealists with pie in the sky goals and unelectable candidates, she really had a knack for taking these people and firmly putting them in the camp of “Screw her, I’m not voting for someone who treats me like that.” rather than engaging in a serious attempt to understand these voters and address their concerns.

        Democrats today have certainly learned that Trump could be a serious threat, not to be dismissed out of hand. To his credit, Biden has notably not fallen into the sort of self-destructive antagonism of the electorate that is not already firmly committed. He might pay only lip service to their concerns, but I’m not aware of him blanket writing off, say, pro-Palestinian protestors en masse as antisemites that were never going to vote for him and are beyond redeem, even if he does frequently trot out manufactured claims of widespread antisemitism.

        People online trying to drum up support for him don’t seem to have gotten the message that this didn’t work out so well for Hillary, and are going at it, calling people who haven’t vocally committed to Biden anything from idiots to Russian shills to Republican trolls, and claiming they hate minorities and LGBTQ+ people or whatever else occurs to them to rile up people. I don’t see that working out to their advantage, and predict it will alienate people who might have potentially been won over.

    • Hillary was a moderate?

      In 2016 the pre election polls showed a rock paper scissors ordering.

      • Trump beats Hillary

      • Hillary beats Bernie

      • Bernie beats Trump

      The last occurred because Bernie was a different enough candidate to attract a certain subset of Republicans.

    • @masquenox@lemmy.world
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      427 days ago

      FWIW, we ran Hillary Clinton as a moderate candidate and lost.

      You call that Kissinger/Thatcher mashup monstrosity “moderate?”

      • @audiomodder
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        126 days ago

        She is a moderate in the Democratic Party at this point, unfortunately. Hell, I think Reagan would be a moderate in today’s Democratic Party. All the more reason we should be running more progressive candidates.