• freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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    10 months ago

    Electoral pressure is literally the only lever we have to push Biden to do better. Thereā€™s no other way.

    This is correct, barring revolution.

    Bidenā€™s team is making a bet that we arenā€™t serious and that they can just use Trump to hold us hostage in the party.

    You are incorrect. Bidenā€™s team, under the direction of the Democrat party, have taken away your lever because they donā€™t want to win. The Democrats have said this, publicly. They said back in 2016 that they would rather lose to Trump than win with Bernie. The Democrat party is happy to lose, always.

    • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      To say that they donā€™t want to win is to imply a secret conspiracy to lose, but thatā€™s not what we see. With Hillary, they didnā€™t conspire to make Hillary lose. They really did want her to win! They didnā€™t want Bernie to win because he wasnā€™t a Democrat. Winning with Bernie would have fundamentally changed their shitty party, they didnā€™t want that. Thatā€™s just lose/lose for them.

      If this analogy applies, if they would rather lose the election than stop doing genocide, then death to America. I wonā€™t give a shit about who wins, hopefully whoever wins destroys this shithole.

      • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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        9 months ago

        To say that they donā€™t want to win is to imply a secret conspiracy to lose, but thatā€™s not what we see

        Itā€™s EXACTLY what we see. 40 years of campaigning on Roe v Wade as law, zero moves to make it happen. Spending their own fundraising on Republican opponents. Espousing positions that people want but never actually following through. Compromising before negotiating. Democrats make their money from Wall St, just like Republicans do, so they have to lie about wanting to win for progressives to vote for them, but they donā€™t actually want to win because then theyā€™ll be exposed. When they have a majority, itā€™s always a small majority and thereā€™s always one to three Democrats that adopt the ā€œspoilerā€ role, either switching sides, going independent, pretending to be a Blue Dog, or lying about the will of their own constituents being opposed to Democrat positions.

        With Hillary, they didnā€™t conspire to make Hillary lose.

        They conspired to lose the election. Not to make Hillary lose, but to choose the person who polled terribly, to choose the positions that wouldnā€™t mobilize the voters, etc.

        They didnā€™t want Bernie to win because he wasnā€™t a Democrat

        No True Scotsman fallacy coupled with a completely ahistorical view. Bernie has been a major part of the party for a very long time. The man is an imperialist through and through. Heā€™s very useful to them as a Democrat, specifically, heā€™s useful to attract progressive voters and they can always throw an election by the way they manage him. Very few people in the party are like that. Hillary is like that for them too, though less progressive and more violent. But all they have to do is treat Hillary badly and alienate a huge amount of voters.

        Winning with Bernie would have fundamentally changed their shitty party

        No it wouldnā€™t have. Because general voters donā€™t elect party leadership, and the president doesnā€™t suddenly become the head of the party. The party would have been fine ideologically. Their problem was that Bernie would hurt their donors.

        If this analogy applies, if they would rather lose the election than stop doing genocide, then death to America. I wonā€™t give a shit about who wins, hopefully whoever wins destroys this shithole.

        They would rather lose than stop doing the genocide. The country is built on genocide - non-stop genocide. Just go look up how many people the USA killed in each military action after WW2. Then go look at how many indigenous people they killed here. Then try to find the numbers for how many slaves they killed. Just for comparison, the very tiny island of Haiti was replacing around 50,000 slaves (because they were being worked to death) annually. During the Haitian revolt, hundreds were gassed by the French in the bottom of slave ships. And thatā€™s just the KILLING. Then youā€™ve got the erasure of language, child separation policies, which you know about now but literally follow an unbroken line all the back to before the founding of the country, because separating kids from their parents is how you kill an entire social culture, forced sterilization of 1/3 of Puerto Rico and of indigenous and Black people was happening through the 1970s. Both parties are aware. They participated. They think itā€™s fine. They think itā€™s correct. They fucking paid the slave owners for property losses but refuse to pay reparations to those enslaved or their descendants.

        The USA is a genocidal settler colony that asserted its own leadership, live a cancer that broke free from its host and now lives independently. All the politicians are engaged, fully or partially, in ongoing centuries of genocide.

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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          9 months ago

          No True Scotsman fallacy coupled with a completely a historical view. Bernie has been a major part of the party for a very long time. The man is an imperialist through and through. Heā€™s very useful to them as a Democrat, specifically, heā€™s useful to attract progressive voters and they can always throw an election by the way they manage him. Very few people in the party are like that. Hillary is like that for them too, though less progressive and more violent. But all they have to do is treat Hillary badly and alienate a huge amount of voters.

          This is like accusing an Welshman of being a Scotsman. He literally isnā€™t a Democrat. Thatā€™s his whole brand and his function to the party.

          He is a major part of the party and certainly a useful idiot, but because he literally isnā€™t a Democrat isnā€™t allowed to be an important part of the party. His job is to be a sheepdog and shepherd us back into the polls for Democrats, he isnā€™t supposed to actually lead the party.

          Alsoā€¦ are you implying they treated Hillary badly and caused her to lose on purpose? Thatā€™s a pretty wild accusation lol

          No it wouldnā€™t have. Because general voters donā€™t elect party leadership, and the president doesnā€™t suddenly become the head of the party. The party would have been fine ideologically. Their problem was that Bernie would hurt their donors.

          Thatā€™s a contradiction. If the party was fine ideologically then Bernie couldnā€™t hurt donors because that runs counter to their ideology.

          Bernie would certainly hurt their donors, and that itself would fundamentally change the party because it would change who the financial backers of the party are - but youā€™re also ignoring how Trump very clearly changed the Republican party (yes, I know Republicans were always fascists, but they were cryptofascists before they stopped hiding behind dogwhistles). The very demographic base of the party changed because of who the president was, and now those ā€œā€ā€œrespectableā€ā€œā€ Republicans that Democrats love so much are on the outside of the partyā€™s base. Bernie, if he had been allowed to win, would have changed the voter base and the financial base. Theyā€™d rather lose than have that.

          This is all a ridiculous hypothetical, of course, because Democrats would rather lose than let Bernie win. But thatā€™s it! They didnā€™t want Hillary to lose, they really wanted her to win - but they wanted her to win with her unpopular platform that caused them to lose. Her platform wasnā€™t intended to lose, though, and they didnā€™t give her an unpopular platform to make her lose. Youā€™re really putting the cart before the horse here.

          They would rather lose than stop doing the genocide.

          It certainly looks that way, but that doesnā€™t mean they want to lose for its own sake. Iā€™m not sure what youā€™re even arguing here.

          It sounds like youā€™re saying that Biden supports the Zionistā€™s genocide literally because he wants to lose. As if this is a wedge issue that Democrats inflicted on themselves intentionally because they donā€™t want to be in power anymore.

          • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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            9 months ago

            It sounds like youā€™re saying that Biden supports the Zionistā€™s genocide literally because he wants to lose. As if this is a wedge issue that Democrats inflicted on themselves intentionally because they donā€™t want to be in power anymore.

            No no, Iā€™m saying the genocide is more important than winning. And if he has to lose in order for the genocide to continue under Trump, then they want to lose.

            • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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              9 months ago

              I see what youā€™re saying now, but I think they want to win and also continue supporting genocide at the same time. Theyā€™re actually ideologues that really believe they can have their cake and eat it too. They donā€™t actually want to lose and will be very surprised when it happens.

              In order for them to actually be planning to lose it would require a lot of people to secretly agree to lose. I donā€™t think thatā€™s happening. I think those people are delusionally confident and actually really believe theyā€™re going to win. Maybe Iā€™m underestimating their intelligence lol

              • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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                9 months ago

                Nah, youā€™re too credulous. The parties collaborate. Winning and losing is just part of the game. The small people care. The leaders golf together, vacation together, etc. They collaborate in the management of empire. No one actually cares who wins and loses. If they cared, they would behave differently.

                • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                  9 months ago

                  What youā€™re talking about is exemplified by Bush v Gore, when the Supreme Court decided the election it was Gore that happily conceded because he and Bush were just having a friendly competition. That was before the empire began its decline, what used to be collaboration between friendly rivals is turning into infighting. The partisanship we see is actually a side effect of deeper troubles.

                  • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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                    9 months ago

                    Fundamentally disagree. The political theater is not showing a deep divide between agents. It is reflecting the deep divide between voters.