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Cake day: August 30th, 2023

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  • Think of voting like signing your name to a candidate/party and what they’ve done/signaled they will do.

    A lot of people can’t stomach a candidate who has been courting the neocons and softening their previous mildly progressive stances she took the last time dems had a primary and the progressives were showing up in numbers. Everyone got in line and the debates were all about M4A, erasing federally held student debt, raising the minimum wage, etc. Sanders single handedly dragged the party to the center (technically more “left” than they were) in 2016/2020 and the dems responded by po’mouthing like they cared about those issues, but then circled the wagons and kicked those voters to the curb.

    The party has shown over and over again that they don’t give a shit about working class people, those of us that want real change. They want to maintain the status quo. Which is progressively more hostile capitalism.

    Signing your name to that constant move rightward is unthinkable for some. And understandably so.

    And that’s before we even discuss the ongoing genocide in Gaza funded and armed by the US. While this administrations representatives in the UN and in any official capacity constantly run defense for the genocide. For literal war criminals.

    Plenty of people could not fathom putting their name on that tragedy.

    We all get that trump is much worse. But everyone else needs to understand how sickening that shitty choice was for anyone with a conscience about what’s going on in Gaza, what’s going on with their neighbors. Signing on for more of the same was completely unthinkable for some. That has to be understandable if we are ever going to change things.

    We’ve been on the road we’re being forced down now as long as I’ve been alive. And the road just keeps going forward. The dems’ proposal is “maintain the course.” The republicans’ was “mash the gas.”

    Some people couldn’t stomach going any further down this road. That’s not making a choice to mash the gas. Because the world is not binary.

    So the choice may have been one or the other, and you see it as “you basically voted for trump” because people couldn’t bring themselves vote for Kamala. To sign their name to a genocide. You’re boiling everything down to the two party mentality, which is exactly what has let us continue down this same fucking road. None of us want to continue this way. Telling us all to hold our noses to vote for Kamala while the entire party gave everyone left of them the finger…is not on us.

    You’re not wrong, we all hate the fascist party. But you have to understand that a lot of people couldn’t bring themselves to vote for someone who was going to keep the regular ol’ genocide going while courting fuckin neocons. They looked to their left, said “fuck those people,” and tried to court republicans. And you’re blaming the people to the left who’ve been repeatedly told to go fuck themselves?




  • Exactly. I don’t fear becoming a minority at all. I’ve lived in countries where I was a minority as a white person. I…didn’t really register that fact. I knew one other white person that lived there.

    These people are sick. It’s like the people who think everyone must be repressing their gay urges and that attractive gay people are dangerous because it makes repressing those feelings harder. Like…bro. You’re gay. That’s cool. None of us are going to treat you any differently. Only people who think it’s some curable disease will. People…like you.

    You’re just racist, my dude. Those of us who aren’t…don’t care about becoming minorities. I think it would give us some fuckin character, honestly. White majority nations main characteristic is, like, genocide and colonialism. Nah, I’m good.


  • I’m not going deny that there were certainly sexist people that wouldn’t vote for a woman. But I don’t think I can agree it was the difference between winning and losing.

    I think it’s much, much more likely that the progressive voting bloc that was able to start winning the primaries in 2020 and was railroaded by the party (twice) that’s been completely shunted off to the side in favor of some mythical swing Republican voter is very much the reason.

    They think putting a woman of color up as the candidate would be enough to win that bloc. Which goes to show the root of the problem. It’s the rainbow capitalist issue. “If we slap a pride flag on the person of color we got as our new representative and change our single bathroom signs to say ‘all gender,’ we’ll be in the right! We’ll fool those hippies and socialist dirtbags yet!”

    This has failed them. Over and over. The most thinking people of the entire country (biased opinion, I grant) aren’t easily appeased. Things were so bad in 2020 that bloc mostly held their noses to vote for Biden. And they figured running against trump was the only ammunition they needed to lock down that bloc and they could hold them no problem while also courting the neocons!

    They are funding a genocide. Basically perpetrating it. They were going to have to bend over backwards to get anyone left of Biden to vote for them. And they unquestionably didn’t. They basically told us to go fuck ourselves. Again.

    And they fucked themselves by doing so.


  • Think of voting this way:

    Signing your name to a candidate/psrty and what they’ve done/signaled they will do.

    A lot of people can’t stomach a candidate who has been courting the neocons and softening their previous mildly progressive stances from the last time dems had a primary and the progressives were showing up in numbers. Everyone got in line and the debates were about M4A, erasing federally held student debt, raising the minimum wage, etc. Sanders single handedly dragged the party to the center (technically more “left” than they were) in 2016/2020 and the dems responded by po’mouthing like they cared about those issues, but then circled the wagons and kicked those voters to the curb.

    The party has shown over and over again that they don’t give a shit about working class people, those of us that want real change. They want to maintain the status quo. Which is progressively more hostile capitalism.

    Signing your name to that constant move rightward is unthinkable for some. And understandably so.

    And that’s before we even discuss the ongoing genocide in Gaza funded and armed by the US. While this administrations representatives in the UN and in any official capacity constantly run defense for the genocide.

    Plenty of people could not fathom putting their name on that tragedy.

    None of this means that republicans aren’t fuckin neofascist shits. But…how many times have the voters left of the dems been told to eat shit and vote blue because the other guy is worse? WHILE CONSTANTLY COURTING THE RIGHTWING VOTERS WHO MAY HAVE FINALLY GOTTEN SICK OF IT?! Kamala literally said she would be different from Biden by having a Republican in her cabinet. WHAT.

    With everything going on, this party said, “yeah, fuck all that. Let’s see if we can grab anyone to the right of us.”

    I got sidetracked, but this is the thing. It’s not binary, because geopolitics isn’t binary. The worlds issues aren’t binary. But a binary choice is all we’re given to make.

    Just…what. And neither of those two choices was actually going to solve the problems. One was maintaining the problems while one was the problems plus more problems. That’s not an attractive choice.

    We all get that trump is much worse. But everyone else needs to understand how sickening that shitty choice was for anyone with a conscience about what’s going on in Gaza, what’s going on with their neighbors. Signing on for more of the same was completely unthinkable for some. That has to be understandable if we are ever going to change things.

    We’ve been on the road we’re being forced down now as long as I’ve been around. And the road just keeps going forward. The dems’ proposal is “maintain the course.” The republicans’ was “mash the gas.”

    Some people couldn’t stomach going any further down this road. That’s not making a choice to mash the gas. Because the world is not binary.

    But you and everyone else posing similar questions is saying “how could you vote for mashing the gas by not wanting to continue down this road?? :(“




  • Here’s how I put it elsewhere in this thread:

    You have two choices, one is to poison a town’s water supply without telling them.

    The other choice is poisoning the town’s water supply, not telling them, and then shooting the survivors as they flee the town.

    No question that slaughtering fleeing survivors is worse. But either way, you’re being asked to sign your name to poisoning innocent people.

    You can only see “you’re voting for slaughtering fleeing townspeople!” But plenty of people cannot stomach voting for poisoning the townspeople in the first place.

    You’re both looking at the same situation but seeing different elements.

    The nuance comes in here: both are valid stances to take. If you don’t vote “against” shooting the survivors, there’s a greater chance survivors will be shot. But voting for the people poisoning the water supply is untenable for many, and not understanding why that is, is a huge problem.


  • Yeah, the people I know and spoke to all just said “I didn’t even vote, I couldn’t stomach it.” And the people who didn’t vote because they were put off by the choices don’t really get reliably surveyed—if anything we might find out a small sample size’s opinions months down the road, but more leftist circles are so disillusioned from being asked to plug their ears, hold their nose and vote for neoliberalism with a heavy splash of neocon garnish thrown in that they don’t engage. We can’t keep ignoring that segment of people. Some of them went to vote third party, but when you’re talking about a 4% difference, a lot desperately needs to be said of anyone left of Bernie madoff being written off as “extreme left.”


  • I mean, this is true, but in most states you have the option to vote early, vote by mail. We can’t ignore the middle part of your statement: capitalism is getting more and more hostile and no one is offering us a solution. Just giving us differently colored badges to pin to our lapel while telling us the beatings will continue until morale improves.

    Give us someone who is actually speaking to us and our needs and we’d have turnout like they wouldn’t believe. But both parties actively suppress anyone trying to do so. Which has been on display my entire life, but has definitely come into much sharper focus in the past 12 years.


  • You can’t honestly think this is true. People didn’t switch—at least not any significant percentage. I think it was a 1% swing. People stayed home.

    The democrats don’t own the votes of people. They swung for the neocons. Leaving the people who’d been arrested for sitting in their schools for not liking a fuckin genocide to sacrifice their values. Again. It’s always on those of us that want better to sacrifice our values to keep the wolves from the door. While the Democratic Party opens the back door for them when they hold the keys anyway.

    They are doing the same thing over and over, shutting out even a middle of the road progressive like sanders. And then they expect to hold onto voters who want real change? They can’t promise more and more of the same and then expect people to get excited. This is 100% on them.


  • Say you get two choices.

    One is to poison a town’s water supply without telling them.

    The other is poison that towns water supply, not tell them, and then pick off survivors as they flee from the town.

    Can you stomach voting for poisoning a town’s water supply if you’re firmly against poisoning people, just because anyone fleeing the town would be able to leave if they managed to survive? That’s the choice we were being asked to make. I get that it’s definitely worse to shoot the survivors, but in the end…either way your vote was to poison people. Some people have strong feelings about it. So strong they couldn’t stomach being the ones to sign on to it.

    We all know it’s worse adding the slaughter of the fleeing survivors…but signing your name to the poisoning is unthinkable for a lot of people. It kinda should be unthinkable for all of us.

    And you’re just saying “well, all you people are racist!”

    See how silly that is?

    Nuance, man.




  • This attitude is generally insane.

    “I don’t hate racists, I hate people who hate genocide so much they can’t stomach voting for it.”

    Look, I voted for Harris, but it wasn’t easy. Because that blood is on this administrations hands. The party is moving further and further away from my ideals every election. Because they keep moving right. On immigration, tax breaks, health care, foreign policy. She was courting the fuckin neocons!!!

    I understand how frustrating it is, because you’re right—not allowing trump to win is better than allowing him. But it’s not so straightforward when your vote is support for something you can’t stomach. Can you understand how that is difficult for people? I sure can. But I also understand how many people stand to get hurt under an authoritarian regime, so i sacrificed my morals again to do what I can to somewhat stem the bleeding.

    But that’s not an easy decision to make. Much harder than, say, blaming the racists for racism, and not the people who are anti-racist.