Okay. So what’s the plan?

Do nothing? (y/n): _

Well the opposite happened so - I mean republicans cut more than funding, they closed up the entire agency, leaving millions of people around the world without food and medicine, and the Democrats would have continued sending food and medicine. That’s scale.

And just to reiterate the genocide didn’t stop, and trump has sold the Palestinians down the river for thirty pieces if silver and a statue of himself plus the naming rights. So how did that even help? There’s no way Harris would have even come close to that. Much less start a War for our buddy Bibi and let Pooty-poot continue his own genocide.

It just makes zero sense to not try and make it better. Letting trump win - even for the ethical reasons stated - is worse.

Leftists are simultaneously numerous enough to cost the democrats the election while also being not numerous enough for the democrats to want to move left to capture that block. The enemy is weak and also strong.

No they’re just morons who demand to vote against their interests.

Do voters actually have authority?

Yes! The votes determine who takes office, see? That’s how that works.

Princeton University said public opinion has “near-zero” impact on U.S. law.

Well i’m suspect of any sociological determination but the simple answer is: opinion is not a vote. We don’t vote on the laws, we vote on the people who vote on the laws. So having an opinion doesn’t do anything to the law. It’s like saying public opinion has “near-zero” effect on the migration of the South African swallow.

Seems like voters have a singular ability to legitimize the authority of those who rule over us.

Wow, you really - um. Yes? Voters do authorize people to hold office (and, by extension, deny others the authority to hold office) but the “ruling over us” part is just a weird way to say it. You see, governments are how societies agree to . . . Okay wait, so when people agree to live in society, they . . Okay let’s talk about the Constitution. You see they left this England place because it was bogus, and they were like, hey - if we don’t get some cool rules, pronto, then we’ll just be bogus too!

When democrats regain power and continue deadly republican policy, will you be too busy celebrating at brunch to care?

When trump is gone I am definitely going to go to brunch. But otherwise (and still) no.

So you’re a single-issue voter?

That’s a thing. And yes, if you don’t recall, the whole god bless the united states is a reaganism that infected all discourse and mutated into brylcreem and flag pins so specifically dropping it from the platform after spectacularly failing to do it as we wanted in 2012 is progress.

No I mean the messenger in “shooting the messenger” is a person with no authority. That’s why shooting them is pointless.

Voters have authority.

You’ve got quite the complete dystopian take on elections, which is all cynical hyperbole and somehow wishful thinking, and must have taken awhile to refine so well done. But, you have the authority to throw your vote away to ensure the realization of that take so - okay.

I’m gonna go over here though where there’s a way to make things better. Because that is possible.

The voters don’t control the platform…they don’t even have a meaningful voice on the platform. No matter how many people show up to the meetings saying “we should not arm genocide,” the platform will not change. You will be asked to leave, and if you don’t leave you’ll be arrested. And if, by the grace of god, you take over a caucus, the DNC can and will simply ignore you.

Well I disagree, obviously, but it doesn’t mean there weren’t things like this: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/convention-floor-erupts-as-dems-restore-references-to-god-jerusalem-in-platform (apologies fir the source, it was the first one in my enshittified search results)

Which was obvious bullshit. But then look at 12 years later and https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/aug/14/democrats-have-officially-abandoned-god/ (apologies again for the source - ugh) and hey lookit that: forward motion.

Does it take too long? Yes. Is it ruled by 300 people who have jockeyed for years to be one of the leaders, yes. Like all human endeavor it is flawed. But it doesn’t exist without the people who make up the party.

We need to get money out of politics, kill the Slaver’s College, re-democratize voting, kill FPTP and a ton of other things. But those things won’t happen through a third party, or the republicans. They can happen through the Democrats if only we’d all agree for one goddamn day. Which is the point of the meme.

I’ll tell you how it’s not on individual voters: individual voters don’t get to decide what the party platform is. The party does. It’s on the party.

And the party is made up of . . . . . c’mon . . . . the party is made up of . . . ??

Of the voters, right. Yes. Voters have a voice in the party platform. It’s not even all that byzantine to do - you show up at the meetings basically. That’s how new (or old) ideas get in.

Now, party politics, yeah that’s a thing in ANY organization whether it’s the DNC, WalMart, or the boys at the bar. So those of you who are big into the “Democrats should do everything I think immediately because i think it” yeah that . . doesn’t work. Working with others doesn’t come naturally to a lot of the Lemmy left I notice. Compromise and letting people have wins and such like that aren’t really accepted, or possibly understood.

By this logic, we shouldn’t blame Ford for the Pinto (dating myself).

So if Ford had a mechanism to let consumers say what they wanted in a car, yes, the consumers would be able to say they don’t want cars to explode on impact. But Ford doesn’t, do they. Ford car buyers don’t have a direct voice. So the analogy fails. Not to mention the whole exploding thing was seriously covered up for years and years as opposed to being published openly and then voted on, which makes it even worse as an analogy.

oh the messenger eh. The person who has no authority whatsoever? That person?

And who might that be?

Doesn’t stop them from absorbing non-republican votes every year tho.

Ok thanks Che. Good work.

Yep

The journal decided when it first started publishing the article type “that the cases should be fictional to protect patient confidentiality,” Robinson told us. “Apart from the case that led to the recent New Yorker article, all or almost all were cases of very well recognized conditions (such as congenital syphilis, fetal alcohol syndrome, serious trauma from ATVs, hepatitis C infection) where a single case report would not generate any interest or ever be cited.”

While the journal is indexed in Scopus and Web of Science, these articles are not. However, we queried all 138 DOIs in Semantic Scholar and found 61 of them have been cited at least once. Together they have been cited 218 times.

I don’t . . . What even . . .

Well, except that one of them does. Every time.

non voters are demoralized further by their lack of sway in a place where democracy is already dead, causing them to stay home.

Sounds like some .ml stuff, alright

I’m not even sure if they made it on the ballot in all 50 states this last time.

I’m not denouncing your decision, you’re denouncing mine!

Okay, mutually assured denouncement.

I don’t understand what you mean that I should support the democrats from my very-liberal state because…other people don’t live in liberal states? I don’t follow, but if there’s some connection there, I’m happy to hear about it.

Leaving aside the issue of downballot races, I think the position of denouncing a national candidate while at the same time expecting that candidate to win (because, blue state), and being okay with that; is a nuanced one. And unless you were going to lead with that, I’d expect it would simply come off as “no one should vote for them period” which is obviously a problem if they’re running against trump more so than your average non-demented, less-openly-corrupt, non-rapist candidate.

I wish people like you would stop trying to put it on individual voters.

How can it not be on individual voters? Voters elect! The Evilcorps Party can do anything they want to do on the campaign except vote. They can’t be responsible for each individual’s vote because it’s individual. The responsibility necessarily lies with the voters, and when they fuck up so horribly the bottom of society drops out, it is very appropriate to blame them.

Well, I’m pretty sure those people were going to throw their vote away again anyway.

If some rando’s framing prevents someone from voting - ehh they really weren’t gonna vote anyway.

And, to be fair, if they’re saying “death to America” then letting the republicans run the table is a great way to accomplish that.

Is voting for a democrat the only way to fight republicans?

In an election, for the purposes of determining who will govern - YES.

Look, would it make you feel better if I said I’d be conflicted if I lived in a swing state? That I’m open to the idea that I might think differently if my choice not to vote actually mattered to the result of the election, rather than merely a signal to the democrats to do better?

Well, my feelings being irrelevant, for a national office you should be open to supporting them because not everyone lives in your solid blue leftier-than-thou state. Or at least preface your denunciation of our only option accordingly.

If you can’t, you can’t. But on election day in November 2024 a bunch of people - for whatever reason - chose this most incompetent, corrupt, and demented timeline. And for those who did so because they hold high morals or standards - that’s ironic at least, if not unconscionable.

Was it? Man, whoever coined that phrase must have been high as hell.

Well your choices are to fight (vote Democratic) or not fight (not vote / not vote Democratic).

Sounds like you’re not going to fight and the reason is Palestine. That’s up to you, of course.