this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
1232 points (100.0% liked)
Political Memes
7796 readers
3922 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yes, but Republican voters pretty much ALWAYS vote, and they vote R down the whole ticket. A large portion of people who vote for Democrats only show up to vote if there is someone they can get excited about. Establishment Dems should consider this a law of the universe; it simply is the way it is. Instead of continuously trying to bully these people into showing up to vote (which has the opposite effect) maybe they should start asking what would get these people excited to vote for Joe. And then get Joe to do those things.
They act like everyone owes them a vote. They don't. They are asking for something from the left, they need to start negotiating in good faith and expect to have to give something in return. Doing anything less than whatever it takes to get people to vote for Joe should be considered them trying to lose and get Trump elected again.
Democrats fall in love.
Republicans fall in line.
And yet Democratic leadership keeps operating under the assumption that they can order Democrats to fall in line.
I think the die-hard Trump cultists are genuinely in love with him, though.
He also called the ICC warrant against Israeli leaders outrageous and is stonewalling every attempt by the UN to intervene against Israel.
I don't think he gets a pass on this
If he is then he's completely ineffective
Biden has been deliberately bypassing Congress to send Israel weapons: https://lemmy.today/comment/8531642
He gets to balance the power of Congress. He can refuse to enforce their bullshit. But more importantly he's the leader of the Democratic party. He has massive influence on the direction the party takes, and can put pressure on members who get out of line.
I think most people are done with people who try to "work within the system set forth by our behind the scenes over lords"... We want someone who's going to call them on that crap constantly and fight against it with every move they make. Biden is clearly not doing that.
I actually got heavily involved with politics after Bernie. Including running for office in a very red district where I had no chance of winning (just happened to be where I was living). Turns out, the establishment would rather reject anyone left of them and lose to Republicans, than to move an inch to the left and anger their masters
Unfortunately when faced with genocidal fascism, pragmatism looks an awful lot like appeasement... And after 40 years of appeasing the oligarchy while they slowly take away our rights, health, and wealth, I think people are almost ready to fight. Maybe not physically... But in any way they can.
Which brings us to the fact that there are 3 choices in the upcoming election... Trump, Biden, stay home (or 3rd party, but that's basically the same as staying home unfortunately)... If Dems and Biden really wanted to get people off the couch and in to vote they'd be figuring out what it takes and doing it... Instead they're just following their already shown to fail bullying strategy... It's really irritating to see them seemingly willfully losing to Trump rather than go against their corporate masters... Again
The reason Trump is so popular is because he's a protest vote. At least in the delusional minds of the maga crowd. He is certainly not a part of the oligarchy controlling the establishment... He's his own oligarchy, and a dangerous one too... But his followers are very dumb and very brainwashed. All they see is that he's a way to fight against the establishment. The Dems needed to put up a protest candidate of their own. Utterly reject the establishment/oligarchy, and embrace the protest... Instead they once again doubled down on the most establishment candidate they could find.
I appreciate your thoughtful response.
Sadly the Republican's "grassroots" orgs get tons of funding from the oligarchy, while any grassroots orgs on the left get none... Without funding I don't know that there's much we can do. Personally I worked my ass off in progressive politics for a few years after Bernie, but unfortunately eventually had to move on to something that can actually pay. Now I've moved as far away from the South as I could, bought a gun and ammo, and a couple weeks worth of emergency food. I don't see any way out of this without it getting really bad. End stage capitalism is rough.
Besides the fact that each new generation is more progressive than the last one, honestly my only hope is that as AI starts taking their jobs, and the oligarchy keeps squeezing more and more out of an ever shrinking upper middle class, that eventually they'll start joining us and voting progressive. Like right now 50%ish of people own nothing... What about when they've squeezed every drop out of 75%? 90%? At what point do the people in their golden bubbles start realizing they've been getting screwed all along too? Hopefully it's before millions die in the streets.
Unfortunately the only real convictions the Dems seem to have is "protect the rich at all costs"... They have some social issues stuff quite a ways behind that, but clearly they're willing to let it slide rather than fight (ie roe v Wade)... They would definitely rather lose to Republicans, who at least have that same 'protect the rich' conviction, than lose to progressives who would "eat" the rich instead... Even though they agree with progressives on the social issues
So typically liberal=neo-liberal=establishment Dems... Progressives=Bernie and the squad... Just semantics
I've seen that video before... Love everything he does... I wonder how AI and robots taking over all human labor over the next 20 years will effect this model. I guess it's sort of like discovering a resource that dwarfs the production capabilities of the people. So all the democracies slip into dictatorships? Maybe that's what we're seeing the prelude to?
I guess I don't see how Bush fits that definition, but I guess it doesn't matter, I think we're close enough.
Personally, I wish we could hurry up and replace all human labor with computers and machines. People could still do work, they'll just be free to pursue work that they find satisfying instead of the bullshit work most people are doing now. We will of course have to have an economic revolution and force the rich to share the wealth created by the machines, otherwise everyone dies in the streets except a few thousand rich people. I'm a strong proponent of UBI tied to inflation and set at a thriving level by "district"... However we want to define district.
Yeah...I think they'll push for a faux revolution, designed to cull the herd more than actually change power structures... Our only hope is for people to realize they need to fight the rich and not each other... So I don't have high hopes
That would work if voters are reasonable but they're not, there's been something every single time - and yes it's always 'but this time it's serious'
Could you explain what you mean a bit more?
Every election there is a reason that the left candidate isn't left enough for the purists - every single time.
Yes... I bet if they'd put up someone who's actually on the left, it would be a different story. Like, I don't love everything about Bernie (because he's not as "left"as I'd like), but I would have gladly voted for him against Trump. Millions of young people would have gotten excited to go vote for him too.
Every election the Dems fight tooth and nail to stop actual progressives from being allowed into the general. They put up their centrists instead. So of course they aren't "left" enough.