“We have to give them everything they want from us first, and then we can start pressuring^[1] them!”

I learn from the best! This comment would have been unironically upvoted a year ago by all the people downvoting it now.

You’re exactly right. There’s absolutely no way to influence the Democratic party’s decisions through criticism or making it clear that they’re on track to lose. Joe Biden is who we’re stuck with and if you say you won’t vote for him, you’re completely useless. He’s the only one who can beat Trump.

Strangely, he wasn’t listed on my ballot so I just had to write him in.

Wow, this thread is full of Russian bots and Trump supporters. Biden is the picture of health, extremely spry and cognizant, personally, I thought he handled himself very well in the debates, despite the media attacking him unfairly over his stutter. Regardless, he’s the nominee, whether you like him or not, no amount of complaining will change that. He’s the lesser evil so we’re stuck with him and you just have to vote for him, unconditionally.

there is a perfectly good flag for England that people refuse to use

Well yeah, but these days, you say you’re English, you’ll get arrested and thrown in jail 😆

We can’t condemn the Nazis because if we condemn the Nazis people will think we’re Nazis. When people see that we won’t condemn the Nazis, that’s how they’ll know we aren’t Nazis.

Non sequitor. Not what I said and not a Republican.

Campaigns are about winning swing states, those are just the rules of the game. Kamala lost that game worse than any Democrat in nearly 40 years. Maybe the rules we have aren’t fair, and if they were different, she would’ve lost by a smaller margin. But then, both campaigns would’ve been run completely differently, the same candidates might not have even been the nominees, etc.

By the actual rules of the actual game, Kamala lost extremely badly.

This was literally the worst electoral map for the Democrats since 1988 when Republicans won Illinois and California.

I’m confused, when you talk about voting “Democrat,” do you mean, for the Democratic-Republicans? I was thinking of voting Federalist, personally.

Since our system makes it impossible to change from the two currently existing parties, it follows that the two parties we have now must be the ones we started with.

But regardless, this is typical shortsighted liberal (i.e. capitalist) analysis that only looks at the immediate outcome and only at electoral politics. If a significant portion of the electorate can make a credible threat to sit out if their demands are not met, then they can leverage that threat to get what they want. The right is much more willing to do this because they put their values above reason, and it works - many Republican candidates understand that if they look soft on things like abortion or guns, a sizable portion of their base will defect, even if it means voting for a crank and throwing the election. Democratic voters are much more committed to being “reasonable” and so refuse to set any red lines anywhere, and the results are clear: the right successfully shifts the Republicans to be more extreme, the Democrats follow, and the left falls in line and accepts it. We are desperately overdue to start learning from their successful tactics and from our own failures, setting down red lines, and thinking beyond the current cycle. And we can debate where exactly red lines should be set, but if genocide doesn’t deserve one, nothing does.

Moreover, the facts of physical reality, the material conditions, and the myriad of crises we’re facing demand radical changes beyond what we are told are possible in the existing system. But those things are physical, natural, immutable facts, while our political system is, on a fundamental level, manmade. We do not have to abide by its rules and what it tells us is and isn’t possible - but we do have to do that regarding the laws of nature, which tell us about things like climate change. Monarchy had no mechanism built into the system to transform into liberal democracy, and yet, here we are. That’s because there are fundamental mechanisms for change that exist within every political system, whether the system wants them to or not, and I don’t just mean revolutions, but demonstrations, strikes, etc. And so, the party I voted for, PSL, participates in electoral politics for the express purpose of building organization beyond electoral politics. Helping a candidate who I see as fundamentally unacceptable win an election is less important that helping to promote that sort of organizing.

A note on this survey is that it was taken of all likely voters, so it’s possible it could be influenced by conservatives being, let’s say, not very normal about her. Regardless, people on both sides often see the Democratic party much further left than it really is.

More like, a good contingent of those voters voted unconditionally for these people, who they had every reason to believe would act like this. They did this to themselves.

My father once yelled at me because he tried to to tell me a story about a friar in the 1600’s whose faith in God granted him the power of flight and I assumed it was a joke. It was not a joke.

Elad Barashi, who has worked in the Israeli entertainment industry for several years, sparked outrage after posting on X: “Good morning, let there be a Shoa (Holocaust) in Gaza.”

In another post, he wrote, “I can’t understand the people here in the State of Israel who don’t want to fill Gaza with gas showers… or train cars… and finish this story! Let there be a Holocaust in Gaza.”

They have demonstrated that they are not “leftists” by defending the cruelties of Israel. There is no “infighting” here.

“Bans all criticism of Israel” is not the title. The title is that they are banning criticism of Israel, which is true. It’s also true that if someone bans oranges, then they are “banning fruits,” it would only be untrue if they said, “banning all fruits.”

The title does leave it ambiguous in a way that people might think it extends to all criticism, but that’s not actually what it says.

The best way to prevent another Holocaust is to make it illegal for anyone to ever warn that anything happening is similar to the Holocaust or to the Nazis and should be stopped before it goes further. Brilliant. Genius.

Equal rights for all, but with Jewish people being more equal than everyone else.

It’s very frustrating and the thread I linked made me feel like I was losing my mind. I try to seek out perspectives I disagree with but a lot of times I just end up concluding, “Damn, these people are even worse than I thought.”

What gets me is how wildly people in the thread blew it out of proportion. You had someone quoting “first they came for” as if lifting sanctions on a leader we installed is comparable to the Holocaust.

It’s like everyone needs everyone to agree that every time Trump sneezes, it’s the literal worst thing that has ever happened, and if you push back on anything ever you’re the enemy. These same people fantasize that they can win elections by appealing to moderates.

But the thing that really grinds my gears is how they all default to hostile intervention in foreign countries despite knowing absolutely nothing about their situation. The “null” position should be leaving everyone alone, but instead, it’s whatever the government or media tell them. Or in this case, whatever a random tweet from a crypto grifter tells them. And they will try to bring down the hammer of social condemnation and use things like this as a way to equate communists to fascists and kick us out of spaces, even when they aren’t actually at all invested in the issue.

Buncha clowns.