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As AOC and Sanders Draw Crowds, 72% of Democrats Want Party to Abandon Centrist Approach to Trump
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
926 points (98.7% liked)
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"Context" says the guy bringing out-of-context (yet objectively correct) Bernie quotes, meant to paint him as some establishment shill. Especially now as he's doing tours around the country to get people to rally against the fascist oligarchs and pass on the progressive mantle to someone younger, instead of I dunno staying home with his family because he's old and should rest and enjoy his old years — it's not like he's running for president. He owes nothing to no one, he gains nothing from this, but he did it anyway because he saw that this is the best shot progressives will get to take hold of the Democratic Party, now that it's weak and confused. And it's working.
He might not live that long...
I don't know the future, depends a lot on the environment. But if you're in a general election with two viable choices, one is a pro-corporate pro-democracy candiate and the other a pro-corporate anti-democracy candidate, then objectively speaking, if you want to save democracy you have to vote the first choice.
By "viable" I mean someone you know people will vote enough to be able to take on the candidate who does the most damage. I'm sorry but a Jill Stein like figure who only pops up in election years with the stated goal of siphoning votes from the less horrible candidate, that's not what I'd call viable. They could be if they fought for ranked choice voting — then there would be no concern of siphoning votes.
General elections aren't so much about fixing everything then and there, they're more about maintaining the environment necessary for changes to happen via public pressure, activism, protests, direct action, even future elections (all of which are way more precarious now that the greater evil won).
People make voting in the general seem like such a heroic act of defiance to "reject the duopoly", but that's just an aestheticization of politics, a way for people to say a visceral "fuck you" to the system while fucking themselves too and getting nothing in return except schadenfreude. Making voting into an identity is peak liberal virtue signaling (even when leftists do it, even when MAGA does it), and it's costing us everything.
You're clinging to semantics here, which is very frustrating — and honestly not helpful at all except for edgy leftists who can't stand engaging pragmatically with electoralism because it makes them feel dirty.
When I say pro-democracy, I mean they're not explicitly anti-democracy, that is not explicitly pro-dismantling-democracy-forever-with-high-priority the way the other guys demonstrably are. So yes, given the context, we're grading on a curve here — obviously. That's why we say they're the lesser evil as opposed to "the good guys". Jesus fuck, some people really want to be the smuggest person in the death camp. Right now Bernie's your only shot, but I'm not your boss, keep shitting on him.
And who did they sabotage it against? Jesus Christ!
Maybe you should go back to reddit and complain about voter shaming or something.
Respect? Who said I respect them? But letting nazis win to spite the libs is suicidal. Now not only do you get zero progressive policies through (which will kill people), you also need to spend all your energy fighting for your existing rights (which will kill people) and weathering the storm (which will kill people).
Also, remember my initial objection was to you lumping Bernie in with the corpo Dems, despite you yourself admitting that they rigged the primary (and if you won't say against who, then I'll say it: against Bernie).
PS: I'm done with this conversation.