Actually, the other side mostly wants things to stay the same. Their constituents, on the other hand, would like to see better healthcare, education, unions, and stronger safety nets. But since the other side aren’t fascists, their voters are stuck with them.
This right here ☝️. The grassroots democrats I could support. It’s the Chuck Schumers and John Fettermans that will undermine the party from within that make supporting democrats difficult.
Why haven’t the democrats kicked out Fetterman?
Rotating villain. He allows them to tell their constituents “we want what you want, we just don’t have the power because of thay one guy, but if you vote just a little harder, we won’t pull the football away this time”, while telling their donors “we ain’t giving them shit lmao”.
remember that one time the villain was ‘the parliamentarian’? apparently that guy exists and is suddenly important when the democrats run out of reasons to blame republicans
He was elected in 2022, so his next election is in 2028.
Senators are elected for 6 years. House Representatives have election every 2 years.
Edit: gotta love the down vote, as if facts didn’t matter, just feelings or as if I wrote the Constitution.
Didn’t stop the democrats from giving the boot to Al Franken halfway into his term.
People have to have a conscience to be shamed into resigning.
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Al Franken resigned, champ.
Exactly.
Look at how Donald has dealt with people who get out of line. Democrats aren’t powerless. The villain’s part of their party strategy.
How would that work, exactly?
PA senators are not subject to recalls, so it’s out of the hands of the voters. He could technically be impeached and removed from office by the Senate itself… but for what, exactly? It’s not illegal to vote a certain way, even if it’s against the wishes of your constituency.
And even if Fetterman were somehow removed, PA is an extremely competitive state. Remember, he won against Doctor fucking Oz, so the chance of someone even worse coming in to replace him is quite high. The devil you know, etc etc…
Best case scenario is that he gets primaried into irrelevance in 2028 by someone with actual integrity. But even then, I’m not holding my breath…
How would that work, exactly?
You pull all of his committee assignments and neuter his value to lobbyists. If all he has is his vote on the legislation that hits the floor, he can’t do much and it will hurt him both financially and politically, because if you don’t have value to lobbyists they won’t send you “gifts”.
You attack him personally and threaten his business or personal connections. For example, if Dems wanted to pull Manchin in line, for example, they could have sent the DoJ after his daughter for price gouging consumers on pharmaceuticals.
And yes, while it doesn’t matter now, you make sure he knows he’ll be primaried out and smeared like yesterday’s dog shit. Character assassination is effective and could bring someone in line, especially when they’re enthusiastically supporting genocide and Israel’s popularity is in the shitter.
That’s how.
They’ve never been powerless. They’re just complicit.
Because he was elected and is still serving his term?
And it doesn’t appear that he’s the type of person to resign.
Do the 21 people who have upvoted you thus far not understand how our government works?
Impeachment would be a good move to Fetterman for conning an entire state to vote for his fascist ass.
There’s always a rotating villain.
Used to be Dianne Feinstein. Then it was Joe Manchin. Then it was that Sinema bitch. Now it’s Fetterman and Schumer.
And people just kind of ignore the pattern and pretend it isn’t a party-wide PR strategy.
Not speaking for anyone else, but I’m fully aware of what the Democratic Party stands for. Problem is, the alternative has gotten so much worse.
Before the current madness, there was a part of me aching to vote for someone crazy to come and hasten the act of burning this mess to the ground. Then I saw it, and got scared. Maybe that’s when I should’ve leaned in.
Then primary them.
The odds of us getting out of this with a revolution are vanishingly small.
The answer is going to be reforming the Democrat party by primarying the Schumers and the Fettermans out.
Party reformation has happened multiple times in American history and conservatives literally just did it in the worst way possible to the Republican party over the last decade or two.
Party reformation takes time. That is life.
Right, but in the mean time it makes any attempt to claim “The Democrats stand for [insert policy position]” a lie, because while an individual democrat may believe in those things, the part as a whole can’t agree on anything at all. They can’t even align themselves on their own platform, let alone apply pressure to the Republicans. At best they’re nothing but a speed break for more republican policy. You’re still getting republican policy, just slower, and they can’t move the needle in the other direction even if they win because they’ll simply surrender in advance.
Wasting more time and more money trying to slow the rate the US collapses into a burning train wreck is an exercise in futility. The only real solution is to try and build a “coalition of the willing” to preserve what is left and the Republicans drive the rest, screaming incoherently, off the cliff they’re headed for. Small scale organizing, networks to help move people to safety “underground railroad” style, to move material and finances in ways that circumvent federal control, create safe-havens that can resist federal encroachment and operate outside of federal regulation meant to break down resistance. Register some “Churches” that can provide physical plant and meeting grounds, as well as offer support services when federal support is ripped up. Build a nation within a nation.
Voting for Democrats isn’t going to stop this spiral. They have no vision, no will, no unity, and zero political capital to actually create change. Sure, vote blue to slow the bleeding, if you’re still allowed by next election, but as long as they’re a party so big tent they have no direction at all, they’re just a slower, more painful collapse.
Correction: They SAY they want health care and education, get elected, and then spend their political capital making most people poorer, doing fascism, and genociding.
Still better than Nazis.
I don’t know that I agree.
The only difference I see here is that, under Democrats, it’s primarily ICE and the cops doing the Nazi things and not CBP, and you’ll recall that after George Floyd was killed Biden used his next SOTU to publicly call for more police militarization.
Also, go look up who first appointed Tom Homan, for a very good example.
I don’t know that I agree.
Then you need a better education.
Of course.
Very constructive and insightful comment. Thank you.
doing fascism
Lol. Can you describe how Democrats “do fascism”?
I keep seeing this stupid, counter-productive sentiment and have yet to have anyone actually explain it to me.
Meanwhile, I’m old enough to remember when I was poor and had NO healthcare and the Dems fought tooth and nail to get Obamacare passed and then I had affordable healthcare. Millions of other people can tell you the same, if you need a history lesson.
By supporting Israel.
Again.
Constructive comment. Perhaps read the thread before responding in the future. Thank you and have a lovely Friday.
the media is owned by private individuals with their own agenda.
The democrats had the house, senate, and presidency for 4+ years. Where is that Healthcare?
Spoiler: Both sides are bad, they both get paid off. Its just that one side is really fucking honest with you right now … to the point where they commit crimes in public because no one will do anything about it.
Both sides are bad
Cool observation. Here’s a smiley face sticker and a lollipop.
Here’s another observation.
Both sides are NOT the same.
So, in a system where you WILL get one or the other for the foreseeable future, what would you consider to be the intelligent thing to do?
Also, you are wrong. Democrats haven’t held a trifecta for 4+ years since the 1960s. In recent memory their control has only lasted 2-3 years at a time, and you’ve also failed to take into account that many things require a supermajority in Congress to enact and Dem’s total control has typically been by a very thin margin.
Key Periods of Unified Democratic Control (White House + Senate + House):
2021–2023 (117th Congress): President Joe Biden, with narrow House and Senate majorities.
2009–2011 (111th Congress): President Barack Obama, passing the Affordable Care Act.
1993–1995 (103rd Congress): President Bill Clinton’s first two years.
1961–1969 (87th–90th Congresses): Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
1933–1947 (73rd–79th Congresses): President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the start of Truman’s term.
Where is that Healthcare?
When I was young and broke Obama, during one of those windows of control, gave me affordable healthcare when I had none and he had to fight tooth and nail with Republicans to get it.
You really need to do your homework before you post things on the internet that other people who don’t do their homework will just accept as fact. It really doesn’t help our situation.
And we should thank Trump for opening eyes of so many dumb people that thought otherwise. It had to get really bad before we see any changes. Though I see in comments many are still sucking off dems
Yes, being insane for Democrats is almost (but not really) as bad as being MAGA.
The democrats had the house, senate, and presidency for 4+ years
What years where these pray tell? I guess if you don’t mean “4+ consecutive years” but that would be silly wouldn’t it?
Also, why did you fail to mention the Supreme Court? Interesting.
No one said consecutive. That is rarely possible with the usual midterm losses. Biden had 2 and Obama had 2.
Lol ok
They’re not the other side that this post is talking about.
ROFLOL yeah it’s the Democrats fault we don’t have national healthcare. tHeY hAd foUR YeaRS WherE is It?? Smeared all over the soles of the Republicans shoes. That’s where it is.
No, the media doesn’t think that, the owners of the media wants the media to say that they’re equal
Equal? Universal healthcare is derided as the delusions of radical extremists. A mere pipedream of anti-semitic tankies, if we’re talking the gambit of American media.
A lot of world class dipshits on this very platform think both sides are equal. Getting pretty tired of reading
“Both sides are fascist, one’s just more open about it.”
Stupidest fucking sentiment I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading. Absolute lack of education and critical thinking skills to say shit like that.
The lack of critical thinking skills is when people cannot understand that one side is fascist and the other enables the fascists.
To many leftist, capitalist imperialism is just fascism in disguise, and they are entirely correct.
I don’t think they’re both equal, they’re certainly both shit.
How do you measure the quality of shit?
Let’s just say I wouldn’t let Maxine Waters or Mitch McConnell watch my dog
If “shittiness” was a binary, they’d definitely the same. However, in the real world it’s a spectrum that looks more like:
Beautiful!
Now, add some marionette strings to both parties, connect those strings to a billionaire’s hand and it will be a perfect representation!
With their proposed ideas, I’d mostly agree.
However, with the increasingly shittier Republicans they have compromised further and further into utter shit. They’ve tacked toward shitty, pretty hard in some cases, to try to lure some shitty votes their way… alienating those who want less shit. They’ve opted to take money from extremely shitty people because they have a lot of money but those people desire there to be more shit. The Democrats abandoned their less shitty ground repeatedly even when they managed to find some real leverage, unleashing torrents of shit for no apparent reason (unless they actually want more shit).
So yes, their campaign websites have a lot less shit on them than the Republicans, but in practice the party as a whole has either pushed for things to be much shittier or compromised their alleged ideals unnecessarily resulting in things being much shittier.
There are certainly diamonds in the shit. I don’t think it’s all of them, but current leadership is definitely way more shitty than they look. What concerns me is that every time we get rid of some small contingency of Democrats that are obviously bathing in shit and willing to open the floodgates for the Republicans, we always seem to find just enough of the remaining Democrats wiling to dive in and replace them. It gives the impression that, for a significant subset of them, their campaign slogans and alleged ideals are performative.
I was banned from the lemmy.ml memes community for saying the Democrats are slightly better than Republicans. After saying it I needed to argue with 20 people at once, all with preprepared arguments, who were adamant that both sides are the same.
I’ve also recently seen that that community is extremely toxic in other ways.
To be honest what I really want is fully automated luxury gay space communism.
They won’t give us that either.
That’s fine, we’ll give it to them for free.
It isn’t theirs to give. It is ours to take.
Fully luxury automated gay space Communism. That way the abbreviation becomes almost an acronym. FLAGSC, rather than FALGSC
Yes, but you can have my portion of gay
Just save it for later. Forever is a long time.
Ok, I just hope it doesn’t spoil. What is the shelf life of gay?
Indefinite! And on the way, you’ll discover new and amazing types of straight.
Sounds like a plan
Ive been told that its not gay in a 3 way, and with a homey in the middle theres some leeway.
Can you confirm? I dont want to run out of credits.
Unfortunately we are all out of name brand luxury gay space communism.
We do, however, have Temu deluxe ambiguous resource “sharing” managed by Grok, and an couple open packs of glow in the dark ceiling stars. Only $19.99 a month at 30% interest when you buy now, pay later.
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As do .ml and hexbear.
Excuse me for not seeing a credible difference between genocidal warmonger (blue) and genocidal warmonger (red)
But Putin attacking countries is fiiiiine. Ukraine and Western propaganda and all that.
firstly isn’t that whataboutism?
either way I’m opposed to inter-capitalist wars and despots like Putin.
In a discussion about the misrepresentation of political stances to further various agendas, it is not a whataboutism to point out a commonly held political hypocrisy.
I mean it is a misrepresentation of my political stance, plus the topic was warmongers running our government and they were like ‘what about russia’
If your primary concern had been its misrepresentation of your values, why didn’t you lead with that? The topic of .ml and hexbear was brought up as examples of people pushing the narrative in OP - hence why including a hypocrisy about the topic common in those communities is relevant.
A pretty common sentiment on hexbear is that Putin is someone Lenin would have shot. Opposing the war in ukraine as an inter-capitalist war is pretty common position as well. I don’t see the hypocrisy, just looks like someone attacking a made-up position
Excuse me for not seeing a credible difference between genocidal warmonger (blue) and genocidal warmonger (red)
Q. E. D.
Where’s the lie though
I’ve written before on electoralism. There are a few issues with @Diva@lemmy.ml point of view here.
To be clear I am not saying that elections are the only thing that matter or the only thing that we should be doing; just that it is foolish to be ignoring them. Ideally, we should be having our own party, but in places where that is not possible, we should participate in primaries and vote as left as possible. Diva’s dismissiveness here is effectively saying we should step out of the way and let fascists have their way. Harm reduction is still important.
I will also just tag a comment here that voting is still a form of organizing and building credibility. If you have a movement and can persuade its members to vote then said members can also be persuaded to protest or strike. In the west voting carries little personal harm, so if people find that too tall then one can be sure that any higher order resistance might not happen.
At a minimum we should all be voting left in primaries to have statistics that there is in fact a left leaning populace that is being ignored. Protest votes and spoiled ballots are also good moves to do.
Diva is not wrong that the dems are also capitalists, but their apathy is discouraging leftist unity and changes to our material conditions.
Diva’s dismissiveness here is effectively saying we should step out of the way and let fascists have their way.
This is a false binary. I criticize democrat politicians for arming a genocide, that’s me demanding better from them because their actions on that front cost them the election and tens of thousands of people their lives.
Harm reduction is still important
Harm reduction for whom? did it include Palestinians getting bombed with US weapons? any of other victims of US foreign policy? Trump couldn’t operate with impunity as he is if the democrats didn’t set him up for it.
voting is still a form of organizing and building credibility
No it fucking isn’t. Organizing is organizing. Be it building dual power, mutual aid networks, unions, affinity groups, whatever. Voting is the bare minimum civic participation. Conflating them is a diversionary tactic designed to make people think they’ve done something groundbreaking by filling in a ballot.
If you have a movement and can persuade its members to vote then said members can also be persuaded to protest or strike
completely backwards. Movements don’t start with voting and scale up to strikes. they start with material organizing and sometimes engage in electoral politics tactically (ideally with an actual workers party)
At a minimum we should all be voting left in primaries
Funny, did this in the 2024 ‘primaries’ with uncommitted votes; all warning signs were completely ignored. surely if we keep trying the same things will work out eventually.
their apathy is discouraging leftist unity
I’m not apathetic, I’m actually quite involved in irl organizing (actual organizing, not electoral). I’m just not particularly invested in the democratic party.
Harm reduction for whom
For many vulnerable people. Its good that you are unaffected by the election results, but please check your privilege.
Voting is the bare minimum civic participation.
A bare minimum that mls cannot be bothered to do. As such they have no credibility to doing higher level activity.
Funny, did this in the 2024 ‘primaries’ with uncommitt…
Are you aware that there have been elections before that? We should have been organized long before. J Edgar Hoover thanks you for your contributions. You are the leftist he would wish to see. Disorganized and unwilling to take actions.
I’m not apathetic, I’m actually quite involved in irl organizing (actual organizing, not electoral). I’m just not particularly invested in the democratic party.
Right, you cared so much you couldn’t spare an afternoon every two years? Maybe skip the shit posting a few days to get some of the time to do so. Not all of us are so privileged as to not care about the harm reduction at the least.
Its good that you are unaffected by the election results
I’m actually pretty fucking affected by them, I’m a trans woman and plenty fucking familiar with economic precarity. I’ve been having my prescriptions fucked with on and off ever since Trump got in office, my insurance even stopped covering pretty much every formulation of estrogen other than ones used by cis women
You’re lecturing me about privilege because you don’t like how I feel about your preferred party of genocide enablers.
A bare minimum that mls cannot be bothered to do.
I’ve voted in pretty much every fucking election on and off year in my adult life, plus I’m an anarchist.
J Edgar Hoover thanks you for your contributions
It’s rich accusing me of being a fed/useful idiot while identifying voting for the democratic party as the truly useful activity.
You couldn’t spare an afternoon every two years?
Once more, I’ve fucking voted every year for over two decades. I even vote in municipal elections, those happen on odd numbered years.
feel free to continue attacking straw targets though I guess.
Excuse me for not seeing a credible difference between genocidal warmonger (blue) and genocidal warmonger (red)
You’re not excused until you learn to post comments that aren’t mind numbingly stupid.
Eww, you’re from .ml. Remind me to put on gloves next time before touching your comments.
“Look how bad the other side is”
Doesn’t work when your side just fell asleep at the wheel and let the opposition take control. And that’s the charitable take. Your side decided it was more important to fund a genocide than combat all the scary things in the first list.
If you look around at what’s happening right now you’ll see this was a false choice. Trump was always going to give Bibi whatever he wanted.
Taking a step back and having the revelation that your electoralism means definitive genocide no matter who’s in power should not be a reason to dig in and defend your electoralism. It should be reason to tear everything down.
Otherwise, youre taking the stance that Palestinians have a duty to allow themselves genocided to buy yourself time for more political waffling.
So did Biden and Harris wasn’t going to be any different. Biden even went around Congress to make damn sure Bibi got exactly what he wanted and then some.
The progressive side of our politics still lives in the dem party and we have a better chance of getting our ideas out there in that party. Either by election like Mamdani or by appointment like Lina Khan.
To be clear I don’t think Lina Khan was a lefty. Still her tenure in the FCC was rather pro consumer and pushing back on big corporations. That would not happen at all in any rep admin.
What does this have to do with Biden giving Bibi exactly what he wanted?
The thread is about both-sides-sim. I pointed out a case in how its still helpful to vote as left as possible.
Yeah and left is not letting Bibi get a single thing, even if that means losing Israel as an ally and supporting a party that’s not a major one.
It’s more about power than ideas. The problem with the establishment Dems is not that they have the wrong ideas but that they have been purchased by the oligarchs who get to win whether they get a D or an R.
Weird how this is the conclusion you came to instead of figuring out that the “your side” you’re talking about isn’t our side and hasn’t been for a long time.
At least we’re not in the other car coming at us straight on.
If you’re American, people like you are the reason Trump is president. He was always going to genocide Palestine, and if you’re saying so was Harris, then they’re equal on that and you should elect Harris. Then AFTER she’s in office you can pressure and throw mud and do everything possible to get the US to stop.
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Oh, stop. Really.
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TF does that even mean? If you’re implying I’m a useless tool that comment is about as useful as your tired old “both sides”.
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Oh good. Another opinion. And we’re not talking about the media, we’re talking about your comment. Don’t move the goalposts.
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Obviously the republicans are genuinely terrible people
But I’ll give you an equivalence that actually holds up
Both parties have their snouts in the trough and depend on huge levels of external funding which completely undermines your democracy
That is a problem that needs to be fixed
OK, fix it when the government isn’t on a bloodhunt for transgender people, to start with.
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One side wants to enact fascism and the other side thinks they can stop them by dancing in frog costumes and compromising with said fascism by only doing fascism lite™
Those are two diffrent groups of people
Yeah one of those people are the politicians who will lead America into fascism, other other one is the frog suit wearing idiot who will happily follow.
