1180
Exclusive: Bernie Sanders worries young people are underestimating the threat from Trump
(www.usatoday.com)
this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
1180 points (97.6% liked)
News
23267 readers
3852 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What exactly is your plan for changing first past the post?
You could make the case that if the democrats actually supported that, it's worth holding your nose and voting for them in order to open up other options in the future. But they don't support it, because they benefit from it. So basically you're asking the left to keep voting for the democrats unconditionally forever while they don't address any of our concerns and refuse to make any sort of reforms that might allow us to have a voice in the future. How is that a viable path to accomplishing anything?
The plan is to keep voting in every primary for the most progressive candidates and then voting for the least bad people in elections while pushing for reform. However hard it is to enact change while Democrats are in power, it will be impossible while Republicans are.
I'll pose the same question to you: how is not voting for the least bad viable candidates, thus guaranteeing the worst candidates get into power, a viable path to accomplishing anything?
Did you not notice what the DNC did to Sanders in the last Democrat primary???!
It's not just a case of "a few bad apples".
I noticed that voters didn't turn out to vote for him. The DNC doesn't get all the blame.
But what I'm being told over and over is if Biden cuts off support for Israel he'll lose the election. Which means moderates and liberals won't vote for a progressive candidate who makes it through the primaries leading to whatever nutjob is running on the other side.
So our reward for being pragmatic and holding our nose will be the same as voting 3rd party today.
It's just as impossible to enact reform through the Democratic party. Especially when you adopt the approach of "vote blue no matter who." The Democratic parties interests in terms of voting reform are directly contrary to the interests of voters, and will never allow it happen unless they have no other choice. If they know they can count on your support no matter, then you have forfeited whatever negotiating power you've managed to accrue.
To the extent that electoralism is worth engaging with, strategic voting as part of a bloc is the only way to make it worthwhile. The goal should be to build an organization or movement that can say, if you refuse to give into our demands, we will not vote for you and you will lose. In the short term, it might mean losing an election, but if you can demonstrate that power, then in the future you'll be able to make a credible threat of withholding votes to get what you want, and if they cooperate you won't have to follow through. If that organization is able to coordinate other actions like strikes, then all the better.
It's like this: two countries are facing a powerful invader, and the only way to fend them off is through an alliance. But country A says, "I know you need us to survive, so we demand 99% of your territory in exchange for an alliance." If country B follows the ideology of "lesser evilism," they'll agree to that, because 1% is better than 0%. But how did that happen, when country A needs the alliance just as much? Because lesser evilism is stupid and irrational. At some point you have to set a red line and say, this is the absolute minimum that I'll accept, and I'll reject anything less even if it means the deal falling through and me facing a worse outcome. And "no genocide" is decidedly inside of that line.
There are a few ways of going about it. One is third parties. If you vote for the Green Party for example, you get voting reform, anti genocide policies and a much better enviromental policy. At the same time Biden is still much better then Trump and being realistic about what you can get should also be part of voting strategy. Also it is incredibly important to say, that citizenship does not end at the ballot box. You got to and can do more to influence politics. So I would probably vote Biden in a swing state and Green Party in an state, which is not a swing state. This matters in two ways. Firstly the more people vote third party, the more likely they can get into some actual power, but also the Democrats see that they can gain potential votes, by improving policies.
Also no lesser evil has to be distinguised from compromise and deals. If you get an actual improvement out of doing something, it can be worth doing even at a price. So if two countries face a powerfull invader, it can be worth making a deal that country A gets 40% of the invaders land and country B also 60%, if country B is already stronger for example. In that case both get something out of it. However without the alliance both would probably fail. In this case the question is, if Biden would actually net improve the US compared to today.
The point of the hypothetical is to demonstrate why the principle of lesser evilism is incorrect. Not every deal has to be exactly equal, the question is what to do when offered a terrible deal when the other party needs you just as much as you need them, and the answer is to bargain even if it means a risk of the deal falling through.