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this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2026
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Leopards Ate My Face
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americans when politics take up more than 1 bit:
Leftists love to abandon a candidate they mostly agree with as long as there's one single issue that doesn't align perfectly.
No it's a candidate you mostly agree with. I for one don't care for a party that doesn't fight for medicare for all, doesn't fight to restore the courts, doesn't imprison traitors and rapists, that supports genocide, that pumps more funding into cops and ICE, that strives for "the most lethal military in the world", that continues to subsidize fossil fuels, that legally bars workers striking, that doesn't bother to codify Roe, and ultimately when they finally get around to doing something, they assume that giving government money to market driven companies will best solve problems.
the response is always lesser of two evils stuff. yes, kamala is less evil than trump. still evil, though.
Progressive Puritanismtl is the reason why Trump got elected both times.
Neither Hillary nor Kamala were progressive enough so a large enough portion of people just didn't vote.
Meanwhile, so Republicans always vote.
The problem is that they are not progressive at all. Like literally what position of Harris is progressive? It is all either keeping the status quo or regressive.
You wanna known what a progressive point is now. Dont kill trans people. That is where we are right now. That is the line of progressivism now that trunp won. Congratulations overton window shifted
As a leftist, I can tell you there was a fuck of a lot more than one issue that I didn't agree with Biden or Harris on. I still voted for her, but I can tell you I won't hold my nose again.
What happened, in general terms, is that Gen Z kept the previous elections from slipping too hard to Republicans, and Harris went viral for calling them dumb. And she was pro-genocide, and she was a cop-loving prosecutor out of California. She basically screamed "DINO." Then, when the Democratic primaries happened, Biden lied and said he was going to run again, which basically killed any other chance for a popular candidate to emerge to challenge Trump. So when Biden finally changed his mind, we were forced to vote for Harris or Trump.
If you want to blame something, blame the Democratic Party playing games with their internal processes to keep the people from having a candidate they actually wanted. Nobody even wanted Harris as VP. She got it, much like Biden under Obama, because she was a "safe" moderate.
And I can tell you, as a regular voter. I had people at my door for her 12 different times asking me to vote.
We shouldn't have even allowed Biden to say he was going to run a second term, but the entire establishment went along with it as political theater to put her on the ballot.
Why did Trump win? Because American elections are fucked and never favor the popular vote and because enough people were fucking pissed. The Liberal idealists were pissed because dispite popular opinion our leaders ignored them most of the time, and the Conservative minded were pissed because they had 4 years of "Fuck Joe Biden" propaganda.
There is no left in the US. Democrats and Republicans are just different flavours of the same Conservative shit..
Hell, the Overton window has slid so far right that even the Liberals here in Canada are basically conservatives from about 20 years ago
I believe this line of thinking only serves to sanewash right-wingers.
Only true if you think the entirety of politics fits in 1 bit.
They (US politics) literally do though, right? At least that's my impression as a non US person.
If my understanding is correct it would need an overhaul of the constitution to change that, right? (The part about representatives of states cascading to select the representatives who then select the boss).
I'm quite uneducated though in US politics so perhaps I've got something completely wrong!
The number of combinations of choices in social and human affairs is pretty much infinite so politics in a real Democracy could theoretically be infinite-sided (though only if there were no "representatives" of citizens and people directly voted on everything - i.e. direct Democracy)
Because the US isn't really a proper Democracy (more like an attempt at one), the vote itself in American has only 2 real options, but there are other ways to expand the number of choices because the two main parties in America are umbrellas for ranges of possibilities and they do have somewhat democratic (rigged, but still with more choices than the actual vote) internal selection systems in the form of Primaries.
If one properly analyses it, it turns out the presidential selection system in the US is really a multi-stage affair in which two of the stages - the Primaries and the actual vote - are open to the public (though there is quite a lot of selecting going on behind closed doors even before the Primaries).
So if people participate in both Primaries and the actual vote, they de facto have more choices than 2.
Also another thing to keep in mind is that this is a cyclical process and the outcomes in one cycle - i.e. who won and by how much - influence what happens in the next cycle so the vote itself defines not just what happens in one election, but also which choices will be made available - i.e. which candidates will be fielded - in the next.
All this means that if one actually cares and makes an effort, there's more "Democracy" to be had than it might seem at first sight and the vote itself has more influence than just that immediate choice, so anybody claiming that "you have no choice but to vote lesser evil" either has a simplistic view of things or are purposefully trying to deceive others.
This is without going down into the whole local politics and civil society participation, which in the US is almost as livelly Democratic as in Europe.
This assumes honest primaries. Or primaries at all.
We get what party leadership decides.
Oh yeah, as I mentioned there is a lot of closed-doors choosing going on before the Primaries.
Then the Primaries are rigged (with things like super-voters in Democratic Primaries).
All, of course, all assuming there are Primaries.
This does not add up to Democracy, IMHO, it's just slightly better than only having a 2-choices Vote with no Primaries at all.
I think that at the very first hint of fuckery, everyone should vote in the green party's primaries and write in the progressive candidate that the party is exerting influence to block. Democrats don't deserve voters ever again if they're not going to listen to them.
We can just walk in and take over the green party. They're tiny and have tiny primaries.
That doesn't alter the fact that the entire electoral system in the US is Mathematically rigged to make it pretty much impossible to succeed in a candidate from a 3rd party being elected as president - the level of difficulty is that of getting over 100 million people to switch their vote in a single election (you can try it over multiple election cycles, but what happens is that after years of trying and failing, most people give up, so it has to happen quickly or it won't work).
As I see it, for a 3rd party to grow in the US it has to start by winning local elections since the number of people who need to change their vote to it is much less and then build on such victories to win seats in Congress, then build on that for the Senate, and only then for the President.
Anyways, my original post was about what can be done and how things should looked at "in the context of how the election system is in the US" (as fucked up as it is) and what it is realistically possible in it, rather than what it should be.
If democrats aren't going to be a second party, we should select a different party to be our second party.
Agree.
Just pointing out that the entire system is designed to make that almost impossible.
So how can this nightmare cycle be broken?
Vote blue no matter who hasn't worked. Even when a democrat wins, it's some genocidal shitlib like biden. And when democrats lose, they blame the left they refuse to listen to and move to the right because they want to and pretend that they're chasing the votes of republicans, even though they know that's not going to happen and even though they know no one's actually buying the pretense.
Not an American, but as I see it, the only chance for a big change is to build things from the ground up block by block starting at the local elections level.
Another option is to bypass traditional politics as much as possible by using the power of civil society groups which are independent of political parties, such as Unions and politically independent single subject groups (for example, groups of people formed to combat setting up a data center in a specific region) - as shown in Europe a couple of General Strikes tend to focus politicians back into actually working for the interests of voters, at least temporarilly.
Yet another option, though weaker and much more indirect, is to consider that the vote in one electoral cycle affects which candidates are fielded in the next cycle, which is my main counterpoint to the OP's point of view since such a perspective justifies not voting for the lesser evil to send a message to Democrats that they need to field better candidates.
That said, personally I think Americans are seriously fucked and I doubt any change will happen before things properly break in terms of quality of life (I'm thinking proper dystopia with widespread starvation and homelessness) and people rebel and even then the reaction of the powerful will probably be to turn the place into and overt Autocracy rather than the current Oligarchy with some Theatre of Democracy.
I don't think this is effective. I consider the centrist messaging that progressives stayed home to "teach democrats a lesson" to be how centrists frame their unwillingness to appeal to an electorate they want to rule instead of serve.
Why would progressives stay home to “teach democrats a lesson”?
I mean, people don't just do things for no reason at all, unless they're crazy.
The most logical explanation is that they did it ultimately because centrists (i.e. the DNC) were unwilling to appeal to an electorate they want to ruie instead of serve.
A simple logical analysis shows that framing from "centrists" (I added quotes because they're not in the political center, but rather are hard-right) as actually being an indirect admission of their own guilt - they did not do what politicians are supposed to do, which is appeal to the electorate, hence the electorate did not vote for them.
In Democracy the blame for politicians not being appealing to voters and hence failing to get their votes lies not with the voters, it lies with the politicians.
Sure, "centrists" and their useful idiots loudly cry that people have an obligation to vote for them, but that's not a mindset of Democracy it's a mindset of Autocracy.
You are correct although I don't even think the two party system is related to the constitution. I think it's more about precedent than anything else. The country is too conservative to change the way things are done even when it's not legally bound. I'd love to leave this shithole. The day trump won in 2016, I lost faith irreparably that we'd ever be decent again. As you can imagine, 2024 nuked the tiny sliver of hope I had again. I expect the worst moving forward. I grew up in a world that this generation was supposed to be able to fix. But the oligarchs have ensured only the oldest most corrupt rich asswipes alive can access power so that dream is dead.
You're getting downvoted for being right.
You see this readily on Lemmy.
I can be like, "I'm definitely pro-access to hormone treatments in most circumstances for adults, but I still think having transitioning a person's sex is a big decision, should be made cautiously, and can have lasting psychological effects." And I'll get 100+ down votes.
The reason you get downvoted is because its, in your case likely unwitting, concern trolling.
It is nobody's decision but the person receiving treatment.
While it's important that people are fully informed of the risks and potential downsides associated, the specific wording of the talking point you are repeating is designed to infantalize and remove the option under the guise of "caution".
Ironically this is a perfect example of how liberals end up supporting conservative and/or fascist policies.
You just can't help yourself.
Correct, societal problem require group effort and you're pulling the wrong way.
You just can help instead.
Maybe because it's a disingenuous and ignorant defense that plays into the right's framing that "their transing the kids", ignores the reality of 'de-transitioners', sows doubt on puberty blockers, and is just the casual whitewashed version that is used to make the more controlling legislation palatable.
Like why should you get "close enough" points for this take on Lemmy of all places.
Thank you for demonstrating the point in the most predictable way possible.
Thank you for not engaging with a single part of the actual argument.
That's the thing: that sounds reasonable until you take 5 minutes to research and find that there are already a fuck ton of roadblocks and checks in place to make sure it's what they want and the best option. That statement is either made in bad faith or in ignorance. A trans person trying to get access to surgery and a woman trying to have her uterus removed have similar, but unique, levels of difficulty.
Pretending anyone can make that choice on a Tuesday and undergo serious surgery on a Wednesday is either super ignorant or a bad actor. You can't even do that shit for normal healthcare procedures.
But the viral right found its token examples, and those examples became the face of an entire problem that didn't exist.
Because your position is forcing children to endure the wrong puberty.
And your purity position is that a Nazi in power that threatens everyone is better than "not perfect".
Your policy results in trans kids committing suicide. And it's why you want it so bad.
I mean, just because you pretend you were subtle here doesn't mean you're not still admitting to being transphobic and mad you cannot get away with it scot free.