cross-posted from: https://lemmy.radio/post/13183659
If only progressives were as good at voting in primaries as we are at snarky memes...
this post was submitted on 06 May 2026
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Ah yes, I should have voted in the primary we totally had for Kamala! Or that one right before that one that totally happened with just Biden on the ticket! That was clearly my bad. Maybe I'll have two choices next time and I'll vote extra hard, just for you.
Or in a state that's either too early or too late in the cycle for the dnc to care about when it comes to primary and cacuse results.
My state has our primaries in fucking AUGUST. Nobody gives a shit about us.
Hey, if that was your first primary, fair. You might not be old enough to remember but there were primaries in 2016 and 2020 and while very good at being condescending online, progressives still didn't show up to vote.
The ones the DNC admitted in court that they rigged and it's fine because they've never needed to be legally honest with the public?
Those one's?
Way to assume that I'm some child because you can't grasp how American politics works, and how rigged it is against us. I've voted Dem my whole life and we do have progressive candidates out in our state legislature where my voice actually gets heard (and even that is flawed and limited to two parties as well).
Anyway, did you know each of our states only gets two senators? My home state of Massachusetts gets the same number of Senators as California (which has over double the population of Ontario) and Wyoming (which has under half the population of Saskatchewan).
Well, out of the two of us, you either forgot about 2/3 of the last the last elections or chose to ignore then because you knew they disproved your point.
And yes, the Senators is a weird thing but on the other hand, imagine how powerful progressive Senators could be if only progressives voted!
Fwiw, the usual and more striking comparison for California and Canada is that California has almost as many people as all of Canada.
Well, out of the two of us, you either forgot about 2/3 of the last the last elections or chose to ignore then because you knew they disproved your point.
Says you.
And yes, the Senators is a weird thing but on the other hand, imagine how powerful progressive Senators could be if only progressives voted!
I'll rally the progressive cattle that outnumber humans in Wyoming and travel to the great Mormon state of Utah and pitch my case, post-haste! /s
Fwiw, the usual and more striking comparison for California and Canada is that California has almost as many people as all of Canada
Which is why you should really reconsider how lacking your understanding is. I'm comparing states and provinces and the whole country of Canada can't even match. You think California runs the federal government?
Says you.
??? Okay, I'm so curious, what's the third option? You didn't forget the other elections, you didn't neglect to mention them because they were counter to your point but instead....?
Can't wait for them to push Gruesome Newsom on us and tell us to take it. I'll be honest, I'll probably abstain at that point, I'm not voting another fascist in.
Considering my state will go to conservatives no matter who I vote for, I'm just gonna keep voting third party for whoever the leftmost candidate I can find is that's at least write in eligible.
Pointing that out before the 2024 elections on lemmy caused many witch hunts and attacks from those amazed anyone could possibly consider not voting dem.
Evolution is a tricky concept -- all that incremental improvement.
Except a vote for newsom is also for what 5 steps backwards as he's fully on board for most of the GOP platform?
Incrementalism in politics moves rights, never left
Incrementally moving right isn't an improvement.
This would make a better point if the current administration wasn’t dismantling the government, stripping rights, and abducting people in the streets.
People may not want to hear this but not everyone is ready to replace the whole system at once and incremental progress is probably the best way to make gains. Revolutions don’t always end with a government based on the ideals that started them.
That's the joke. Charlie always tries to kick the football.
I think it misses the point that while previous rhetoric may have been overblown what we are seeing now is at a different level.
I don't think it misses that point because that context is irrelevant and outside the bounds of this meme. Charlie will try to kick the football. Progressives will vote for Democrats. Democrats will remain an institutionalist and incrementalist party. Corporate Donors will change their handjob gloves to match whatever party is in power.
Ah, might as well just give up then
You can do what you want but that is not the point of the comic.
Incrementalism is a tool of the fascist to prevent actual change. This results in incremental fascism, democrats have said for decades that progress takes time. Yet here we are having the same conversations about wages, income inequality, housing, and basic needs as they did 200 years ago.
I don’t think the current facists in charge are doing it incrementally. You don’t acknowledge any changes or improvements over the last 200 years due to incremental progressivism?
Slavery took a civil war but women’s rights, gay rights, minimum wage, social safety nets (granted not at the level they should be), etc. I’d argue there has been lots of progress. If anything, the last 10 years have shown that getting discouraged by imperfect progress and not voting (even for the lesser evil, who do sometimes surprise us) can lead to very quick backslides. We’ve literally lost rights and baked in harder obstacles to progress by not choosing the lesser evil when that is the only realistic choice. I’m discounting revolution there because again it doesn’t always end how it starts
I don’t think the current facists in charge are doing it incrementally.
Yeah. Funny how incrementalism isn't the only way to accomplish things. But it's a great way to not accomplish them.
Slavery took a civil war but women’s rights, gay rights, minimum wage, social safety nets (granted not at the level they should be), etc. I’d argue there has been lots of progress.
There has been progress. And incrementalists love to take credit for it because they have none of their own. Women's rights took a constitutional amendment, you can't creep up on those incrementally. Roe v. Wade was a court case. Also not incremental. Minimum wage was instituted as part of the New Deal. FDR was not an incrementalist. Same with social safety nets. Those were part of the New Deal and Great Society plans, which again, were not incrementalist. But the Clinton-era welfare "reform" that surrendered to the racist "welfare queens" rhetoric of the Reagan era was incrementalist.
If anything, the last 10 years have shown that getting discouraged by imperfect progress and not voting (even for the lesser evil, who do sometimes surprise us) can lead to very quick backslides.
Then the party shouldn't have stymied progress and called it "incrementalism".
We’ve literally lost rights and baked in harder obstacles to progress by not choosing the lesser evil when that is the only realistic choice.
We lost those rights because the party thought second worst was good enough to win.
I’m not sure what your definition of incrementalism is. A law passing or court ruling on a single issue is not but a reform of a law is?
My point was not defending some ill-defined “incrementalism” but to just say that all issues won’t get addressed at once. Look at the ACA, watered down and not enough but it did get millions of people insurance. It took so much political capital to get it in that form and it still became a beating stick for the Right for decades. It’s a ad campaign against billionaires that’s needed for anything expanding the government.
People don’t want to vote for anyone who can’t move a mountain in less than 4 years, or in this case someone who can’t move a hundred mountains.
I’m not sure what your definition of incrementalism is.
It's what centrists call doing nothing while everything slides to the right. They pretend it's a virtue.
Look at the ACA, watered down and not enough but it did get millions of people insurance.
It was 15 years ago. How much longer are we gonna coast on a less generous version of a Heritage Foundation policy that manages to keep getting worse every year?
People don’t want to vote for anyone who can’t move a mountain in less than 4 years
I don't know about others, but I got pretty fucking jaded about democrats' claims that everything they do has to happen on a geologic time scale when they snapped to attention to give Netanyahu what he wanted immediately, and without the holy Parliamentarian's approval.
Our current conditions were a result of small incremental changes.
Oh look, it’s the Genocide Joe squad that got us into this fucking mess.