The ruling class of America sees the mayoral elections of Mamdani and Wilson as more dangerous and threatening than Trump and MAGA.
That’s why they’ve been fighting socialist and communist ideology for over 100 years. It would give us real power in politics and they would lose the privileges afforded to them by the status quo.
Watching the Mamdani election play out was wild. Seeing the biggest challenge being 2 people from the same side argue and talk crap for months was disgusting. Siding with Trump on top of it all because of how scared they were. They were so desperate they had no choice but to not even pretend anymore, like when Biden magically started winning against Bernie in 2020. The next 10 years will be even weirder as more people catch on.
Billionaires plan is now: it’s an IMMEDIATE THREAT IF VOTERS JOIN THE DEMS
the will do everything in their power (like this meme) to drive you away
Democrats cannot be trusted. They will betray everyone as we have just seen with the government closure vote
How can you blame the entire party for the actions of a few? Most Democrats, establishment and otherwise, seem really upset by what those senators have done
You used exactly the right word: “seem”
They’ll send a sternly worded letter to other members of Congress
Is specifically selected members of Congress that were not seeking the election so they can distance themselves from the entire vote, they can say, look what they did. We wanted nothing to do with it.
How can you blame the entire party for the actions of a few?
Because it’s always just enough.
Most Democrats, establishment and otherwise, seem really upset by what those senators have done
You seem way more upset at anyone who suggests that politicians aren’t being honest in the face of massive pushback.
I don’t support the GOP, but the statement could be adjusted for them as well.
Only Sith deal in absolutes.
They’re arguing against absolutes, like that sithy quote itself.
Removed by mod
billionaires fund democrats too lmao
the fact that so many people (and presumably you) think “voting for the lesser evil” is the end all be all of political engagement is perhaps one of the bourgeoisie’s greatest victories
Yeah it’s fucking wild that people are defending neoliberals so hard as if neoliberals didn’t just dick the whole shutdown.
deleted by creator
Same energy as the Fox News classic “you complain about police violence but you never complain about gang violence”.
It’s the same picture.
One of them are wolves in sheep clothing. The other are just wolves, period.
You know to shoot the wolves.
8 Senators don’t vote the way you want and now EVERY Democrat is a fascist.
Embarrassing childish fucking nonsense.
And they just happened to be people retiring, convenient, no way this is with the blessing of Schumer and the DNC…
I have a bridge to sell you.
8 Senators don’t vote the way you want and now EVERY Democrat is a fascist.
8 senators vote the way you want and now you’re calling anyone who doesn’t love it a child. Standard centrist.
Amazing how they blame us for telling the truth and then lie to us and say we’re the morons.
So they’ll be called out by their Democrats in Congress, right?
And recalled soon too, right?
Or will they stay in office as they fuck over us by giving into Republicans? Putting my money on that one, personally.
you read a different meme than I did
Liberals will read any meme that calls them out and then hate progressives more.
Scratch a liberal…
The DNC and Dem leadership are the guard dogs of Fascism. The rest don’t matter.
“Lap dogs” might be more accurate.
Man, Russian propaganda really did a number on your country
US politics is a result of US propaganda
[re-commenting with no instance shaming]
Every Marxist-Leninist user
Reform is a tool deployed by the oligarchy to stay in power. It stops progress and results in incremental fascism disguised as a lesser evil. Reform gives the illusion that voters have a part in deciding political outcomes despite several studies showing voters have zero influence in politicians and their policies.
Cool cool, so why does voting vs not voting matter? What actionable alternatives would you suggest and why do those preclude checking a box on a piece of paper?
I’d argue that even an illusory vote has value as a public barometer. If 80% of a voter base is consistently voting against the incumbent party it tells you way more about their discontent than 80% not showing up.
You’re correct about that. In a chapter titled, Should We Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?, Lenin argues that there are a number of reasons why communists ought to participate in elections even if they aren’t an effective means of implementing change.
As you mentioned, elections can be useful for a public barometer, they can also be useful for promoting ideas, they can be used to test potential leaders for opportunism, etc.
The caveat is that those goals are only really useful in the context of an actual communist party. It doesn’t really do us any good to know that people are dissatisfied with the current ruling party if they just support a different bourgeois party. It undermines the ideas we’re trying to promote if we just sheepdog people back into the fold of incrementalism and lesser-evilism and having faith in the system. And it does us little good to test “leaders” who are already avowed anti-communists.
All of which is to say, there are reasons to participate in US elections, but not through the democrats, rather through a third party that actually stands for what we’re trying to promote, like PSL.
Really, the main reason that Lenin argues for participation in electoralism is for the sake of reaching people where they’re at in order to encourage them to pursue other, more useful approaches, such as strikes.
I appreciate the response, thanks for the perspective. From my view, I rarely see this line of reasoning in the wild. The “participation” in elections begins and ends with “Both parties bad. Vote for [the nebulous idea of] a third party”. In my opinion, if you can’t give a concrete name and put in enough effort to get it on the ballot then you’re not actually participating.
As a example: I heard complete silence from this portion of the left during the NYC mayoral race/Mamdani’s campaign. No mention of (let alone stumping for) a more progressive alternative. Now with his win, there’s no discussion about parlaying that turnout into other elections. Only attacks on his international politics (not sure why that matters for a mayor) or projected future failure.
Nothing about that approach indicates any good faith engagement with progressive politics in the electoral space. In that sense it’s completely indistinguishable from the right’s suppression and defeatism.
From my view, I rarely see this line of reasoning in the wild
As a example: I heard complete silence from this portion of the left during the NYC mayoral race/Mamdani’s campaign. No mention of (let alone stumping for) a more progressive alternative.
I’ve seen quite a bit of discussion about this, personally. Here is a thread on Hexbear from a week ago with people arguing back and forth over this point. And if you search “Zohran” you’ll find plenty of comments celebrating his win.
Only attacks on his international politics (not sure why that matters for a mayor)
It doesn’t really matter that much as a mayor, but it does matter somewhat if he’s treated as a leader, representing ideas beyond his official capacity. And that sort of thing is why Marxist participate in electoralism in the first place.
It’s a complicated issue.
Another Rosa Luxemburg fan I see. She spoke the gospel.
Reform is a tool deployed by the oligarchy to stay in power.
Its a political relief valve to limit the scope of corruption and the degree to which the public experiences pain. If you’re in the corona of folks who enjoy relief via reform, it is often enough to quell your desire to overthrow the system. If you’re not, it costs you support - often along ethnic or regional lines - in a way that divides your neighbors against you.
Reform gives the illusion that voters have a part in deciding political outcomes
Voters are deciding political outcomes. Large waves of angry voters do change policies by forcing the government leadership into a reform cycle. This is often preferable to violent confrontations between an increasingly unpopular state leadership and growing crowds of dissidents.
Reform isn’t an illusion. It has material consequences for a subset of the angry populace. Soothing this populace and winning them back to the establishment’s side is why reforms work as a mitigation of revolution.
The illusion is in the belief that reforms aren’t necessary. Government leadership pumped up on its own hubris will often exceed the limits of the institutional system and undermine their function. Because reform requires appeasing people outside your immediate interest groups, they can often be characterized as an act of weakness rather than a strategic concession. And leadership that relies on the impression of strength (and the overt displays of brutality) can abandon reform as a vehicle for tempering hostility to policy changes, leading to revolutionary movements.
studies showing voters have zero influence in politicians and their policies
Studies have shown a large gap between public opinion and public policy. What these studies regularly neglect is the popular rejection of ostensibly favorable public policy, often in the wake of a short term media campaign or sudden economic shift, which temporarily change their historically stated positions.
Consent can and does get manufactured. And this consent is reflected in subsequent election results.
No rational or decent person ever refused to vote against Republicans in swing states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States
The issue isn’t one of rationality or decency. The issue is of exhausting a constituency with barriers and terrorizing them with criminal liability while controlling the privatized mechanism for counting votes
At some point, its two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner. “No harm in voting” totally misses the problem at hand.
So what you’re saying is that you already have every “rational and decent person” voting against Republicans every election and that’s not enough to win.
That’s the joke, yeah. I can explain the reality if you want though.
Nothing lost by protest voting then
Honest my ass. They lie almost as much as their orange hogfather
I don’t vote for Republicans. Never have, never will. I do engage with Democrats, and tell them my needs and expectations.
Which they promptly ignore
Yeah, I try to vote for the progressive during primaries too.
Some years ago I concluded that in my own value framework, Hypocrisy was one of the greatest sins, just short of things like purposefully harming others for fun.
So yeah, an honest greedy fucker who doesn’t hide they don’t give a rat’s arse about who they harm and how badly in the pursuit of their personal upside maximization is actually a better person (more precisely, a less bad person) than an hypocrite greedy fuck who won’t give a rat’s arse about who they harm and how badly in the pursuit of their personal upside maximization but try and pass themselves as caring and nice.
You see, they’re both doing nasty things to others for personal gain, but the latter is poisoning the well of trust and by hiding their true nature manages to do far more harm than the former before people catch on to it and stop it.
Further, as far as I know there is no positive reason to use hypocrisy: it’s only ever used to hide evil intent.
I suspect that alll in all hypocrites do a lot more harm to others than people who are just openly selfish.
That said, in the US Republicans too are hypocrites - notice how they promised all sorts of good things to people like farmers and then did the opposite.
Hypocrisy seems to be a general problem of big party politics.
If Dems are so bad then why did they shutdown the government to save ACA.
Oops someone didn’t hear the senate passed the budget with the ACA cuts.
Hey hey hey! The crossed the aisle to create a historic bipartisan agreement to reopen it!
Checks notes: ah yes, see? Brilliant negotiations! The gop got everything, and the dems got assurance that they will have a vote on the aca benefits! I mean, the vote will just be no, but come on, what skill! Truly, no one could have squeeze more from the deal!
the repubs got more than their initial ask: delta 8 THC is outlawed and now states cannot use alternative funding to pay out SNAP benefits in the future when this inevitably happens again.
I wait… what???
The dems are truly masters of the art of the deal. All it took was a little bit of immiseration and they got some votes and an excuse to let the republicans set up their plan to cut welfare. They didn’t even have to miss thanksgiving.
That news disagrees with their dogma, so it’s fake news.
They didn’t shut down government to save the ACA, they shut down government to win a couple of elections. Thousands of federal employees went over a month without pay so they could win a couple of elections. They denied SNAP benefits to 42,000 people so they could win a couple of elections. And now that those elections are over, they have voted to reopen government with absolutely none of their demands being met.
And Bernie Sanders can go fuck himself. He is nothing but a sheep dog to the fascist oligarchy
What is it you do like? You seem to hate everything
Just Democrats and Republicans. Mostly Democrats Because Republicans don’t pretend to care. Democrats will call themselves an ally while embracing you as they shove a knife in your back. Anyone paying half attention would realize that Democrats cannot be trusted.
You’re not the person I asked unless you forgot to switch alts, but you also didn’t answer the question. What is it you (and the other guy) do like?
Seeing that you are in a communist space what do you think we would like? Communists dont support liberals or thier red fascist counterparts. And liberals would rather defend fascism than support the working class
Because they shutdown the government because people were clamoring for some semblance of resistance, and there was an election coming up. They capitulated as soon as they could after the polls closed.
Removed by mod
deleted by creator
What a stupid take.
If a bar has Nazis, it’s a Nazi bar. If the Dems are collaborating with Nazis, as this latest move certainly makes it seem, then they are also Nazis.
Even between Nazis there are levels. You wouldn’t put Hitler and some german citizen that voted for him at the same level, both suck but are not the same.
Democrats have definitely shown to not be as bad as Republicans. The system is broken but you can choose to say “It’s all the same, so I won’t do shit” or you can choose to acknowledge that even within this shitty system, there are better and worse options.
They might not be on the same level but I still wouldn’t vote for someone who supported Hitler. This lesser-evilism is literally how Hitler came to power in the first place, the social democrats supported Hindenburg for president as a lesser evil to stop Hitler and then Hindenburg just appointed Hitler as chancellor anyway.
I’m not saying to vote for the next Democrat puppet. I’m saying that pretending that democrats are the same or worse than republicans is a ridiculous claim. I’m all for something sane that breaks us out of this shit.
You wouldn’t put Hitler and some german citizen that voted for him at the same level, both suck but are not the same.
democrats are long past the “some german citizen that voted for him” stage. They are very firmly in “vidkun quisling” territory.
Yes, I would put a citizen who voted for Hitler on the same level as him. A Nazi is a Nazi.
Okay, stupid take in my opinion ¯_(ツ)_/¯
And it sounds to me like you’re defending Nazis.
Two sides of the same coin.
Funny republicans saying I’m helping Democrats when I write in a name or vote for a third party.Democrats say I am helping the Republicans. Truth is George Washington was right. Political Parties have corrupted our nation. I’m surprised that we’ve lasted this long.
