I was trying to think about why today has significance, and then it hit. History may not repeat, but it rhymes.
Today, U.S. voters determine the future direction of the entire world. We shouldn’t have this power, but that is irrelevant. Do we explore the world of authoritarianism, with major powers all falling under despots, or do we stand alone?
There is no way to overstate the stakes here. This is not hyperbole; this is simply the truth.
There’s only one thing you can do. This election is not about you (though you count); it is about what we leave to posterity. An unlivable world? Permanent oligarchy? For those with kids or those who want them, do you want them to grow up with clean air and water?
And do not do this third-party shit. We got Bush instead of Gore because of 700 votes for Nader in Florida. Harris isn’t perfect, but don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. A vote for Stein is a vote for Trump unless you’re in a ranked-choice locale.
Yes, we have a broken system, but now is not the time to lament it by further fucking things up. We can eventually have that conversation as a nation, but in the '90s, when I lived in Germany, it was still considered gauche to be proud to be German. Is that the 50 years you want going forward here?
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As a Canadian I have to deal with this rise of authoritarian BS too. Whatever America does, Canadians try to emulate. I really hope we can look back at this event as a very shitty footnote in American politics that we all can have a nervous laugh at in 50 years.
I could be facing recency bias, but it certainly feels like ever since the rise of Trump, politicians have gotten a lot more bold when it comes to authoritarian/nazi like policy. We’re personally dealing with our provincial governments trying to push for privatized health care, the stripping of environmental protections, and much more.
Not to take away from the importance of voting Harris today (or hopefully, prior to today), but this:
We can eventually have that conversation as a nation, but in the '90s, when I lived in Germany, it was still considered gauche to be proud to be German. Is that the 50 years you want going forward here?
feels out of touch. It’s already gauche in most progressive circles to be proud to be American (What are you proud of? The settler-colonialism? The Imperialism? The choice to back genocide? The still-haven’t-abolished-slavery-ism?). Lots of us know that this supposed “eventual” conversation will never actually come. We’re never going to get the country to move to RCV or abolish the electoral college, if we forever stick to the parties who directly benefit from the status quo.
Vote Harris today if you can, people, because it’s too late for anything else this cycle, but we have to stop this spiraling descent rightwards by adhering to a party that would rather lose Leftists than “Centrists”. As people who care about social justice and progressive politics, we should be abhorred that our platform is palatable enough to Dick The-Fucking-War-Criminal Cheney to get his endorsement.
For every person claiming that we’ll eventually totally have the conversation about the party platform, there’s another Centrist Democrat who is saying, “No, actually, the party doesn’t need to move leftwards… It’s always been a lesser of 2 evils choice… Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good by drawing hard lines like not supporting genocide…”.
Republicans unshackled themselves from their Centrist arm of “respectable” anti-social-justice goons to fully embrace their white supremacism in the open, and those goons have now taken up residence in the Democratic Party in response.
If we’re just fundamentally unwilling to consider unshackling ourselves from them, we’re never going to stop the rightward-shift happening now. We didn’t move Leftwards in the 60s because our politicians led us there, people protested and rioted and made people uncomfortable until they acquiesced and got off their asses. And unless Citizen’s United gets overturned, that route isn’t going to work within the Democratic Party, because the police are now powerful enough to keep protesters from actually making politicians feel uncomfortable enough to choose their constituents over their corporate donors.
At the risk of not be(e)ing kind, unless you can give me a timeframe for when “eventually” is, you are part of the problem, providing cover and excuses for our rightward shift as a country.
We got Bush instead of Gore because of 700 votes for Nader in Florida.
No, Gore likely had more votes (if they had performed a statewide recount). We had Bush (and Cheney the now-Democrat) because SCOTUS stepped in to stop the recounts, and the Democratic Party chose to “keep the peace” instead of fighting it. Just like they will every time.
A vote for Stein is not a vote for Trump if you live in any solid blue or red state.
How is Bush the counterexample reason to vote for Harris while she is actively campaigning with Dick Cheney?
We can eventually have that conversation as a nation
That’s a good way to describe the last 50 years of American politics…
Cheney, for as much of a tool as he may be, at least hasn’t shown himself to be fully engulfed in the maga cult and recognizes that allowing Trump into power is a legitimate threat to the entire system. It’s less of an endorsement of Harris and more a rejection of Trump.
Edit: To touch on the ‘eventually’ aspect. I don’t want it to sound like an excusing of the slow pace of change in our modern world, but put into context that the USA is, by global comparison, a young nation. Look at the time spans that nations in Asia or Europe have existed by comparison and the length of time it took to change their ways, often through drastic social upheaval. In comparison the gains in social equalities here have come at a rapid pace in the past century. For a place founded in violence and oppression where it was originally codified law that only white landowning males where of consequences we’ve made some notable improvements in the span of a few generations. As it stands today we’re in a space where there are people legitimately clamoring for a second civil war due to the inability to find consensus on any number of issues. So many things that are common sense to the rest of the world are considered alien here, deemed ‘un-american’. As we move along the road people come around to these ‘radical’ ideals, but it often takes a generation for them to become the norm.
that allowing Trump into power is a legitimate threat to the entire system.
If only… That’s literally what he is campaigning on and honestly I can not believe people are still unironically and uncritically repeating this after his administration in 2016.
Look at the time spans that nations in Asia or Europe have existed by comparison and the length of time it took to change their ways, often through drastic social upheaval. In comparison the gains in social equalities here have come at a rapid pace in the past century.
I would caution against such sweeping generalizations about world history. Yes, some nations have existed for looooong periods of time relatively coherently, but that isn’t typical and “progress” isn’t a one way street. Within the lifetime of the US, hell within the last century, there are countless examples of those “social equalities” moving significantly faster, and in both directions.
Also I can’t quite tell what you are trying to get at with the historical side tangent. Could you clarify?
The historical bit is just looking at things in a longer term context. It’s a challenge for people, particularly at a younger age, to consider things in a view that goes beyond a single lifetime. In the past roughly 100 years we have gone from ‘man will never fly’ to being able to have this conversation on servers across the globe. Women getting a vote. Schools and entire societies being segregated by race. From as recent as my youth when being gay was a punchline to the LGBT community largely being not only accepted but actively supported.
There are losses here and again of course, but in a grand scheme view society has made notable progress. Maybe just a bit of frustration over the recent weeks with the ‘nothing ever changes’ mantra that seems so popular.
Ironically my response was fueled by my frustration with that same mantra, lol.
I’m glad you asked actually, because I’ve been seeing a trend for the last few years and I think it explains the shift that people have been pointing out in the Democratic party. The way in which many Democrats felt railroaded into Hillary in 2016, I think the same is happening to the Republican party, albeit more unknowingly. There is a not insignificant amount of Republicans who have been disenfranchised from voting red because that’s just what you do. It all comes down to the Republican party being split by the MAGA cult, with those Republican voters wanting to return back to the status quo of red vs. blue. Of course what they don’t realize is that the culture war that the conservatives have been imposing is what created this whole situation in the first place.
Anyway, this is where Dick Cheney comes in. Yes, a representative of that culture war that brought us here, but not a MAGA cultist. An endorsement from one of the most recognized Republicans is an attempt to move back towards the classical conservatism, away from the clamoring fervor that the Trump presidency put the country in. Remember that the stock market is important to these voters (and his donors), and Trump had everything set up in his favor and still squandered it. Corporate America does not want a repeat of this and despite polling and the media playing everything up, I personally don’t think the MAGA voters will have enough voting power.
That is to say, if the Green Party is meant to siphon votes from Democrats, The Classical Republican Dick Cheney is meant to appeal to the votes from Moderate Republicans and maybe convince some Republican voters who would have voted red “because that’s what you do”, to instead vote for Kamala.
This isn’t to say his endorsement of her isn’t damning and that the leaders of the Democratic haven’t been shifting away from the left. Just positing that like many of us, there’s a portion of Republicans out there who are just as tired. There are still far, far too many who seem like a lost cause, but it’s easy to forget that just because they’re Republican’s does not mean they are MAGA, so hopefully we see the results of that this election.
Additionally, Trump was the figurehead. I realistically do not see someone being able to replace him, and I do not entirely see Trump supporters moving on from him to some other political figure. The are so many people who vote for him because he was a reality TV businessman, because of his personality, quite literally a parasocial relationship with the president. Even if Trump endorsed someone else, I would be somewhat surprised if it were effective. At the very least, it will need lots of pushing from FOX Entertainment News.
I think you are spot on with explaining the perspective of the Democratic party campaign strategists, but I would push back on some of those points.
Remember that the stock market is important to these voters (and his donors), and Trump had everything set up in his favor and still squandered it.
I don’t think they see it that way and honestly using the same “objective” metrics, removing 2020-2021 due to COVID being a major outlier, there isn’t much difference between the Trump and Biden presidencies from an “economic perspective”. If you include 2020-2021 it looks like Trump “squandered it” and Biden had “unprecedented growth” but it’s really a story of outliers and how they can be manipulated to tell whatever story you want.
It’s also needs to be said that those “objective” metrics have/are becoming increasingly divorced from “objective” reality but that’s a conversation for a different thread…
Corporate America does not want a repeat of this
Trump was great for Corporate America, Biden has been even better. The MAGA propaganda is that ‘Trump really stuck it to corporate America and was actively working against their interests’ or ‘he might suck but at least he’s hitting the corporations where it hurts them most’ but I really haven’t seen any good evidence for any of that (see the point above). If you’ve got some counter evidence to share I’d be interested.
convince some Republican voters who would have voted red “because that’s what you do”, to instead vote for Kamala.
But they won’t any more than you’ll convince many Democrats to vote for Trump. Those voters that the Harris campaign is targeting will be voting Libertarian, Green or (mostly) “holding their nose” and voting Trump.
Honestly, one of my biggest annoyances surrounding the Nader spoiler controversy is the assumption that all votes would’ve gone to Gore where the evidence does not support that conclusion and it’s subsequent use as a cudgel to support duopoly instead of the more accurate warning of what happens when you sacrifice your voting block to pander to the other half of the duopoly.
it’s easy to forget that just because they’re Republican’s does not mean they are MAGA
You’re right, and within that context it may be useful to use the self identify method the house tepublicans use (“the House Freedom Caucus, the Republican Study Committee, the Main Street Caucus, the Republican Governance Group”) to discuss who “is MAGA”, who Harris is pandering to and play the fun game of ‘which of those 5 groups is the lesser evil?’ and look at the ven diagram between those…
Voting is one (important) part of what you need to do if you’re an American.
Do what you can outside of elections as well, like writing to your representatives, getting involved in local politics (it matters!), and attending protests/marches.
And pushing for a better system to break out of this mess. !rcv@ponder.cat
Let’s see this madness ended today. My daughter’s will not be handmaidens, my young son will not grow up learning hate. As a child I was told our generation will fix the problems of the past and that assignment is long past it’s due date.
Well, if those in power were willing to step aside for a new generation, we might have been able to do something. We were told we could do anything … except apparently participate in government at the federal level until they’re dead and AARP is coming for us. At which point, we’re the out-of-touch old people.
Well at least I got a sticker out of the deal
Covfefe, treason and plot
A vote for Stein is a vote for Trump unless you’re in a ranked-choice locale.
unless your in NC and voting for josh stein, who’s actually pretty great.
I’ve honestly just been trying to keep my head up and hope for the best. I talk to the people in my life, encourage them to vote, share my political opinions where I can, but I’m ready for this election cycle to end already. I’m sick of worrying if I’m going to have to flee the country some time in the next year to avoid ending up in some sort of camp or just lose access to medications and legal protections. I’m ready to have a solid Democrat that I’m maybe mildly annoyed with for the next 4-8 years and try to drag them further to the left rather than this danger mode existential horror shit.
I feel like enough Americans are in the same boat or similar boats that we’ve got this, but it sure is tense waiting to find out.
The “solid Democrats” of the last 4+ years have been putting people into
camps~migrant detention centers, prisons, enhanced interregation facilities, any other euphemism for camp that doesn’t come with the same baggage~, stripping legal protections and significantly reducing access to medications.The “existential horror shit” does not stop with this election, regardless of outcome.
