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It's because my analysis of the parties extends beyond "what does the party do and what are the end results". You're right, the GOP causes more harm in the absolute sense than the Democrats. No question about it. But the GOP is a party of mostly rich white people that pursues policy good for rich white people. The Democrats are ostensibly the party of labor, social equality, etc. and yet they pursue an agenda that serves only rich white people. This betrayal will always make them more "evil" in a moral sense, and every time they stab the dreamers in the back, or rig primaries to fight populist sentiment they firmly entrench themselves there.
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May 3, 2018 00:47
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You see if you're really dumb, it's actually the opposite of what you think. Makes you think.
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May 3, 2018 00:53
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Traitors are worse than the enemy, hth you don't get mad at a dog who bites a child, you get mad at the adults who brought the dog into the room and screamed "if you don't vote for us this vicious dog will bite them!"
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May 3, 2018 00:53
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Grimdude posted:Wait, I was under the assumption that everyone in here knew the Republican party was objectively the "greater evil" when referring to "lesser of two evils" voting. This whole discussion was about whether voting for Dems just because they aren't as bad is a good idea, right? Like, just LO goddamn L if you breathe oxygen in the year 2018 and type what you did. I mean, if you can manage the rest of the sentence before your mind explodes: quote:because the co-opt all the political energy for change from the disenfranchised in the country and use it to further entrench our oligarchy I think it makes the point fairly clearly? That the existence of the democratic party and the effort they usurp from better causes and ultimately squander on not doing what is needed to help people, is a greater threat to the chance of building a good future than the actual regressives, because it's the democrats that serve as the prime enablers of their policies by preventing them from being effectively fought. The two parties are both part of the same problem, both merely two methods of ensuring that control of the country is never in the hands of those it should be and will always serve the interests of the wealthiest and the powerful at the expense of everyone else.
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May 3, 2018 00:59
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Ytlaya posted:This is the same argument people used to claim that Bernie Sanders would have been worse for black people than Hillary Clinton. That's a whole lot of words to say "yes I think I'm smarter and blaming the voters implicitly for not being as informed, but I'm not going to explicitly say other people are dumb because that would be gauche" I think the core of the democratic party makes the practical decision that the Dems are the best realistic option. I get that idea from talking to people who are political actvists, or in the groups in question, be it women, minorities, LGBT, etc. People would love to have better options but it's very reasonable to vote the way they do. I'm traking you and others to task for saying you're against blaming voters and making GBS threads on them, because you are. You're just not explicit. quote:edit: To be explicit, it's not like the majority of black women who vote Democratic have somehow happened upon the One True Perfect Ideology and that it's somehow racist to claim that there could be a flaw in the ideology of this specific demographic in 2018 (just like literally everyone's ideology probably has some flaws). Suggesting as such also implies some very problematic things, like any black leftists (or literally anyone who doesn't hold mainstream political views) being inherently wrong by virtue of not holding the majority view. It's fine to be a black person who votes for communists or whatever, and that's not at all problematic. My issue is specifically with the dipshit posters in this thread.
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May 3, 2018 01:00
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This is some weird-rear end gaslighting you're doing. Like for real, just sitting there trying to badger people into saying black people are stupid or uninformed and then when that didn't work just acting like they said it anyway.
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May 3, 2018 01:14
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Oh Snapple! posted:This is some weird-rear end gaslighting you're doing. "I'm not going to judge people or blame them for voting a way" "Some people are just going to vote the way mainstream society says because it's mainstream, and I'm going berate as an idiot anyone who votes the same way but I will carefully avoid explicitly connecting those dots"
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May 3, 2018 01:31
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The entire reason I'm posting in this thread is that making GBS threads on people for voting lesser evil is really dumb and counter-productive. If people do it, they probably think they have pretty good reasons and it's not an insane or stupid thing to do. You can do your own thing but being such insufferable dicks about it is annoying me so here I am being an insufferable dick. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 3, 2018 01:33
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In what fantasy world are the people supposedly berating "lesser evil" voters in any way comparable in dickitude to "lesser evil" voters who literally go into a rage when someone implies that "lesser evil" isn't good enough. Particularly when the "lesser evil" voters being shat on are, specifically, the ones willing to sell out anything and everything as long as it gets a D elected. Not captive loving demographics.
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May 3, 2018 01:39
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pretty bog standard puppetmaster tone argument meltdown
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May 3, 2018 01:42
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Oh Snapple! posted:In what fantasy world are the people supposedly berating "lesser evil" voters in any way comparable in dickitude to "lesser evil" voters who literally go into a rage when someone implies that "lesser evil" isn't good enough. Oh it's the other guys who are bad. Got it. self unaware posted:pretty bog standard puppetmaster tone argument meltdown Hitlery would have nominated Federalist Society judges to enforce conversation therapy after reinstating Jim Crow.
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May 3, 2018 01:51
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self unaware makes good points, and I'm starting to see why Holocaust 2.0 is actually kew and good see, it doesn't matter how shallow the graves become so long as you didn't vote for the lesser of two evils in the first place, and furthermore Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 02:01 on May 3, 2018 |
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May 3, 2018 01:59
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I think perhaps the suggestion is that without the radical change that cannot come from the democrats, that outcome is inevitable, and at best delayed.
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May 3, 2018 02:10
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OwlFancier posted:I think perhaps the suggestion is that without the radical change that cannot come from the democrats, that outcome is inevitable, and at best delayed. I'm fine with revolutionary politics, it just feels like people are advocating for something in the middle, where 3rd parties somehow become viable without any effort through the power of just voting for them, and ignoring anything between now and that goal or actively berating it.
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May 3, 2018 02:12
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Jaxyon posted:where 3rd parties somehow become viable without any effort through the power of just voting for them it's like a strawman factory feel free to post anyone anywhere who's ever said that 3rd parties will become viable only by voting for them
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May 3, 2018 02:14
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Jaxyon posted:I'm fine with revolutionary politics, it just feels like people are advocating for something in the middle, where 3rd parties somehow become viable without any effort through the power of just voting for them, and ignoring anything between now and that goal or actively berating it. I mean, a third party is a possible path to that. The two party system is a big part of the problem and reducing votes for either of the two establishment parties will help undermine its validity. Even getting people to not vote can do that because a political system where almost nobody votes clearly has no legitimacy at all and will make people more open to alternatives. There's little more damaging to the prospect of revolutionary change either literally or figuratively than trying to restore faith in the establishment parties. That really can only have the effect of perpetuating the rottenness of the system. The republicans base isn't even wrong when it rails against the corruption of the democrats, it might be wrong about the specifics a lot of the time and it's certainly wrong when it ascribes any absence of such to the republican candidates but the sentiment is there and it's well founded. Working to divert that energy into something that really can "drain the swamp" in the sense of shattering the current system is something that should have good support among both leftists and just generally angry people. But the democratic brand surely isn't anything but toxic at this point. It's a party of historic failure and of extant corruption and lack of interest in the change people need. I don't see the desire to get people to devote their energies into salvaging it. That's the issue, it's not that democrats are a stopgap between now and then, they're actively contrary to ever getting to then because they're precisely the wrong direction. Hence why people get annoyed. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 02:22 on May 3, 2018 |
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May 3, 2018 02:16
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OwlFancier posted:I mean, a third party is a possible path to that. The two party system is a big part of the problem and reducing votes for either of the two establishment parties will help undermine its validity. Even getting people to not vote can do that because a political system where almost nobody votes clearly has no legitimacy at all and will make people more open to alternatives. There's little more damaging to the prospect of revolutionary change either literally or figuratively than trying to restore faith in the establishment parties. That really can only have the effect of perpetuating the rottenness of the system. The democratic brand isn't toxic at this point. That's simply not realistic, and the result of an echo chamber of message boards telling you that. And there's still the mushy middle ground here. Yes third parties are good. Yes we should be pushing for them. How do we get there, and what do we do in the between times? Making third parties viable is going to take a lot of work, and likely a bunch of years.
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May 3, 2018 02:27
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If it wasn't I don't think half the country would be not voting, nor would such a swathe of those most in need of a left wing government be voting for the republicans. You get there by working for it, the work you would waste on the democrats, the break you will have to make at some point. Work to promote them and trash the other parties, both of them. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 02:35 on May 3, 2018 |
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May 3, 2018 02:31
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Jaxyon posted:The democratic brand isn't toxic at this point. That's simply not realistic, and the result of an echo chamber of message boards telling you that. You look at any polls lately?
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May 3, 2018 02:41
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Established parties actively suppress third parties. Every time someone runs on their own ticket they get painted as crazies or dummies. The mainstream media serves D and R, not the voter. You may try to get around this argument by saying a small campaign isn't viable in the current system but *that* is the only way for such a movement to start. It has to start small and gradually accrue more people and influence. People who tell you it's your job to vote one way or for a lesser evil are the reason we don't have real debate. They prop up the system with their simple view of things, probably because they are reasonably comfortable with things the way they are. Plenty of affluent people like to pretend to be communists, for instance, but they wouldn't encourage a general strike or anything radical enough to shake things up. Lesser of two evils is just something the status quo folks hit you over the head with during election years. If you need healthcare, employment, a home/car NOW they tell you "vote for this party and wait". They don't have sympathy. If you died tomorrow and your corpse wasn't a useful prop, they'd act like you never existed at all.
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May 3, 2018 02:46
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You also have the option of political action outside the election, unionizing, striking, stuff that terrifies the democrats as much as the republicans. There are political activities that can immediately help people regardless of the state of the government. That's what got LGBT stuff to the place it's at, it sure as hell wasn't the democrats. You live in a profoundly anti government country so working with what you have is not the worst idea.
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May 3, 2018 02:50
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WampaLord posted:You look at any polls lately? Have you checked out the polling on socialist parties? OwlFancier posted:You also have the option of political action outside the election, unionizing, striking, stuff that terrifies the democrats as much as the republicans. There are political activities that can immediately help people regardless of the state of the government. That's what got LGBT stuff to the place it's at, it sure as hell wasn't the democrats. You live in a profoundly anti government country so working with what you have is not the worst idea. I'm all for doing stuff outside of voting, but I don't begrudge people voting lesser evils while doing those things.
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May 3, 2018 03:10
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WampaLord posted:You look at any polls lately? What you mean the opinion polls where they have a huge generic ballot lead or the actual, voting polls where they're winning everything that can be won?
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May 3, 2018 03:21
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Ogmius815 posted:What you mean the opinion polls where they have a huge generic ballot lead or the actual, voting polls where they're winning everything that can be won? I meant more like this: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-millennials/democrats-lose-ground-with-millennials-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN1I10YH quote:The online survey of more than 16,000 registered voters ages 18 to 34 shows their support for Democrats over Republicans for Congress slipped by about 9 percentage points over the past two years, to 46 percent overall. And they increasingly say the Republican Party is a better steward of the economy. But continue to miss the forest for the trees. As long as we win a slight majority in the 2018 midterms, nothing bad will ever happen again! There's nothing more after that, right? That's the last election ever? "Why care that we're losing the biggest upcoming demographic of voters?" - you and the Dem strategists.
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May 3, 2018 03:29
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Jaxyon posted:I'm all for doing stuff outside of voting, but I don't begrudge people voting lesser evils while doing those things. The point is, though, that in this case, the "voting lesser evil" is actively counterproductive. You have to pick one or the other, you can either support the democrats and the two party system or you can work to abolish it, you can't have both.
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May 3, 2018 03:37
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WampaLord posted:I meant more like this: If you read that whole article it's pretty easy to see that this is just another case of "white people are racist".
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May 3, 2018 04:34
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If you look at the actual data you'd see that first of all, their N is too small for several types of comparisons. You can't even see trends among Hispanic voters for that age range for insufficient observations, and for black voters the data doesn't go back to 2016, only 2017 African Americans age 18-34 since May of last year saw democratic support go from 74% to 54% and "will not vote" went from 2.4 to 13 and third party went from 2.5 to 9 http://polling.reuters.com/#poll/TM1212Y17/filters/PD1:1,SC_RACE:2,RESP_AGE:-4/dates/20170503-20180503/type/week There's not enough to see for other specific age brackets, for for African Americans overall support for democrats is at 69%, a 20 point difference. http://polling.reuters.com/#poll/TM1212Y17/filters/PD1:1,SC_RACE:2/dates/20170503-20180503/type/week
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May 3, 2018 06:07
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OwlFancier posted:The point is, though, that in this case, the "voting lesser evil" is actively counterproductive. You have to pick one or the other, you can either support the democrats and the two party system or you can work to abolish it, you can't have both. This is incorrect.
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May 3, 2018 09:25
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Potato Salad posted:This is incorrect. I'm pretty sure it's not. Supporting the two parties supports the system that enables them, the only way you're going to get rid of it is by getting rid of them.
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May 3, 2018 11:42
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Jaxyon posted:"I'm not going to judge people or blame them for voting a way" You missed the dot in the middle where you claim to be aware of more than the mainstream and yet are riding hard for that mainstream vote
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May 3, 2018 16:16
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OwlFancier posted:I think perhaps the suggestion is that without the radical change that cannot come from the democrats, that outcome is inevitable, and at best delayed. Well it's just a fact that if you take, for instance, gay marriage, the fact is even if a pure fascist gets into office in 2024 gay people will still have had a little more than a decade to be married and happy, and they wouldn't have had that at all if the GOP had kept power. That'll be rolled back, of course, and those marriage licenses might be used to terrorize or imprison them under a fascist regime. The moral calculus is kind of up in the air on that one.
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May 3, 2018 16:43
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Ogmius815 posted:If you read that whole article it's pretty easy to see that this is just another case of "white people are racist". Which do you think is more feasible - A) Convince white people to stop being racist B) Messaging your campaign in a way where you trick racist white people into voting for economic and social justice by providing them with a different scapegoat, the rich fucks who own everything To paraphrase a saying, you go to war with the voters you have, not the voters you want. I'm not sure there are enough "woke" white people in America to win an election, even if every single non-white person voted with them.
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May 3, 2018 17:18
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Reminder that while people in here are using minorities as props to threaten people into voting straight-ticket Democrat or Dems will let Republicans shoot the hostages, the real Democratic party just dragged an anti-gay anti-woman anti-Obamacare Democrat in a safe blue seat across the finish line by 1% over his pro-civil rights primary challenger. Literally the Democratic party could have put one more pro-minority vote in congress with zero risk and zero downsides, but decided to throw their support behind a misogynist gay-hatin bigot instead because he's a party man.
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May 3, 2018 17:25
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I wonder: if Dan Lipinski's marriage stances were reversed, and he were pro gay marriage, but anti-miscegenation, would lesser evilist posters demand that black people vote against civil rights for their own families because at least it's not a Republican doing it?
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May 3, 2018 17:30
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VitalSigns posted:Reminder that while people in here are using minorities as props to threaten people into voting straight-ticket Democrat or Dems will let Republicans shoot the hostages, the real Democratic party just dragged an anti-gay anti-woman anti-Obamacare Democrat in a safe blue seat across the finish line by 1% over his pro-civil rights primary challenger. He's barely even that considering he dragged on Pelosi herself and was against the ACA, which is one of the only legislative victories the Democrats can point to in the last decade.
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May 3, 2018 18:07
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Yeah I guess "party man" isn't the right term since he votes against the party all the time even on issues that are supposedly essential to being a Democrat. More like "ruling class loyalty", by backing him the Democrats showed they will not only happily throw minorities and women under the bus but also prefer not even being able to pass signature legislation to disappointing the oligarchs.
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May 3, 2018 18:23
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Jaxyon posted:That's a whole lot of words to say "yes I think I'm smarter and blaming the voters implicitly for not being as informed, but I'm not going to explicitly say other people are dumb because that would be gauche" Thinking other people are wrong about something does not in any way imply thinking they're "dumb." As I said, most people are always going to fall in line with some mainstream ideology - that is what makes said ideology mainstream in the first place. For most people, the only two "real" choices are mainstream Democrats and mainstream Republicans, because most people aren't "plugged into" politics enough to even be aware of much beyond that. Within this context, it makes perfect sense that most black Americans would go with the option that is less hostile towards them. The same thing is true for lower income Americans, who generally support mainstream Democrats (even though I'm sure you'd agree the radical left would be better for them). This is really not difficult to understand. As I mentioned before, your logic implies that Clinton would have been the best candidate for black Americans due to receiving more votes in the primary. It also implies a lot of other even more goofy things, like "the best ideology for X group" changing over time as public opinion changes. edit: Also, I don't even think voting Democratic in the general is wrong (it's still the strategy I think is best). I just think it's not obviously dumb or worthy of contempt when someone chooses not to vote. Oh Snapple! posted:This is some weird-rear end gaslighting you're doing. Yeah, you're being really weird Jaxyon. If you'd just take a step back for a second, the absurdly of your argument would become immediately obvious. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 18:46 on May 3, 2018 |
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May 3, 2018 18:32
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Further even if you do think someone is dumb, education is a societal responsibility, and if someone's education has failed them that in no way implies any blame should be applied to the individual. AND even if you do think we should apply blame, that's still pointless because it will accomplish nothing, and the real solution is to fix education.
twodot fucked around with this message at 19:26 on May 3, 2018 |
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May 3, 2018 18:37
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OwlFancier posted:I mean, a third party is a possible path to that. The two party system is a big part of the problem and reducing votes for either of the two establishment parties will help undermine its validity. Even getting people to not vote can do that because a political system where almost nobody votes clearly has no legitimacy at all and will make people more open to alternatives. There's little more damaging to the prospect of revolutionary change either literally or figuratively than trying to restore faith in the establishment parties. That really can only have the effect of perpetuating the rottenness of the system. That's one spin. Another is that it's tacit acceptance of the status quo; people vote when it matters / they want change. phasmid posted:Established parties actively suppress third parties. Every time someone runs on their own ticket they get painted as crazies or dummies. In the U.S., it's because they are crazy -- or at least political incompetitents. Anyone with any sense will nominally run as an R or D because party registration doesn't really matter. Neither Team R nor Team D has any real way of enforcing party discipline. If it makes you feel better, think of our system as functionally equivalent to the French system. We just call our first round of voting 'primaries.'
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May 3, 2018 21:28
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gaj70 posted:In the U.S., it's because they are crazy -- or at least political incompetitents. Anyone with any sense will nominally run as an R or D because party registration doesn't really matter. Neither Team R nor Team D has any real way of enforcing party discipline. There are lots of people that run for third parties in all levels, though. They're not ALL crazy, they just get railroaded by the status quo. The crazy ones get more media attention because they make anybody who isn't running either blue or red seem like fringes. As to the party discipline thing, again, that happens differently at all levels. At the national level we can see people being rewarded or chastised depending on how their efforts serve their party. Yeah, I see a lot of similarities between our (US) system and the French system.
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May 3, 2018 21:53
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