#bernie beats trump

[qqueenofhades]

Thoughts on Marianne Williamson for 2024? Or her just in general? I don’t know much about her, but the left/progressives claim she holds their moral values and believes in radical change. Is it possible she’ll just be another Bernie, who made ‘preaching to the choir’ statements without actual plans to enact the policy they want? Or can she be a considerable candidate for 2024? I’m planning on voting for Biden for re-election, but I do want to know more about Marianne.

She is a flake, a kook, has no real experience, is anti-vax, anti-depressant, generally completely unfit for being president, and I don't know why the Online Leftists have latched onto her.... okay, yes, I do. It's because they are diehard, pathologically averse to voting for the only candidate who can a) beat Trump and b) has actually enacted progressive and helpful change for real, and not just in their fever-dream fantasies. And because they haven't learned ANY lessons from how badly 2016 was fucked up, they insist on putting us through this "uwu I need a Special Third Party candidate uwu" rather than doing anything useful whatsoever. I will try to control the rant here, but yeah: this is a trigger for me. I fucking hate everyone who still lives in Cloud Cuckoo Online Leftist Land and refuses to acknowledge the damage they did because they "just didn't like" Hillary in 2016 and are guzzling at the teat of Tankie Propaganda about Biden and are still therefore utterly useless (and indeed, actively and viciously harmful) at the project of opposing actual theocratic fascism. So. Yeah.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts

[warsofasoiaf]

Somewhat related to anon's ask about Trump being convicted. Let's say Trump is convicted on at least one of the counts in the DC case before the RNC in July, do you think the GOP would put up someone like Nikki Haley seeing as she polls well against Biden (I actually think she'd beat him relatively comfortably)? According to a NYT poll, a five point advantage for Trump in a swing state turns into a ten point deficit if he is convicted, so I could see the GOP wanting to go with someone different.

No, I don't think so, for a couple reasons.

For one, Trump leads opinion polls of Republicans by an overwhelming majority. Putting up another candidate would likely engender backlash from a sizable amount of Republicans even if it made sense from a strategic perspective. No one likes having their guy lose out the nomination, just ask the Bernie Sanders supporters. The GOP would not just fear people staying home, but donations drying up from the people who believe that they were sidelined by the party elites.

For two, the populist wing of the movement largely doesn't believe in or trust public polling, particularly coming from a source like the NYT, which is seen as fake news. They'd think that it was false information meant to manipulate the RNC into dropping Trump for a weaker candidate.

Thanks for the question, Bruin.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

#modern politics

[soapskneebrace]

i’m sorry if this isn’t the right place to ask but it’s my first year voting and idk who to talk to,, abt that voting thing you reblogged,, is it still worth voting even if i don’t vote for typical red or blue parties? the candidate i want to vote for runs for the green party which is literally almost unheard of in the us but with how strictly red vs. blue politics seem to be here i’m not sure if it’s even worth voting for the person i actually want to have my vote bc i know they won’t compete with the blue party. as much as i hate both the blue and red leading options i would much rather contribute to the blue party winning than the red, but i don’t actually want to vote for b***n. but i just don’t want to waste my vote on a party that can’t compete and contribute to t***p getting elected, like im not sure what to do. i know who i actually want to vote for but i feel like actually voting for them is a wasted vote and it’ll do more harm then good even though the other options aren’t great either

again i’m sorry if this is like a completely inappropriate question, feel free to just delete this, but this two-party-only thing is so fkn frustrating. i want to give my vote to the person i feel actually deserves it but most people i know don’t even realise that there are other political parties aside from red v blue so instead of creating a situation where people can vote for who they want it’s people have to vote for option A even though they suck because option B is SO MUCH WORSE and option C isn’t even viable because A needs as many votes to beat B as possible like …..what is the average person even supposed to do?? does this even count as democracy???

So I don't understand why you censored Biden or Trump, first of all, because they're not slurs. I find the asterisks infantilizing.

To put it to you simply, no, it is not worth voting third party. That is an emotional vote and I'm sorry, but your feelings do not matter. I don't care how bad you feel voting for Biden. You know your third party candidate is not going to win. I still blame every single blue voter who wrote in Bernie for Hillary's loss in 2016.

Splitting the blue vote means red win. That is just how it works in this country and you need to learn that now. You need to stop treating your vote like an endorsement of Biden's policy and start treating it like the only scrap of power you have in this fucking country, because other than voicing your complaints to your representatives, that really is it.

Oh, and speaking of Biden--the House rejected the $17.6bn aid bill to Israel after Biden threatened to veto it. I strongly recommend you start getting your political news somewhere other than Tumblr or TikTok. Constant public pressure on Biden and his administration is working. Do you think Trump would give a rat's ass about what the public wanted him to do? Do you think Republicans would for a second consider pulling back on a war they are desperate to escalate?

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm not saying it isn't a shitty situation. I AM saying that your favorite candidate is not going to win, and I'm even saying that your favorite candidate will put us at risk for a Trump victory. We have a two viable parties because that is the reality of our socioeconomic political system. Rs and Ds are the only choices available because they are the only parties with significant financial power. Investors back Rs and Ds because they know Rs and Ds will give them a return on their investment. Green party candidates, and any other third party candidates, will not win because they do not stand to benefit investors.

It's shitty. It's unfair. It's unethical and immoral. But it's the world we live in. It's the world YOU live in. You have to play the political game whether you like it or not.

So play it smart.

#answered

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

They ask for a ceasefire and then do this. Hamas aren’t some type of Palestinian Avengers, they’re just Iranian directed terrorist proxies that make life unlivable for Palestinians and Israelis alike. Hamas isn’t trying to help the Palestinians, they never have, they are just sowing chaos to benefit Iran and Putin. Middle East leaders use Israelis as a boogeyman to rally and distract their populations. Conversely, Israeli fascists like Netanyahu use Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran as a boogeyman to keep their hardline government in power.

The hardliners on both sides use each other to maintain their control while ordinary Palestinian and Israelis die. Whichever side you choose to support, you’re wrong.

If your out their beating a drum spreading hatred against Biden because of this mess you’re going to re-elect Trump or some other RepubliKKKlan douche that will treat the Palestinians and Muslims in general a thousand times worse. We don’t need a Bernie Bros 2.0 movement to cost us the next election. If you’re all over the place howling about not voting for Biden you’re getting blocked. We’re not going to suffer, be impoverished, be imprisoned, be deported, be discriminated against, or die in the streets because you’re following RepubliKKKlan propaganda and naively blaming Biden. One Trump reign of terror was enough. Smarten up and save our own democracy.

Putin’s got a big smile on his face because he has distracted everyone from Ukraine and divided Americans yet again.

#terrorism #Hamas #Israel #palestine #Gaza #Iran

[mrsgojosatoru]

And I knew, I fully KNEW that after Trump was elected democrats would swing hard to the right and implode. And that is what is happening.

can u expand on this? why would they behave this way when youth and poc were enthusiastic for bernie in 2020

Because ALL politicians serve at the behest of our ruling class. For democrats it's not about winning the youth vote and people of color, it's not even about winning at all -- they fund raise better as losers -- it's about making sure the wealthy keep as much of their wealth as they can.

Republicans get in office, do a bunch of tax cuts, increase military spending, get rid of public goods and to get their votes cut rights to minorities. Unlike democrats Republicans work best as winners. And unlike democrats they LOVE fulfilling their campaign promises.

Then after our country has been decimated, there's no money to support community needs, and people have been stripped of their rights democrats come in and go "you NEED us." Then they dangle protecting our rights like a carrot. They go "you don't want .... [insert x fear tactic here. Project 2025. National abortion ban. Rolling back same sex marriage]. Then they fundraise and run on that. You can note that Biden is REALLY short on campaign promises as a winner. He doesn't know what to sell you other than fear mongering. Vote for him he's not Donald Trump.

When democrats get in office they don't actually .... do anything. They just make liberals feel okay about violence against people of color at home and globally, and do ... nothing. Like ask yourself, really ask yourself. Liberals were all up in arms over Trump but did they care about any of the following?

Do people care about those kids in cages now? Because the kids are still cages. Did they care about border patrol agents whipping people at the border? Did they push Obama to follow through on his campaign promise to codify Roe v Wade? Did they get up in arms over Biden wanting to pass the most draconian immigration reform in the past thirty years? Wanting to continue the border wall? Funding for the genocide of the Palestinians? Drone striking Yemen for their blockade of their own waters?

Nope! In fact they tell you to keep voting for Biden because he's the lesser of two evils when ... is he? I'm not saying he hasn't done anything, but I am saying that like ... he could do a lot more. For democrats our rights and equality isn't actually something to be protected they are something to dangle over our heads and threaten us with. Vote for us or else. Then do nothing meaningful about protecting them.

Because at the end of the day our ruling class just cares about staying wealthy. Lower taxes, lower wages, more shoes to fill their thankless minimum wage jobs. So they get politicians who will keep us beat down fighting to be seen as people, and we can never move forward in class equity.

The democratic party winning and surviving doesn't matter to them. If they implode under fascism they don't care. So long as the rich can stay rich. It's why they saw some enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders, collapsed the establishment immediately behind Clinton and Biden and pushed us straight towards this exact situation.

The ruling class would kill us all to hold on to their money and power a little longer, and that is at the root of everything.

[gwydionmisha]

#Joe Biden #Worker's Rights #Election 2024 #US Politics #News

[oldbaton]

Tbh I don’t think anyone would have beat Trump in 16. Now that we have the benefit and clarity of hindsight, the DNC was pretty unaware of the forces at work and was taking certain states for granted. And they would have whether it was Bernie or Clinton or had Biden decided to run in 16 after all. That said, picking a hugely unpopular candidate was. A choice.

#I rewatched an SNL skit about the Hillary and Bernie debates #and they have a joke about ‘Biden… we have a chair waiting for you’ #which is actually funnier knowing that he would become an outright elected President

[qqueenofhades]

You don't need to post this, I'd almost rather you didn't. But I lived in VT for years and Bernie Sanders' decision to piss in the well if he couldn't be President was just the latest in a decades-long pattern of being useless at best and an active hindrance at worst when it comes to passing any sort of legislation or reform that doesn't directly benefit Bernie Sanders. He says all the right things, but at the end of the day he's a semi-benevolent grifter with 3 houses, a documented refusal to share his wealth in the form of charitable donations, several vacations funded with twenties bilked from gullible teenagers and a long history of supporting the NRA right up until he decided to run for president. There is not a mitten or bird cute enough to make me like or respect that man. Would I have voted for him over Trump? Fuck yeah. Howard Hill's a lousy conman, but he's still better than Montgomery Burns.

If you don't mind, I will indeed answer this, just because it fits very well with what I'd learned from my own impression of Bernie and played into the reasons why I just never warmed up to him, even while he was being hailed as the new leftist messiah. If he had been the Democratic nominee in either 2016 or 2020, yes, I would have voted for him, but in either case, it's extremely doubtful that he would have beaten Trump. When you can just slap the "socialist" label on him and turn off the wishy-washy middle who would see him as far too radical + piss off all of Florida with comments supporting Castro + barely scrape up any African-American support + openly disdain and separate yourself from the party while trying to become presidential nominee of that party + don't have any significant or actual experience in passing legislation or working within the system, it is not a recipe either for an election win or a successful presidency. The Bernie diehards can keep insisting that there's some alternate universe where he was the Democratic nominee in 2016, beat Trump handily, and magically turned the country into a left-wing utopia, the end, but... yeah. It's not real.

I also think Bernie did enormous damage in tacitly encouraging his supporters to boycott the process if he wasn't the nominee, and refuse to support Clinton until it was almost the convention and he had already run the clock out. I will say that I think James Comey, rather than Bernie, most directly cost HRC the election; releasing the "we're gonna reinvestigate her emails that we investigated a thousand times!" letter a WEEK BEFORE THE ELECTION was a spectacular and unforgivable act of political sabotage that probably took just enough off her margins in key states to hand the election to Trump. (Polling from before and after the Comey letter supports this, iirc.) But Bernie was the one who really started and encouraged the Bernie Bros mindset of "don't vote for anyone if you can't have the Perfect Candidate" that has now thoroughly infiltrated the Online Left, to lasting and detrimental consequences. And for that alone, in my opinion, he has a lot to answer for.

If people still want to insist that Bernie would have magically won the election in a landslide and been a far stronger candidate than Clinton, I would like to point out that we had an almost exact Bernie-vs-Trump analogue in the 2019 UK elections. Jeremy Corbyn was the exact same old-school socialist uncompromising grumpy leftist as Bernie, whereas Boris Johnson was the orange-haired populist messiah propelled to power by racism, nativism, and xenophobia (Brexit Brexit Brexit!) like Trump. And what happened? Johnson won a crushing 80-seat majority in Parliament that completely reversed the losses of Theresa May's anemic 2017 performance and is still, at the moment, enough political insulation to save him from the no-confidence vote sparked by Partygate. (Basically, if you don't follow British politics, the Tory government was caught red-handed partying and drinking in Downing Street all winter, while imposing very tough covid-related socialisation rules on the British public, including cancelling get-togethers over Christmas with only a few days' notice. This is because the Tories, like the Republicans, think the rules don't apply to them and are just for little people to follow.) So yeah. We literally saw how that went in the UK, and there's no reason to think that the US version would have been any different.

As I have said, even an old white man with a reputation as an inoffensive bipartisan centrist, ie Biden, had the fight of his life to beat Trump and his hordes of gullible cult/open fascist supporters, and now the Republicans are screaming SOCIALIST and FAR LEFT RADICAL! at him even though Biden is... not. At all. Just imagine the ammunition they would have had against Bernie in a general election campaign, and Bernie himself has made their job easier at every turn, because he still wants to paint himself as a "morally privileged outsider" despite being a senator for 15+ years. (And as you point out, with very few actual legislative accomplishments to show for it, despite all his progressive platitudes.)

Anyway, both Bernie and a certain subset of his supporters never seemed to grasp that there is more to making real change than just giving speeches and posting on social media about it, and their "I'll take my ball and go home and refuse to be a team player" sore-loser attitude has contributed to the fissures in the Democratic party and made a lot of people feel justified in doing the same. So yeah. I am no fan of his either.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts

[dnickels]

tbh one of the first things i tell young people getting into political campaigning is to make sure you don't block the "other" side, because inevitably you end up in a leftwing tankie echo chamber type thing, overestimate your numbers horrendously, make a bunch of mis-steps based on the assumption you've got it in the bag, and end up getting annihilated at the ballot box. i see your bernie primary trauma and raise you a bbc exit poll showing corbyn had been completely wiped out in an almost historically bad loss 😔😔😔

Sure-- I would argue that issues with the Sanders campaign had more to do with the fact that he (and by extension his top staffers) weren't ready to go to war with the Democratic Party rather than any 'tankie' overconfidence. Sanders still won't, I think he genuinely believes himself to be responsible for Trump on some level (ridiculous and stupid, get a grip Bernard) and it explains his devotion to taking the party line even when its morally reprehensible and will never win him anything from Schumer et al. The Corbyn situation was different in meaningful ways but at least one issue was that he wasn't willing to actually crush his enemies within the party, or even think of them as enemies at all, and the Labour institution was willing to sabotage him even at the expense of the country.

There were obviously many many more issues at work in both cases but the point I'm making here is that massive liberal institutions are much more powerful than left insurgencies and their capacity to Do Politics-- raise funds, disseminate messages, craft media narratives-- at the national level dwarfs even an incredible volunteer operation like Sanders in 2020. Sanders dominated in states where he had a strong ground presence, ie, where people actually had a chance to hear about Bernie Sanders, and then fell in places like South Carolina where he didn't invest in a similar campaign presence. Once the narrative could coalesce around an alternative it was over-- it might not have been but the intrusion of the novel coronavirus and the Dems' willingness to kill their own voters was the end of the Sanders campaign.

My point being: at no point do alleged Stalinists factor in here at all. There's so much brow beating about how a handful of communist subversives are going to spoil everything by voting for Howie Hawkins and its nonsense. It's nonsense! The electoral college still exists!! A random electrician in Manitowoc, Wisconsin is 10,000 times more likely to play a key role in the fate of the country than I am and he is not on tumblr. Anyone with real concerns should be out canvassing in Dearborn or Scranton, not shadowboxing the ghost of the Comintern.

[c-bassmeow]

who do you want to see run in the democratic primaries? aside from bernie

Tbh no one. Democrats are hopeless. From a “this might be a cute moment to pretend to be a leftie” perspective I guess that Shapiro guy from Pennsylvania and fetterman had he not had a stroke although at this point fuck it he could possibly beat trump even in his condition. I think it’s impossible to predict given how insane the timeline has been for so many years. But I do not support the Democratic Party. They merely prevent republicans. They serve Wall Street, the military industrial complex, lobbyists, think tanks, pharma, etc. both parties do.

[deadpresidents]

Do you think Bernie Sanders would have been able to beat Trump in either 2016 or 2020?

I do think Bernie Sanders would have defeated Trump in 2020 if he had been the Democratic nominee. I'm less confident about how he would fared in a general election in 2016.

#2016 Election #2020 Election #Bernie Sanders #Donald Trump #President Trump #Presidential Politics #Politics #Presidency #Presidential Elections

[mallowmaenad]

my new political ideaology is that I get a device called the dipshit detector that removes self-important white people’s ability to use cellphones for 1 month and I don’t fucking care if this is a fascist dictatorshit i actually would turn joe biden into joe woke and donald trump into pronoun trump if i see one more loud mouthed straighty act like their opinion fucking matters im introducing their shy 9 year old son to my little pony i cant fucking take this shit yes fuck it throw republicans in concentration camps they’re practically begging for it they wont shut the fuck up about how theyre gonna be hunted down and killed wish granted bitch blam blam its wabbit season bitch im sick of liberals im sick of voting im sick of norway if youre even slightly uncomfortable around gay people you should be set on fire black power asian power jewish power latino power and i fucking mean it im not just buying the stupid 30$ tshirt on fckhate.com the worst thing to ever happen in american history is abraham lincoln not publicly executing every confederate general and outlawing slavery full stop we literally live in starship troopers we are trapped in a shitty gmod half life dark rp server yeah I do think you’re basically a terrorist if you go to disney land and i also think that if the first words out of your mouth when the rustbelt gets set on fire is “those dirty rednecks deserve it” ill show you a fucking redneck you fucking yank prick you fucking racist i wish hilary clinton would explode on live tv charitys are fucking fake theyre as fake as those cardboard towns in north korea oppenheimer was a limpdick pussy and fallout is becoming a game franchise that fetishizes the mass genocide of asians and i want todd howard pinned under a large rock for it spec ops the line wasn’t ugly enough there is a conspiracy started by the cosmetics, nutrition and fashion industry in collaboration with the upper class descendants of fucking typhoid “moneybags” marys to fool the masses that fat people aren’t hot as fuck. My body and mind and soul degrade with the week because of yhe shit ass menial labor yhey made me do and the fucking lead in gasoline and world war 1 started a chain reaction of fathers beating their kids and wives because it’s cheaper to buy a gun than go to therapy because we’re fucking warhammer orks without any of the endearing mental stupidity we live in mordor. we live in fucking mordor. it literally does not matter who is president our two political parties are Nazis and Neo-Nazis bernie sanders was the closest thing to a centrist this country has ever seen. capitalism grinds up joy into a paste to divvy out on 500$ gucci toothpicks public urination should be legal rent is theft corporations are agents of satan who is jesus christ who is not jesus of nazareth jesus christ is the poster boy of white supremacy i fucking hate Hamilton white people should listen to MORE rap i want to get my dick sucked at a death grips concert. Laundromats and burger joints where you can get a meal for 5$ are far more important than police stations and walmart. pop anarchists want to personally confiscate your wheelchair uou fuckers treat yhis like a game fuckin e girls with hammers and sickles in their icons arguing about what form of communism or socialism or whateverism is right when bitch that is a pipe dream you are going to die in captivity arguing about which dragon ball z character is the strongest (girl broly) at least go punch a hole in your wall and fuck it to prove you’re human you facebook fetishist jesus christ every other day i want a biblical death just so my fucked up thouhhts mean something i need a fuckingjason vorhees bitch wheres the yandere tea party this is all so fucked up its not fucking real the christian god hates you whoever says otherwise is trying to make you a fucking slave. Mormonism and scientology should be wiped off the map any religion formed after the invention of the gun is a fucking pyramid scheme i wish i was a 9 foot toll shark lady with hugebrealssta so i could fucking knock over thechrystler building

DO 9/11 AGAIN

#vent #rant #cw politics

[lizardbytheriver]

I will say this about Biden, one thing that is interesting is that Conservatives do not know how to attack him. They cannot say he is Black, Muslim, or Foreign like they did with Obama. They do not have the years of groundwork they had with the Clintons (because again, during the Obama years, they focused on Obama). So... you got a White Old Man (pretty much like most, not all, Republicans). You cannot do a Corbin (or Bernie) by saying he is antisemitic. Because Biden loves when Israel slaughters Palestinian Children. You got the sexual assault stuff, but Republicans do not care. Republicans love Trump and Brett Kavanaugh. You got the racist history, but Republicans do not care. Republicans love Trump. Republicans once loved Reagan and Nixon (before Trump became their God). So what's left??? Labtop. That has nothing. A failed son who is a product of nepotism. But the only successful Trump son is... Ivanka's ghoul of husband. And he is not even blood related to Trump. Eric and Don Jr. look coked out of their minds. And then there is the narrative problem. Biden is simultaneously a senile old man and an evil marxist mastermind destroying America. These two narratives are all over the Republican Party and Republican Rhetoric, but they are so contradicting. If Biden is beating the Republicans, why are the Republicans being bested by a corpse?

[viking369]

No She Wasn't. I'm Calling Bullshit

(1) She was right about Trump being a crook? Yeah, so was everyone else with two braincells to rub together. I've known it for four decades. If it took her until 2016 to figure it out, maybe she isn't, contrary to her cherished opinion, the smartest person in the room.

(2) She was right about Trump being controlled by bad people? Another "No Shit, Sherlock". That family's been mobbed up forever. All Donny did was change mobs. So why didn't Hillary send teams to investigate? I think we know why. Something about glass houses and throwing stones.

(3) She borked Whitewater. So badly that any mortal attorney would have been in seriously deep kimchi. But she went effectively unscathed. Could it be because the Arkansas developers found her and Billy just too useful? We'll never know since that whore Starr spent all his time chasing blowjobs instead of the substance of the case.

(4) She borked both queer rights and healthcare reform because she thought, being the smartest person in the room, that she could ram them both through. Instead, she set both causes back a generation and set the table for Gingrich to take over in '94.

(5) She borked the emails. Yes, it was really a nothingburger, but it was JUST FUCKING STUPID.

(6) She borked the nomination. She acted like it was a coronation tour and was offended that anyone ran against her. All women were supposed to support her out of hand, and so the Sanders campaign was just a misogynistic mass of Bernie Bros. My wife and daughters were amazed that, by Hillary's definition, they were now bros. Hillary's campaign pulled out so many dirty tricks, Nixon would have been impressed. And she continues to accuse Sanders of misogyny with no more supporting evidence than Trump has for election fraud. And OBTW, when it comes to abusing women, I think it's hard to beat Epstein and Maxwell. Whom do we have pictures of partying with those two? The Trumps and the Clintons. Whom do we not have such pictures of? the Sanderses.

(7) She borked the election. No other way to characterize bunkering in New York while ignoring Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

So just ditch the canonization of Hillary, OK?

[shirkers2018dirsanditan]

i think conflating disinformation with propaganda is in part to distract from the fact that propaganda is not even remotely partisan…lol but also. and i’m just gonna cram a lot of stuff into this post because i’ve been constantly thinking about it.

the 2016 election really destroyed a lot of people, not only conservatives, and it not only represented but further entrenched this mistrust and disbelief in your neighborhoods, in collective power, in democracy. it made a lot of people, not only extremists and republicans, more conservative. and partisanship got ridiculous. it was proof what we’re doing is not working and is actually quite terrible for most people. and instead of saying, okay these are the old strategies of strife and discord. blame it on the blacks, jewish people, immigrants, “terrorism,” the radicals, then blame it on asians and gay people and “woke culture” and whatever. like instead of saying, yeah this is the eisenhower playbook, the nixon playbook, the reagan playbook, the bush playbook (and the clinton playbook, and the roosevelt playbook, and the johnson playbook……even the obama playbook to an extent)…..we just created a new class of technocrats and talking heads and meaningless beltway politicking. we made new ways for people to make money off of strife…which made it worse….

meanwhile, our brains keep getting broken. like, how many people, no matter what has happened, will repeatedly - literally over and over and over and over and - say “this is why you should’ve voted for hillary! if only bernie sanders blah blah” so all of this is the left’s fault, which is also a very old playbook, but being used by people it does not actually benefit. like that was pretty meaningless in 2017, even, it’s certainly meaningless now. like, me personally? i didn’t vote for hillary. because i was fucking 17 years old. i convinced my mom to in the primary, but if i could go back in time i wouldn’t. but it doesn’t matter, anyway. i couldn’t vote, but i also live in texas. i believe every vote counts, absolutely, but i’m not stupid. it wouldn’t have mattered if i didn’t vote for either main party the presidential election in 2016 because texas was not turning blue, and if i DIDNT vote for trump or hillary, it would still be contributing to the erosion of republican dominance in texas, numbers wise. either way, it has no impact on the election. so, enough already. enough.

and i’m gonna keep going even though this post is too long already, but on that note. again, i just voted today in the primary runoffs. i left two slots blank because there was not enough of a difference between the candidates, but i voted and i vote in every election unless i am literally prevented from doing so (as i was in the democratic primary in 2020 because they didn’t send my mail in ballot until it was too late. i got it after the election was over 🙄). but i don’t see how it helps anyone to pretend like we don’t understand apathy among voters. like, for how many people, how common is it, that no matter who is in office, your life is largely the same? it is without a doubt true that this administration has done some good things already, some really fucking major things, yes. but some of those have already been undone. there are campaign promises they have already straight up broken (i thought we stood with immigrants?). but also, there is the fact that both parties DO have a vested interest in the status quo. they’re not the same, but they are both american political parties, in which most politicians are ridiculously wealthy and live lives completely out of touch with most americans’. and i understand why for many people it is so frustrating to be beat over the head with “vote blue no matter who” when they are not delivering, and too often not even trying. like, democrats are supposed to support abortion rights, and yet they are throwing their weight behind henry fucking cuellar in tx-28, who is avidly anti-abortion. and it’s because he’s an incumbent and they’re incumbents and thus they have a vested interest in opposing primary challengers. but what does that communicate about their position on abortion? that it’s less important than their personal power and influence. the tragedy that happened today…the fucking groundhog’s day of carnage in this country….i do believe the democratic party supports gun control, yes i do. but it is clear they don’t support it more than they do the status quo of governance because they are not willing to do whatever it takes to get it done. and shrugging at this and saying, well they don’t have the votes, this that or the other…come on. you and i know that is not going to cut it. it is not true that a party in charge of both congress and the presidency has no power to change the law…..it’s DIFFICULT. yeah. every fucking thing is. tell me one thing that comes easy? but they are not even choosing easy….they’re too often choosing nothing at all.

our government was not designed to produce radical change, but to suppress it. it was not designed to liberate the masses, but to suppress us. yes, this is true. none of that means we just pack up and go home. none of that makes voting worthless, that’s insane. nothing is an end all be all magic bullet. not even so-called revolution. but you have to believe in a strategy to be committed to it, believe in a candidate to vote for them, that’s a fair thing to demand. sometimes, you have to settle, yes. but arguing all voting is about settling is not true….and when you double down on trying to demonize ANY candidate that can inspire people, i question your commitment to democracy, i do.

#this is a mess i just needed ot get this out of my head #like im not a both sideser but im also not naive #and i do believe a multiparty system would strengthen our democracy i think its not fair that it is so hard for people to run for office #i believe in democracy and i want to see democracy in america in my lifetime #not merely an imitation of it