I feel this applies to the current relationship between US and EU as well. Dear EU, step the fuck up!
this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
543 points (97.9% liked)
Progressive Politics
2013 readers
673 users here now
Welcome to Progressive Politics! A place for news updates and political discussion from a left perspective. Conservatives and centrists are welcome just try and keep it civil :)
(Sidebar still a work in progress post recommendations if you have them such as reading lists)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Democrats are the party of controlled opposition. Do you hate Republicans and want a reasonable chance for the opposition to win? Vote Democrat! What's that, you want progressive policies like parental tax credits, universal health care, or regulated housing prices? Tough shit, our corporate overlords say no. Vote for us anyway though to keep a stagnant government or else watch Republicans bring a sledgehammer to its foundations! The DNC desperately needs an overhaul in its leadership.
The Democrats are not protectors, they're not heroes, they're not martyrs. The Democrat party is not a revolutionary party, they're a party of people who generally liked things the way they were between roughly 1980 and 2016. They're the party of people who did very well for themselves during that period, and as a result they have a lot to lose. They're not going to risk all that they've gained, to fight for someone else's vision of a theoretically better society.
You do realize what the Uvalde cops are famous for right? They arrested parents that tried to get into the school to save their kids. They stopped one of their own from trying to enter the classroom to save his wife.
Democrats want to stop Trump, using a corrupt system, with one arm tied behind their backs, while using the other one to finger wag at ANYONE not following the norms that no longer exist.
Democrats want to stop Trump
Perhaps, but not enough to metaphorically go rushing into a school where there's an active shooter, putting their lives at risk.
Well fuckin said! That is exactly right!
Isn't the 1980s mostly Reagan whom we and democrats alike quite hated for nearly everything?
The Democrats didn't hate Reagan enough to not continue with his neoliberal policies once they got back into office in 1992. In fact, the neoliberal era really started in the late 70s when the Democrat Jimmy Carter was in office.
What did Carter do?
Carter deregulated a lot, including the passenger airline industry.
To be fair, the regulations at the time meant that only the richest assholes could afford to fly anywhere. The airlines were literally forbidden from competing on price.
The problems started when Reagan allowed the first mergers.
I don't know if preventing mergers would have helped. There were a lot of airlines that went bankrupt during that time.
1993
I would put the Democrats as more of a moderate reform party. There is an attempt to make mild change, a lot of which gets undone when Republicans take power.
Half of Lemmy hates democrats more than they hate republicans. I suspects that’s why you are getting all of these downvotes for that opinion. Though I might change “moderate reform” to “extremely mild reform.”
I know that's the reason why I'm getting downvotes. Luckily, because this is Lemmy, downvotes don't really mean much.
It is just funny that you see this back and forth between how people here will never vote for Democrats yet they'll make these grand statements on how Democrats, without their support, should act.
You don't vote for a political party in the hopes that you might be able to push them to represent your interests, you vote for a party who WILL represent your interests.
What kind of fucking power do you have to influence a political party when you tell them that "I will vote for you no matter what you do, but please pretty please be nice to me"?
I swear liberals sound like they're in an abusive relationship with the Democratic party. "They promised it would be better if I go back to them this time. I'm sure it's going to be completely different now!"
It's the Democrats fucking JOB to convince people up vote for them. Don't blame the people if the party can't convince them.
You don't vote for a political party in the hopes that you might be able to push them to represent your interests, you vote for a party who WILL represent your interests.
In a true democracy, yes. That is what you would do.
In a false democracy, like Russia, you would ignore the rigged elections entirely and focus on agitating for the implementation of democracy.
But in a flawed democracy, you have a system where the elections are not exactly rigged, but where you do not have truly proportional representation.
In such a system, your primary focus should be on fixing the system. The closer to a true democracy this is, the easier it will be to accomplish via reform, although one should not discount direct action. However, when an opportunity to vote arises, you should take it. You can't afford to spend all your effort on elections, but ignoring your opportunity to do some harm reduction would be ineffective.
In such a system, your primary focus should be on fixing the system.
If you're talking about the USA, there isn't really a way forwards within the system. It's effectively rigged. The only way to gain useful power in that system is to work out of it. A vote is free, use it, but in a system that broken, that vote is almost worthless and cannot solve the problem.
- The US federal election is a two-party system with FPTP, making other parties very very very difficult to elect and easy to demonize as a 'wasted vote' helping the worse of the main two parties to win. Both of the major parties benefit from this duopoly and have no interest in reforming the election to allow better parties to gain seats. The Democrats didn't even doing much on removing voter suppression when they had the power to, there are so many easy wins they could make if they cared.
- Consolidation of mass media under private owners, combined with the general concentration of wealth and its political influence, give the owner class effective control over which candidates are presented in a positive light and therefore more likely to be known and popular. You can't make a federal candidate viable without the support of the owning class, and they won't support a candidate who isn't enriching them. The selections are rigged.
It may be a flawed democracy on paper, but when you account for the surrounding conditions, the people don't have the power to choose their leaders. It's as false as Russia's.
You don't vote for a political party in the hopes that you might be able to push them to represent your interests, you vote for a party who WILL represent your interests.
If you aren't voting for a party that represents your interests because it isn't in that ballot, you should vote for the closest one to get what you can get.
Unless you are going to say Trump is just as bad as Democrats.
In a two party system that just means no political party will ever represent your interests. You're giving up any power that you have to influence politics so that the "lesser of two evils" can slowly drag your country to hell.
Is the progressive change to the Democratic party in the room with us right now, post–2024 presidential election? It seems many believe the lesson is "drop social issues" when that wasn't even mentioned at the DNC. They're also adapting a harder stance towards immigration while not bulging on economic issues.
So don't vote and let the greater of two evils drag your country to hell faster?
So don't vote and let the greater of two evils drag your country to hell faster?
Don't vote and force the party who gives lip service to representing your interests to actually step up and put their money where their mouth is! Any party who can only run on "we're not as bad as the other guys" doesn't deserve to exist.
How has that been working?
I don't know, nobody has ever had the stones to do it for long enough to matter. How has blithely accepting neo-liberalism's theft of the 99%'s economic future been going?
I voted based on Bernie Sanders's recommendations given he is a politician actually trying to implement change.
I have yet to see any case where not voting has ever led to a system where people get what they want.
Oh no? Have you looked for any?
Yes.
I prefer to think of the Democrats/neoliberals as AIDS and Republicans/fascists as pneumonia. It's the pneumonia that kills you, but it's the AIDS that has to be addressed if you want to survive. Establishment Democrats sap our ability to fight off fascism, and now fascism has come for us.
I think that's a perfect analogy.
It depends on if the Uvalde cops were being paid NOT to go into the school
I'd like to see Democrats doing a whole fuck more, but this is a shit analogy.
That is the truth.
Does that make the progressives the children?
The American public are the kids
Progressives are the teachers getting shot.
Are you projecting immaturity onto progressives, SatansMaoggotyCumFart?