OH boy I sure do love purity checks. It’s worked out so great for us in the past.
Why is this shit always all or nothing, goddamn. It works for maga because they have no nuance and it’s all groupthink, but the rest of the nation is far more complex and won’t just go for a hard left progressive in the same way. It needs to happen but it won’t happen in a single election.
I am in no way endorsing newsome, but at least he’s doing LITERALLY ANYTHING.
Exactly, people tried that shit with Carney up here and we all knew we were not getting a progressive PM but we sure as hell didn’t get a right wing mini trump.
Could we have gotten better? For sure but desperate times man, desperate times…
Yeah I might not vote for him in the primary but its not a deal breaker.
As a Californian, Newsom is just the other side of Trump’s coin. He has no principles. He puts his finger in the wind before he does anything. I’d vote for literally any other Democrat first. It’s not about him being a Progressive or not. It’s that he’d pursue literally any position if it was advantageous to him, including hard right ones.
There is a hot car with an infant inside and parent no where in site. Should you break the window and save the child? Breaking a window is bad so we shouldn’t do it. They just shouldn’t have locked the baby in the car. I’m not going to vote for vandalism.
-protest non-voter
…you expect the dems to run a progressive?
I fully expect to see a repeat of 2020. The party establishment will be split between Elderly Nepo-Ghoul With Fanatical Partisan Following and Young Pretty Boy Who Says Progressive Things To A Room Of Millennial Age Investment Bankers.
On the edge of the debate, you’ll see a few genuinely progressive leftist voices saying things like “We should be against genocide” and “Homelessness is easily solveable if we put forward even the least amount of political capital” and “Granting DC statehood is the most obviously smart and moral Act any future Congress can pass”. Maybe even a few “Medicare 4 All is still a good idea” die-hards shouting from the extremely cheap seats.
And then one (or both) of the insider candidates will pick up a few of the more popular slogans as their own. This, while denouncing any of the fringe voices as Anti-White Racists, Politically Toxic Far-Left Anti-Capitalists, Eco-Terrorists, and Fat Ugly Unfuckable Losers.
Come primary day, said fringe leftists will do shockingly well in some of the early states. At this point, the centrist candidates will panic, drop the kabuki of intra-party squabbling, align behind whomever the current Party Elder tells them to select, scream that a vote for Fringe Candidate is a vote for Fascism, blanket the airwaves with a deafening smear campaign, disavow every nice thing they said up until this point, and maybe squeak in to the convention by a few points on a technicality about who gets to be Superdelegates.
The Convention will be a coronation of a rotten corporate homunculus. Any leftist disgusted by the process or the annointed candidate will be denounced as a Far-Right Foreign Plant designed to undermine the fundamental principles of democracy itself. Said rotten homunculus will pick a Token Minority/Progressive as their running mate, then immediately dump that person to the sidelines and campaign exclusively with the reanimated corpse of Rush Limbaugh.
Trump wins by a ten point margin in 2028. Leftists are blamed for the loss. Democrats vow to purge their party of anything resembling progressive values or human decency even harder. By 2032, they’re running a Bitcoin Billionaire in an uncontested primary, because it’s unreasonable to trust an election process that’s been infiltrated by Hamas.
This is exactly why they’ll run him.
Don’t care. Way better than fascism and besides, the tweets are hilarious.
Reddit just called me a Republican plant for not liking newsom. Before the primaries have even started. Pisses me off
Remember when we were told that we could criticize Dems during non-election years?
Or primaries were the time to have debate, but I guess that too has gone out the window with the DNC tiping the scales since 2016.
Exactly. Like, I’m not going to be happy if he gets nominated, but I will vote for him. But before primaries is the time to debate and find the best candidates
Nope. But I don’t list to those trying to control me.
I vote, and not for fascists.
Clearly you are in favor of an oceanic based monarchy.
Poseidon?
It’s the “if you don’t like Biden you’re a Russian troll” all over again. It’s started.
It’s happening here too
Listen, I know we are the tiny bubble, so posting this here has no negative effect — but 2028 has to be about people on the right and left joining together to repudiate fascism and totalitarianism. Who cares about the past under these circumstances. I hope that Newsom’s lack of prog cred gives him cred with the pugs who hate Trump. Or are lukewarm on Trump.
2028 has to be about people on the right and left joining together to repudiate fascism and totalitarianism
not pictured are all the ignorant morons that believe billionaire news media that sanewashes the people those pictured in hoods follow.
reality has nuance, removing it hurts us all.
The Harris thinking Cheney would sway voters pipeline again? Oof.
The right does not think this is fascism. So, there goes that fantasy.
There has to be economic pain so bad that they can’t refute it anymore. That’s our only hope.
That or Trump dying before the end of his term.
The right wants this. You are hopelessly deluded if you think they will lift a finger to prevent it. Double if they have to work with the libs they despise.
the “right” that you refer to doesn’t exist, because the overton window has been slammed really fucking far right. There is a sea of idiots somewhere in the middle, Trump was able to take advantage of that, telling them he would fix it all quickly. That lie will only become harder to ignore as these same idiots struggle more and more to afford groceries.
These are the people that are not hard right, but they are hard dumb. Reality and struggle is the best teacher and they’re about to get a lesson they have never had before in their safe relatively comfortable American lives.
By just crossing them all off as ‘the right’ and that they want fascism is foolish and self-defeating. Yes the far right DO want this, but everyone that isn’t some semblance of ‘left’ are absolutely not the only ones that don’t.
Blanket statements provide no value, only serve to remove nuance, and the removal of nuance only serves fascists.
He also thinks children shouldn’t be allowed to transition genders.
Ending purity tests doesn’t mean we can’t criticize or demand better of someone.
I agree with that…? People should be allowed to transition but with parental/guardian permission or are legal adults (18, in the US). Is that considered right-wing take? I thought I was a moderate!
He thinks children shouldn’t be allowed to transition even with parent/guardian permission.
By the way, are you aware that transition is most effective when done before or during puberty, which for most people means well before 18? It saves a lot of money overall on surgeries and such, as I understand. Hunter Schafer transitioned as a teenager, and you if you look up photos of her you can see that it worked very well for her.
Today Texas Democrats will be present for the session that will gerrymander their state, they could have stayed out of the state to keep it from passing, but the decided to return and allow it to pass.
The gerrymandering that Gavin says will happen in California is going to be voted on in November, it will probably not happen.
This chain of events will result in Republicans gaining extra control in the house/senate, because of the choices and lies made by Democrats.
The gerrymandering that Gavin says will happen in California is going to be voted on in November, it will probably not happen.
I will say this. They aren’t waiting until November 2026 to vote on it. So they’re at least pretending to take this seriously.
But I’ll also say that some right-wing court is going to decide the ballot measure is unconstitutional. And the California Dems are going to throw up there hands, announce collectively “Oh well we tried!”, and then find a way to blame Transgender people for the Permanent Republican House Majority.
probably wont happen, what makes you say that?
It’s been the cycle for the last 40 or so years
The way we stop the cycle is to stop it
Leadership will pick the least objectionable neolib to promote the shit out of, and they’ll end up gambling - again - that voters care more about sticking it to Trump than achieving real relief from our capitalistic hellscape.
Newsom’s only redeeming qualoty is his ability to get under Trump’s skin. Literally everything else is focus-group tested neo-liberalism.
Early to be predicting anything but dems are fucked if Newsom is gonna be their guy.
Backing big oil list my vote
Hopefully, the Democratic Party will go the way of the Whigs, and take Newsom with them. I want a genuinely good party whose mission is to overhaul America in all ways. UBI, a renewed Constitution, universal healthcare, the extinction of ICE and border patrol with minimized police, ect.
The America we have is a sick creature, that cannot be saved by Geronocrats.
He’s rather brazenly pro-Israel. That is not a winning strategy for a Democratic candidate. Israel lost the public referendum, with something like a single-digit % of Democratic voters supporting the genocidal state. Time to accept this and move forward.
AIPAC and none of that shit matters if a significant segment of your voting base will outright reject you.
Friend I don’t give a fuck I just don’t want to live in hell anymore. I’m going to be first in line slamming my fist on the table for a progressive but apparently we need to be at Gavin Newsom before we can ask for a progressive. Lemmy and Current Affairs isn’t the average American. We suck. That’s abundantly clear to me now. You know what? If Mandani or similar figure was running for president I’m all in. I’m all in on that no matter what. I’m in for the most progressive candidate at all times. Unfortunately right now I just need to not be under threat of everything completely falling apart and not being fixable. Maslow’s hierarchy I need that first foundational level to build my pyramid on. I don’t necessarily mean this to convince anyone, sometimes you just have to yell into the void because it all feels so bad.
I’m not. If there’s a Bernie or AOC like candidate vs Newsom, I’m voting for the Bernie AOC candidate. I’ve played it safe the last 3 elections I, no longer care if it hurts Dems chances because Dems have had their assses handed to them and were already in hell. I want someone who is going to fight Republicans and help get policies we actually want and they will fucking despise
I voted for Bernie every time. It didn’t do anything. This is where we are. I’ll vote for the most progressive candidate who is on the ballot, but if it’s Newsom versus Trump I’m not going to purity test gatekeep.
As amazing as a Bernie , AOC America won’t let them win. America is too racist, and misogynistic to ever let that happen.
Damn, .ml is starting their crap early. They already got trump back in, now they are working to get more of the GOP in power by fomenting infighting…reruns suck.
Thinking that an unliked party putting forward a candidate, who’s only nominating quality is a second order connection to Obama, lost because of a triad of leftist servers on lemmy is genuinely delusional.
More referring to their CCP overlords’ general efforts. They are just the mouthpieces and bots.
The path to progressivism does not run through assholes like Gavin Newsom. “Lesser-evilism” has brought us to Trump!
It is more nuanced like that. You and I are not the average American voter. We can’t assume all voters will act like us. We have to play the field and represent our true ideals as much as possible in balance.
Show me the average American voter. I know a lot of people, but I’ve never met the average one.
Pretty sure greater evilism brought us trump.
It’s another way of looking at it. You’re always going to have a fascist element in society who loves the “greater evil”. Maybe we should demand more than “not quite as bad” to represent the opposition. Every time the “lesser evil” manages to win and then disappoints people, it demoralizes its own electorate. Every time the dems move rightward on issues, they push the “greater evil” even further right. This is how “lesser-evilism” helps bring us to where we are now.
So, I don’t think you are entirely wrong, but I think you (and by extension, all americans) are out of luck on that front. There is not a single democratic candidate who, if elected with a supermajority in congress and a supportive supreme court, that would turn around the economic situation in the US from the course it’s on.
You can get some wins with social issues and foreign policy, and tinker around the edges of the economy, but even if Sanders or AOC became dictators tomorrow, their stated goals, while being light years ahead of Trump or any Republican, would not reverse the decline in living standards for the majority of Americans.
For the issues most Americans care about most, their pocket book, lesser evil is all there is or will be for the foreseeable future.
The lesser evil gets more evil every cycle. Foreign policy is the least likely to change between administrations. We are watching how an executive can wield power in spite of the courts and legislature.
Let’s be clear, the courts and legislature could stop this, they choose not to. They are captured. When/if a Democrat reaches the White House again they will not have half the power that Trump wields.
(The courts are a little iffy, but I’m still confident the legislature could stop it if they wanted)
Could they? By what mechanism?
You’re not wrong
Do I like seeing him fuck with Trump? Yes.
Is he a dirty neo liberal? Yes.
Would I support him in a primary for President in 2028? Probably not. I sure hope someone better shows up.
Would I support him if he won the Democratic primary? Yes. Assuming we get elections. Assuming the DNC hasn’t fully fractured and a third party candidate cannot reasonably win.
Would he fix our country? No. See item 2.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Its not hard, people.
Good take. Maybe the Kamala protest abstainers will have a fresh enough dose of Trumpism to remember that halfway-kind-of-decent-sometimes is better than literally-the-worst-possible-decision-at-all-times. I hope we still have elections. I hope we are not stuck with Newsom as the only choice. But if we are, he IS the only choice, and even though he’s not nearly a progressive, he is far closer to it than whatever the GOP rolls out with in 3 years (whether it is Trump again, Trump Jr., Vance, or a new piece of shit far right authoritarian). We need to make sure he wins, and that means getting your asses to the booth. All of us. Even you.
Goddam. You guys sure love hoping someone else learns lessons. You ever hope democrats learn a little something?
I very clearly said that I hope we are not stuck with him. Hoping that Dems get their shit together and act right or at least get out of the waybof those who do is a constant state for me.
The democrats weren’t the ones that stayed home during the most important election of their lives. Just saying…
No, they’re the ones who failed to win that election. They’re the ones who willfully did everything they could to avoid taking principled positions and connecting with voters. Will they do it again? You betcha. Go ahead and be mad at millions of people, or demand a bit more from the couple of hundred of your “leaders” whose entire job it is to win elections.
Wish I had your faith in American voters.
I’m not sure how to take your comment in this context. Do you have more faith in the dem party to run popular and successful campaigns? Whether you have faith in the voters or not, you still need to get them to vote for you.
So, you think that if the Dems run a candidate with principled stances and popular positions that people would support them.
I have no such faith in the American voter. They can’t tell the difference between principles and propaganda, and they have no idea what’s good for them.
Boy howdy! I sure learned my lesson! And I’ll bet you must be happy as the day is long that the millions of Americans hurt by the questionable decision to allow good to be the enemy of perfect have also learned that lesson right alongside the rest of us.
Thank you so much for the tough love you brought down on us all. I’m sure we’re all going to be so much better from it once we’re done morning our losses and are once again allowed to be seen in public.
Aw shucks pardner, you’ve convinced me to vote against my conscience! Adding my vote will surely put us over the top. What’s that? We need to convince millions more? Well, okay, sure seems like it might be easier to scare a few politicians into doing what’s right, but I’m down to hear your plan. The plan is to gaslight and browbeat people who recognize the moral bankruptcy in the Democratic party until they just vote for them anyway? Can I at least pretend that genocidal dementia patients like Joe Biden are actually “the most progressive president in history”? I can? Damn, I’m really understanding the attraction now!
Cool story! I hope for your sake, history repeats itself. And if it helps, from what I understand, the suffering of others is a lot more tolerable when you lack the empathy it takes to think of anyone but yourself.
Good luck! And welcome to my block list.
I also have noticed that literally 0 of the “we can’t vote for Democrats, stop voting for them, that is the way to progress” strategists have anything to say about candidates to support before the primary, protest organizations to join in the meantime, anything generally productive that is outside of the general election they’re so gung-ho about giving their input to.
Right now would be the time to be looking around for good midterm or primary candidates who aren’t corporate whores, talking up third parties or reforms that would make third parties viable, all that kind of stuff. Nope. Just “let the Republicans win” in the general election, and then, crickets. And now occasionally popping up to shit on Gavin Newsom when he’s tangling with Trump, like a romantic partner who is grabbing on your arm and screaming “stop it!” while you’re in the middle of a fistfight. Just fuckin’ helping, the lot of them, from morning till night.
Many of the fake “leftist” that refuse to vote, have also never voted and don’t know how elections work. Dig around on Lemmy enough and you’ll find whole arguments with several hundred people that have no clue what a primary is. I know because I’ve been involved with trying to educate them. I’ve learned to just ignore idiots. Similar to other sites, I just had higher expectations for Lemmy.
They aren’t Americans and probably not “leftist”
“halfway-kind-of-decent-sometimes”
You mean the same person that refused to say “Genocide is bad, and we shouldn’t support it”? The same person who proudly stood behind Biden when was bombing innocent people? The same person who put people in prison for marijuana, then laughed about it when talking about smoking herself? The same person who campaigned with the Cheneys?
I think your definition of “halfway-kind-of-decent-sometimes” might be different than mine. All we’re looking for is someone who isn’t a monster, and she couldn’t even pull that off.
This is why the Democrats keep losing, and have such a low approval rating: They keep normalizing monsters, and can’t figure out why the voters don’t like that.
I mean someone who will not literally destroy our democracy to remain in power. The bare minimum.
You mean the people from the DNC who pretty openly refuse to have fair elections? The same party that has shit on civil rights for decades? How is that not destroying our Democracy?
You’re right. Better to just actively or indirectly (through inaction) support the party that is currently actively revoking civil rights on a national scale, and planning to rig/end elections to stay in power indefinitely. That will fix the broken system.
That will fix the broken system.
That’s what gets me about this whole thing. There’s plenty of core of truth to the idea that the Democrats are very bad, although yes the alternative currently is infinitely worse. There are thousands of things that any given person could do to try to fix that or work for better things in American politics. Refusing to elect Democrats anymore, no matter what, is 0 of them, and will make things quite a lot worse.
It’s like punishing your child for bad grades by refusing to feed them anymore. One, it doesn’t address the problem, two, it will make even the thing you say you are upset about and trying to fix, infinitely worse.
Functionally, things are the way they are because the people that want to change things for the better do not make up the majority of people yet. Plenty of the boomers are still happy with the status quo since most of it doesn’t directly impact them. Gen X even was more right leaning than the boomers in 2024.
Just looking at the number of people that actually vote, neo-liberal boomers and Gen Xers will still be dictating policy for another decade at the least. If they aren’t progressive, most of the policy getting passed will not be either.
This isn’t even taking into account the way that land has more power than people in the US either. Sparsely populated red states hold just as much power in the Senate as New York or California. The House is currently capped on the number of Representatives as well, meaning that those small red states are over represented and larger blue and purple states are underrepresented.
The best shot at changing anything before another decade passes is by starting locally to each of us. We can try to do what New York City did and implement an alternative voting system in our own cities, that will help immensely to get more people like Mamdani in office. If we garner enough support at the city and local levels, we might even be able to be like Maine or Alaska and get an alternative voting system in place at the state level.
Alternative voting systems are pretty much the only real way third parties will have a chance to get off the ground and have a seat at the table on a national level. The main reason for that is because it helps mitigate the spoiler effect; where your preferred candidate and the safe candidate knock each other out allowing your least preferred candidate to win elections.
Want to help? Get the word out about alternative voting systems and organizations that promote them. Get involved locally.
Underrepresented Fediverse Social Media Accounts:
Involvement Links:
Who said to do that? I certainly didn’t. I push for parties that and actions that are actually trying to do something against the current party. The Democrats are the ones that have spent their time propping up and actively supporting the current party.
You started this conversation by advocating for not voting for Newsom if he is the only candidate with a chance against the GOP. If your “other parties” have fractional support of the democrats come general election day, they’re not viable alternatives and your vote for them is functionally identical to not voting at all.
By all means, I 100% support advocacy for change, for reform, for new people and ideas in power. But we also have a shitty voting system that means you usually need to pick the least of two evils come election day. And you need to be practical and make peace with that. I wish we had something like Approval voting where there was no push to a two party split and everyone could vote for every candidate or party they like, and I would support voting reform in that direction all day every day, but that is not what we have now.
Hard disagree. The voters very clearly do like monsters.
Some do, sure. But the two major parties have only put monsters on the ballot for the past few decades, so we don’t really know how many would pick a non-monster given the chance.
Parties didn’t put those politicians on the ballot, voters did. The Democratic party got rid of smoke filled rooms and contested conventions in the 1970’s and the Republican party followed suit in the 1980’s.
If you are disatisfied with the pols on offer, you have only to look to your neighbors.
lol, you mean the same DNC that said “…the DNC charter’s promise of ‘impartiality and evenhandedness’ as a mere political promise—political rhetoric that is not enforceable in federal courts.” ?
The same party that openly rigged the past two elections for the candidates that they wanted?
The voters are often just as behind at times as the politicians they put into office. The lion’s share of the voters are neo-liberal Boomers and Gen Xers, of which the Gen Xers are more conservative than the boomers as of 2024.
We’re not going to look much different for ant least another decade unless suddenly a ton of Millennials and Zoomers show up to vote in record breaking numbers.
Changing our voting systems locally and on the state level is the best chance we have at making a difference within the next 10 years, imo. It opens up access for third parties to grow and it lets progressive have a better chance of squeaking out wins against the neo-liberal incumbents.
I desperately wish it was this straightforward to the majority of people who shape our future in this country.
I am firmly convinced that most of our population doesn’t have internal language, no internal tools for abstracting ideas into mental words for comparison and evaluation, and just spout rhetoric by instinct. Literally, this is why everyone seems so stupid… they’ve changed the way their minds work by scrolling all day, every day, and not socializing and not changing habits.
Nuance is something that you can only arrive at if you have this mental narrative tool that lets you see multiple angles of an issue.
This means that our future of politics is going to be entirely grifters riding on this fact and creating over-the-top caricatures and WWE theater style politics. And people will eat it up because everyone just wants something to be all-in for or all-against so they can fight with the opposing fans. We’re so fucking cooked.
Yeah it can’t be that people are frustrated about living in a country where they’re in a permanent minority and will never be happy with their government.
Thank you for the non-sequitur response. I will return in kind with “Banana kneecap caterpillar establishment.”
Libs and dismissing any criticism from progressives. Can’t name a more iconic duo.
I am dismissing your complete lack of effort in engaging with a point, if it makes you feel better to think of someone who called that shit out as a “lib” then have it, meanwhile I will continue to rally people behind the point that a third of our population is too stupid with to continue to engage with using the same liberal political methods of inclusion and mediocrity and financial status-quo. I don’t know where that leaves you, but please do it over there on the other side of the curb.
You said people are stupid and lack a sense of nuance.
I pointed out that people are frustrated and don’t give a fuck about nuance anymore, and that’s why we’re fucked.
Sorry I didn’t spell that out for you.
Yes, you do have to make an effort to connect topics when communicating.
And sure, there is a problem with apathy, but that’s not THE problem. The last three presidential elections have seen the highest voter turnout in American history, it’s not a problem with people not caring as much as being too easily swayed to care about the wrong things, and this comes from a lack of education, lack of language skills, lack of cognitive ability broadly. When you say “People are too frustrated to care about nuance” yes, this IS stupidity. Stupidity isn’t some magic potion, it’s caused by things. In this case, it’s been designed by corporate interests using fascism to further this goal of a dumb, easily manipulated population.
This is the way.
