After a day and several replies from people. I’ve come to the conclusion that people here are ok with their party and leaders supporting genocide and they attack the questioners (instead of their party leaders) who criticize those who support genocide. Critical thinking is scarce here.
I’m shameful of humanity.
At the risk of feeding a sea lion, there’s actually a simple reason a candidate might shift their position toward voters that are already “guaranteed” to vote for them: if that “guaranteed” base grows, it provides a voting offset that could allow the candidate to worry less about losing the support of less progressive voters.
Oh. I’ve just looked up ‘sea-lion’. Jesus fucking Christ. In one thread we’ve had the argument, from supposed progressives, that;
This is the progressive position now?
This isn’t politics, it’s a fucking religion.
It’s not a religion, it’s reality and acknowledging that we can’t always get what we want when we want, and sometimes, the best option is harm reduction. You’re going on and on, like voting is always about ideological purity, but it’s not. The current system we have means you can push as far in whatever direction you want during the primary elections, but when it comes down to the general election, there are two viable candidates. The reality is, most third party slates, don’t even have a path to 270 electoral votes. Of the two that do, only the Libertarian Party has ever received an electoral vote, and that was in 1972 because of a “faithless elector,” rather than support at the ballot box. The Green Party? They only show up every four years to make perfect the enemy of better. They’re not serious. That leaves you with Trump and Harris. If we characterize them as cynically as you seem to view them, the choice is between someone that impulsive, vindictive, transactional, and devoid of even being able to pretend to a modicum of empathy, versus someone that isn’t stopping genocide fast enough. Of those two, which one do you think is more likely to exacerbate genocide the most?
Saying you’re not going to vote for a candidate that “allows genocide,” doesn’t mean genocide isn’t going to happen, it just means you get to feel better about yourself rather than inching things toward less genocide that might actually save some lives. So take how you will feel about yourself voting for someone that “allows genocide,” and set that aside, and ask yourself, out of the two, who is going to make it worse and who will make it less worse — because that vote has real life-and-death consequences.
Just declaring it to be ‘reality’ doesn’t stand in for an argument. I obviously disagree so if you want to have a discussion you have to forward some rational argument for your view.
Why will withholding a vote when neither candidate is acceptable not stop genocide?
You’ve simply declared that it will, but not given any reasons.
If both candidates are going to continue arms sales, then there’s no difference. The idea that Trump’s going to sell more is silly, there’s no current limit, Israel buys what they need. So the only affect I can have is in the long term.
Here, there’s two options:
Make it clear that genocide does not win votes.
Make it clear that even genocide is not going to dissuade me from voting Democrat and so give them basically a free ticket to ignore voters complety.
The former is the most likely to stop genocide.
Same goes for any other issue.
All the while you vote as if it were a duopoly, it will remain a duopoly. It’s not about getting ‘the least worst person’ into power next month, it’s about the long term value of making it clear to politicians that they cannot simply threaten us into voting for them, that they need to present policies we want in order to secure votes. Anything less and you might as well chuck democracy now. All they have to do is build up the bogeyman again and you’ll vote for them no matter what. In what way is that remotely “for the people, by the people”?
Sure.
But why would they? If the base that’s ‘grown’ is guaranteed, then why shift at all? Why not have the new larger guaranteed base, and the less progressive voters. After all, the guaranteed base is guaranteed, you don’t need to do anything to get their votes.
But let’s say they want to risk it for ideological reasons (no evidence at all that this is the case, but for the sake of argument we could assume it).
You’ve still not addressed the two main questions.
How do they know the extra votes came from left-leaning but ‘guaranteed’ voters, and not from voters who really liked their centrist policies?
If they have some way of knowing (polls, focus-groups etc) then why can’t they use that way of knowing to ask about voter commitment, and make the move to the left before the election, why do they need us to actually vote first to find out if we’re in this ‘guaranteed base’?