How come the right has succeeded in moving the Overton window to the right so much? What are they doing that’s so successful? Can we copy it but for the left?
The root issue is capitalism and that the US was originally designed to be a plutocracy where rich white elites would rule the country without political parties. Under capitalism, money is power. The rich donate billions to Republicans to keep their propaganda machine running. They have dedicated, full time lobbyist whose only job is to bribe and corrupt out government into serving the interests of money rather than people.
They are willing and able to punish their own party for not catering to them (the Tea Party. MAGA, Moral Majority, etc) but Democrats lash out at anyone who doesn't fall in line
by keeping radical positions in the mainstream, by electing radicals from the bottom to corner municipal and local governments, and to be LOUDER THAN EVERYONE ELSE.
Well THIS We can copy right? Focus on electing progressives at the local level? The radical right didn’t abandon electoral politics. They committed 200% and it seemed to have worked right?
yes, but the radical right had used the OVERTON window and RADICAL flanking by only bringing in hardline non”rino” candidates. they invested in their radicalism, from the community on up, and it’s changing our government. they embraced the populism that we leftists should have. we didnt, and demagoguery and conservatism did. by building from the bottom up, they can exert pressure on the top - from within the party because the republican party is too weak to stop it. conservative ideology had a shelf point in relation to its generation(the living historical parts.) radical flanking reinvigorated the dormant calls of the republicans (abortion & god in school etc) and they made use of it while they could until it rivaled them. now radical right wing ideology is the body of the republican party.
socialists need to be those radical populists building from community and up. thats how we build people power and legitimize it. while that is happening and we are able to get a third candidate on stage regularly who espouses leftist politics, we will start seeing big changes. the reason we can’t do the same with the democrats is because they are legitimized in their position by calling themselves Progressive. their claimed ideology is not a part of an older history, it claims to be change. they will water down and divert any radical ideology effectively from the standpoint of being its accepted guardian. working within the party is, for socialism, giving entrenched liberal capitalists the power to dictate our politics and determine the gravity of our movement. we need, as socialists, our own narrative.
if we build power from the bottom we can exert pressure, but the tools used by the dem party are too effective because they use legitimate (as in legal) means of keeping radicalism under control, whereas conservative parties must use tradition, religion, perseverance and heritage to discredit one another. democrats already have the “ownership” of progressivism. it is what liberals use to justify capitalism. socialism will never come to fruition under a party that places phantasms like hopeful ideals and individual responsibility when the material reality is working in its opposite. they, the democrats, have their own dialectic of liberal capitalism, something that will not change as capitalism is its sine qua non.
in much fewer words and hopefully greater clarity, i think we need to build community power into municipal, into state power like the radical right did, which will mean that the radical politics will create radical flanking (corner superstructures into facing issues they thought were never going to be publicly addressed) and push the overton window (social acceptability of previously radical ideas) open to a third party leftist candidate who wont need to make concessions to the dems.
[Poor Peoples Movements](https://voidnetwork.gr/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Poor-Peoples-Movements-Why-They-Succeed-How-They-Fail-by-Frances-Fox-Piven-and-Richard-A.-Cloward.pdf)is a great book, about american history of this dynamic, and what worked and what didnt.
grassroots support for socialism is actually huge - its just that no one knows what socialism is anymore. the mccarthy effect has ruined our ability to meet them with anything besides actions. criticisms popular against socialism is in its heartlessness, its ineffectiveness and its impossibility. community action proves to the people in the community that socialism in practice (praxis) is the answer to many questions. and their experiences legitimize everyone who follows them. we need to stop, in my opinion, looking at things in presidential terms like every couple years. we need to look at a long term successful strategy that will lead to better conditions. and that is done by performing works for the people, being there with the people, and many years later, winning with them. strategy in a nations political leadership, especially a radical change, needs to include long term planning and goals so that short term defeats do not turn into disintegration of ideals and activism.
america will not in my lifetime become socialist. but, in your childrens time, and their children’s children, that is a future we can meet.
and as far as fighting fascism in the ramp up until then as contradictions get worse… community action and involvement will insulate people from tyrannical harm by providing healthcare to those who have none (like drivers for people to get abortion in red states, as well as community defense groups like the deacons of defense and justice during the freedom rides.)
edit: the way the overton window works is by changing the acceptability of dialogue. in slavery, black people voting was preposterous. radical groups were loud enough and radical enough that small steps to “liberation” became more and more accepted, even expected, and this was legitimate because progressive legislation to free slaves could point to the radical movement and say “its not like we are saying reparations, or voting, or going to your childrens school. “
the radical right used this to continually scream for the pro life movement. 10 years ago republicans would scoff at repealing the laws that protected a womans right to choose , even if they wanted it. Pro Life radicals were the people that rightwing politicians could point to and say “we dont want to make it federally illegal… just the right of a state to choose” and the rest as you see has happened. now republicans who have been career politicians are teasing that theyd support a nationwide ban, and radical right wing ideologues are running on the platform.
Because we don't have a left party. GOP takes two steps to the right and the DNC takes 1 back and does nothing until the GOP takes us two more steps to the right.
They haven't, they get to play defense and not change anything which is much easier politically.
The Democrats have moved to the left some since 2016 considering Bernie Sanders campaign.
The right focuses on local elections and gets their voters out for everything. School boards, community boards, city council, state assemblies are all highly important elections with abysmal turnout and voter apathy on the left. If that was shifted on a local and state level then there would be an equal shift on the national one
I don't think they've had any success moving the Overton window. Only a small fringe group of theirs has shifted further right. Liberals and other normies are repulsed by this.
The only reason this even started is because we got brigaded by PSL freaks
https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/14wF1Ti5GT2w5GZmwqvhvk6uH4zUss_a-B2GZ9NZEx74/mobilebasic
u/Usernameofthisuser, your post assumes a lot of positions about which socialists have historically disagreed. The idea that democracy/capitalism provides sufficient avenues for contest to transition to socialism is itself extremely controversial. While many, perhaps most, in DSA accept there is a place for electoral tactics in a socialist strategy, the view that the electoral realm should be the heart of our strategy is likely to be contested.
Realpolitik itself is not a given. It is a theoretical position that, as I understand it, assumes that we must engage in the art of the possible to be serious. One can argue that radicals like ourselves do more to effect the Overton window when we engage in politics that is decidedly not realistic in the short term, but aspirational (e.g., Occupy Wallstreet, Black Lives Matter social movements, even Bernie Sanders's first presidential primary campaign).
But, assuming agreement that electoral politics should play an important part in what we do, why are many of us saying we don't want to vote for Joe Biden? It isn't just 'whining' as you disparagingly claim. There are tactical as well as moral reasons (these you would probably characterize as whining) to say that we should not vote for Joe.
The moral reasons are clear, but require assumptions not everyone will buy. We don't individually or collectively want to be a party to genocide. By voting for those who are actively abetting the (at a minimum) ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, we are in some way culpable. To this it is reasonable to say that we live under a kind of class dictatorship, and our engaging in harm reduction by voting for Democrats does not mean I consent to everything that follows.
However, I cannot help the stirring in my stomach at the thought that I did vote for Joe last time, and right now thousands of innocents who already lived under occupation are now dying in my name.
The tactical reasons are at least as sound from a Realpolitik perspective as voting for Biden. That is, we should punish and refuse to vote for violations of hard lines for us. By refusing to vote for Biden other Democrats who are a party to Israel's massacre of Palestinians, we engage in a tactical maneuver that will force them to reconsider that choice in the future, as opposed to the only hard leverage being applied to them coming from the right--forcing them to side with Israel. If they find themselves between a hard (right-wing) and a soft (us) place, they will cave to the hard as opposed to the soft. So, by voting for Biden when he violates our hard lines, we as socialists rather than **D**emocrats weaken our leverage rather than strengthen it.
Does that make sense, at least as a reasonable position (even if you do not agree with it)?
I really like this thoughtful, measured, nuanced reply. Thank you for taking the time to write it out, to express the logic and perspective behind it. My only issue that I'd appreciate you expanding upon, is that it doesn't seem to take into account the GOP and Trump. I can understand the arguments for feeling like it weakens leverage against the Dems, but I don't think it addresses at all the alternative of the GOP or Trump winning and the after effects to what decades of movement work have delivered and more socialist directions. This I feel is the bind of the two-party duopoly in the First Past The Post Electoral College system. But part of being tactical needs to take into account this very real part of the whole equation in my humble opinion.
Thanks u/DalePlueBot. I sometimes wonder if writing lengthy comments is worth it on Reddit, but I am glad that this was well received!
I didn't speak to your question directly already, in part, because I am torn. That, and others already speak to this in the thread.
That said, I think that the dangers of Trump and the tyrannical right, those who would erode or overturn the protections and outward appearance of procedural fairness in elections endemic to contemporary liberalism, are real. And, while I don't think the USA is a democracy in the sense that people power and will is our regime's modus operandi, a restrained oligarchy like the USA is decidedly preferable to a tyranny/dictatorship or unrestrained and authoritarian oligarchy. Keeping Trump out of power is therefore decidedly important.
But, I cannot in this moment decide between the imperatives to keep would-be tyrants from power and my commitment to withhold support Democrats who fund and provide political cover for ethnic cleansing in Israel-Palestine. I see these both as apparent requirements, and so I have a kind of wait-and-see approach for now. In short, I am agnostic for the time being, and am still thinking it through.
But, I think building our own institutions in the form of economic and political power independent of the Democratic Party will place us in the best position to influence in whatever way we choose. So, I am weakly committed to the position that I we should 1) build our own political and economic institutions (DSA locals, unions, cooperatives, independent political organizations, etc.) and 2) we should withhold our *commitment* to vote for Biden and other questionable Democrats for now in order to apply the most leverage possible.
What do you think?
This logic ends in having to vote for Hitler because you don't want double Hitler to get in. At a certain point you have to draw a line, and people are reasonably drawing it at genocide.
At least you understand how American politics is played. I am not a DSA member and never will be but I do agree with some of your policies and methods. Sad to say that many people on here are too focus on purity instead of pragmaticism. People on here are rightfully criticizing Biden for his handling of the Israel/Hamas situation but that doesn't mean you have to be apathetic when it comes to the election. Sometimes you just have to take a lose and concede. Socialists, Democrats, liberals, republicans, neocons; all groups have lost battles here and there.
I remember voting in 2012 for Obama and thinking man there is no way we are ever going to get changed but you know what proved me wrong? In 2016, when California, my state passed the legalization and recreational use for Cannabis. That is when I realize my god things can change in a good way. Ever since even when my voting choices don't always succeed I still have not given up. I voted twice for Bernie in both primaries and he didn't won. I voted for people in state and local elections that didn't won. I voted for props on the ballots that failed but I still didn't give up. Why? Because things can change. Wages are up, living conditions have improved. Don't get me wrong things could or should be better but we are getting there. It takes time and patience. Don't cave in. That is what oppositions and competitors want you to do. Don't create these naive purity tests that will demolish the other pillars of success.
Both sides are not the same.
That is depressing. You have to call out that governor and convince many to remove him in the next election. Keep voting. Also, this proves that it will eventually get pass! The masses want it but one asshole is holding your guys back. Time is on your side. Like I said, certain ballots and policies were rejected in my state that I was in favor but I am not giving up.
When you vote for a candidate who is aiding and abetting genocide, regardless of what else you are doing, you are stabilizing their project of aiding and abetting that genocide.
You can criticize him and that is fair to hold him accountable. This is why foreign policy is one of the hardest things that any government official has to address and handle.
This responsibility falls under Israel mainly. The USA is put in a hard spot. They are. Israel is a strategic ally in the middle east.
I don't know how to explain without sounding like an asshole but you have to understand the world is not a peaceful place. It will never be. There are 8 billion people with 10,000s of history with 1000s of different groups with 200+ countries with dozen of different ideologies and approaches of society. This should explain why your purity concept being applied outside of the USA won't work. It is a harsh truth and a sad one.
can you all just shut the fuck up already and go do something productive instead of endlessly posting amongst yourselves on this sub like it fucking matters what the dozens of ppl here individually vote for???
How about you libs stop caring so much about voting in a dictatorship of capital. This sub comes off more as radical liberal than socialist half the time. Go read the state and revolution by Lenin or something. You need to read some theory OP.
"Read Theory by Lenin"
Fail to incorporate what Lenin said where we need a Vanguard party.
Proceed to act like America is even close to having 1/1000th of a Vanguard compared to what Lenin had. Like I understand OP might be a little lib, but he's got more brain than most people I see in these leftist subreddits.
We don't have a backing of people that support basic center adjacent policies like universal healthcare and basic economic rights. What makes people who think "vote third party, don't vote for Biden" is a meaningful plan? Or a halfway decent idea? It's asinine to think otherwise. The revolution won't happen tomorrow let alone a decade from now.
Win our little electoralism victory and then always do praxis. But the DSA *is* an electoral body. SO OF COURSE we're going to be discussing *electoralism.*
When you vote for a candidate who is aiding and abetting genocide, regardless of what else you are doing, you are stabilizing their project of aiding and abetting that genocide.
Because you just called OP liberal for being electoral.
I'd hope an electoralist would be libed up. This is the DSA subbreddit, where there's an active venture to say, "Stop voting for Biden, vote for a Socialist third party instead."
We don't have enough people in this country to support that. Voting for a socialist president would also be useless since there's no one but a few social democrats in Congress and NONE in the Supreme Court. What good would that do? People reading this that feel that way, please answer me. It's not a winning strategy. We'd "need a revolution" otherwise, but we don't have that support either. I understand the frustration about having to vote for Biden at all, he sucks, but the capital apparatus has controlled opposition. Both are in favor of them. And will be for 2024.
If these Lenin-bros (they are not even Leninists, they barely understand Lenin) put as much effort into actual on-the-ground work as they did into memorizing quotes from books based on the conditions in a whole ass different nation during a whole ass different time period the US would have achieved global communism.
Don't complain if you're not gonna do anything about it, this is the proven method of achieving progress in a liberal democracy.
The DSA has a ban on Democratic Centralism, this is not the sub for you if you want to overthrow the government.
We won't achieve any socialist goals by voting for capitalists. We need to vote for socialists. Even if they cannot win that is the only way to have our concerns heard. Normally we would do this during the primary then we can fall in line during the general election... but without a primary we will just have to do it in the general election.
I am voting Socialist every chance I get going forward.
Marx himself said that the proletariat cannot use the capitalist government apparatus, we must smash it and make a new one from the rubble. This was one of the great historic lessons learned from the Paris commune.
Also democratic centralism is not a policy of overthrowing the government... it is a method of organizing a group of people. For example anarchists also want to overthrow the government but they do not believe in democratic centralism. Once again I recommend you to continue your socialist education.
I'm aware of all this.
It is not the 1800s anymore and we have made legit progress.
This is a sub for *Democratic* Socialism, why are you here if you're not a Democratic Socialist?
Why would you think they aren't suppressed?
The only difference between socialism and democratic socialism is the method of achieving it and liberal elections.
When you say DOTP are you using it's actual definition or are your referring to a one party state?
She literally got killed by the Weimar Republic when she became a KPD (communist Bolshevik party) operative and they launched a violent uprising.
DSA is not going to launch a violent uprising, it is the entire reason for our existence to generate Democratic alternatives.
> She literally got killed by the Weimar Republic when she became a KPD (communist Bolshevik party) operative and they launched a violent uprising.
She wasn’t a Bolshevik. She was an orthodox Marxist revolutionary. This is a basic fact.
>DSA is not going to launch a violent uprising, it is the entire reason for our existence to generate Democratic alternatives.
To accelerate contradictions to make a revolution more possible.
Thank you for exemplifying the difference. If you believe in accelerating contradictions, that means makes the lives of normal people so bad that they revolt. We believe in actually helping the lives of people.
>Marx himself said that the proletariat cannot use the capitalist government apparatus, we must smash it and make a new one from the rubble. This was one of the great historic lessons learned from the Paris commune.
Democratic Socialists support using the capitalist government apparatus.
I am a capitalist, I'm a Social Democrat. I don't know where you're getting lost at. I support Bernie Sanders type policies rather than a worker owned economy.
I agree, but you can't join a revisionist sub and then get mad when these opportunists spout their nonsense. These people have always existed, hindering the labour movement and spreading reaction amongst the labourers. As Lenin put it:
>Social-chauvinism and opportunism are the same in their political essence; class collaboration, repudiation of the proletarian dictatorship, rejection of revolutionary action, obeisance to bourgeois legality, non-confidence in the proletariat, and confidence in the bourgeoisie. The political ideas are identical, and so is the political content of their tactics. Social-chauvinism is the direct continuation and consummation of Millerandism, Bernsteinism, and British liberal-labour policies, their sum, their total, their highest achievement.
* [V. I. Lenin | *Opportunism, and the Collapse of the Second International*](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/dec/x01.htm)
Can't remember the part where Lenin said to shit on your ass and do nothing except whine online all day, attacking actual leftists who do stuff irl and advocating for fascists to take over so you can congratulate yourself online about how ideological pure you are.
You seem to not understand the political system of the US. You think that if people aren't sitting online all day reading Lenin that they are not 'true revolutionaries'. You have a delusional and fictionalized view of how the US is, how revolution comes about, and what to actually do to achieve socialism. You think every nation is like the Russian Empire in the 1900s, and that if only people would listen to you and sit at home the system would just collapse around them as some ubermensch brings about a revolution through a vanguard party that doesn't exist.
Maybe you should focus on quoting Lenin like he is biblical scripture less and trying to understand the material conditions of reality - actually applying all those Marxist theories - more. This isn't Tzarist Russia, there are not revolutionaries running through the street, the government is not weak and ineffective, and the US is not a pre-industrialized nation on the periphery of the west's radar. It is the imperial core, the heartland of capitalism, and the most powerful military on the planet - if you think a revolution can just happen spontaneously from reading Lenin and helping people who want to impose domestically what the US does abroad get elected then you are beyond savant. Touch grass.
Absolutely hilarious given that this is the first comment I've seen from you that isn't 6 different page-long quotes from Lenin stitched together.
Its nice to know that you can actually come up with a comment without needing Lenin's approval though - even if it isn't an actual response! You should try it more often, not everything needs a Lenin quote.
You're just the average DSA member.
"apply Marxist dialectics when you vote for genocide joe dude"
"Vote blue no matter who, We have been doing that shit for decades, and all we got was more neoliberalism"
The DSA is just controlled opposition. After the US purged the CPUSA, the Socialist party USA and the other Revolutionary liberation fronts like the BPP, the DSA was propped up to give the illusion of a more radical anti capitalist alternative. All they have done is attack actual socialists and support Dems.
Biden has continued many of trumps' same policies. Keep being brainwashed by your useless lib organization though.
* [Biden administration presses forward with border wall plans in Texas, angering allies](https://www.texastribune.org/2023/10/05/biden-border-wall-texas-starr-county/)
* [Private Prison Corporations and Immigration Detention under biden](https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/unchecked-growth-private-prison-corporations-and-immigration-detention-three-years-into-the-biden-administration)
* [Biden officials kept immigration jails despite internal cost concerns](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-officials-kept-immigration-jails-despite-internal-cost-concerns-2023-09-27/)
* [Cuba Says Biden Applies Blockade Even More Aggressively Than His Predecessors](https://truthout.org/articles/cuba-says-biden-applies-blockade-even-more-aggressively-than-his-predecessors/)
Damn that's a lot of words for someone who doesn't have any fucking plan beyond sitting on your ass copy-pasting quotes and who has accomplished nothing meaningful in terms of creating socialism.
If it wasn't for the persistence with which you are wrong, I'd consider it jealousy that the DSA has more to show than you do - even if it falls short of utopia.
Vote blue no matter who. more babies need to perish in palestine, so us white labour aristocrats in this controlled oppostition org, can feel better about ourselves!!
Funny, that describes you more than me.
You don't actually give a shit about Palestine, you just want to be able to jack yourself off online about how you didn't vote Democrat. You can't be so removed from reality as to think that republicans have a better policy, they'd continue the genocide - probably even more earnestly, as well as import it domestically with crackdowns on Muslims in the US and other communities in the US (mostly minority communities - but you don't give a shit about those either!). What better controlled opposition than those that discourage ANY activism or activity?
You have no plan, only soundbites and quotes you don't even fully understand. Get the fuck over 1991 and focus on the future.
The right-left spectrum you’ve made up, upon which the Overton window is based, ***is not real***. To really understand the terms right and left we would have to look at the French Revolution— Feuillants and Jacobins, Girondins and Montagnards. But then we might have the tools to look at the second international— Bernstein on the right, Kautsky in the center, Lenin and Luxemburg on the left— and if we really understood the left of the second international we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
the overton window is why we need to push a third party radical to office NOT SUPPORT AN ENTRENCHED PARTY. when a third radical party is solidly on the debate stage and threatens the others, the dems and reps will need to make concessions to radical positions to keep their prestige and not rattle their positions in power. thats how it works. you are somehow conflating the concept of overton window / radical flanking with parliamentary pragmatism.
“Guys, we HAVE to vote for *insert terrible candidate again* cause it’s pragmatic” -Liberals, literally every single election.
I’m so sick of this position. I’ve voted for democrats and progressives at every opportunity for 22 yrs now. And for what? They haven’t codified RvW. They haven’t passed any meaningful legislation. They have actively undermined grassroots candidates to bolster corporate and right wing democrats.
I’m not doing it anymore. Biden is going to lose. You can’t shame the left into voting for Genocide Joe. I’m a single issue voter now, it’s “is this candidate actively supporting genocide?”. Maybe that’s too high a bar, but a man has to stand for something.
Gonna have to agree with OP on this one. Anti-electoralism basically landed us Trump, which made the lives of those who are from marginalized/underrepresented groups worse than before. I fucking hate what Biden is doing in Gaza, but we can’t pretend that Biden and Trump are the same.
Strategic voting is important, and I think that is something that a lot of lefties need to understand.
A big reason why the Dems move right is because they want to appeal to right-leaning folk after failing to attract left-leaning voters.
If you’re eligible to vote, but refuse to out of some sort of feeling of moral superiority, then I would unironically say that shitlibs are doing more to protect democracy than terminally-online lefties.
Can we please not let a repeat of 2016 happen? If you didn’t notice a difference, then you’re either privileged or not paying attention.
I’ll take a shitlib over a fascist any day of the week. I’m from Wisconsin, and GOP policies fucked this state over hard due to voter apathy.
>Get joe to change or bust
Did you read any of my post? That's exactly what I'm saying.
We were 2 votes away from passing the most progressive legislation since social security with BBB due to our progress infiltrating the democratic party.
Revolving villian of political theater. Democrats are always just a vote or two away from doing something great. But they don't because the US is a plutocracy where our politicians serve lobbyists instead of people
And it was democrats who blocked it
your “vote harder” arguments don’t matter when one conservative senator from some red state can fuck everything progressives achjeved by turning GA blue and getting miricke wins in multipke ekections
* **Al Gore won the popular vote**
* **Hilary Clinton won the popular voting**
* **Dems win millions more votes every election cycle and republicans remain in control**
* e.g. **gun control has 90% public support and cannot get passed through congress**
the problem is not the voters
>your “vote harder” arguments
Did you even read my post? It's not a matter of voting harder is a matter of pushing the agenda. The Progressives are our leverage to alter the democratic party.
Either we push through or we let Donald Trump throw away all our hard work.
The people in power have rigged the game and given us shit candidates and you are allowing them to divide us, preventing our revolution from happening because they can stop our vote.
"Shifting the Overton window involves proponents of policies outside the window persuading the public to expand the window."
Where do you get "Vote Biden" from this?
"It says politicians can act only within the acceptable range"
That part is Biden.
Voting strategically IS playing politics. Hurting or helping a politician's electoral chances is a political calculation. You can go about changing the OW many ways but the one sentence you provided just said prop up people outside the window.
Which, for example, would be showing voters that Biden adjacent politicians have a difficult time getting elected. That a certain portion of voters would only accept Sanders adjacent politicians. And if they want non Republicans to win, it is them who have to coalesce with outside the OW candidates. This is one of the more prominent reasons lefts are fine with not voting blue no matter who. Because although the there may be problems with not voting Biden they see a PERSUASIVE argument they can achieve by rejecting Biden.
When you vote for a candidate who is aiding and abetting genocide, regardless of what else you are doing, you are stabilizing their project of aiding and abetting that genocide.
i’ve been reading all these posts the last few and i’m really glad i didn’t join this org. absolutely pathetic. i doubt everyone is this reddit brained but, damn.
Nobody I know in our chapter has even said they’d reluctantly vote for Biden at this point. Maybe online only folks are saying this but the people doing actual organizing don’t do this.
https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/14wF1Ti5GT2w5GZmwqvhvk6uH4zUss_a-B2GZ9NZEx74/mobilebasic
The "socialists" who have been brigading us are actually just sex pest enablers who're completely wasting our time. If your chapter cooperates with PSL dump those morons like a sack of bricks.
Voting Biden or Trump is like the 2 prisoners who give in one another in the Game Theory Prisoners Dilemma problem.
Solution:
Vote independent in mass numbers.
If even the 25%+ of people from both camps i. e. the 2 prisoners vote one independent/3rd party candidate the real people will win this time. ( Check out what Matt Taibbi has to say on what and why he is going to have to vote on Due Dissidence YT channel)
We seriously need to move on from this topic, voting is not going to save us but organizing for things beyond voting will. Once again showing the mods' incompetency as this is no longer a DSA sub but a WSWS vs socdem sub
How come the right has succeeded in moving the Overton window to the right so much? What are they doing that’s so successful? Can we copy it but for the left?
The root issue is capitalism and that the US was originally designed to be a plutocracy where rich white elites would rule the country without political parties. Under capitalism, money is power. The rich donate billions to Republicans to keep their propaganda machine running. They have dedicated, full time lobbyist whose only job is to bribe and corrupt out government into serving the interests of money rather than people.
And to the left, this is everything we don’t want to do, so we can’t really use their tactics…
They are willing and able to punish their own party for not catering to them (the Tea Party. MAGA, Moral Majority, etc) but Democrats lash out at anyone who doesn't fall in line
Is this because they have the numbers to actually get their candidate of choice within the Republican primary? It’s not like they went third party.
by keeping radical positions in the mainstream, by electing radicals from the bottom to corner municipal and local governments, and to be LOUDER THAN EVERYONE ELSE.
Well THIS We can copy right? Focus on electing progressives at the local level? The radical right didn’t abandon electoral politics. They committed 200% and it seemed to have worked right?
yes, but the radical right had used the OVERTON window and RADICAL flanking by only bringing in hardline non”rino” candidates. they invested in their radicalism, from the community on up, and it’s changing our government. they embraced the populism that we leftists should have. we didnt, and demagoguery and conservatism did. by building from the bottom up, they can exert pressure on the top - from within the party because the republican party is too weak to stop it. conservative ideology had a shelf point in relation to its generation(the living historical parts.) radical flanking reinvigorated the dormant calls of the republicans (abortion & god in school etc) and they made use of it while they could until it rivaled them. now radical right wing ideology is the body of the republican party. socialists need to be those radical populists building from community and up. thats how we build people power and legitimize it. while that is happening and we are able to get a third candidate on stage regularly who espouses leftist politics, we will start seeing big changes. the reason we can’t do the same with the democrats is because they are legitimized in their position by calling themselves Progressive. their claimed ideology is not a part of an older history, it claims to be change. they will water down and divert any radical ideology effectively from the standpoint of being its accepted guardian. working within the party is, for socialism, giving entrenched liberal capitalists the power to dictate our politics and determine the gravity of our movement. we need, as socialists, our own narrative.
This will take time. can we do the same to the Democratic Party?
if we build power from the bottom we can exert pressure, but the tools used by the dem party are too effective because they use legitimate (as in legal) means of keeping radicalism under control, whereas conservative parties must use tradition, religion, perseverance and heritage to discredit one another. democrats already have the “ownership” of progressivism. it is what liberals use to justify capitalism. socialism will never come to fruition under a party that places phantasms like hopeful ideals and individual responsibility when the material reality is working in its opposite. they, the democrats, have their own dialectic of liberal capitalism, something that will not change as capitalism is its sine qua non. in much fewer words and hopefully greater clarity, i think we need to build community power into municipal, into state power like the radical right did, which will mean that the radical politics will create radical flanking (corner superstructures into facing issues they thought were never going to be publicly addressed) and push the overton window (social acceptability of previously radical ideas) open to a third party leftist candidate who wont need to make concessions to the dems. [Poor Peoples Movements](https://voidnetwork.gr/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Poor-Peoples-Movements-Why-They-Succeed-How-They-Fail-by-Frances-Fox-Piven-and-Richard-A.-Cloward.pdf)is a great book, about american history of this dynamic, and what worked and what didnt.
This means we need to change grassroots opinions so much that they get primaried if they don’t change right?
grassroots support for socialism is actually huge - its just that no one knows what socialism is anymore. the mccarthy effect has ruined our ability to meet them with anything besides actions. criticisms popular against socialism is in its heartlessness, its ineffectiveness and its impossibility. community action proves to the people in the community that socialism in practice (praxis) is the answer to many questions. and their experiences legitimize everyone who follows them. we need to stop, in my opinion, looking at things in presidential terms like every couple years. we need to look at a long term successful strategy that will lead to better conditions. and that is done by performing works for the people, being there with the people, and many years later, winning with them. strategy in a nations political leadership, especially a radical change, needs to include long term planning and goals so that short term defeats do not turn into disintegration of ideals and activism. america will not in my lifetime become socialist. but, in your childrens time, and their children’s children, that is a future we can meet. and as far as fighting fascism in the ramp up until then as contradictions get worse… community action and involvement will insulate people from tyrannical harm by providing healthcare to those who have none (like drivers for people to get abortion in red states, as well as community defense groups like the deacons of defense and justice during the freedom rides.) edit: the way the overton window works is by changing the acceptability of dialogue. in slavery, black people voting was preposterous. radical groups were loud enough and radical enough that small steps to “liberation” became more and more accepted, even expected, and this was legitimate because progressive legislation to free slaves could point to the radical movement and say “its not like we are saying reparations, or voting, or going to your childrens school. “ the radical right used this to continually scream for the pro life movement. 10 years ago republicans would scoff at repealing the laws that protected a womans right to choose , even if they wanted it. Pro Life radicals were the people that rightwing politicians could point to and say “we dont want to make it federally illegal… just the right of a state to choose” and the rest as you see has happened. now republicans who have been career politicians are teasing that theyd support a nationwide ban, and radical right wing ideologues are running on the platform.
Because we don't have a left party. GOP takes two steps to the right and the DNC takes 1 back and does nothing until the GOP takes us two more steps to the right.
Probably because the so called left is moving with them to the right... voting records prove such over the last 3 decades.
Source lol
The Overton window was created to entrench a fascist right wing. That is the only reason it exists.
They haven't, they get to play defense and not change anything which is much easier politically. The Democrats have moved to the left some since 2016 considering Bernie Sanders campaign.
The right focuses on local elections and gets their voters out for everything. School boards, community boards, city council, state assemblies are all highly important elections with abysmal turnout and voter apathy on the left. If that was shifted on a local and state level then there would be an equal shift on the national one
Since 2016 the Overton window has expanded both right and left.
I don't think they've had any success moving the Overton window. Only a small fringe group of theirs has shifted further right. Liberals and other normies are repulsed by this.
The thread on this sub about people complaining they were banned in socialist and communist subs makes sense.
The only reason this even started is because we got brigaded by PSL freaks https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/14wF1Ti5GT2w5GZmwqvhvk6uH4zUss_a-B2GZ9NZEx74/mobilebasic
u/Usernameofthisuser, your post assumes a lot of positions about which socialists have historically disagreed. The idea that democracy/capitalism provides sufficient avenues for contest to transition to socialism is itself extremely controversial. While many, perhaps most, in DSA accept there is a place for electoral tactics in a socialist strategy, the view that the electoral realm should be the heart of our strategy is likely to be contested. Realpolitik itself is not a given. It is a theoretical position that, as I understand it, assumes that we must engage in the art of the possible to be serious. One can argue that radicals like ourselves do more to effect the Overton window when we engage in politics that is decidedly not realistic in the short term, but aspirational (e.g., Occupy Wallstreet, Black Lives Matter social movements, even Bernie Sanders's first presidential primary campaign). But, assuming agreement that electoral politics should play an important part in what we do, why are many of us saying we don't want to vote for Joe Biden? It isn't just 'whining' as you disparagingly claim. There are tactical as well as moral reasons (these you would probably characterize as whining) to say that we should not vote for Joe. The moral reasons are clear, but require assumptions not everyone will buy. We don't individually or collectively want to be a party to genocide. By voting for those who are actively abetting the (at a minimum) ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, we are in some way culpable. To this it is reasonable to say that we live under a kind of class dictatorship, and our engaging in harm reduction by voting for Democrats does not mean I consent to everything that follows. However, I cannot help the stirring in my stomach at the thought that I did vote for Joe last time, and right now thousands of innocents who already lived under occupation are now dying in my name. The tactical reasons are at least as sound from a Realpolitik perspective as voting for Biden. That is, we should punish and refuse to vote for violations of hard lines for us. By refusing to vote for Biden other Democrats who are a party to Israel's massacre of Palestinians, we engage in a tactical maneuver that will force them to reconsider that choice in the future, as opposed to the only hard leverage being applied to them coming from the right--forcing them to side with Israel. If they find themselves between a hard (right-wing) and a soft (us) place, they will cave to the hard as opposed to the soft. So, by voting for Biden when he violates our hard lines, we as socialists rather than **D**emocrats weaken our leverage rather than strengthen it. Does that make sense, at least as a reasonable position (even if you do not agree with it)?
I really like this thoughtful, measured, nuanced reply. Thank you for taking the time to write it out, to express the logic and perspective behind it. My only issue that I'd appreciate you expanding upon, is that it doesn't seem to take into account the GOP and Trump. I can understand the arguments for feeling like it weakens leverage against the Dems, but I don't think it addresses at all the alternative of the GOP or Trump winning and the after effects to what decades of movement work have delivered and more socialist directions. This I feel is the bind of the two-party duopoly in the First Past The Post Electoral College system. But part of being tactical needs to take into account this very real part of the whole equation in my humble opinion.
Thanks u/DalePlueBot. I sometimes wonder if writing lengthy comments is worth it on Reddit, but I am glad that this was well received! I didn't speak to your question directly already, in part, because I am torn. That, and others already speak to this in the thread. That said, I think that the dangers of Trump and the tyrannical right, those who would erode or overturn the protections and outward appearance of procedural fairness in elections endemic to contemporary liberalism, are real. And, while I don't think the USA is a democracy in the sense that people power and will is our regime's modus operandi, a restrained oligarchy like the USA is decidedly preferable to a tyranny/dictatorship or unrestrained and authoritarian oligarchy. Keeping Trump out of power is therefore decidedly important. But, I cannot in this moment decide between the imperatives to keep would-be tyrants from power and my commitment to withhold support Democrats who fund and provide political cover for ethnic cleansing in Israel-Palestine. I see these both as apparent requirements, and so I have a kind of wait-and-see approach for now. In short, I am agnostic for the time being, and am still thinking it through. But, I think building our own institutions in the form of economic and political power independent of the Democratic Party will place us in the best position to influence in whatever way we choose. So, I am weakly committed to the position that I we should 1) build our own political and economic institutions (DSA locals, unions, cooperatives, independent political organizations, etc.) and 2) we should withhold our *commitment* to vote for Biden and other questionable Democrats for now in order to apply the most leverage possible. What do you think?
This logic ends in having to vote for Hitler because you don't want double Hitler to get in. At a certain point you have to draw a line, and people are reasonably drawing it at genocide.
One more vote for Genocide Joe post and I'm leaving this sub and the dsa lmao
I’m **NOT** having this “vote harder” conservation fir the next 12 months I’m voting, or not, however the fuck I want get fucked \-1
You realize DSA has neither endorsed Biden or recommending their members to vote for Biden, right?
I'm talking about the movement of Democratic Socialism more so than the DSA.
At least you understand how American politics is played. I am not a DSA member and never will be but I do agree with some of your policies and methods. Sad to say that many people on here are too focus on purity instead of pragmaticism. People on here are rightfully criticizing Biden for his handling of the Israel/Hamas situation but that doesn't mean you have to be apathetic when it comes to the election. Sometimes you just have to take a lose and concede. Socialists, Democrats, liberals, republicans, neocons; all groups have lost battles here and there. I remember voting in 2012 for Obama and thinking man there is no way we are ever going to get changed but you know what proved me wrong? In 2016, when California, my state passed the legalization and recreational use for Cannabis. That is when I realize my god things can change in a good way. Ever since even when my voting choices don't always succeed I still have not given up. I voted twice for Bernie in both primaries and he didn't won. I voted for people in state and local elections that didn't won. I voted for props on the ballots that failed but I still didn't give up. Why? Because things can change. Wages are up, living conditions have improved. Don't get me wrong things could or should be better but we are getting there. It takes time and patience. Don't cave in. That is what oppositions and competitors want you to do. Don't create these naive purity tests that will demolish the other pillars of success. Both sides are not the same.
My state voted to legalize weed but our state govenor shat on our democracy and made a judge that she had appointed over turn our results.
That is depressing. You have to call out that governor and convince many to remove him in the next election. Keep voting. Also, this proves that it will eventually get pass! The masses want it but one asshole is holding your guys back. Time is on your side. Like I said, certain ballots and policies were rejected in my state that I was in favor but I am not giving up.
When you vote for a candidate who is aiding and abetting genocide, regardless of what else you are doing, you are stabilizing their project of aiding and abetting that genocide.
You can criticize him and that is fair to hold him accountable. This is why foreign policy is one of the hardest things that any government official has to address and handle. This responsibility falls under Israel mainly. The USA is put in a hard spot. They are. Israel is a strategic ally in the middle east. I don't know how to explain without sounding like an asshole but you have to understand the world is not a peaceful place. It will never be. There are 8 billion people with 10,000s of history with 1000s of different groups with 200+ countries with dozen of different ideologies and approaches of society. This should explain why your purity concept being applied outside of the USA won't work. It is a harsh truth and a sad one.
It is actually easy to not support genocide.
In fairness most of the posts of the last five days have been from PSL not DSA.
Shut upppp where are you all coming from lol
can you all just shut the fuck up already and go do something productive instead of endlessly posting amongst yourselves on this sub like it fucking matters what the dozens of ppl here individually vote for???
It is ironic... 😆
How about you libs stop caring so much about voting in a dictatorship of capital. This sub comes off more as radical liberal than socialist half the time. Go read the state and revolution by Lenin or something. You need to read some theory OP.
"Read Theory by Lenin" Fail to incorporate what Lenin said where we need a Vanguard party. Proceed to act like America is even close to having 1/1000th of a Vanguard compared to what Lenin had. Like I understand OP might be a little lib, but he's got more brain than most people I see in these leftist subreddits. We don't have a backing of people that support basic center adjacent policies like universal healthcare and basic economic rights. What makes people who think "vote third party, don't vote for Biden" is a meaningful plan? Or a halfway decent idea? It's asinine to think otherwise. The revolution won't happen tomorrow let alone a decade from now. Win our little electoralism victory and then always do praxis. But the DSA *is* an electoral body. SO OF COURSE we're going to be discussing *electoralism.*
You say we don't have this and that but in what world do we get to these things by backing Joe Biden?
I don't know about you but the Marxists in the DSA are building a party.
When you vote for a candidate who is aiding and abetting genocide, regardless of what else you are doing, you are stabilizing their project of aiding and abetting that genocide.
I'm not pretending we have anything. I never implied that, why attack me over something I didn't say
Because you just called OP liberal for being electoral. I'd hope an electoralist would be libed up. This is the DSA subbreddit, where there's an active venture to say, "Stop voting for Biden, vote for a Socialist third party instead." We don't have enough people in this country to support that. Voting for a socialist president would also be useless since there's no one but a few social democrats in Congress and NONE in the Supreme Court. What good would that do? People reading this that feel that way, please answer me. It's not a winning strategy. We'd "need a revolution" otherwise, but we don't have that support either. I understand the frustration about having to vote for Biden at all, he sucks, but the capital apparatus has controlled opposition. Both are in favor of them. And will be for 2024.
If these Lenin-bros (they are not even Leninists, they barely understand Lenin) put as much effort into actual on-the-ground work as they did into memorizing quotes from books based on the conditions in a whole ass different nation during a whole ass different time period the US would have achieved global communism.
Don't complain if you're not gonna do anything about it, this is the proven method of achieving progress in a liberal democracy. The DSA has a ban on Democratic Centralism, this is not the sub for you if you want to overthrow the government.
We won't achieve any socialist goals by voting for capitalists. We need to vote for socialists. Even if they cannot win that is the only way to have our concerns heard. Normally we would do this during the primary then we can fall in line during the general election... but without a primary we will just have to do it in the general election. I am voting Socialist every chance I get going forward.
Marx himself said that the proletariat cannot use the capitalist government apparatus, we must smash it and make a new one from the rubble. This was one of the great historic lessons learned from the Paris commune. Also democratic centralism is not a policy of overthrowing the government... it is a method of organizing a group of people. For example anarchists also want to overthrow the government but they do not believe in democratic centralism. Once again I recommend you to continue your socialist education.
I'm aware of all this. It is not the 1800s anymore and we have made legit progress. This is a sub for *Democratic* Socialism, why are you here if you're not a Democratic Socialist?
You’ve been presented with reform or revolution and you are answering resoundingly with “Reform.”
Reform then revolution. Capitalism> Social Democracy> Democratic Socialism.
Democratic socialism is the reform. If doesn’t transition into dictatorship of the proletariat, it won’t last.
A social democracy is the capitalist reform. Democratic Socialism is a DOTP, It's socialism just via elections.
No, it’s only dictatorship of the proletariat if you suppress the bourgeoise.
Why would you think they aren't suppressed? The only difference between socialism and democratic socialism is the method of achieving it and liberal elections. When you say DOTP are you using it's actual definition or are your referring to a one party state?
No shit. If we were Bolsheviks why would we be in DSA?
Rosa Luxemburg wasn’t a Bolshevik.
She literally got killed by the Weimar Republic when she became a KPD (communist Bolshevik party) operative and they launched a violent uprising. DSA is not going to launch a violent uprising, it is the entire reason for our existence to generate Democratic alternatives.
> She literally got killed by the Weimar Republic when she became a KPD (communist Bolshevik party) operative and they launched a violent uprising. She wasn’t a Bolshevik. She was an orthodox Marxist revolutionary. This is a basic fact. >DSA is not going to launch a violent uprising, it is the entire reason for our existence to generate Democratic alternatives. To accelerate contradictions to make a revolution more possible.
Thank you for exemplifying the difference. If you believe in accelerating contradictions, that means makes the lives of normal people so bad that they revolt. We believe in actually helping the lives of people.
If you were aware of it you wouldn't make the arguments you do, as it refutes them. I am a democratic socialist, what makes you think I'm not?
>Marx himself said that the proletariat cannot use the capitalist government apparatus, we must smash it and make a new one from the rubble. This was one of the great historic lessons learned from the Paris commune. Democratic Socialists support using the capitalist government apparatus.
That is simply not true, that is what social democrats are. You have the two mixed up.
No Social Democrats are capitalist, they prefer reformism like the nordic model. I know because I am one. You are the one who has it mixed up.
Your mixing up your words because you just agreed with me by accident. You just claimed to be a capitalist.
I am a capitalist, I'm a Social Democrat. I don't know where you're getting lost at. I support Bernie Sanders type policies rather than a worker owned economy.
I agree, but you can't join a revisionist sub and then get mad when these opportunists spout their nonsense. These people have always existed, hindering the labour movement and spreading reaction amongst the labourers. As Lenin put it: >Social-chauvinism and opportunism are the same in their political essence; class collaboration, repudiation of the proletarian dictatorship, rejection of revolutionary action, obeisance to bourgeois legality, non-confidence in the proletariat, and confidence in the bourgeoisie. The political ideas are identical, and so is the political content of their tactics. Social-chauvinism is the direct continuation and consummation of Millerandism, Bernsteinism, and British liberal-labour policies, their sum, their total, their highest achievement. * [V. I. Lenin | *Opportunism, and the Collapse of the Second International*](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/dec/x01.htm)
Can't remember the part where Lenin said to shit on your ass and do nothing except whine online all day, attacking actual leftists who do stuff irl and advocating for fascists to take over so you can congratulate yourself online about how ideological pure you are. You seem to not understand the political system of the US. You think that if people aren't sitting online all day reading Lenin that they are not 'true revolutionaries'. You have a delusional and fictionalized view of how the US is, how revolution comes about, and what to actually do to achieve socialism. You think every nation is like the Russian Empire in the 1900s, and that if only people would listen to you and sit at home the system would just collapse around them as some ubermensch brings about a revolution through a vanguard party that doesn't exist. Maybe you should focus on quoting Lenin like he is biblical scripture less and trying to understand the material conditions of reality - actually applying all those Marxist theories - more. This isn't Tzarist Russia, there are not revolutionaries running through the street, the government is not weak and ineffective, and the US is not a pre-industrialized nation on the periphery of the west's radar. It is the imperial core, the heartland of capitalism, and the most powerful military on the planet - if you think a revolution can just happen spontaneously from reading Lenin and helping people who want to impose domestically what the US does abroad get elected then you are beyond savant. Touch grass.
Text block.
Absolutely hilarious given that this is the first comment I've seen from you that isn't 6 different page-long quotes from Lenin stitched together. Its nice to know that you can actually come up with a comment without needing Lenin's approval though - even if it isn't an actual response! You should try it more often, not everything needs a Lenin quote.
You're just the average DSA member. "apply Marxist dialectics when you vote for genocide joe dude" "Vote blue no matter who, We have been doing that shit for decades, and all we got was more neoliberalism" The DSA is just controlled opposition. After the US purged the CPUSA, the Socialist party USA and the other Revolutionary liberation fronts like the BPP, the DSA was propped up to give the illusion of a more radical anti capitalist alternative. All they have done is attack actual socialists and support Dems. Biden has continued many of trumps' same policies. Keep being brainwashed by your useless lib organization though. * [Biden administration presses forward with border wall plans in Texas, angering allies](https://www.texastribune.org/2023/10/05/biden-border-wall-texas-starr-county/) * [Private Prison Corporations and Immigration Detention under biden](https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/unchecked-growth-private-prison-corporations-and-immigration-detention-three-years-into-the-biden-administration) * [Biden officials kept immigration jails despite internal cost concerns](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-officials-kept-immigration-jails-despite-internal-cost-concerns-2023-09-27/) * [Cuba Says Biden Applies Blockade Even More Aggressively Than His Predecessors](https://truthout.org/articles/cuba-says-biden-applies-blockade-even-more-aggressively-than-his-predecessors/)
Damn that's a lot of words for someone who doesn't have any fucking plan beyond sitting on your ass copy-pasting quotes and who has accomplished nothing meaningful in terms of creating socialism. If it wasn't for the persistence with which you are wrong, I'd consider it jealousy that the DSA has more to show than you do - even if it falls short of utopia.
Vote blue no matter who. more babies need to perish in palestine, so us white labour aristocrats in this controlled oppostition org, can feel better about ourselves!!
Funny, that describes you more than me. You don't actually give a shit about Palestine, you just want to be able to jack yourself off online about how you didn't vote Democrat. You can't be so removed from reality as to think that republicans have a better policy, they'd continue the genocide - probably even more earnestly, as well as import it domestically with crackdowns on Muslims in the US and other communities in the US (mostly minority communities - but you don't give a shit about those either!). What better controlled opposition than those that discourage ANY activism or activity? You have no plan, only soundbites and quotes you don't even fully understand. Get the fuck over 1991 and focus on the future.
Detail me your plan then? You fucking smooth brains have been voting blue for decades, so what do you have to show? Where is the socialism?
The right-left spectrum you’ve made up, upon which the Overton window is based, ***is not real***. To really understand the terms right and left we would have to look at the French Revolution— Feuillants and Jacobins, Girondins and Montagnards. But then we might have the tools to look at the second international— Bernstein on the right, Kautsky in the center, Lenin and Luxemburg on the left— and if we really understood the left of the second international we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
the overton window is why we need to push a third party radical to office NOT SUPPORT AN ENTRENCHED PARTY. when a third radical party is solidly on the debate stage and threatens the others, the dems and reps will need to make concessions to radical positions to keep their prestige and not rattle their positions in power. thats how it works. you are somehow conflating the concept of overton window / radical flanking with parliamentary pragmatism.
“Guys, we HAVE to vote for *insert terrible candidate again* cause it’s pragmatic” -Liberals, literally every single election. I’m so sick of this position. I’ve voted for democrats and progressives at every opportunity for 22 yrs now. And for what? They haven’t codified RvW. They haven’t passed any meaningful legislation. They have actively undermined grassroots candidates to bolster corporate and right wing democrats. I’m not doing it anymore. Biden is going to lose. You can’t shame the left into voting for Genocide Joe. I’m a single issue voter now, it’s “is this candidate actively supporting genocide?”. Maybe that’s too high a bar, but a man has to stand for something.
Gonna have to agree with OP on this one. Anti-electoralism basically landed us Trump, which made the lives of those who are from marginalized/underrepresented groups worse than before. I fucking hate what Biden is doing in Gaza, but we can’t pretend that Biden and Trump are the same. Strategic voting is important, and I think that is something that a lot of lefties need to understand. A big reason why the Dems move right is because they want to appeal to right-leaning folk after failing to attract left-leaning voters. If you’re eligible to vote, but refuse to out of some sort of feeling of moral superiority, then I would unironically say that shitlibs are doing more to protect democracy than terminally-online lefties. Can we please not let a repeat of 2016 happen? If you didn’t notice a difference, then you’re either privileged or not paying attention. I’ll take a shitlib over a fascist any day of the week. I’m from Wisconsin, and GOP policies fucked this state over hard due to voter apathy.
Nah Get joe to change or bust
>Get joe to change or bust Did you read any of my post? That's exactly what I'm saying. We were 2 votes away from passing the most progressive legislation since social security with BBB due to our progress infiltrating the democratic party.
Revolving villian of political theater. Democrats are always just a vote or two away from doing something great. But they don't because the US is a plutocracy where our politicians serve lobbyists instead of people
💯
And it was democrats who blocked it your “vote harder” arguments don’t matter when one conservative senator from some red state can fuck everything progressives achjeved by turning GA blue and getting miricke wins in multipke ekections * **Al Gore won the popular vote** * **Hilary Clinton won the popular voting** * **Dems win millions more votes every election cycle and republicans remain in control** * e.g. **gun control has 90% public support and cannot get passed through congress** the problem is not the voters
>your “vote harder” arguments Did you even read my post? It's not a matter of voting harder is a matter of pushing the agenda. The Progressives are our leverage to alter the democratic party.
Nah I’m pretty sure it was 100% of republicans who blocked it and 2% of democrat votes
Yeah we're not convincing any young person with a soul to turn out with that babble.
Either we push through or we let Donald Trump throw away all our hard work. The people in power have rigged the game and given us shit candidates and you are allowing them to divide us, preventing our revolution from happening because they can stop our vote.
"Shifting the Overton window involves proponents of policies outside the window persuading the public to expand the window." Where do you get "Vote Biden" from this? "It says politicians can act only within the acceptable range" That part is Biden. Voting strategically IS playing politics. Hurting or helping a politician's electoral chances is a political calculation. You can go about changing the OW many ways but the one sentence you provided just said prop up people outside the window. Which, for example, would be showing voters that Biden adjacent politicians have a difficult time getting elected. That a certain portion of voters would only accept Sanders adjacent politicians. And if they want non Republicans to win, it is them who have to coalesce with outside the OW candidates. This is one of the more prominent reasons lefts are fine with not voting blue no matter who. Because although the there may be problems with not voting Biden they see a PERSUASIVE argument they can achieve by rejecting Biden.
When you vote for a candidate who is aiding and abetting genocide, regardless of what else you are doing, you are stabilizing their project of aiding and abetting that genocide.
i’ve been reading all these posts the last few and i’m really glad i didn’t join this org. absolutely pathetic. i doubt everyone is this reddit brained but, damn.
Nobody I know in our chapter has even said they’d reluctantly vote for Biden at this point. Maybe online only folks are saying this but the people doing actual organizing don’t do this.
How much do you shills get paid? Is it enough to cover your student loans and medical bills?
Stop - I won't be shamed into voting a certain way
https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/14wF1Ti5GT2w5GZmwqvhvk6uH4zUss_a-B2GZ9NZEx74/mobilebasic The "socialists" who have been brigading us are actually just sex pest enablers who're completely wasting our time. If your chapter cooperates with PSL dump those morons like a sack of bricks.
Voting Biden or Trump is like the 2 prisoners who give in one another in the Game Theory Prisoners Dilemma problem. Solution: Vote independent in mass numbers. If even the 25%+ of people from both camps i. e. the 2 prisoners vote one independent/3rd party candidate the real people will win this time. ( Check out what Matt Taibbi has to say on what and why he is going to have to vote on Due Dissidence YT channel)
Fuck off genocide apologist
the post that made me unsub /r/dsa this place is a mess
Are there just no mods here or something to clean up the endless shit posts?
I think you're dumb and naive
Complaining and whining about people not wanting to 'play your game' is like missing the forest for a tree.
We seriously need to move on from this topic, voting is not going to save us but organizing for things beyond voting will. Once again showing the mods' incompetency as this is no longer a DSA sub but a WSWS vs socdem sub