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Literally every leftist I know IRL voted Harris and seeing this comment over and over is absolutely hilarious. Either you think bots are real people, think it's impossible to criticize democrats, think the democrats are not worth criticizing, or some combination of the above. The only thing I know for sure when I read comments like this is that you aren't and do not know any leftists. What kind of activism are you actually engaging in? What brings you into contact with the community? Nothing, because if so you would know better.
If they voted, then it's not about them. It's that simple.
You don't know any leftists who say the election system is so broken and corrupt they refuse to participate? And you think that any account that says that is a bot?
This is after being told I'm not a leftist because I've supported Democrats for years. Not to mention a bigot and a fool etc. etc. High quality reparteé as you may imagine.
So - I don't know if YOU know any leftists in real life I guess. Are the leftists in the room with us? /s
My point is that I know leftists who think the system is broken and corrupt and would have abstained or voted 3rd party as they have previously, and specifically did not in this election or in trumps previous elections. Literally nothing changed except they budged on their beliefs and got nothing in return. This idea that they should vote for dems because the alternative is fascism is terrible. The dems are bad and don't care. It is pretty foolish to support them as a party. If you consider yourself a democrat, you probably are not a leftist. I'm registered democrat, I vote democrat, so do many of my friends, but that does not make us democrats or supporters of their party. So, yea, it's possible that you've held or supported people who've held foolish or bigoted beliefs and if you're proud of your support for them then I'm not sure you get to claim you're not foolish or bigoted.
Dem senators in the 90s voted against gay marriage. Nancy pelosi and plenty of other dems do insider trading and refuse to allow legislation that would curb that to pass. Are those the dems you support? Who's to know. These people are not your friends and don't care about you. They may vote in ways that benefit you, or they may not. I'm not a democrat and I don't support them because they don't support me or my comrades. If you feel like they support you than you are indeed either a fool, or not left enough to really even want to be called a leftist. That's fine if so, you can be a lib if that's what you are, but leftists generally don't "support" dems.
What does "budged on their beliefs" mean? That they did something they don't believe in? Why would they do that? Is it because they do believe that voting matters and a vote for the most likely candidate to beat the fascist is worthwhile?
And "got nothing in return" you mean their supported candidate didn't win? I . . I don't . . that seems really . . . dramatic. But, okay. Sorry they didn't get a pony. I didn't either. I did get a sticker though, that was okay.
Contrary to the entire rest of my life, but okay if you say so.
I don't . . . that doesn't . . . what the fuck are you doing?
Yes. Assholes. Dem senators in the 90s also supported gay marriage. That's not unusual in a political party, especially at the national level. At least it wasn't until fascists rebranded republiQanism as they all vote in lockstep. Which, good for them. How very.
No, and I know? I guess?
Ah. but I thought-
Yeah there it is. A "lib". Until last year I never heard anyone but right-wing backward-ass idiots, racists, and nutjob evangelicals use the word "lib". Yeah, I get it, it's supposed to be like a European liberal which is very centrist and yes there are centrists in both the Democratic and the other party.
I'm not a centrist, unless you're saying reason and process and understanding are centrist. But your definitions of words in general don't seem to be ones I'd agree with.
"Support" for example. If you're voting for a Democrat, you're "supporting" them. That's - that's what that is, so you can't not support them unless you're saying it's supposed to be ironic or some kind of dark magick spellz or some shit. You can tell yourself that yoiu're not supporting them of course, but you'd be lying to yourself.
If you're registered as a Democrat, you "count" - by all the bodies that do counting of Democrats - as a Democrat. I.e. you are, very literally, "a Democrat" in almost all the ways people count. Which is also strange because most states allow you to register as an Independent and still vote in primaries for either party.
If you want to vote in the Democratic primary and the only way to do that is register as a Democrat, well, you're a Democrat. Congratulations. But you can't not be a Democrat if you're registered as one unless, again, you're just telling yourself that which is not true.
This whole thing of "libs" and "not a democrat" and all that is just pointless because it keeps us from supporting the same person. It is, of course, traditional, and also my lifelong experience, to shit on the Democrats for whatever fucked up thing a bunch of them are doing now - politics is really, really hard to do well. Tom Daschle is one I remember hating on a lot. Probably a nice guy but really fucked up the whole Iraq War II thing.
In the meantime, what I see from "leftists" is only - essentially complaining with no solutions offered other than "they shoudln't do that" or armchair hot-takes that mean nothing. What I see from Democrats - in addition to their obvious failures - is policy positions, caucuses, meetings, communications, fundraising, and candidates that generally support the M4A, green new deal, funded schools, etc. that I support.
Any other "supporters" who want to do all the things a political party needs to do well should also do them really really quickly because the midterms are on in like five minutes.
The belief is that one should vote for a person or party because they align with your morals. They voted against their conscience because a whole host of people told them that not to would be to condemn even more. And so they voted to prolong a genocide and now they stand without conviction or protection for their allies they gave up those convictions for. Maybe to you voting is a box you check, but for a lot of people it is a statement of their morals and beliefs. That gun to their head they would not sell out their international comrades for luxuries at home. They sold out their neighbors to protect their family and someone is still coming for their family anyway. Say what you want about "harm reduction" but voting for genocide is voting for genocide. They did so and gained nothing except an inability to say they stood for something. Harris paraded around Liz and promised to be tough on immigration. Who was that for? It certainly was not to reassure leftists that she super secretly didn't want to help murder people abroad.
Clearly we have very different understandings of the world. I've never seen a self proclaimed "proud democrat" at any actual level of organizing. Maybe the women's march admittedly had a lot of democrats show up, but actual organizers that I engage with are self proclaimed leftist who "vote" democrat but do not identify as one. If a nonbinary person checks their assigned gender at birth on a form with just M/F, that doesn't mean they align or self identify with that. It's just the options they were presented with. M4A, the fight for a living wage, and LGBT rights have all been championed by leftists before liberals could get together enough to stop using racial slurs. I've been hearing "lib" from the left since obama was in office, but I checked and urban dictionary has an entry from 2005 attacking them from the left, claiming libs are defined as fake progressives who actually don't care about leftist causes. That's popular usage for at least two decades. Maybe there's an age or geography difference that is the cause of this disconnect, but around me most refugee assistance is organized by anarchists and most food aid is organized by socialists. It's not cliquelike, as there's plenty of crossover, but what I don't see is a large contingent of run of the mill democrats actually helping anyone. If you are so concerned about how leftists vote, go work with them wearing your I'm With Her merch. Let them see some libs actually doing something.