Loved it!
Briahna: “Let’s talk about power, let’s talk about leverage. Do I have more leverage against Kamala Harris before she’s elected, or once she’s president for four years?
The silence says it all.
I hate that populist propaganda. There’s not a single populist willing to give power back to the people. This is authoritarianism through and through. And I hate that even anarchist spaces are being invaded by them.
I tried, but it was painful to listen to all the extra words and deadend sentences. I get that not everyone can be a good fluent speaker, but not everyone should be guest appearing (or whatever) on podcasts either.
Briahna: “Do I have more leverage against Kamala Harris before she’s elected or once she’s elected for four years?”
What does she think leverage is? What the fuck does it matter whether you have leverage over the losing candidate? Leverage only works with allies, you have to actually get them in office if you want to use it for anything more than feeling pure and undirtied by the reality of policymaking.
Maybe Kamala would have won if she had listened to her base. It is the politician’s job to listen and serve the people who vote for them. Why are you blaming voters who disagree with the politician?
She did listen to her base. We are not her base.
Who’s this “we”?
You spent all of 2024 screaming abuse at people who tried to warn you she would lose.
Well maybe centrist democrats can stop blaming us for her loss. We clearly need a populist/socialist Bernie Sanders type who will address the systemic issues that are compounding in this country.
Hence why she lost, she did not have a base.
Everyone who decided Trump was the better choice is an idiot. Harris was better in every conceivable way. Of course I blame them for deciding she wasn’t good enough, the objections people raised about her apply more to Trump. These left leaning Trump supporters directly harmed my life and are directly responsible for thousands of deaths, and they justified themselves with logical fallacies.
Since you’re going to assume in the worst possible faith that I didn’t vote for harris unless I say this first, I voted for harris. Maybe you can restrain yourself from doing it anyway, but I doubt it.
Trump was a worse choice. Harris lost anyway because centrists don’t understand how voters work. Voters will not support the second worst genocidal piece of shit just because they’re second worst. At least not in sufficient numbers to win.
If you keep acting like you’re playing to the entire crowd instead of just the voters you can get, you’re going to waste a ton of energy chasing after fascists, and losing votes you could have had in the process.
Fascists always vote for the greater evil and you cannot win their votes by betraying your own voters.
These left leaning Trump supporters directly harmed my life
You right-wing genocide worshipers did that to yourselves and you all deserve worse. Too bad you had to drag the rest of us down with you.
I’m literally just talking about left leaning activists telling people not to vote, suppressing turnout and helping Trump win. Why do you think I have any beef with you?
Let’s pretend for a moment that you’re not lying in bad faith about the messaging of the anti-genocide wing of the party. You know what would make it harder for such messaging to take root?
NOT. SUPPORTING. GENOCIDE.
I never said she wasn’t genocidal, or an Israel supporter, but on those two issues she was still better than Trump. There’s not a single issue that Trump was the better choice, and that’s why I’m upset at people helping Trump win, like Briahna. You also seemed to have come to that same conclusion, so I literally have no idea why you’re yelling at me.
Harris chose genocide over votes. You’re mad at anyone who said she shouldn’t have done that, and call it “helping trump win.”
These left leaning Trump supporters directly harmed my life
The only thing bluemaga liberals care about lol
Oh come on. They care about netanyahu.
Ask yourself this: Why did many of the same people who voted for Obama for two terms then turn around and vote for Trump?
HINT: Obama promised HOPE and CHANGE.
Briahna isn’t in that camp. I’m talking specifically about left leaning activists that told people not to vote. Not Trump fans, yet still trump supporters in effect.
Swing voters probably don’t exist in any real number, and if they do they are unreliable anyways. A state or county flipping does not necessarily imply people flipped, especially when turnout is around 50%, it’s often just a matter of who showed up.
I’m talking specifically about left leaning activists that told people not to vote.
By an astounding coincidence, centrists interpret all criticism as “telling people not to vote.”
I hear your point: Harris was a better candidate than Trump.
To be more explicit, my response is to argue that people are tired of corporate pro-establishment pro-Israeli candidates. Trump is willing to lie to people with populist rhetoric that gives them hope.
He never lied about being pro-Israel, and he literally hawked baked beans in the oval office for no reason, he’s the most pro-corporate candidate in my lifetime, to an absurd degree. I agree people were motivated by him, but it was the racism. We really can’t replicate that on the left.
What also hurt Harris’ chances were activists like Briahna suppressing turnout. That’s my main criticism of her. Harris could’ve done better, but so could Briahna and others. Feels like I’m picking on her but that is the subject of this thread anyways.
He never lied about being pro-Israel,
And his base are horrible people, so it was a selling point for them. It’s not a selling point for democrats, no matter how much it excites you.
What also hurt Harris’ chances were activists like Briahna suppressing turnout. That’s my main criticism of her.
“Shee shouldn’t have been an activist against genocide because it hurt my team’s chance of winning!”
What do you think leverage is?
Leverage is negotiating power. You have leverage when you have something the other side wants. If you make it clear that your vote is unconditional, then you’re giving up your negotiating power in exchange for nothing.
“Do what we want and you can win, don’t and you will lose” is the textbook definition of leverage. “Whether you give us anything or not, it’ll have zero impact over whether you win or lose” means you have no leverage. What part of that is hard to understand?
Meanwhile, Democrats are moving to the right, very obviously because of who showed up to vote. They aren’t searching through internet forums, they are looking at exit polls. So that big threat, take away all the democrats power, resulted in them drifting further from progressive values, as well as, ya know, taking away all their power. So what the fuck was the point?
Democrats are moving to the right, very obviously because of who showed up to vote.
You don’t get more voters by only appealing to the voters you already have. And you don’t get more voters by offering fascists some genocide abroad as a treat when full fat overt fascism is running against you. You just lose people who don’t like genocide.
You may think it’s unfair that you can’t have your genocide and voters too, but that’s the world we inhabit.
Unfortunately, politicians don’t usually see it the same way. Turnout has been low for decades, and young people and progressives are some of the most unreliable voting blocs, especially when people like Briahna think that not participating in the general election is sending any other message other than ‘don’t listen to me’. It’s not even like a ‘politicians are duplicitous’ thing, it’s survival of the fittest: conservative Democrats have a much easier job entrenching themselves than progressives because their voters are older and more reliable, so over time this just selects for more conservative politicians.
Turnout has been low for decades, and young people and progressives are some of the most unreliable voting blocs
If you never appeal to them, your party will wither and die as its current crop of geriatric dipshits goes to make hell a worse place.
It’s not even like a ‘politicians are duplicitous’ thing, it’s survival of the fittest: conservative Democrats have a much easier job entrenching themselves than progressives because their voters are older and more reliable, so over time this just selects for more conservative politicians.
Democrats do everything they can to block better candidates. The genocidal shit represents you, so you pretend that it represents the will of the people.
You need more voters to win. You know where they are.
She’s not in office.
I just explained this. You’re treating this as if it were a forgone conclusion.
You’re either pretending or just choosing not to understand this concept. It’s really not that difficult.
Ok I’ll remove that part
Personally, I advocate for voting third party rather than abstaining, which provides a quantifiable data point that there are votes to be won on the left.
The widespread protests over Palestine on campuses and elsewhere also help establish that this contingent of voters exists.
The Democrats calculus was that they could win by moving right and picking up moderates and centrists, and so they attempted to “call the bluff” of the left, on the assumption that for all the noise we were making, at the end of the day, we would fall in line behind the lesser evil, as has often happened in the past. The attempt to win over centrists failed, and the assumption that the left was bluffing also fell through.
The party may have an understanding of why they lost, even if they won’t say it because it makes them look bad and admitting it would strengthen the left’s negotiating position. If they genuinely still don’t get it, and aren’t going to, then they obviously aren’t useful as a vehicle to get policy enacted, and we should focus on building an alternative from the ground up, no matter how difficult it may be.
The policies I believe in are not merely “preferences” or things that I think are good ideas. There is a certain minimum set of policies that need to happen. The planet is dying, and the economy is getting worse all the time, the fascists are the only ones offering any sort of “alternative” to the status quo, and so long as that’s true and the status quo is declining, their victory is assured.
The gulf between what has to happen and what politicians tell us is “allowed” to happen is widening further and further. If they refuse to do what’s needed and cannot be pressured to, then they need to be replaced.
Very well stated.
Giving fascists four years to fuck shit up is quite a gamble in my opinion. I think Trump would’ve been distanced by most Republicans if he had lost, and the party would eventually move toward courting Latinos and diversity in general like they said they wanted to before Trump took over in 2016.
If it were a mitt romney situation or something I may feel better about a third party vote. We knew, because of Jan 6, that he was a threat to democracy, which of course includes third parties as well. So I’m concerned we won’t ever get to test your theory, and that none of your red lines are going to be respected.
I think Trump would’ve been distanced by most Republicans if he had lost, and the party would eventually move toward courting Latinos and diversity in general like they said they wanted to before Trump took over in 2016.
I completely disagree, and this is a crucial point. Trumpism is here to stay. His success was not a fluke or a one-off, but a product of existing trends and conditions, which are on track to get even worse.
People only like moderate politicians when things are going well. When things are going badly, people want change and they want explanations for why things went wrong. This is doubly true if things are going badly while a moderate figure is in charge.
The “moderate” establishment wing of the Republican party started a decades long war in Afghanistan that was extremely costly, accomplished nothing, and was a national humiliation. At the same time, economic growth (especially as perceived by the average person) has been slowing, due to income inequality and the difficulty of sustaining endless growth in an already developed economy. Bush failed so hard and became so unpopular that Democrats even got a short-lived trifecta in the backlash.
Liberals seem to be still clinging to what was “normal” 20 years ago, when there was bipartisan consensus (at least among politicians) regarding neoliberalism and things like invading Afghanistan. They see Trump’s deviation from that consensus as some kind of massive strategic error, alienating countless Republicans who still believe in that consensus, and the fact that it’s worked is some improbable fluke. That’s why they trotted out Dick Cheney of all people, a guy who is very directly tied to that consensus (and it’s failure), thinking he’d pick up support rather than alienating people. Because they don’t understand how the failure of the wars in the Middle East has changed the political landscape.
Trump provided a simple explanation for that failure that fit in with the right’s preexisting beliefs - the US failed because we had become “too woke,” and the solution was to double down on right-wing beliefs to fix the problems. The left could provide another explanation that’s actually based on reality, but the left has very little voice in politics. Instead, we get, “We failed because we were too woke” vs, “We didn’t really fail.” And people can see the failure (in both foreign and domestic policy), and many will sooner accept a wrong explanation for failure than an outright denial of it.
Obviously, Trump isn’t actually a real alternative or outsider, and this is evidenced by him going right back to starting stupid pointless wars in the Middle East. As he fails and becomes unpopular, it’s likely that his failure will be contextualized within the right-wing beliefs structure. You can look at Tucker Carlson or MTG to see that happening in real time. As long as there isn’t an alternative explanation provided, and as long as conditions continue declining even when the Democrats win, over time more and more people are going to look to the far-right.
They have moved to the right every single election since Jimmy Carter, win or lose.
This election did not make a difference in that regard. FFS Bill Clinton’s ENTIRE FUCKING CAMPAIGN AND PRESIDENCY, was bending over backwards sucking off the conservative voting base trying to convince them the ‘southern democrats’ have risen again.
I know you’re not the original replyer, but they were making an argument for how to move the party to the left by not voting, and you’re saying that’s impossible anyways.
I guess I kinda agree with you more, politics is about making the best possible choice, and sometimes that means voting for a conservative when the alternative is fascist. If everything is fucked and there’s no way for the dems to move left like you say, then the only option is to slow down the collapse into fascism. Harm reduction. But I don’t know if I agree things are so hopeless, I believe in pushing socialism 24/7 up until about October of an election year.
But I don’t know if I agree things are so hopeless, I believe in pushing socialism 24/7 up until about October of an election year.
Then start. “Shut up and vote for genocide” isn’t socialism.
Your daily reminder that liberals don’t consider Palestinians human
Actually I’m not suggesting not voting. I’m suggesting not voting for genocidal fascists because they have a different tie. We have tried your way for LITERALLY OVER A CENTURY. IT DOES NOT WORK.
Trump put in effort to win voters who used their leverage such as the Libertians and even promised to end the Gaza genocide. Kamala refused to do so and paraded around Liz Cheney.
Which won?
You have to be pretty gullible to believe any voting bloc besides the rich and powerful have any influence or leverage on Trump.
Also, really dislike that ‘which won’ rhetorical in this context, when we are talking about people fighting against Harris in the general election and refusing to vote for her. It’s totally self-fulfilling: commit sabotage then blame the victim. Real “stop hitting yourself” vibes.
You have to be pretty gullible to believe any voting bloc besides the rich and powerful have any influence or leverage on Trump.
You say, believing any voting bloc beside the rich and powerful have any influence or leverage on Harris
Nobody has pushed back on my assertion that Trump is more corrupt, you just ignore that because its inconvenient. Either Harris has secretly pocketed hundreds of millions of taxpayer money and taken billions of dollars in bribes, or she’s less corrupt than Trump. It’s wild to me I have to state this twice in the ‘progressive’ community.
Nobody has pushed back on my assertion that Trump is more corrupt,
Trump is more corrupt. That’s not in dispute. He still won because democrats keep chasing fascists to the right under the idiotic assumption that fascists will vote for lesser fascism.
I’m pushing back: actively supporting fascist genocide is the most corrupt a person can be.
How is ‘stating the requirements for a candidate to receive a vote’ sabotage in a democracy?
She actively pushed for people not to vote. If she had quietly decided not to vote herself, I wouldn’t know her name. She’s a democratic strategist yet only speaks out against her own party in the general. I think it’s fair to call that sabotage whether or not you agree with it.
Can you actually link to any part of anything she has posted that has told people not to vote at all?
Anywhere?
I’ll even give you her substack which is more radical than what news sites tend to select of her words.
She also is not a ‘democratic strategist.’ by any definition.
Can you actually link to any part of anything she has posted that has told people not to vote at all?
Yes, this video. Did you watch?
She has been very visibly involved with Democratic politics for almost a decade, I don’t know what you’re on about.
She has been very visibly involved with progressive politics for a decade. Not democratic. Those two are not even in the same ideological strata. The most progressive democrat is still far right to any modern progressive or leftist. AOC is to left-wing politics as Donald Trump is to Bill Clinton.
And I did watch the video, she did not say not to vote at all. She said not to vote for genocidal candidates even if they’re democrats. There’s a pretty big difference. FPTP is not a duopoly unlike what the propagandists consistently sell you. If people voted for their interests, not to appease billionaires but actually for people in parties for their interest, there would be no two party system in the US, even with FPTP. There is nothing stopping a third party from winning a seat, Bernie Sanders is proof of this. There is nothing stopping a third party from having the presidency, except the perception that a third party can’t.
If there are no democrats that are against genocide on the ballot, if there are no progressive democrats at all, then guess what; don’t vote democrat. If enough people do that, dems lose. Permanently. This does not mean republicans win.
You have to be pretty gullible to believe any voting bloc besides the rich and powerful have any influence or leverage on Trump.
And not over Harris?
Yes? Trump is more corrupt, that feels incredibly simple to point out.
Trump’s base loves the genocide and corruption, and will only vote for the greater evil. Corruption and genocide is only a selling point for centrist democrats, and you can’t win with only centrists and suckers.
Your daily reminder that liberals don’t consider Palestinians human
So why did Trump put in more effort to win over voters?
