OBJECTION!

Harder to get Americans to care about a president committing genocide than about a president being senile. I’m critical of him for both reasons and don’t make a secret about it.

Everyone who’s not self-deluding can see that his senility is a problem, including mainstream publications like the NYT. The fact that that includes some people who were critical of him before is not exactly surprising.

Fair, and people in swing states get inundated with ads as it is. Mostly I’d say it’s more useful for mobilization than persuasion, like if you get a text reminding you when voting day is maybe someone makes it when they wouldn’t have otherwise.

Ideally, volunteers could mean quality over quantity, less automated spam asking for money and instead actual humans responding to concerns and answering questions. Even more ideally, that could be paired with voters’ concerns being elevated and the party actually responding to them. The goal is to improve the quality of the campaign’s voter outreach, in whatever form that outreach takes.

I’m not a fan of Biden myself but I still think it’s worth discussing general electoral strategies.

The vast majority of Americans both already know how they feel about Trump and Biden and live in a solidly red or blue state. If you do want to focus on Biden, volunteer with phone banking or canvassing so that your efforts are directed to where they’ll actually matter and be organized in line with their messaging. Personally, I’d say you’re better off focusing on local races where you have more of an opportunity to come at it from a different angle and cut through people’s fortified positions. And as another user said, focus on mobilization, it’s easier to get someone who already agrees with you to register and make a plan than to convince someone to change their whole worldview.

There are also strategies outside of electoralism, such as protests and counter-protests. You can join an organization and form tactics and strategies to subvert the right’s actions, and engage with direct action to build trust and community that could be important in the future. Form strategies while being realistic about your goals and capabilities and coordinate with others.

Americans are near universally convinced that third-parties are a dead end, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. I’ve never understood it and I would’ve thought having two obviously non-viable candidates would challenge that assumption, but it doesn’t seem like anything will. The classic Simpsons bit where both candidates get replaced by evil space aliens but still get elected because “what are you going to do, vote third party?” was not an exaggeration in the slightest. Americans just accept anything.

Again, I’m not endangering anyone. If you can’t talk about this without making false claims an accusations, then we’re done here.

A distinction without a difference. Whether explicitly bourgeois parties or not, the Nazis and SPD were both vehemently opposed to the ideology of the KPD, and those two parties received a majority of the votes in the 1932 election.

Yes, and that’s why Hindenburg won and appointed Hitler.

And do, still. By the millions, in every election. Or, at least, if not explicitly bourgeois parties, parties that are based on some form is liberal ideology, not necessarily in opposition to bourgeois interests, and that often are aggressively opposed to Marxism-Leninism.

Yes, which is unfortunate and concerning, especially as the bourgeoisie tend to ally with the far-right to stop the left, which brought Hitler to power which is happening now with the CDU and the AfD, as pointed out in the article linked at the start of the conversation.

Well, I disagree. Lesser-evilist ideology that calls for sacrificing the Palestinians today will call for sacrificing trans people tomorrow, and like you say, other LGBT people next. To accept it is to accept that I will be put on the chopping block and no one will care or do anything to stop it, and it’s just a matter of time. Enforcing a red line is the only possible way to ensure long-term security. If you say it won’t work, then I may die trying, but I’d rather do that than resign myself to death the other way and be complicit in my own demise. That’s all there is to it. I understand the situation and I’ve made my decision and I’m not going to change it, unless they come to the table.

That’s not a reasonable standard for what constitutes “assistance.” If I see a bank robbery happening and do nothing to stop it, does that mean I assisted the robbery? Am I assisting every single thing happening in the world right now?

If you mean “not impeding” then say “not impeding.” Calling that assistence is false and disingenuous.

First off, no, I’m referring to (at least some of) the parties I listed earlier as Hindenburg’s base as bourgeois parties. I suppose you could include the Nazis and the SPD, but that’s not how I’m using the term, note that I said “the bourgeois parties… [and] the Nazis who they collaborated with,” implying a distinction.

Second, a bourgeois party is a party representing bourgeois interests and receiving bourgeois support. Working class people can and did support bourgeois parties, though as history showed, they shouldn’t have.

It’s possible that my strategy is a losing one. It’s possible that every strategy is a losing one. This is the only possible route I see, regardless of how likely it is to succeed. Maybe we’ll have more strength this time. Maybe we’ll have more strength next time. All I know for sure is that “lesser evilism” doesn’t work, and like I said, it cedes all my bargaining power. Maybe I don’t have any bargaining power in the first place, in which case what I do is irrelevant.

Point is, I have something they want, and they have something I want, and until they sit down at the table, and respect that genocide is a red line, there will be no cooperation. End of story.

Yes, after the SPD unequivocally supported a pointless war that got millions killed, crushed leftist opposition, and teamed up with the conservatives to enact austerity, they did kind of burn their bridges with the KPD. And yes, the bourgeois parties hated the Marxist-Leninists much more than the Nazis who they collaborated with. The results of both of those sets of actions were disastrous.

If only the KPD had been more powerful, not only could WWII have been prevented, but WWI might have been cut short too.

Lol moving right along from one false claim to the next.

the blood of trans people will be on your hands.

No, it will be on the hands of the people who voted for Trump, not mine.

For the record, I am trans. The only viable long term strategy for minority groups is to band together and draw a red line that the democrats cannot win without meeting, and that red line means opposing the Palestinian genocide. I believe there’s a famous poem about what happens when the government starts picking people off and you do nothing, because you are not part of that group. We will be next. Your guilt tripping is meaningless to me, it will not get me to abandon my commitment to solidarity and to opposing genocide.

It’s not. It’s the natural, mathematical result of a FPTP voting system.

Incorrect. You are treating the options provided as set in stone, when they are not. Voting is a negotiation, and the party can change who it runs or how they act based on the actions of voters.

If I walk into a negotiation saying, “My only option is literally Hitler, I will vote for you no matter what,” then I have sacrificed every modicum of bargaining power I might have otherwise wielded. The mathematics of the situation are irrelevant, it is a game of chicken and they will flinch before I do. It’s their job to win us over, and if they can’t do that, they will lose and it will be their fault.

Because even if some 3rd party magically gained prominence, either the DNC or GOP would die, and we would be right back to two parties, and your options again limited.

Except that a third party could enact voting reform to get us out of this situation permanently, something which is impossible otherwise.

There were a number of objectively conservative parties that backed Hindenburg: Catholic Centre Party, BVP, DVP, and DStP. Hindenburg chose to support Hitler because of the threat posed by the left to the bourgeois interests he represented and because Hitler didn’t really challenge said interests.

The SPD also chose Hindenburg over Thälmann, and if they knew he was going to support Hitler, then maybe they would’ve acted differently. But either way they weren’t Hindenburg’s core base of conservative support.

Are you talking about the time communists ran the only candidate who wasn’t either Hitler or the guy who appointed Hitler chancellor and the social democrats voted for the Hitler supporter to stop the communists, whose victory directly led to Hitler’s rise to power?

Yeah I’d say there’s some similarities between that and today.

This edgelord shit isn’t funny.

Good to get confirmation that the whole Soulist grandstanding about “We’re the only ones who actually care about trans rights” is complete bullshit. If you actually cared you wouldn’t be using this as a bit. I’ll be sure to remember this next time you try to pull that shit.

What are you, like 15 and testing boundaries and shit? Because that’s how this comes across.

Won’t stop me from trying. If a third party gains enough strength, they could at least leverage an endorsement in exchange for concessions, while at the same time challenging the belief that they’re useless.

It’s true that lesser-evilist ideology has a vice grip on most Americans, so it’s an uphill battle. But it’s an incorrect ideology, and one that’s going to screw me over sooner or later, so I can’t accept it. I’d rather play the longshot, unless and until the democrats are actually willing to come to the negotiating table.

And that’s how you get the spoiler effect, and another round of fascist SCOTUS appointments for the next few decades, a fascist president, project 2025, etc.

Unless enough people do it.

👍

No, because that’s not true. The only thing that assists Trump getting into power is voting for Trump. Voting third party provides the exact same assistance to Trump as it does to Biden: 0.

But I’ll tell you what - if not voting for someone counts as assisting them, then you can rest assured that Biden will have my assistance.