I’m claiming that people employ binary thinking and lay blame where the answer is just a wee bit more complex. Saying “Her selfishness is a direct cause of Biden being elected.” is flat-out ludicrous for all kinds of reasons, mainly that no one knows what would have happened if Bernie had been the candidate. Nobody’s even putting numbers on what “split the vote” even means. FFS.
And look, I voted for Bernie. I even wrote him in in 2020 (I’m in CA).
But the main reason I’m saying all this is that she had the right to run. It just comes across as incredibly shitty - AND exactly the same thinking that made HRC the candidate - to say “oh no, you there, you can’t run because it might split the vote”.
And that’s what many of us are tired of. This stupid noble sentiment where we jerk each other off about how we lost the right way, the honorable way. Because it just ignores pragmatic strategy and the fact that we lost. And when we lose, how does that help anyone? Congrats, SCOTUS stacked for generations.
It’s not a zero sum game. It’s not like you “win” the election across the board and get everything you could possibly want. And even if you did get a blue wave you STILL don’t get everything you want. Incredibly, it’s a big country with lots of different people with different ideas of how it should run. It’s a simple fact that among Dems most are not that progressive. Our political system is really a bunch of compromises where nobody gets everything they want but, ideally we all get something. What I’ve observed among many folks such as yourself is that you think you should get everything instantly. My speculation is that people who think like this are dealing with a shorter time scale because they are younger. That’s in no way a bad thing but it does mean you haven’t seen the tremendous change that’s happened or 4 or 5 decades. To me, things have improved dramatically and of the many things that stand out is the fact that I don’t have to worry about being beaten, raped, or murdered for being queer. I can be openly trans. I can even marry my lover.
I’m not saying I don’t want to see a viable third party or more truly progressive candidates. But this is a long game where slow incremental progress is assured even if on a much shorter time scale it seems nothing has happened. From my perspective while we still have a long way to go, we’ve made a lot of progress.
That’s a lot of response to something I’m not even sure I was talking about. My point is the Democratic Party as a whole is lacking in tactics and cohesive strategy. The Spoiler Effect is a real thing, not some imagined phenomenon and because voters are largely uneducated about that fact it’s a big issue that is solved by people like me pointing it out. Unless you are arguing the spoiler effect does not exist, I don’t think there’s much to discuss.
I’m claiming that people employ binary thinking and lay blame where the answer is just a wee bit more complex. Saying “Her selfishness is a direct cause of Biden being elected.” is flat-out ludicrous for all kinds of reasons, mainly that no one knows what would have happened if Bernie had been the candidate. Nobody’s even putting numbers on what “split the vote” even means. FFS.
And look, I voted for Bernie. I even wrote him in in 2020 (I’m in CA).
But the main reason I’m saying all this is that she had the right to run. It just comes across as incredibly shitty - AND exactly the same thinking that made HRC the candidate - to say “oh no, you there, you can’t run because it might split the vote”.
And that’s what many of us are tired of. This stupid noble sentiment where we jerk each other off about how we lost the right way, the honorable way. Because it just ignores pragmatic strategy and the fact that we lost. And when we lose, how does that help anyone? Congrats, SCOTUS stacked for generations.
The reality is we have a FPTP voting system. In such a system, two party control is all but guaranteed mathematically. It looks binary because IT IS BINARY.
It’s not a zero sum game. It’s not like you “win” the election across the board and get everything you could possibly want. And even if you did get a blue wave you STILL don’t get everything you want. Incredibly, it’s a big country with lots of different people with different ideas of how it should run. It’s a simple fact that among Dems most are not that progressive. Our political system is really a bunch of compromises where nobody gets everything they want but, ideally we all get something. What I’ve observed among many folks such as yourself is that you think you should get everything instantly. My speculation is that people who think like this are dealing with a shorter time scale because they are younger. That’s in no way a bad thing but it does mean you haven’t seen the tremendous change that’s happened or 4 or 5 decades. To me, things have improved dramatically and of the many things that stand out is the fact that I don’t have to worry about being beaten, raped, or murdered for being queer. I can be openly trans. I can even marry my lover.
I’m not saying I don’t want to see a viable third party or more truly progressive candidates. But this is a long game where slow incremental progress is assured even if on a much shorter time scale it seems nothing has happened. From my perspective while we still have a long way to go, we’ve made a lot of progress.
That’s a lot of response to something I’m not even sure I was talking about. My point is the Democratic Party as a whole is lacking in tactics and cohesive strategy. The Spoiler Effect is a real thing, not some imagined phenomenon and because voters are largely uneducated about that fact it’s a big issue that is solved by people like me pointing it out. Unless you are arguing the spoiler effect does not exist, I don’t think there’s much to discuss.