If this caucus was sooo important, why didn’t the campaign change their positions?
Because the DNC would rather lose than not lick Israel’s boots. I already FUCKING KNOW THIS. JFNIOAFN UIA. AHGHAIGMIOSAEN.
How dense can you be? Are you trying to give me a stroke? Please do because I want to become simple. The alcohol isn’t working fast enough.
Also the “Schrödingers anti-genocide caucus” arguement can go either way. Its a 2 way street. If you don’t think abstaining will influence the results of the election, why would you bother trying to use that to influence the DNC? If you think it does influence the results of an election, it means you acknowledge that you are increasing the risk of a fascist victory.
critique about placing some blame on voters
Do you believe in free will? Agency? Autonomy?
And we have the receipts. Telling voters they’ll just need to vote for the lessor evil won’t work. You won’t win an election that way. The idea that you can blame or shame voters into doing what you want doesn’t work. That is now established fact. We’ve run the experiment, multiple times now, and we’ve got the results. Creating the permission structure such that campaigns know they don’t need to respond to voters: this is what allows campaigns to maintain un-electable positions.
I’m blaming and shaming now because it doesn’t matter. I know I can’t blame and shame you into voting the way I want. I never tried to do that in 2024. I knew that before the election. I’m doing it now because even if the system itself is bad, the people within it have purposefully allowed it to get worse. Their motivations for why vary, but the result of their actions is the same. On an emotional level, I simply hate them.
I can be disgusted by multiple groups at the same time.
But ok, lets engage in your point: You know how voters could have, in our admittedly terrible election system, influence the democratic party’s candidates? Voting in the fucking primaries. I wish the DNC had bothered to run one this time in 2024, but you know, they offered what they offered because Biden was an egotistical old fuckhead. Still better than fascism.
But you know dems did run primaries in 2016 and 2020, as much as I preferred Sanders over both HRC and Biden… Sanders lost the primary. Because not enough people who supported Sanders voted in the primary. And the first time this happened in 2016, people who supported Sanders (even ones that did not fucking vote for him in the primary) decided not to vote in the general because he lost the primary and we got Trump Round 1. FUCK THOSE PEOPLE.
The only reason Biden barely skated by was because of how bad things had gotten under Trump by 2020. If people weren’t fucking morons, it would have been a blow out in both scenarios in favor of democrats, regardless of the candidate.
We already agree: the Democratic party fucked up electorally but multiple things can be true at the same time. You seem to think voters are blameless.
I’m blaming and shaming now because it doesn’t matter. I know I can’t blame and shame you into voting the way I want.
To be clear, we’re not talking about what you or I would do. You’re also assuming that because I’m focusing my criticism on those in power who could have made different choices that I myself made some choice you don’t agree with. What you or I did individually as far as voting is concerned is immaterial. We’re not in power. And as an aside, if I scratch a penny, will I also find you doing this in 2023/24, when it did matter?
If you want to blame voters, you need to offer a mechanism to move them. I know how we can move individual politicians and campaigns because we’ve done it before. I don’t think we disagree about that. But there is no credible mechanism for changing the inarticulate mass which is the “electorate” to adopt your perspective that they should have just voted to support genocide. There is no tool which performs that operation. You can’t move voters in this manner. A single voter is a grain of sand. It behaves like a solid, like a tiny rock. A mass of voters is a river of sand. They have fundamentally different properties.
Play the following thought experiment out for me. Its August 2024. I’m putting you in charge of the Harris campaign. The campaign had just selected Tim Walz as VP before we put you in charge. You’ve got 1.5 billion dollars to spend, and a week of captured media going into the convention. You have three months.
The experiment (0, 1) is conducted by you answering each the following questions follows:
0 You are not allowed to change the candidates policy positions. Explain how you would use 1.5 billion dollars and 3 months to win an election.
1 You are allowed to change the candidates policy positions. Explain how you would use 1.5 billion dollars and 3 months to win an election.
I’ve done a terrible job maybe of explaining what happened to me mentally and my current motivations. I don’t care about whether I could have changed people’s vote or whether I could motivate them to vote at all. That isn’t where we meaningfully disagree I think.
Before November 2024, I thought most people were OK. I wanted good things to happen because I thought most people deserve good things. I understood that there was a portion of people who were terrible pieces of shit, but that they were a minority. That people permitted Trump to win the first time both because they understandably (if a little stupidly) thought “give him a chance” or “things will hold together” or even “yeah no chance he wins anyway I’m staying home.”
After Trump won again though, this illusion was completely shattered. I realized that I was surrounded by far more awful and petulantly stupid people than I could have imagined. And my desire for good things for most people has almost completely evaporated. I feel a pure existential and near suicidal dread. I feel devastatingly alone and there is no escape. I’m surrounded by troglodytes.
And I can’t delude myself out of it. I wish I could. This account represents me lashing out and screaming into the void.
Because the DNC would rather lose than not lick Israel’s boots. I already FUCKING KNOW THIS. JFNIOAFN UIA. AHGHAIGMIOSAEN.
How dense can you be? Are you trying to give me a stroke? Please do because I want to become simple. The alcohol isn’t working fast enough.
Also the “Schrödingers anti-genocide caucus” arguement can go either way. Its a 2 way street. If you don’t think abstaining will influence the results of the election, why would you bother trying to use that to influence the DNC? If you think it does influence the results of an election, it means you acknowledge that you are increasing the risk of a fascist victory.
Do you believe in free will? Agency? Autonomy?
I’m blaming and shaming now because it doesn’t matter. I know I can’t blame and shame you into voting the way I want. I never tried to do that in 2024. I knew that before the election. I’m doing it now because even if the system itself is bad, the people within it have purposefully allowed it to get worse. Their motivations for why vary, but the result of their actions is the same. On an emotional level, I simply hate them.
I can be disgusted by multiple groups at the same time.
But ok, lets engage in your point: You know how voters could have, in our admittedly terrible election system, influence the democratic party’s candidates? Voting in the fucking primaries. I wish the DNC had bothered to run one this time in 2024, but you know, they offered what they offered because Biden was an egotistical old fuckhead. Still better than fascism.
But you know dems did run primaries in 2016 and 2020, as much as I preferred Sanders over both HRC and Biden… Sanders lost the primary. Because not enough people who supported Sanders voted in the primary. And the first time this happened in 2016, people who supported Sanders (even ones that did not fucking vote for him in the primary) decided not to vote in the general because he lost the primary and we got Trump Round 1. FUCK THOSE PEOPLE.
The only reason Biden barely skated by was because of how bad things had gotten under Trump by 2020. If people weren’t fucking morons, it would have been a blow out in both scenarios in favor of democrats, regardless of the candidate.
We already agree: the Democratic party fucked up electorally but multiple things can be true at the same time. You seem to think voters are blameless.
To be clear, we’re not talking about what you or I would do. You’re also assuming that because I’m focusing my criticism on those in power who could have made different choices that I myself made some choice you don’t agree with. What you or I did individually as far as voting is concerned is immaterial. We’re not in power. And as an aside, if I scratch a penny, will I also find you doing this in 2023/24, when it did matter?
If you want to blame voters, you need to offer a mechanism to move them. I know how we can move individual politicians and campaigns because we’ve done it before. I don’t think we disagree about that. But there is no credible mechanism for changing the inarticulate mass which is the “electorate” to adopt your perspective that they should have just voted to support genocide. There is no tool which performs that operation. You can’t move voters in this manner. A single voter is a grain of sand. It behaves like a solid, like a tiny rock. A mass of voters is a river of sand. They have fundamentally different properties.
Play the following thought experiment out for me. Its August 2024. I’m putting you in charge of the Harris campaign. The campaign had just selected Tim Walz as VP before we put you in charge. You’ve got 1.5 billion dollars to spend, and a week of captured media going into the convention. You have three months.
The experiment (0, 1) is conducted by you answering each the following questions follows:
0 You are not allowed to change the candidates policy positions. Explain how you would use 1.5 billion dollars and 3 months to win an election.
1 You are allowed to change the candidates policy positions. Explain how you would use 1.5 billion dollars and 3 months to win an election.
I’ve done a terrible job maybe of explaining what happened to me mentally and my current motivations. I don’t care about whether I could have changed people’s vote or whether I could motivate them to vote at all. That isn’t where we meaningfully disagree I think.
Before November 2024, I thought most people were OK. I wanted good things to happen because I thought most people deserve good things. I understood that there was a portion of people who were terrible pieces of shit, but that they were a minority. That people permitted Trump to win the first time both because they understandably (if a little stupidly) thought “give him a chance” or “things will hold together” or even “yeah no chance he wins anyway I’m staying home.”
After Trump won again though, this illusion was completely shattered. I realized that I was surrounded by far more awful and petulantly stupid people than I could have imagined. And my desire for good things for most people has almost completely evaporated. I feel a pure existential and near suicidal dread. I feel devastatingly alone and there is no escape. I’m surrounded by troglodytes.
And I can’t delude myself out of it. I wish I could. This account represents me lashing out and screaming into the void.