Progressives acknowledging the fact of genocide is a good first step, and it’s useful that Ocasio-Cortez and others have done so — “I think [unconditional aid to Israel] enabled a genocide in Gaza,” she said in Munich — but it is not in and of itself sufficient. Before anyone in the party can move on to selling a post-Biden vision of human-rights-first foreign policy, they must address what accountability for the war criminals in the Biden administration — those who aided, armed, and funded genocide — should look like.
Hey, outside view from those of us in Europe… Just get on with getting the Orange Man out, please.
You’ll get far further dealing with the Democrats once that’s happened.
But until that point, just concentrate on getting the actual genocidal fascist gone.
They would have to acknowledge there’s was a genocide they contributed to. They denied it and silenced the public correcting them.
We need to demand better of democrats, period. It’s ok to expect more out of them than “not trump.” Many of us Americans are completely fed up with them promising much needed reforms, and then turning around to accept bribes to do nothing of the sort after they’re voted in.
Voting out the establishment ghouls in the primaries this year is a great first step - go vote for a leftist this spring, and then vote for any non-repug this fall!
“Are still supporting”
Come mid-terms I’m going to proudly vote democrat everywhere I can so hopefully we can get some control of the country again.
Bingo.
I’ll think about Palestine after my country stops being run by actual fascists and Americans stop being executed in the street and our Constitutional rights stop being violated on a daily basis.
And, coincidentally, by voting Democrat, I am doing the most beneficial thing I can for Palestine because THERE ARE NO VIABLE THIRD PARTIES IN THE UNITED STATES.
What state was going to flip to Harris if ALL of those green party voters flipped Democrat? You can’t name one, because there isn’t one.
Reactionary centrists got Trump elected. Period.
@[email protected] you can’t just look at Green party voters because some people very likely also stayed home instead of voting for the same reason. If you could also count those it’s possible one or more would have flipped.
That said, it’s always a combination of factors so it is still partly to blame even if we assume it wouldn’t have done it alone.
You can’t argue against my first point. We literally have the numbers. This isn’t speculative. We measured this.
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Stein (G): 862,049 votes,
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Kennedy (I): 756,393
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Oliver (L): 650,126
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De La Cruz (S): 166,175
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West (I): 82,664
In no state election would the greens have even come close to moving the results of that race. And if you argue that the green votes actually belong to the Democrats, you’d have to concede that both Kennedy’s and Oliver’s would belong to the Republicans. In which case Trumps victory would have been even more secure.
In the most charitable interpretation, third party votes in 2024 helped Democrats and hurt Trump. If we make some demographic assumptions and treat it like an instant run-off, reassigning third party votes would put Trump even further into the lead.
Third party votes in 2024 were historically low and had almost no impact on the outcome of the election.
How does your point in any way refute that voting for Democrats is the most beneficial thing for Palestine? Unless you’re trying to say that by voting for a third party you actually helped Democrats win more than you would have by voting for them?? Your point was a non sequitur.
you can’t just look at Green party voters
So I responded by broadening the scope and looking at all third party voters. Its a classic trope for apologist Dems to blame third party, and the point is that third party voters were utterly meaningless, and if anything, actually helped Dems in 2024.
Unless you’re trying to say that by voting for a third party you actually helped Democrats win more than you would have by voting for them??
We are not, at all, nor ever have we been, nor ever will we be, talking about what any of us as individuals do. Neither your vote or my vote decided an election. The presentation that voters individually needed make different decisions is a dangerous and deceptive framing that political parties have used prop up deeply unpopular candidates and policies. No one voter decides the outcome of an election.
The 6 million votes that Harris left on the table lost the election. You are arguing against a strawman of your own creation, and what you think my personal choice would have been is utterly fucking irrelevant.
What we are discussing is how elections and electorates respond to candidates and the strategies those candidates use. The point that is now conclusive, is that there was one functional path to Harris winning the election: She needed to oppose the genocide in Gaza. There was no other way for her to win.
Nope. They were talking about an individual vote, their own. Again, you’re changing the subject.
by voting Democrat, I am doing the most beneficial thing I can for Palestine
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Suppose, in 10 years, your choice for president is between a democrat who openly expresses interest in murdering six million Jewish people, and a Republican who openly expresses interest in murdering seven million Jewish people.
Will you still be an unwavering Democrat?
If a communist killed between nine and thirty million of their own citizens would you still support communism?
If Taco Bell reintroduced the shredded chicken burrito, how many angels could dance on the head of a pin?
Somehow you managed to ask a question that takes less leaps of logics than your last one.
That’s what we have right now. BlueMAGA believes if they keep repeating the same mistakes over and over eventually it’s going to turn out the way they planned. And then with a chest full of arrogant hubris they will proclaim I told you so
even if said dem supports genocide and war crimes? vet carefully. vett? vette? whatever. boba vett your votes carefully. :)
If it’s a choice between republicans and democrats I will vote for democrats every time.
I will vet during primaries but mid-terms aren’t the time for that with what’s happening at home in the states and aboard with the current administration.
Democrats who support genocide can’t win, and candidates aren’t static.
If at any point you are supporting a Democratic candidate who holds unelectable policies, you are doing work to support the opposition. Your only option is to move the candidate when they hold a policy which will prevent them from winning the election.
When you say something like “Any Blue will do” in the face of a genocide, you are doing work to get the Republican in the race elected.
Voting for the Democrat in the general election helps the Republican win. Got it.
I’m fully convinced that the people who promote that sort of rhetoric are either astroturfers trying to convince people to waste their vote, or just don’t understand how the voting process works in the US.
SatansMaggotyCumFart has the right of it: Push progressive candidates in the primary, but don’t let perfect be the enemy of good in the general. If you vote third party in the general because the neither of the two viable candidates perfectly aligns with your desires, it’s every bit as bad as a centrist deciding to vote for the GOP candidate. Vote for whichever of those candidates is better.
You have a fantastical view of voter behavior not based in reality.
sure. on topics that are largely just bullet points and trading cards to collect.
but some topics are themselves so important the choice around them outranks all other topics. genocide being one of them. no?
If the Republicans were better than Democrats on the issue, this would make sense.
Found the single issue voter that helped put Trump in the Oval Office.
I’d be open about what I think of single issue voters, but that could net me a ban even on Lemmy.
The candidate has a policy which will cause them to lose the election. If you vote or don’t vote is utterly irrelevant, because the electorate won’t vote for them, so long as they maintain that policy.
You want elections and the American electorate to operate in some fundamentally different way than it actually does.
Many members of Congress you consider insufficiency anti-genocide were elected in 2024. Most of them, in fact. Even our current president won on a pro-genocide platform, along with all the other stuff he’s doing now that still isn’t enough for you to admit that the lesser of two evils is worth voting for. I’m glad the Rupublicans’ policies haven’t touched you or your loved ones personally yet, but consider that they may in the future.
If you read my entire comment you’ll see I’m not advocating for ‘any blue will do.’
Not voting for the only other viable option is actually doing the work to vote in the republican.
Please, address the issue on its merits: If you advocate for a candidate who has a policy which will prevent them winning a race, you are doing work for their opposition.
This is what happened with Biden/ Harris. By supporting them (ABWD) instead of being critical, you set up the permission structure necessary for them to recognize they’ve got your vote without having to change policy positions. The permission structure you and I do me you because you are maybe the most clear and consistent Blue MAGA voter on lemmy, that permission structure allowed Harris to maintain a pro-genocide stance into November. Since holding that stance would prevent her from winning the election, shifting the responsibility from a candidate who is one person, of one mind, running one campaign to change their policy, you shifted that responsibility to the millions of unwashed masses, whom have no great track record for making good decisions when it comes to November, and for which there is no credible mechanism to move the minds of millions of people in the period of a few months or weeks. There is no tool a campaign can operate which changes millions of minds from “I will not support a genocide” to “I will support a genocide”, and I’m glad that this is the case.
Framing elections as if its a matter of individual choice shows an explicit and intentional illiteracy when it comes to how campaigns, electoral-ism, and electorates work. One voter is like a grain of sand. It acts and behaves like a solid, and has other properties we would liken to “its a tiny rock”. But when millions of grans of sand are moving together, their behavior is nothing like an individual grain. When we take individual votes and scale them to millions of voters, their properties and behaviors are different. What and how an individual voters should act is fundamentally irrelevant. We’re not talking nor are we ever talking about what individual voters do. That’s what oil companies in the 90’s did with recycling: they convinced you that your individual choice was what mattered, when they controlled the levers of power to determine what choices were available to you.
The candidates and campaigns have all the power to change their polcies or approaches in this system. Voters as individuals have practically 0 power in this system. There is no practical mechanism to get millions of voters to do whatever it is you would have them do (at least not over the course of months and weeks, like an election). There is an abundance of tools to operate on individual politicians to get them to change.
If you allow a politician who is competing for your vote to maintain an unelectable position, you are doing work to support their opposition.
So Trump 2.0 was a better option than Harris because she wouldn’t/didn’t say the words you wanted to hear?
So Trump 2.0 was a better option than Harris because she wouldn’t/didn’t say the words you wanted to hear?
For the 9000th time, we’re having a conversation about what voters do, not what any one individual does. And no matter how long you keep your head in the sand about the matter, voting isn’t a binary. Any one voter has a range of choices about what to do with their time available to them.
I don’t know if you are fully aware of this, but: SHE LOST THE FUCKING ELECTION!
I don’t really believe any of you blue maga fascists are actually operating in good faith at this point, but I’ll at least offer you the grace of addressing the following issue.
We’re going to run two experiments, @[email protected] , which will both start with the following premise:
It’s August 2024, the night before the convention, and you are Kamala Harris’s campaign manager. You are just coming off the big bump in polling you got from naming Tim Walz your vp. So far, your polling has been meteoric. You managed to got from the low forties/high thirties to high forties in a few weeks. Its one of the most dramatic and staggering increases in polling in history.
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 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.
If you can’t identify a coherent strategy that creates a path to victory under premise (0), we have to conclude that the only way Harris could win the election was to change their policies.
Like others I instantly downvote and refuse to read the remainder of any comment that says “Blue MAGA”. It’s too stupid for me to justify wasting my time on.
Blue MAGA fascist who demanded the candidate maintain pro-genocide positions, there-by ensuring a Trump victory.
What you’re describing is a strategy for primaries, not the general.
The vote in the general election comes at the end of the race. Any response to the input of your vote or lack thereof is irrelevant at that point. We just have to live under the policies of the winner. Even if Kamala changed her stance on Gaza as a result of you and other 1-issue voters withholding your votes, it doesn’t matter; it’s too late and now we have Trump.
If your plan is to let MAGA run roughshod over the world until Democrats share your stance on the issue, then you are as responsible as Trump voters for what is happening.
No, I am not talking about primaries. If a candidate holds a position which will prevent them from winning a general, in the context of election like the previous election, you have the responsibility to take whatever actions are necessary to move that candidate, including withholding your vote if they don’t change their position.
You need to look at the modifier here: the candidate holds a policy that will prevent them from winning the general. If they maintain the policy, the lose the election. Period. How you vote is utterly irrelevant, because the millions of people who won’t vote for them aren’t going to vote. Voting or advocating or a candidate who is running on a losing set of policies isn’t harm reduction or strategic.
I’m not gonna lie. I also tend to ignore posts using the term “Blue MAGA”, because it was frequently used to harass black and brown people for being scared about Trump.
You should work on that then. Its a useful term and a clear demographic, and has been for almost 10 years, and I can’t think of any example in history of it being used to harass black and brown people. You’re more than welcome to provide one.
I’ll be honest I read your comment until you started ranting about Blue MAGA and I decided that that point that reading further would be a waste of my time.
No one should take someone as disingenuous as yourself seriously. You wanted the country to stay pro-genocide and you got what you wanted.
It’s Dems or Repubs, kiddo.
Look at me with a straight face and tell me Repubs are better for Palestine than Dems.
Look at me with a straight face and tell me you’d rather have Repubs continue to be in control instead of Dems.
And please don’t waste Lemmy’s storage capacity with ridiculous comments about third parties. There are no viable third parties in the United States. You have two options for the foreseeable future.
Be a smart person.
what makes not liking one group mean i think the other is better? you’re replying to someone who realizes they (both sides) are absolute capitalist pieces of genocide shit.
one is outward about it. another is hidden about it.
Satan is the Chuck Schumer of lemmy commenters. Their job isn’t to make sure that the Democrats win, their job is to keep the party pro-genocide.
Yes, child. You’re arguing with someone whose explicit goal was to keep America pro-genocide.
Your comments are weak, bud. Do better.
I’m torn on calling them war criminals. War profiteers, absolutely. Genocide apologists, definitely. It’s a bit like being a drug dealer; you didn’t make them take the drugs, but you knew what the likely outcome would be. Should that be criminal under international law? Probably, but I don’t believe that it currently is.
Biden went around Congress to provide arms we had clear evidence would be used in a genocide.
Just because he’s not the biggest war criminal, doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be held accountable.
Not holding “our own” accountable just depresses turnout and let’s maga win
We can’t afford to put Joe fucking Biden or any other Dem politician over the entire country. We have to hold them accountable, and if they don’t want to be held accountable they can stop committing war crimes, or at least get out of office.
Like, it’s not just international law he violated, US law too:
Like, it’s not just international law he violated, US law too:
It’s not that I don’t think everyone involved needs to be held accountable, they absolutely do, but sloppy sloganeering also hurts the cause by making it sound like we don’t know what we’re talking about. How many times has fairly reasonable gun regulation been sidelined because someone got pedantic over whether a rifle was clip fed or magazine fed.
I know, we all hate semantics, but that doesn’t mean they don’t matter.
but sloppy sloganeering
…
It’s weird I have to keep saying this in 2026:
People complaining that the Dem candidate doesn’t reflect the policy positions of Dem voters isn’t the problem, and even if they all shut up, it wouldn’t solve anything.
The problem is forcing candidates dem voters don’t want, rather than fair primaries.
We’ll have a fair primary in 2028, so there won’t be a problem.
If you truly think people talking about the candidate is worse, look at 2008 and Hillary’s campaign team literally and loudly advocating for Kerry over Obama.
People United Means Action" (or PUMA) was a political action committee in the United States that opposed the Democratic Party leadership and the nomination of Senator Barack Obama as the Democratic candidate for president in the 2008 presidential election.[1] PUMA began as an effort by supporters of Obama’s primary rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who believed that Clinton should have been the Democratic nominee.[2][3] According to PUMA, “We [were] protesting the 2008 Presidential election because we refuse to support a nominee who was selected by the leadership rather than elected by the voters.”[4] The organization was founded and led by Darragh Murphy.
On May 11, 2011, the PUMA PAC was stripped of its status as a recognized political action committee for failure to meet reporting requirements.[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_United_Means_Action
That didn’t stop Obama from flipping a shit ton of red states, because Dem voters supporting a platform means more than people saying they don’t like the platform.
Did you ever notice how criticizing the candidate is only a problem when it’s an uncharismatic candidate no one likes with a shitty platform?
Quick edit:
I know, we all hate semantics
Bro, I love semantics…
Um… what does any of that have to do with the subject of the post though? The OP stated:
[…] they must address what accountability for the war criminals in the Biden administration — those who aided, armed, and funded genocide — should look like.
I said I don’t know that “War Criminals” is the right way to frame what they did. I do not disagree with your point that:
Not holding “our own” accountable just depresses turnout and let’s maga win
It’s a valid point, but I didn’t suggest not holding them accountable, I suggested being precise in how we frame what they did wrong. We devalue the term “War Crime” if we use it too loosely.
If you truly think people talking about the candidate is worse […]
Dude, what are you even talking about? We’re talking about the (prospective) candidates. That’s what this whole conversation has been about. My point was about how to frame the way we talk about it. I never suggested they shouldn’t be thoroughly vetted by the voter and people shouldn’t be held accountable for their bad decisions. Who are you arguing with? Because it doesn’t sound like anything I said.
Accomplices
Dumb question maybe, but is the stance on the genocide in gaza the only important one, or do you also care about their stance on other genocides, i.e. sudan, etc.?
The reason people don’t like that question, is it’s a “divide and conquer” approach. However most people repeating it, don’t understand.
For social change, it needs a large movement. To get a large movement, everyone has to handle one task at a time, then move to the next.
Like, if you were in a hotdog eating contest, would you eat one hotdog at a time so your score goes up?
Or would you take a bite out of every hotdog in front of you?
One way you keep steadily increasing score and making progress, the other you might eat 50 half hotdogs and lose to a guy who ate 5.
So why would anyone argue against the strategy where even if everything isn’t finished by the buzzer, we still made some progress?
You are already a victim of divide and conquer. Anyone has to understand that a 3rd Trump term or even a full 2nd term with house, senate and presidency will be disastrous.
If you do not vote this election you might never be able to vote again. This is what they are banking on. They want more time to disenfranchise even more people, they want to bar as many people as they can from voting.
You are hiding behind the bodies of Palestinians. You will not ‘solve’ this problem in one election cycle. This will take generations. Especially with the damage done by billionaires in the past 10 years.
The First step needs to be, getting as many Dems in power as possible. After that, continuing to demonstrate, tell people in power that you are still not happy with the country. Then you can let people like AOC use that momentum to bring institutional change to the supreme court, the senate- and house electoral maps, the 2 party system, citizens united, etc.
What is wrong with the USA goes so much further and deeper than Gaza.
The people who won’t vote aren’t hanging out on political message boards bud…
The thing is, you don’t have to be very politically active to not like genocide. It’s a very low bar, and that’s all that matters:
Running a candidate voters want to vote for.
Spend less time trying to sway millions of voters, and focus on getting a candidate they’d vote for into the general. That’s the entire point of a primary
Before anyone in the party can move on to selling a post-Biden vision of human-rights-first foreign policy, they must address what accountability for the war criminals in the Biden administration — those who aided, armed, and funded genocide — should look like.
To me, this seems focused on a goal, that while admirable, doesn’t actually help in the current situation. We can actually continue trying to do the right thing even if Biden’s team faces no accountability.
To me, this seems focused on a goal, that while admirable, doesn’t actually help in the current situation.
Bingo.
It’s gonna be “fun” watching Repubs win again in 26 and 28 because liberals are too busy infighting trying to cleanse the Democrat party to 100% purity in the face of fascism.
And then we won’t have to worry about elections anymore. But hey, at least we’ll have clear consciences as we’re being gassed.
Well first of it was conditional and involved efforts to bring in aid to palestine and to stop israeli agression. This very much mirrors 911. A thing happened and the “hurt” party rallied their allies to help them which being good allies they did but then over time the actions of the “hurt” party made no sense relative to the initial incident. There was certainly pushback on the whole thing from the biden administration but it did have to navigate congress. Take the republicans away. Like gone. completely. then the response would have cooled much faster from the us.
My default vote is blue, but if any candidate is cravenly mealy-mouthed about this genocide, they won’t get my vote. Biden and the lot of Israel apologists and genocide enablers deserve the same punishment we gave Nazi officers in Nuremberg, as far as I’m concerned. Anything less is basically admitting that you think Muslim lives are of less value than Jewish lives. Genocide is genocide.
So you’re saying if the Democrat party doesn’t achieve the level of purity you desire, then you’re fine allowing a party demonstrably worse (in every conceivable way) to maintain control of our lives and our futures?
Pardon me, but that sounds unbelievably stupid.
What other populations are you willing to sacrifice? Why stop at “just” Palestinians? Should I also make allowances for transphobia and homophobia? What if they promise to just keep helping me as a white man, but decide we can sacrifice other minority communities on the altar of liberalism? No. Either equality for all, or for none.
Clearly the policies of the Trump administration haven’t affected you or someone you love personally yet. They will.
They’ve affected me personally and those I love. I fear for my immigrant family every day. I fear for the minority communities both in and outside my circle. Which communities are you personally ok with sacrificing though in order to guarantee “our side” wins? Just Palestinians or others too?
You didn’t save any Palestinians by letting Trump win.
How many and which communities should I be willing to sacrifice? Please list out the ones that I, as a white man, should be comfortable sacrificing so that a fake Democrat can win? I’ve now seen that I should be ok sacrificing Palestinians, but who else? I know that transphobia and xenophobia are still rampant in this country. Should I be ok with a Democratic candidate who wants to not allow equal protections for non-binary people? Should I be ok with a Democratic candidate who wants to deport economic asylum seekers? Should I vote for a Democratic candidate who wants to co tibie warrantless surveillance of Americans here at home? You insinuate that I’m asking for purity, but I see these issues as the bare minimum.
You wouldn’t have been sacrificing Palestinians by voting for Democrats, because the genocide was going to continue regardless of who won, as we have seen. What you did do was sacrifice all those other groups you mentioned. Just today, Kentucky passed a law, effective immediately, invalidating all trans people’s driver’s licenses.
So, to turn your rhetoric back on you, how many marginalized groups are you willing to sacrifice to make a symbolic point that serves only to boost your own self image and benefits none of the people you claim to be championing?
I often feel we are becoming so desensitized to this hell world that we accepted “acknowledge that they did a boo boo” as opposed to being “tried for aiding war crimes and atrocities” and it fucking sucks. All those narratives about fighting evil, and toppling cruel empires, in reality they get away with it and award themselves medals.
