Not when the boat starts sinking. I think this is an important message now, long before 2020.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Not when the boat starts sinking. I think this is an important message now, long before 2020.
Surely it’s all just Dog’s Will.
Sadly, too many of my “Libertarian” friends won’t get this.
“Thinly veiled”? More like “stark naked”.
I’m sure there’s still commenters here who are very proud of not having voted Clinton in the last election…
Yes, yes, point granted, but you have to admit: Their hands are freaking clean!
“A more inspiring raft.”
I’m dead. I just can’t wrap my head around the need to be inspired.
I’d call it Natural Selection at its finest.
There are five people on that raft.
One of them wants to go down with the boat.
One of them wants to get in the raft.
The other three think they’re both in cahoots with big sea and refuse to participate in any argument that includes the sea!
As a tied vote, the vice president welcomes the big wet zombie Jesus into everyone’s life.
As they swim, everyone complains about big sea, and how it’s so wet, especially the guy who wanted to go down with the boat. That guy hates the sea, especially with how big it is.
Hey guys, give them a break, literally no one could have known.
This analogy would be more accurate if the liferaft had a few holes and then they had to choose.
“Those grapes were probably sour anyway.”
Steve Bruce… was the drawing of the life raft just not inspiring enough for you? did you need a more inspiring raft?
I understand the point quite well and it should make perfect sense, but I also understand the frustration of a lot of American leftists and I think the artist’s dismissal of their concerns with the Democrats rather glib. A better simile would be a lifeboat that was leaking and filled with rabid weasels.
Yeah, some would rather protest than vote for imperfection. Remember the huge protests after Trump was elected? They were so effective.
I can see the argument from some of the anti-lifeboat folks well enough to state it. Namely, that the protest wasn’t about how uninspiring the lifeboat was, but rather that there was one 5-person boat for 20 people.
From their point of view, the 15 people who trashed the lifeboat were just making sure the five assholes who claimed that the one boat was all theirs would go down, too.
This is, essentially, the position of a lot of blue-collar workers, who really do feel at this point that neither party is going to do jack for them, so why not let everyone drown? It’s short-sighted and ultimately self-destructive, but it isn’t completely at odds with human nature. The Dems have been in betrayal mode, with respect to the working class and labor, for decades now–they simply assumed that because the Republicans were even worse, that folks at the bottom of the economic scale would have no choice but to be secured votes for the Democratic candidate, freeing the Dems to chase after corporate money with almost the same level of abandon and naked avarice as the GOP.
I say all this as someone who voted for Hillary, and who has been voting nearly straight-ticket Dem for most of my voting ‘career’, and who will continue to actively vote against the party that’s causing the original ship to sink in the first place. I don’t deny the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc that has been playing a key role in the shift. But if the Dems had been doing a better job of advocating for the blue-collar working-class for the past thirty years, there would’ve been a helluva lot less anger and fear for the GOP to exploit.
Well, no, this isn’t accurate. It’s more like they’re on a sinking ship, and the life raft is punctured, and there’s another raft nearby which is not punctured, and the MC throws that one away and tells the others “now you only have the choice of getting in the punctured raft and dying a little more slowly, if you don’t do that you’re choosing to doom us all”. Fuck anybody who thinks Clinton was an acceptable choice.
Yeah, much more like the ship is sinking, but there’s another ship alongside which is also sinking, but slightly more slowly. And there’re a number of people on jetskis urging you to climb into the slightly less bad ship, while desperately working to obfuscate the fact that there’s a perfectly good lifeboat hanging from the far side of your ship.
Yeah, I’m not feeling this. Of course people should vote to keep the greater evil out of power. But it’s become very clear that to make that happen, parties need to run decent candidates that people want to vote for. If we are going to blame people who wouldn’t take the lifeboat, shouldn’t we also blame the manufacturer that made the lifeboat way too small to save everyone from drowning?
Is saying of course they won’t really run people who represent your needs, the country needs to vote for them anyway really more sensible than saying of course they won’t vote for people who don’t represent their needs, the country needs you to put up better candidates? Can’t we recognize that both are mistakes?
Yeah, as someone who held their nose and voted straight-ticket Dem, I’m not liking the implication that all the criticisms towards the Dems were just non-substantial nitpicking.
I’ll take a pretty stock-standard Democrat neolib over a racist manbaby with brainworms, but I’m not gonna pretend that I like neolibs. It’s a question of less terrible, not more good.
“ We are less shittier than the Republican Party” should be the Dem’s slogan. I mean I grant that it is still a powerful arguement to keep voting for them but the fact is that the bar is so low that Democrats don’t have to do anything more. A problem which has been conveniently glossed over is that very few liberals hold the Democrats responsible for any of their action/inaction. I don’t remember any protests during Obama’s term when he was indiscriminately deporting immigrants, waging wars, spying on everyone. It’s all well and good to ask Republicans to protest Trump and hold him accountable but the left needs to first start doing the same to their party.
I think all the “HRC wasn’t perfect tho” voices are missing the point. Nobody in the cartoon likes the lifeboat option, but it is their only current option; the ship is sinking and no one is there to rescue them at the moment so they are going to have to, however temporarily, use the resources provided them in advance or drown. The person insisting it’s the only option just wants not to immediately die, she’s likely well informed that the lifeboat, in the event someone doesn’t come along in the near future to haul them out of it, is just a tool for extending their time being not-dead and is not the solution to all their problems, but she recognizes that in order to solve their problems being alive longer is better than dying rapidly.
This isn’t a pro-HRC cartoon, it’s a pro-not-being stupidly, stubbornly blinkered because you can’t get what you want immediately cartoon.
*Make that “HRC/the Democrats”
@21
How is anyone missing that point when like every “HRC wasn’t perfect” poster thus far has advocated for her as being better than a Trump presidency?
People are taking umbrage with a fact that the criticisms against HRC and the Democratic establishment are being analogically rendered as like, non-substantive nitpicking.
Oh hey, Fuck You Vicar for not realizing that HRC was the REALISTIC choice. And because you and others couldn’t have their cake and eat it, we have Trump. Stop living n a fantasy world.
Onamission5 @21: The problem is that it doesn’t do anything to address, or even acknowledge the lifeboat’s inadequacies, for some people, even in the short term. Again, it’s not “5 people will either die immediately, or they will live a little longer”, it’s “5 people will live longer and 15 will die immediately, OR 20 people will die immediately.” If you’re one of the 15 for whom it makes no difference, it’s much more tempting to say “Fuck it,” and cut loose the lifeboat.
Now, the flipside of THAT, in turn, would be that of those 15, maybe 2 showed up at the company open house where they took public feedback on lifeboat design and accommodations (ie, the primaries and off-year, down-ticket elections that serve as the parties’ “bush leagues”, where up-and-comers actually get sorted through). Instead, they’ve stood around waiting until the boat starts to sink, and then raise their concerns. If everyone who didn’t vote for Hillary in 2016 had spent the last two decades voting for liberal Democrats in their local elections (or hell, even Greens or Socialists), we might have actually had the ‘inspiring’ candidate they ostensibly wanted.
@24: If we’re being REALISTIC, we should consider that Clinton’s platform of “everything is going great” in the midst of ever-increasing inequality was unpopular with so many voters, she was not sure to beat even one of the worst con-men in history. So realistically running her was a terrible risk to the country. I can see insisting that people should have voted for her anyway, but why defend that mistake?
I don’t care about “inspiring,” I just want a candidate who won’t sell civilization to the Right in the name of “bipartisanship.”
1) I want to know what that “perfect lifeboat” option was.
2) Y’all still clinging to the “economic anxiety hypothesis” despite there being virtually no evidence for it at all while disregading that black people who are actually a lot poorer voted Clinton at above 90%…
I certainly don’t think there was a perfect lifeboat in this situation, I just don’t like equating legitimate criticisms of neoliberalism being construed as either non-substantive whining.
Giliell @28: The people who actually voted Trump were driven mainly by racism, misogyny, and other forms of bigotry. I’m not sure economic anxiety and other forms of personal frustration with the ‘system’ have been ruled out as significant factors in non-voting or voting for one of the minor parties.
Porivil Sorrens.
Nobody is actually doing that. I didn’t see a person here on this blog during the election who was actually very enthusiastic or wasn’t very critical of the Dems.
This is about the people who thought and think that Clinton was so bad that they rather didn’t vote at all or vote for a “third party candidate”.
Aka The Vicar.
What?! This is not an accurate analogy. Its more accurate to say that the life raft has a bunch if holes.
Whats that? You can fix holes? Naw Id rather drown apparently.eye roll
The Vicar, #16
As we got close to November, yes she was. And you know it too.
The comic itself does that though, by portraying the complaints of the people against the lifeboat as being trivial things like “I don’t like the color” or “It doesn’t look comfortable.”
Like, I disagree with The Vicar too, but it’s just disingenuous to pretend that the criticisms non/third-party voters levy against her are that facile.
It is disingenuous to suggest that people voted for Trump because they were dissatisfied with how too far right Dems have moved. All the evidence points to Trupm being put to power mainly by comparatively well-of racists. Sure, some poor people with economic anxiety voted for him too, but they do not consist the majority of his voters.
Charly,
I don’t like chocolate so I chose the double dark chocolate ice cream with chocolate chunks topped with chocolate sauce.
Analogy is incorrect – the sinking ship is anchored to the lifeboat.Even if everyone got together on the lifeboat , the ship is still likely to sink everyone.
A better analogy I think would be that there is a hole in the lifeboat, but also a bucket that could have kept the lifeboat afloat if only enough people were willing to help bale once everyone got on it.
Porivil Sorrens
Well, in that situation when the alternative is literal fascism, yes, the complaints do sound a bit trivial.
German labour is currently self-immolating for many of the same criticism levied at the Demsn and they well deserve it. But believe me, if it was voting for them or see the AfD in power, I’d paint a heart next to my crosd.
@ Amphiox, #38
I like that analogy, but to make it completely accurate, all the people have to keep bailing no matter what, they can’t stop to eat, sleep, or even signal potential rescuers. And then, just when you start to look like you might be able to take a short breather, some asshole comes by just to shoot a few more holes in the bottom.
If you think “mass deportation of immigrants” or “needless foreign wars that will almost guaranteed kill thousands of innocents” are trivial in the same manner of “I think this life saving device is the wrong color”, I think you are actually a reactionary, lmao.
When compared to mass deportation and needless wars plus concentration camps for kids plus chance of nuclear escalation plus the possible end of reproductive rights plus the complete destruction of the mechanisms that would have allowed folks to maybe actually change issues one and two, than yeah, call me reactionary.
fuck!! I am so tired of this all the dam time!
a life boat is not a replacement for a sinking boat it is a temporary solution a dangerous situation.
voting is not the end of the process it is but one fucking step. You have to continue over and over one step at a time in order to get to the goal and to maintain any gains already obtained.
uncle frogy
Literally none of those things are uniquely Republican outcomes. We had childhood detention centers under Obama, there has been a credible risk of nuclear escalation for literal decades (but lol guess JFK wasn’t a democrat), states have been eroding reproductive rights for decades even while under democratic administrations, and voter disenfranchisement has been going on for decades, even while under democratic administrations.
Regardless, none of that changes the fact that “This candidate tangibly supports killing and deporting poor foreigners” is not a trivial criticism, irrespective of who that is contrasted against.
As mentioned, I agree that HRC was favorable to Trump, but the idea that her abhorrent neoliberal views on things are somehow trivial is just like, fucking disgusting lol.
I thought this was supposed to be about Brexit until it got to the “inspiring” bit. I think it actually works better that way. To be accurate to the US election, for a start you’d have to show raft guy purposely throwing another raft overboard to force everyone to crowd into his preferred one, or something.
And since
1. Sanders supporter mostly ended up holding their noses and voting for Clinton, as far as I can tell, and
2. everyone, including the Clinton and Trump campaigns, thought that Trump had no chance, meaning that disappointed leftist voters were basically told that they wouldn’t need to compromise their principles and vote for the lesser evil because that’s what they’d get in any case,
I don’t see why you would waste the energy of your ire on anyone but Trump and his supporters.
Wait, in this metaphor, is the life raft the entire Democratic Party or is it just whoever you have the option to vote for? Is it referring to 2018 Congressional elections or 2020 Presidential?
-In the first case, there are more rafts, but one of them is already sinking and the one everybody wants to get on has no oars or anything to actually propel it anywhere. It also might be sinking, at the very least one side seems deflated.
-In the second, well, fortunately my available raft tried to stop the boat from sinking, or whatever metaphor you want for voting no on Kavanaugh, so yeah I’ll get in it, even if there’s no guarantee it won’t drift into shark-infested waters.
-In the third case, we haven’t even picked the raft colors yet, let alone if we’ll actually get a life raft or replace it with extra torpedoes or a fire hose or something.
-In the fourth case, which is, um, rambling about 2016 again I guess, the lifeboat had a lot of duct tape patches. And we don’t hold the duct tape. That said the chosen life boat didn’t even have that and also was infested with worms, uh, somehow, despite being inflatable. All other options were covered with tarps.
Okay you know what this metaphor sucks. HEY! ONE PERSON SAYING GET IN THE LIFE BOAT! YOU CAN GET IN IT WITHOUT THEM!
we can’t
Porivil and others, the mere fact that we let a proto fascist into the white house trumps everything. No pun intended. At the end of the day, even if Trump’s presidency ends up in the same place as Clinton’s (and that’s a huge grant I’m giving) then in the end it still doesn’t matter. Hillary would have still been the best choice. Because with Trump we showed the world that the richest, most influential, most militarily powerful nation this planet has ever seen can totally go fascist. Even if Clinton was as bad as everyone pretends she is (more on that later) then she is still preferential than the alternative, which is setting a precedent that’s dangerous as fuck. The next Trump-like president might not be so incompetent in his goals.
This next section I am not sure it applies to you Porivil, but it does to leftist purists.
As for Clinton’s viability, she is fine. She was fine, and continues to be fine. I was a Bernie supporter, considered green party after it was clear he was not going to win. I hung out with others of the same vein, and my experience is thus…you suck.
Seriously, the amount of dishonest bullshit I encountered by so called leftists while I was among them is staggering. Conspiracy theories about how Clinton stole the primary. Assassinated people. Dishonest portrayals. Out right lies, and quote mining. All intent to make her look worse than she actually is. Shes not. She is fine. Imperfect, flawed and ultimately human, but talk to these people long enough and they make her out to be some kind of super villain. Seriously, the amount of money, time, and energy spent on making her look bad by both sides of the fence for decades and this bullshit is the best you can come up with? I dare say that Clinton is probably the most clean politician since any other who has had such torrents of scrutiny would fold and tear. Her policies are not as left wing…who cares. And I say that as someone who was born incredibly poor and working class. Every Hillary hater Ive meet has been some overly privileged asshole who think you are fighting for the common man but no. No you want to make yourself feel better. For being more left. Maybe Ive just had bad luck and there are decent ones out there, but I am not trying to look for them.
A lot of you even defended Trump. Saying “oh hes not really racist or fascist, ect” or “Clinton is not the lesser of two evils compared to Trump” and yet expect us to believe that you have the ability to see Clinton for what she is when you couldn’t even do that to the most obvious threat to our nation?
The most fucked up thing is? You got it. You all got your wish. You made the party more left. During the election they adopted more left leaning proposals, and what did you do instead? Threw a hissy fit because the imperfect woman won against a man just as shit as her (Sanders sucks when you look deeper and past the hype). And abandoned them because they were “only saying this to get our votes”. Yes they were, thats a good thing. Thats the point. We wanted that. When the tea party wanted change and the RNC was using their energy for votes, guess what? They took over. Because when you vote you make them beholden to you and your positions. because by voting you show them that at any point you can primary them out of a job. that’s how the tea party got it done. You had that, and squandered it away with petulance. Useless.
Porivil Sorrens @ 44,
Nearly all of the children detained under Obama were unaccompanied when they arrived, and they were placed with sponsors as soon as possible.
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/jun/25/brad-parscale/tyes-immigrant-children-detained-under-obama-they-/
People who let Trump win got a government that’s farther to the right. It would be incoherent to argue that, because Hillary (or her party) isn’t leftist enough, you should thus let someone (or his party) much less progressive than that win. The premise may well be true — I certainly think it is — but a rational conclusion it is not.
If anybody thought that’s what they were doing in the 2016 election, it would make as much sense as saying the raft doesn’t look comfortable. It may indeed be far from their ideal of comfort, but they either fail to grasp that it’s more comfortable than drowning to death (as absurd as it may sound that they don’t realize this), or they actually wanted to drown AKA get Trump in office (as absurd as that may sound).
If you want to dispute that either way they were doing something absurd, you have to say why they made a good choice. Was Trump somehow a better choice for president? If you think so, then how exactly is one supposed to support the claim that he was?
(BTW, freemage #15 and #25, it’s not a good choice to ensure 5 people will drown unnecessarily, out of spite or whatever.)
Porivil Sorrens
Yeah, lol. I meanb laughing out loud. Because it’s funny? I mean, if you care so much, what’s so funny about it?
Clinton’s neoliberal views aren’t trivial when looking only at Clinton. But we are not and were not in the times when we have the luxury of looking at them in isolation.
The world may be sinking into another age of fascism and Trump’s election may be the thing that tipped things over the edge. And you’re still whining about Clinton.
Oh, and the good old “both parties are the same, only a difference in degree” bullshit.
Because Obama’s less than promising tax policy is equivalent to Trumps massive theft through taxes.
Choosing between Evil and Affably Evil is not a great choice.
Maybe is time to build a Good choice?
How much work/money are you willing to do for that to happen? I ask honestly, as I have noticed those who complain the most expect other people to do the real work….
Just remember children, drowning only hurts for a couple of moments; then you go to sleep! So, not that bad!
@53 Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
I don’t live in the USA, neither im am an american citizen, so the only help i can give to you there is some moral help.
In my country, showing good deeds, donations, social activities and participation in social media (forums and blogs), i try to make my country a place with more Liberty, Egality and Fraternity.
Attack the Democrats all you want, go after Clinton and “moderates” (i. e. corporate shills) like her all day, but when the general election comes around and the primaries are past and lost, you’ve got to vote for the lesser of two evils. You don’t live in a system of proportional representation. You don’t have coalitions, you have first-past-the-post. Your system sucks, but it’s the one you have, so it’s your obligation to vote against the vilest scum, i. e. the Republicans, and try to replace your own side’s candidates with better options beforehand. I have no sympathies with people who voted “with their conscience” (or did not vote at all), because such people must live a very privileged, insulated life indeed, if they did not feel the need to give a single shit about matters of liberty (such as Muslim and Hispanic Americans, LGBT) and mere survival (migrants and refugees or the poorest of the poor Americans). Your clean conscience is not worth the suffering you’ve helped create. Don’t even let me get started on international matters.
@50
I mean, yes, when every viable politician supports policies that not only adversely hurts the people I care about but also the world at large, damn straight I’m going to “whine” about it. Hence why I’m working to make sure that as many neoliberal elitist democrats get primaried by people who don’t find it necessary to deport or murder my friends and family.
A vote for a Democratic candidate for Senate (even if it’s fucking Manchin) is a vote against Majority Leader McConnell and Chairman Grassley and so on. Same logic holds for the House.
The only way we can begin to bring all the Republican slime out into the open is by giving the Democrats control of at least one, and preferably both, Houses of Congress. .
Porivil Sorens,
The primaries are over. You won some, lost some. Time to stop whining.
@59
Nah, sorry. I’m not going to like, complacently accept politicians that want me and my family dead. Feel free to kiss my ass, though.
Porivil, the conjunct of “every viable politician supports policies that not only adversely hurts the people I care about but also the world at large” and “I’m working to make sure that as many neoliberal elitist democrats get primaried […]” is interesting.
(If they might be elected, then they’re viable, no?)
I’m taking practically viable, not technically viable. Literally anyone of age that is a US citizen can run for president, but in practice there isn’t much chance of them winning, especially when running against well-established party members.
Oh goodie, the pretzel logic brigade is here.
“The lifeboat is not shiny enough!” “The lifeboat has holes making as sinkable as the ship!” “There is a better lifeboat hidden by the ship that the woman is not telling the group about! (Plus she has cooties.)”
I don’t know. I kind of like the matte lifeboat myself.
@ Nerd #53:
I know I don’t do enough to make that sort of thing happen. But then again, I don’t insist on purity of the vote. I voted for Clinton when it was her against Trump.
The best analogy is a life raft with holes in it. It still works, just not ideally. I don’t know why some people try to say that there should be a sinking raft that represents the Democrats and a perfect raft that represents Bernie or Jill Stein or whatever. They don’t understand that, even if everyone who voted for Hillary as the lesser of two evil voted for Bernie or Jill, there would still not be a consensus and Trump would have won with a big margin and appear to have a mandate. There were too many choices and the people who wanted us to oust Hillary couldn’t agree on who to vote for.
I’m sorry, but this comic (and most of the thread) is ridiculous. Hillary lost, even though she won the popular vote. But the boat did not sink everyone is still alive to make a choice, there will be another life boat. So maybe stop punching down on the people who you think failed everyone by not caring about the last boat enough and start making sure that most of the people actually like the next one, so that this shit doesn’t keep happening.
If you honestly think, that everyone has an obligation to ratify the lesser of two evils, even though it has done next to nothing for them in the last two to three decades, you want to take choice away from those people, and all the democrats ever have to do, is be a little bit less horrid than the GOP. Stop dwelling on the last election and start punching up and not down, the voters will not change very much, so change the politics.
kurt1:
If you had a choice between being shot in the head, or being first slowly skinned alive and only then being shot in the head, you would not be obligated to choose the former.
But it would be perverse.
There is no obligation, but me, I’ll always go for the lesser evil over the greater.
(duh)
PS
It was people such as you that decried voting for the lesser evil, and urged otherwise.
(No wonder you don’t want to dwell on the last election!)
@67 John Morales
Only matters in the short term, there is no real choice here. But thats not what is happening anyways so maybe stop overextending some metaphor.
@68 John Morales:
I am not an american and I don’t remember commenting whatsoever on the election while it was taking place. But if it makes you feel better to blame decades of political failure on people like me go ahead, I don’t care. My points are still valid though.
Only for those who don’t want to see any differences. I saw huge differences in policies and competence.
kurt1, really?
Heh. “The guilty fleeth where no one pursues” and all that.
I didn’t write that you did, I wrote that people like you did.
(For example, “The Vicar”)
As to the putative validity of your points, it varies. There is no obligation to choose the lesser evil over the greater, but refusing to choose the lesser evil over the greater when your choice matters is still a choice. A perverse one.
(The one made by those who are entitled to vote, but choose not to do so)
@71 Nerd of Redhead
I think you misunderstood my comment, i was referencing John Morales “being killed painful vs quick” analogy. My point was, that the analogy doesn’t hold, because the outcome of an election is not fatal. And @John you forgot the point about changing the democrats platform to accomodate the poor majority that doesn’t vote. Playing the blame game doesn’t change anything and will probably lead to a second term for Trump. Political parties rarely accomodate the disenfranchised except when there is enormous pressure from the bottom up. Constantly blaming people for past mistakes does not unify people to build that movement and is therefore counterproductiv. That is the REALISTIC thing to do.
kurt1
What do you suggest we do? We tried being nice, and got spat at by leftist purists who saw us voting for Clinton as centrists or accommodationists. We tried being nice and got met with wild bullshit conspiracy theories and talking down to. At the end of the day the progressive movement has the power to do anything, but they don’t. They don’t because they would rather shit talk neolibs and centrist rather than get up and vote for change.
Oh and here is another line of bullshit I remember seeing from the stupid left that I only got reminded of when I saw Consciousness Razor say this:
Yea I shit you not I had a face to face discussion with a communist, anti-Hillary man who wanted Trump to win because it will spark revolution, and when I reminded him that people like me (Latino and bisexual) tend to be victims of such a government his response was “well, better get some guns and join in when the fight happens”. I don’t know how common this line of thinking was, but they exist.
@logicalcat
I can understand your disappointment and anger (as much as a white, hetero man in europe can, but I try). But Hillarys campaign wasn’t about change. At least not for the poor. It was very much about the status quo. You can focus on some asshole who wants to see the world burn and the few people he represents, but that won’t change anything. And it’s fine to be angry with people for having dumb ideas. But they are not the reason Trump is president. The fact that almost 60% of americans can’t cover a 500 $ unexpected expense explains way more why Hillarys campaign failed than the 12% of Sanders voters who chose Trump. More than 40 % of those eligible didn’t vote, a lot of them disenfranchised poor. They have been sitting in a shoddy raft year after year and every once in a while someone comes around with the promise of a better boat. But the next time they are still sitting in that shoddy life boat that has accumulated even more leaks.
The democrats have done ok with LGBTQ+ rights and some things for citizens of color. Not so much on climate change and the extrajudicial killing of people in other countries. But they are not opposing the capitalist class even one bit. The need of the poor is simply unaddressed. Don’t direct anger at dumb and apathetic people, wielding the horror of Trump as a cudgel against them will not work. Don’t limit your protest towards Trump, direct your anger at the party you want to be in power and that failed by not doing enough for the people who didn’t vote. Demand a system that works for everyone.
So, if we’re going to locate the reason Trump is president, we should look to people who had good ideas? How was president Trump a good idea?
Then give the explanation — don’t just hint at it or give vague gestures about it. Lay the thing out for me, point by point.
Did they have a dumb idea that Trump would improve this situation for them? Was that not a dumb idea?
Which party is responsible for the gerrymandering and other forms of voter suppression that made them disenfranchised?
You just said “it’s fine to be angry with people for having dumb ideas.” Which one’s it going to be?
And being apathetic about the very things you’re complaining about is something I’m angry about, with or without your permission…. You should be angry too, even if it’s from a distance in Europe.
Why won’t it work to say they can and should avoid horrific outcomes with their vote?
Who’s saying we shouldn’t be inclusive about our outrage? Just you, as far as I can tell: you don’t want us complaining about certain bad actors. It should be limited to only those that meet your approval — the legitimate targets of our anger/protest/etc. should be a very specific group of conservatives in the highest ranks of the Democratic party. Why not others? Why not ordinary voters who make bad choices?
the outcome of an election is not fatal
Tell it to people in Puerto Rico. Tell it to people being deported back to countries that will kill them. Tell it to women who are about to lose their ability to control their own fertility. Heck, tell it to the guy Trump killed on 5th Avenue. The outcome of the election was very fatal for quite a number of people. Few of them, admittedly, European white males. (Except the guy on 5th Avenue…and the ones dying because the VAs are underfunded and becoming more so. Or…actually, forget the caveat.)
@77 consciousness razor
I’m sorry but if you want to play the debate game where you focus on finding things to criticise and attack instead of trying to understand what I am trying to say, I have to disappoint: I’m neither smart enough nor a good enough writer to construct a bulletproof, un-nitpickable post.
I gave an explanation of why I think that the fact of 60% of americans being in a precarious financial position led to Trumps presidency. It’s in the part you didn’t quote. But let me elaborate: for some it is apathy, disgust with the political system as a whole for others. If you are scraping by, the future frightens you. I have been a student with little money and it triggered a major depression. I had a family that is doing well enough to lean upon and live in a country with a social safety net; they don’t. In that situation I didn’t care about the issues and I didn’t go voting, the day by day life was exhausting enough. If you want more information on the various reasons why poor people tend not to vote, there is enough of it out there.
Ask them! I think for people like us, who mostly are educated on the issues the election seems like an easy choice now. We see all the ways in which Hillary is better than Trump. We accept, maybe grudgingly, that this election still isn’t about social justice for the poor, vote and move on.* I don’t think from a poor persons perspective there is that big of a difference. Some of them are a bit racist (the real racists did vote for Trump), some sexist but I think that given the choice between their racist, sexist biases and a strong message of healthcare, education and social security, they would mostly choose the latter. If you wan’t to know more about that read Howard Zinn.
Before the election took place, almost everyone thought that Trump would surely loose. So they stayed at home, not ratifying the system that does nothing for them. For them there never was that clear trolley problem the comic proposes and people are not rational agents anyways. These points are obscured by the comic in giving superficial reasons why people didn’t vote for Hillary enough and that is why I think it’s condescending and targeting the wrong people.
And which party is campaigning extensively to get rid of of gerrymandering, voter suppression and the electoral college? I didn’t see the democrats doing much about it when they were in power, especially not when they held the house, senate and presidency in 2009 and it cost them the election in 2000 as well. Don’t see them doing enough about it now, though it came up as an issue. They didn’t defend ACORN though.
Being angry is an emotion, you can’t do much about that. Directing your anger is something active. Those are not exclusive concepts.
I’m not telling people how to feel, nor did I compile a list of things people are and aren’t allowed to protest. You seem to have the habit of interpreting everything in most unfavourable way possible, reading in ordner to criticise and not to understand. I am advocating for pressuring the democratic party more on the issue of confronting capitalism.
I am also not stating that you shouldn’t be allowed to complain about bad actors. Thats not what this comic is about, it’s not merely saying “People were stupid by not voting for Hillary” it’s claiming that Hillary lost just because of that, that these people had no legitimate reasons and deserve the blame. And I think thats wrong and doesn’t do anything except sowing more divison.
@78 dianne
Not fatal to the democratic system. People are still allowed to vote, yes? And before someone points out how Hitlers election was fatal to a democratic system in the past and it is therefore not universally applicable or something like that, I know. But please, just try to get the point someone is trying to make instead of trying to pluck them apart.
It’s really late so good night and cya around.
*And I understand why you are angry with those who didn’t, but thats not the point the comic is making.
@Kurt 78: Ah, my misunderstanding. Yes, people are still allowed to vote, at least some are. I think you said you aren’t from the US? Check out the voter suppression laws being passed in a number of states. And the closing of polling places in certain neighborhoods. There’s a lot of effort being put into making sure the “right” people vote.
Then there’s the issue of whether the votes are counted fairly and accurately. I’m very interested in the midterm elections because of a little feature of US history: Only three times, ever, in US history has the party that was in power in the presidency gained seats in Congress in a midterm election. One of those was a technicality (the House was expanded and the party in power got more seats…but the party not in power got a larger number of additional seats). The other two were during WWII and after 9/11: times when the “rally around the flag” effect was especially strong. (And frankly I”m slightly dubious about that last one, but assume it was fair for now.) Despite Trump’s attempts to declare a war with “the left”, that’s not the current situation. If the Republicans gain seats, that’s pretty much proof positive of cheating. US-Americans don’t give more power to the party in the presidency. That’s just not who we are.
So, was it fatal to US-American democracy? I’m not ready to make a statement yet.
kurt1; You do your paymasters in AfD, Le Pen, and UKIP proud. Maybe you can get a letter of recommendation Putin.
The only reason you cannot find out that the Democratic party is fighting against voter disfranchisement is because you don’t consider the D’s pure enough. Your “both sides” can go to hell because you clearly have not read anything based in reality about either Donald Trump or Hillary Rodham Clinton in the run-up to the election. There are no Trump scandals proven false, likewise there are no HRC scandals proven true.
*Kurt @79. My bad.
@81 patricklinnen
I’m confused, am I supposed to be an idealistic socialist purist or a nazi-party paypig?
Hillarys message was “America is already great”. That doesn’t resonate very well with the 60% of people who have not been doing great at all for a very long time. And it is surely didn’t get them out to vote. It is a weird contradiction to “Hope and Change” as well, which got Obama got elected (the message not the contradiction).
I don’t know what you mean by “Your “both sides”” because nowhere did I say that the republican party is compareable to the democrats. The GOP is more a conglomerate of racist, sexist, psychopath aristorcats than a political party.
“Reality” in a political and social sense is, what’s in peoples heads, not what is objectively true or written down in some policy proposal. Most people do not read extensively and weigh all the facts and arguments, regardless of voting habit. But I think that by making easy to understand proposals of how to improve peoples lives, you will get through to them. The New Deal got through to people, who were short of large scale open rebellion. And at least economically we are in a compareable situation with the 1% holding almost all of the wealth.
@80 dianne
Yeah, I am not completely unaware about the various ways in which the electoral system in the US is broken. And I know that there is a lot of grass roots-organizing going on and a lot of those groups are connected with or sympathetic to the democratic party. That’s why I said that I wish for a heavier push towards getting rid of gerrymandering and the electoral college from the top of the democratic party. Suppression through voter registration is not that much of an issue in my country, because you don’t have to register to vote at all. When you register your place of living with the local authorities you automatically get registered to vote, which is a good system.
I am always amused on a very cynical level when americans tell me how great their democracy is. Because voter suppression was there from the beginning, and most of them don’t know anything about that. Even if you disregard the majority of people who were not allowed to vote at all because they were slaves and/or women, people needed a certain amount of accumulated wealth to be eligible to vote. During the industrial revolution people live in the same place for a certain amount of time to be eligible, which disenfranchised the poor who had to travel around a lot to find work. The Jim Crow era was especially horrid with it’s open terror against POCs (and their allies to a lesser extend). It has been a long struggle, but seeing people on the ground fighting for their rights and the rights of their neighbour fills me with hope.
kurt1:
Ahem. She got nearly 3 million more votes than Trump did.
And still lost the election in which over 40% didn’t vote. Am I really that difficult to understand? Or is it that outlandish a claim, that that the alienation of the majority of voters for whom the status quo doesn’t work leads to resentment and apathy that culminate in someone like Trump?
Racism, sexism, voter suppression, gerrymandering and weird accelerationist argumentss all contributed to Trump being elected to varying degrees. But the political alienation of the working class poor has, in my opinion, contributed the most and changeing on that issue bears the greatest potential for winning the next election. That’s what the comic above doesn’t get, and the democratic platform is reluctant at best to move to the left on economic issues. MLK led a vastly successful movement for social justice by making not only the issue of race alone but economic disenfranchisement a central tenet of his activism.
kurt1
Except, of course, those who are dead, like the 4k people in Puerto Rico, who didn’t even get to vote.
Except for the kids in the cages.
Except for the two fucking SCOTUS seats that will guarantee a conservative court for decades to come and thus make many changes virtually impossible.
Election have consequences and they have costs. The world will be lucky if the above is the worst. Sliding into global fascism is still on the table.
Are you German, btw? How about one regional branch of the CDU already courting the AfD? Or do you still believe that they’re not actually Nazis?
No, the problem is that your argument isn’t much supported by data, because while it is superficially true, it is also true for about any presidential election in the last 100 years. The Dems didn’t suddenly lose those voters (while of course everything said about voter suppression, gerrymandering etc. still applies). Those 40% never voted in the first place. And while it IS important to reach out to those people, they’re not a new phenomenon.
Same with the economic argument: the most marginalised and poorest communities voted for the Democrats. You know who didn’t? White people. You’ll do anything to not see the elephant in the room. Talk about grievance studies? White people around the world voting for right wing parties that are always fighting the poor instead of poverty because their feefees got hurt when they were yold that the n word is bad, that’s real grievance studies.
Oh ye dark gods, I know I’m going to regret wading back in to the endless re-litigation this blasted,benighted election, but here we go…
Whilst the above is broadly true in general, it’s not actually true in the specific cases of 5 of the 6 states that flipped from blue to red in 2016 (with a combined total of 70 electoral college votes). In Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, the Dems dropped their votes by double-digit percentages between 2012 and 2016 (the drop in Pennsylvania was “only” 5.78%). In the case of Iowa, over 1 in 5 2012 Dem voters did not vote Dem in 2016. So yes, in the key states that actually determined the outcome of the 2016 election, the Dems did suddenly lose a large number of voters. In those 5 states, they would have taken the state if they had just maintained their 2012 vote numbers (the only state that flipped that they wouldn’t have won on the 2012 vote is Florida, which is also the only flipped state where their turnout increased in 2016). And those 2012 Dem votes were significantly down on the 2008 vote…
In short, the data clearly shows that Clinton lost because a lot of people who turned out for Obama in the key swing states 4 years earlier did not turn out for her.
If anybody wants the full data, the change in Democratic vote between 2012 and 2016 in those 5 states was:
Iowa: -20.88% (822,544 to 650,780)
Michigan: -11.69% (2,564,569 to 2,264,807)
Ohio: -17.93% (2,827,710 to 2,320,596)
Pennsylvania: -5.78% (2,990,274 to 2,817,409)
Wisconsin: -14.62% (1,620,985 to 1,383,926)
For a bit more detail, see also: A Short County Level Analysis of the 2016 Presidential Election. Or Just Cool Maps!.
Dunc
So, that’s 40% of the US electorate?
Because that’s kurts argument. The argument isn’t “she lost (roughly) 1.5 million votes in key swing states”, but that the 40% that didn’t vote are the reason.
And those number do not tell you a thing about the reasons they lost those votes. How much of it was voter restriction and simply not counting votes? How much was “Bernie or burst” people not voting at all or voting Trump instead? How much was white people feeling they were discriminated against by minorities existing and therefore voting Trump? How many wrung their hands over “her emails” and stayed at home? How many just couldn’t vote for a woman (and of her age!)? How many actually stayed at home and added to the 40% none voters because they were economically desperate?
You need to know who didn’t vote Dems who had done so before and why. Without that detailed analysis the argument “they stayed at home because of the weather” is as good a hypothesis as the other ones.
kurt1, #79:
I don’t know or care what you think an “exclusive concept” is. I never used any such phrase and don’t believe it makes sense in the first place. But it doesn’t matter.
You’re saying I can have valid and reasonable reactions to bad things others do, which I should not express. I don’t accept that shit. I will say what I think is true, not what would-be pollsters tell me about what “sells” to the masses.
I’ve never been much of a salesman. Besides, I think quality, not quantity, is what counts in this case, because we’re talking about what I say and do in my own life. If I were terribly influential, it might be sensible to consider another type of approach, but that’s not the situation I’m in.
Fuck you. Unlike your guesswork and stereotyping, I actually have a fucking poor person’s perspective, and Zinn’s book is on my shelf next to some Vonnegut and Tocqueville. If you read Zinn’s book and failed to notice how often poor white dudes discriminated against others whenever they had the opportunity, then you’re the one who needs to read it for comprehension.
For whom? Oh, right, poor people like me…. (Fuck you, again.)
The comic doesn’t present any sort of trolley problem. Is anybody being thrown overboard to save the others, for instance? No.
There is an obvious solution to a serious problem, which is argued for rationally; and to their peril, the other characters contrive a series of absurd and counterproductive objections to it.
They are when they behave rationally. I think that’s what they should do, and I complain when they don’t. Maybe I should just let it burn inside me and say nothing. You seem to think it would accomplish something good somehow, if people like me just shut the fuck up about those who gave us Trump as president (and a veritable zoo of assholes in Congress, etc.). I don’t think that would help me, nor any of the people I interact with.
People did have superficial reasons for not voting for Clinton. There were no good, valid, coherent, respectable, legitimate, etc., reasons to let Trump win. That’s what millions of people did in this country – they fucked up, royally. It’s a fine example of some people not acting rationally.
#85:
It’s not an issue of understanding you. You’re just interspersing a whole lot of garbage, with the few vapid points that you’re making.
To add to what Giliell said, Clinton lost because the electoral college is some voter-suppressing bullshit which is bad for democracy. It obviously says something bad that Trump had even a remote chance of winning — something bad about the condition that our fascist fucking country is in. But you’re saying we should disregard the fact that she literally was more popular, I suppose because you thought you had to make the point that she was less popular. So you did try to make it, in the least compelling way I can imagine.
Anyway, you don’t actually need to make that point, do you? You might consider conceding a few things every now and then … how does that sound?
Not to dispute what Dunc said … but “key swing states” is a phrase that only makes sense as long as the electoral college exists. There are some states with voters who matter, while voters elsewhere (e.g. my home state) are not worthy.
And obviously, it goes without saying that you should just fucking forget about the non-state “territories” which must not be named.
One of which houses the federal government.
Shhhhhhhhh
Giliell, @ #89: I don’t pretend to know the reasons why those people stayed home, but since we’re explicitly talking about people who had voted for Obama in 2012, I suspect that “white people feeling they were discriminated against by minorities existing” is probably not high on the list. (Remember, I’m only talking here about the specific subset of former Dem voters who voted for Obama in 2012 and did not vote for Clinton in 2016. I’m certainly not disputing that racism is a significant motivating factor for other segments of the electorate – however we already know that they swing very heavily Republican these days.)
And no, obviously it’s not “40% of the US electorate”, but it is a sufficiently large subset of that 40% to turn the result of the election, which is what counts.
Thing is, as far as I can tell, nobody has actually bothered their arse to go and find out why those people stayed home. That seems like a pretty major oversight on the part of any Dems hoping to turn things around…
Also, I’m not particularly trying to support anybody else’s argument here.
@86 Giliell
I already explained what I was trying to get across in post 79:
I am really wondering where I gave off the impression that I sympathise or agree with anything right-wing or even center-right parties are doing. Or where you got the idea that I ever did. All my posts were pretty much about the need to unite with the poor to oppose the authoritarian movements by starting to really address their situation. Sanders synthesised that point in his John Hopkins speech a few days ago:
Thanks Dunc, you saved a lot of work.
The critical questions here are why poor people are not voting and what you can do to mobilise them. It is possible, see the labor and civil rights movements. Poverty is oppressive; as much as race and gender. Two of the three are addressed by the democrats and one is addressed by neither party. That needs to change.
@consciousness razor
I will do us both a favor and just stop talking with you. I hate arguing for the sake of the argument and you are projecting a lot of anger about unjust things onto me, things I am angry about as well. We all want a way out of this mess.
Shhhhhhhhh
I guess it’s technically a federal district, not a territory … but still just another flavor of non-state for our quasi-citizens to not vote in. You really don’t have to wonder how liberal these places are. They do a fair amount of polling, even in such forgotten and forlorn realms.
Further to #93: the one thing we do know from the county-level analysis is that the collapse in the Dem vote was concentrated in rural counties. I could be wrong, but given what we know of the demographics of the “Bernie or burst” contingent, I suspect that’s also probably not a particularly big factor. Personally, I suspect a lot of “Bernie or burst”ers are in the “habitual non-voter” or “potential first-time voter” buckets, and so (whilst it would have been great if they’d showed up) didn’t actually contribute as such to the Dem rout in those states.
Dunc
You may be talking about them, but kurt is not, in support of whom you posted your statistic.
kurt1
Where did I claim that? You keep acting as if things were still “normal”. Yeah, elections go one way this time, another way another time, yadda yadda.
But it’s not. Things have significantly changed and one of the two major parties in Germany openly courting neonazis is part of that.
No, they fucking well didn’t. I’m almost as sick of this crap as I am of the Vicar’s overriding concern for his precious ideological fluids. FiveThirtyEight gave Trump a 30% chance of winning in the last days before the election. The average of the polls gave Clinton a 4% lead – far too little to be even reasonably sure of victory. The day before the election, I told an idiot on another blog they were an idiot because they insisted Clinton was going to win easily.
I think it was the “you still think that…”, which implies that I previously held that position. Apparently I misunerstood and it wasn’t meant that way. I don’t think that things are “normal”, but I also don’t think that it is too late either. I am looking for a way out and I think pushing the center and center-left parties to do more about economic equality is a good way to go. Martin Schulz made a horrible mistake by rekindling the migration topic during the last election, and the SPD in general does not own up to how harmful policies like Hartz IV and the Agenda 2010 were. They are talking about changing since they lost to Merkel but they never do and carry instead of oppose CDU policies. That’s why they are doing badly.
Things are even worse in Austria, where I currently live, the right extremists are part of the government here. The interior secretary
HermannHerbert Kickl and Vice-Führer Strache are underway limiting access of government critical media, while rewarding right-wing propaganda publications. But a lot of protest is rising here and in the US and I hope we can stop the fascists.And yes, I was also talking about the people who voted for Obama and didn’t vote in the last election, but I was also looking at the broader picture of non-voting in general. I don’t know why the analysis is often limited to what people vote for instead of identifying why people don’t vote.
Im putting my anger straight where it belongs. Towards leftists who didnt vote for Hillary. Not the dnc or Hillary herself. Leftists who are too dumb to learn from recent history with how the tea party changed their politicians platforms. Leftists who are so fucking privileged that they think they speak for poor ppl like me. They dont.
Vote democrat or fuck off from the conversation. Right now when it comes to politics and amassing change the tea party is more intelligent and competent than them. They forced the establishment politicians of the day to adopt their platform. And they did it by voting republican. By voting they showed the rnc that they had the motivation to primary them the fuck out if they wanted.
I am repeating this shit because i notice that none of these dnc critics addressed this point. The dnc is the way it is because you allow it, and instead of fixing it you would rather waffle about. I guess because its essy to criticize instead of to fix.
This isnt even the first time. You all did this stupid shit with GWB first election run. A shit president that pushed the country dangerously to the right.
But that is exactly my point! I never advocated for not voting DNC or not voting at all. The problem I see is that the DNC does not do enough for people who don’t vote, a majority of them poor. We should not allow that. Criticising is making out the problem, that needs fixing.
The DNC is not the same thing as the Democratic party. Among other differences, the latter is an actual political party; and it exists at national, state and local levels.
The Democratic party hasn’t done enough for a whole a lot of people, voters and non-voters alike. A majority of voters are poor, and the conjunction of voters and non-voters is also mostly poor. Inequality is just plain bad in this country. The only apparent motivation you’ve got for focusing on non-voters in particular is because you took offense at the comic strip. However, many of those it’s ridiculing weren’t non-voters; also included are people who did vote and chose anyone other than Clinton, for similarly absurd reasons. I think you should understand what it’s really about and what it means, before you take offense at it.
Anyway, you’ve been suggesting that something about the Dems’ inadequacy makes for a good reason why some select group or other failed to vote for Clinton in the general election. Other than factors outside of their control, like voter suppression, they didn’t have a good reason to do anything like that — nobody did. It was not a good choice.
You could try to comprehend why a person behaved as they did, but this doesn’t require a claim that they genuinely were behaving reasonably or responsibly. That’s a fallacy, and that’s clearly not what these people were doing. A claim like that is simply false, and making it would not help you comprehend the truth about why they behaved as they did.
You may think it’s important that we persuade them to change their behavior for next time. (This thought would presumably occur to you because you understand perfectly well that they were not doing the right thing the last time. See above. If it occurs to you for some other bizarre reason, I almost certainly don’t care about that.)
To persuade them do so, you do not have to try to adopt or validate their mistaken perspectives which are themselves the things which should change. There’s no need at all to give them a pat on the back for doing a great job of getting Trump elected. The goal is not to persuade them of anything like that.
If they are going to invent rationalizations for their bad behavior to keep their positive self-image intact (as people are apt to do), they should do that on their own time. And it should be after they’ve genuinely learned this important lesson which we’re trying to persuade them of: they should stop making wacky choices in the voting booth that hurt our country along with the rest of the planet. If they can at least manage to do that for a few minutes on election days, then I don’t particularly care what kind of bullshit stories they tell about themselves any other time, so that they can sleep at night despite the terrible fucking choices they used to make. Just mumble that crap to yourself if need be, before and after your prayers, but don’t pretend like it belongs in a fucking history or political science book.
Sorry I caused confusion, I thought those were synonymous.
Well that could be taken to indicate that you don’t actually know enough about the American political system to have a view on it worth taking seriously.
This wasn’t a discussion about the workings of the american political system and I don’t see how it impacts the other points I made. If we discuss the social democratic party in germany we usually mean party leadership and their decisions and not all interestgroups that exist within it. That’s why I’m not accustomed to make that distinction.
kurt1@105,
Of course it was about the American political system. It was not about the SDP in Germany.
…or even the SPD!
I wrote “workings of the american political system” and meant that as “structure of”. The point about the SPD was just to illustrate, why I made no clear distinction between “democrats”, “democratic party” and “DNC”.
Changing the country for a bit: holy hell, people! I see that many Brazilians are making the same inane arguments in regards to their own presidential runoff, which features Bolsonaro, a guy arguably many times more fascist, racist, homophobic, transphobic and misogynistic than Trump, with added murderousness (and all of this explicitly so). “None of the two candidates represent me, so I’m voting null,” one says. “I’ll probably vote for Bolsonaro because even though he may ruin the country the other guy will definitely do it!” says another. “He’s not as bad as the media makes it out to be.” “His [completely vile] quotes are being put out of context.”
Shit, how difficult is it for people to learn from history, even some as recient as Trump’s election?
Kurt1: “My point was, that the analogy doesn’t hold, because the outcome of an election is not fatal.”
Tell that to the women who will die in back alley abortions, the kids that are going to be shot by cops, the children in the baby jails, the folks who are going to OD due to lack of effective treatment, the people who will not be able to get HIV medication…
Oh, wait, you won’t be able to. They’ll be dead.
@110 a_ray_in_dilbert_space
My post @94
It sucks that one can’t edit posts, I really messed up the phrasing there (and elsewhere).
100.
Effing lol; what happened is that 100k or so votes were left on the shelf through inept campaigning because she surrounded herself with idiots and ran an inanely risky data-analysis planned campaign over the better judgement of basically everyone else outside her circle – I know of rust belt dem campaign volunteers who remember being starved of flaming campaign signs as they tried to raise the alarm that they were about to get clobbered, as they tried to run up the vote count number instead of shoring up the fucking stuff needed for the electoral college.
It isn’t the left that failed your candidate in 2016, it was her idiot advisors, their idiot algorithms and her for surrounding herself with those idiots, and the idiot democratic primary system, which has only produced 2 winning candidates within the last 30 years, and the first of the two arguably won because the reform party split the right vote.
To extend the lifeboat metaphor, the manufacturer has being cranking out rubbish dinghies for years and has only made two models that were fit for purpose within the last 30, and have had a nasty habit of dropping everyone in the drink most of that time.
@101
And you’d be right. They don’t do enough. My problem is that the people with the grievances are the very same ones who can fix this problem, but they don’t. They make excuses for not voting Democrat. Its “rigged”, or they don’t inspire me, or they don’t do enough. They would rather complain about the problem, than fixing it. Smug in their ‘more leftist than thou’ attitude. Democrats are going to support centrist ideal because that’s where the most votes are statistically…unless you get a loyal and motivated voterbase. Unfortunately, republicans got more of that. its how they changed their party into a more right wing one. So there’s precedent for this already. This is why I want to stress to all the non-voters/third party pushers in the world that the Tea Party are more competent and intelligent than they are.
There is no excuse for anyone to not vote democrat. Even if the system is rigged (and its not) there is no excuse. We can together change the party, but Democrats like myself cannot do it alone. Otherwise we would have done it already. https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2018/07/27/if-deng-xiaoping-could-capture-chinas-communist-party-you-can-capture-the-democratic-party/
Also Kurt I tend to use the DNC and the Democratic party as interchangeable so sorry for the confusion as they are not.