Comment by dualvariable | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dualvariable | Hacker News Reader

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> The whole idea of "third-party voting is a complete waste in the US" is incredibly dumb because a vote for someone who loses isn't a wasted vote. It shows the others that there's a voter there who can be convinced if catered to, if they select a better candidate.

Tried that in 2000, voting for Nader as a protest vote against Clinton/Gore third way neoliberalism. I did that in a state where the electoral votes for Dems were 100% safe. Still just got blamed for Bush and there was zero self-reflection on the part of the Democratic Party.

...

I would urge everyone to stop fixating on the Presidential vote as the only fight to win and everything being win/lose based on that outcome. If the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the House exceeds 50% of Democrats in the House, then we can start thinking about a world where e.g. AOC might be the speaker of the House rather than Nancy Pelosi.

> It's a symptom of the terminal disease which has infected all layers of American society and has gotten it to where it's at: short-termism. Everyone just looks at the next quarter, the next election.

Yeah, and the Office of the President is 4-8 years and is just more short-termism, along with individualism / cult of personality / CEO-leadership. If you want to make lasting change in the DNC, start by flipping more and more House seats to progressive from neoliberal.

The legislative seats are barely more malleable than the executive ones, and they’re a lot cheaper to buy off. Even with grassroots efforts to elect local candidates and move them up, it takes a perfect storm to actually get someone that’s even modestly different than the empty suits that largely fill those seats already.

I have zero faith in this system to execute anything other than purchased policy agendas, or empower any more than a tiny symbolic collection of people who oppose them… just enough to give the illusion of agency and stop any real organizing. I have no idea what could possibly break this pattern.

The Republicans were successful with the Tea Party in taking over the House and the Presidency, that's a model which I'd argue is really proven to work in our two party system because we all just literally watched it play out in real-time.

Arguing against that, probably comes from a cynical neoliberal perspective where the Democratic Party can't change because the argument assumes that the Democratic Party can't change.

And the alternative is definitely outright fascism and the suspension of Democracy. They've told us what they're planning on doing, just like we knew they wanted to get rid of Roe vs. Wade, we just accepted the lies about it being settled law and a political football.

If you're not willing to vote against that, then you're comfortably middle class and don't think you'll be one of the ones that are going to be hurt.

I've voted against Trump 3 times and threw money behind trying to get Sanders the nomination in 2020 instead of Biden, so when all the horrible stuff has been going down this term I don't have to tie myself in knots with rationalizations about my actions.

The Tea Party had the support of the Koch brothers, Fox News, the Heritage Foundation, et al. They had a VP puppet on the bill, Palin, almost immediately after their inception, despite McCain being a center-leaning Republican. It was not a grassroots movement. Make any unfounded assumption you like about my motivation, and construct and straw men you want between you and that reality, but it is reality. It was bought and paid for before anybody had even heard of it. The closest thing the democrats have seen to a national-scale grassroots political initiative was Sanders, and the DNC torpedoed it reflexively.

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