The idea that your base threatening to not vote for you, especially in secure states, is going to suddenly make the Democrats go right is crazy
Agreed… but, that’s ABSOLUTELY not what I’ve been saying. Please go back and read what I said and duly note that I clearly stated this is going to take (literally) DECADES.
Please don’t be intellectually dishonest with me in the future like this. You’re just going to piss me off and make yourself look like you have an utter lack of reading comprehension and/or are being purposefully obtuse with me.
Sorry, this isn’t a video game, son. It’s trying to build a representative democracy in a vast nation. Nothing “suddenly” is going to happen no matter what we do, but what we’ve been doing by embracing false equivalency is spinning our wheels.
Also, please note… if you’d like me to treat you with respect, then I suggest in the future you try being less disrespectful and knock off the condescending, rude demeanor you approached me with in this thread. Misconstruing and exaggerating my positions while implying I’m an “idiot” will guarantee you a jack-slap. Thanks for understanding.
You sent the signal loud and clear that you are an idiot party line voter
Thanks for calling me an idiot.
Sorry, I don’t think I’m an idiot (nor is anyone else) for pushing for a long-term strategy that will actually work over time. Especailly when the infantile alternative is whining that it’s all unfair and spinning your fucking wheels.
What we’ve already done hasn’t worked, son. How about whining about the failure of voting in consistently and consecutively a lesser evil once we’ve actaully tried it?
We have NEVER done this in modern history. This is reality:
Ever play ping-pong, son?
Were you asleep or something when we got to watch the former governor of Massachusetts, a boring moderate who signed into law the model for Obamacare suddenly decide that he was “severely conservative” and almost lose to that shit smear, Santorum?
No, I wasn’t a sleeping idiot, thanks. But, apparently you were wide awake, congrats. In the meantime you go on to contradict yourself here:
“… The Republican base was threatened on their right flank by the Tea Party. The Tea Party was a credible right wing flank. Did Republicans respond by saying “fuck it” and running more to the left to snatch up more middle? Hell no! They ran screaming to the right to try and get their base back.”
You just proved my point that when the base pushes, the representatives usually respond. The public pushed the Republican party to the right and they moved to the right. When the public pushes the Democrats to the left, it’s not at the same rate or consistency, but it does happen. Life is complex, sorry.
When you push to the right in public, you’re doing what the richest Americans who own the media truly want you to do (overall). If you push too far to the right that it even makes the rich uncomfortable, the media will deride you verbally but that’s about it. However, when you publicly push to the left, you can expect some batons cracking against your skull and possibly some tear gas. (I’ve been there, no fun)
Let’s face it, it actually takes fucking guts to push the establishment to the left and it very often requires civil disobedience for the mainstream media to usually even just bother to cover it. You can gather five tea baggers in a park and it’ll garner far more mainstream media coverage than 5,000 left-wing protestors of wars, income disparity, etc.
That’s reality. And, it’s time to cope with it, deal with it and overcome it. Using false equivalency and discounting the fact that some (not all) Democrats will move to the left (in varying amounts) if there’s enough pressure doesn’t help the situation.
While it’s certainly more difficult and takes GUTS to push the establishment to the left, that’s not a reason to tuck tail and give up unless you’re a bloody coward. And, it’s sure as hell no reason to throw away your vote on a candidate that can’t win in a cowardly “protest vote” that ends up ushering in greater evil and solves nothing.
If Democratic candidates believe that, they are fucking stupid. –
Your vote only “counts” in less than a dozen states. If you live in a “doesn’t count” state, are a lefty, and voted for Obama even though you think he sucks, you are a moron who threw away a vote. You couldn’t have wasted your vote more efficiently if you tried. You sent the signal loud and clear that you are an idiot party line voter who will put your hand in a buzz saw before you do anything other than mechanically put a check next to ever D you see. You are worthy of absolutely no attention because the only thing they need to do to get your vote is be a Democrat.
You’re regrettably falling into the same trap I’ve already spelled out. You’re using short-term thinking for a long-term problem.
Whether Democratic candidates are “fucking stupid” or not is beside the point. The reality is many of these “fucking stupid” Democrats currently and undeniably have the power and shift more to the right when they don’t get a lot of support. Your little protest vote means very little to the establishment except to establish that you’re a fringe element and don’t matter anyway.
In our current reality, if you don’t have corporate money, radio and television media (
extremely important) on your side, you simply can’t reach enough Americans to radically sway the public away from the “status quo” no matter how many fancy progressive blogs cover you. This same power has nearly killed organized labor, demonized all forms of socialism and convinced many Americans their true enemy is immigrants (not to mention war with eurasia).
Why? How? Because the corporatist right has many more advantages over the social left. This is reality. To ignore this power when strategizing for the future is foolhardy.
ADVANTAGES OF THE CORPORATIST RIGHT:
• Far more retired elderly at home exposed to corporate TV media and radio that influences them to vote conservatively. (This affects other points below as well)
• People who commute further distances than those who live in (or near) cities are heavily exposed to and influenced by right-wing radio in their automobiles. Furthermore, the electoral system leans in the favor of these more rural dwellers who are heavily inundated with corporatist propaganda.
• Corporations are vastly more likely to fund anti-regulation, conservative agendas. The most you can hope for is something like MSNBC that leans socially left, but is (overall) conservatively pro-corporatist. The rich support conservative media (even when they run at a loss) because they understand the long-term profits of influence.
• More people still get their “news” from the corporate TV media than online alternative media sources (source). Also, many get their online “news” from corporate media that’s simply moved online. This influences these people towards a pro-corporatist agenda.
• Many moderates and left-leaning people work more than many people do on the right (for various reasons). This gives them less time than those on the right to dedicate themselves towards getting involved in national and local politics, voting, etc. in general. On the flip-side, this also exposes more on the right who work less to more corporate TV media and radio.
• The rich are far more likely to support Republicans, even though they’re not more likely to be socially conservative. That confuses people who don’t understand the difference. Most of the rich hold their noses and vote Republican (and give them money) because it supports their corporatist conservatism. In other words, they prioritize the profit they gain by not paying for externalities (pollution they create, public health care, public education, etc.) over socially liberal agendas they may agree with (gay rights, women’s rights, anti-censorship of sex/violence, etc.).
• It’s much easier to organize and get media attention when you have money and influence over sheep people who have too much time on their hands, too little education and too little critical thinking skills. On the other hand, trying to organize moderates and people on the left is like herding cats.
• They can and do use their control of mainstream media to use fear to suck money and massive power away from average Americans to support their monstrously corrupt and extremely profitable military-industrial complex. There has never been anything with this much vast power in human history. They can spy on many average Americans communications to thwart everything from business to activism. This kind of power is vast and undeniable.
• They have the money, power to lobby (bribe) and influence candidates to basically only fear being voted out of office and little more than that. Your little third party candidate doesn’t have the bribe money to stand up to this and many politicians and top advisors, etc. simply go into profitable business with the same corporatists they “legislated” after leaving office (and vice versa).
• They have vast money, power, connections and media resources to spread their chosen campaign over the airwaves. How many third party TV commmericals did you or any other Americans see in the last 20 elections compared to Democrats and Republicans? Exactly.
… And this list just scratches the surface of the power they have over third parties.
So… in this currently reality, what does your underfunded, true left (or true moderate), third party dream candidate have against that? Little or nothing because most Americans are’nt going to get exposed to their ideas or will only get a distorted, filtered view of them via mainstream, corporate media.
That’s our current reality. This is what we cope with and overcome. This is why there are only long-term strategies that will actually work against this vast, entrenched power.
If you don’t face the reality of our current, entrenched power structure… you’ll be doomed to keep spinning your angry wheels with lots of squealing and smoke, but no traction.
If on the other hand you voted for the Green, or even Libertarian, you would be signalling to Democrats that they can’t run screaming to the right in all things because their left flank does in fact have an end.
Comparing the left-wing Green party to Libertarians (much more many of whom are corporatist sympathizers and worse) is ridiculous, but that needs its own thread and is off-topic. If you are a Libertarian and DO want to espouse the virtues of Libertarians, you need to start a new thread. I’m sure the moderator will graciously enforce this.
But, anyway, more on-topic… one thing they both have in common is that when you vote for them all you show to the establishment is that you’re on the fringe and don’t matter. Although the establishment is going to give certain anti-regulation Libertarians far more credence because they lean towards their corporatist agendas, they are often just used as pawns. But, like most Greens, many Libertarians don’t support very profitable foreign-interventialism and they are mostly sidelined into obscurity because of it. Hence we ping-pong and greater evil prevails in keeping average Americans down.
Please observe my “ADVANTAGES OF THE CORPORATIST RIGHT” list above if you still don’t get why and how.
