I’m agreeing with this post, but I’d like to add something.
Everything else aside, do Democrats realize that it’s tacky if not straight up offensive that every time someone suggests that maybe our sitting president shouldn’t be supporting genocide, they make it about the campaign. People are being killed, tortured, raped, starved, and more – and their biggest concern is that talking about it might hurt his fucking campaign???
What. The actual. Fuck.
That’s what inspired me to post that thing yesterday, though I’m not sure the point landed.
Their entire strategy for a long time now has been “if you don’t vote for us and our half-measures, we will let someone who actively wants to hurt you take charge and we will do nothing to stop them.”
When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time. Holding the threat of abuse and violence over our heads it itself abusive.
This, and also they’ll tell us we have no choice while lauding the American “democracy,” because apparently democracy is when you’re strongarmed into voting for one shitty candidate.
Something about Gaza and the election I think people need to consider is that eventually the government documents and intelligence on this is going to become public. With how much of what the IDF has said has already been shown to be outright fabrications, I can’t escape the conclusion that the U.S. Government communications on this are going to be incredibly damning. Every time a US official uncritically accepts IDF propoganda we are adding explosives to the ticking bomb that is the public exposure.
Not pressuring Biden on Gaza is gambling that this all remains sealed until after the election, or that there isn’t anything in there that will destroy his chances in November. Supporting the genocide is both unconscionable AND an extreme electoral risk.
A lot of top Democrats are going to pretend they never supported unconditional military aid for Netanyahu’s genocide. This is the Iraq war all over again.
No one’s doing anything about it now and everyone knows it’s happening (no one’s meaningfully denying it, some people are just secretly fine with it). Why would an expose spelling it out after the fact change anything? We’ve done this dance before unfortunately.
Horrifically, it is basically the same story with the US border as well. Biden has basically continued all of Trump’s border policies and utterly failed to counter “OMG INVASION AT THE BORDER” rightwing fear mongering with ANY effective narrative or policies.
Of course, Trump would be worse, but something about saying Biden would be better just comes off as really disingenuous to the truth even though it is technically true.
The undecided voters that matters are the ones who are undecided about voting at all.
Being marginally less shitty than the opposition is not a winning strategy. It’s hard to convince people to not stay home without offering something substantial.
Maybe it’s a coordinated campaign of Democratic voters who are concerned when their party is doing things like trying to pass a border bill that… *checks notes… gives Republicans literally every racist thing they’re asking for in regards to the border, and making deals with Benjamin Netanyahu, as if he isn’t the Israeli equivalent of Donald Trump.
Trump would do far worse, so no it’s not the same? Their stance may be the same, but Trump would absolutely go over the top and do something extra instead of maintaining the status quo like Biden is.
It’s more like do you want to be shot by a 9mm, or shot by an implement determined by the person shooting. And it could potentially be a nuke taking out 5 square miles of collateral damage.
The idea that things wouldn’t be worse for Gazans with Trump in power encouraging Israel to wipe them out is honestly fucking ridiculous. Both sides do bad things so both sides are equally bad is like grade 3 level reasoning.
Cool, but I won’t vote for Evil. Not even the “lesser” variety.
I’m willing to be convinced that Democrats aren’t evil, but the evidence would have to be very compelling to overturn a lifetime’s observation of disappointments and horrors.
Yes, but what else should Biden and the Democrats do? Because if they stop providing aid to Israel, you can bet Russia and China would be more than happy to offer their assistance, and not only would the assault on Gaza continue, the Russians and Chinese would probably provide Israel with tips on the best way to genocide. By supplying Israel, America at least has a seat at the table and any discussions, and can push Israel towards softening their stance, but the moment they stop providing Israel with assistance, Israel will just block them out, and as I said others would be more than willing to not just step in and help Israel destroy the Gazans, but would love to use it as a testing ground for newer weapons. So, the question is what would you have America do? At least by supplying aid to Israel, they stay involved, and can use their presence to push for peace, but you would have America give up it’s only leverage to help the situation, because if America stopped supplying Israel, they would up just like the UN, World Court, and other international organizations, that are complaining loudly and being completely ignored by the Israeli government.
Then maybe America should ACTUALLY be the world police and go stop the horse shit instead of being an arms dealer.
You can be right in that pulling out would be bad and everyone else IS correct for saying this situation is fucked and the US should not be HELPING a genocide.
Literally any of those options is better than selling a genocide committer weapons.
Like I said, the US should ACTUALLY be the world police. Either put an end to the agressors on both sides, or get the civilians out, or both.
This isn’t rocket science. The answer to, “hey, these two old enemies are fighting on the playground again!” is distinctly NOT to sell the bigger one MORE weapons, stand back, and go, “hey, this isn’t good!” Fucking pathetic that I have to explain this.
So you are saying you want America to invade the Gaza strip and defeat hamas?
And you’re fine that other countries will get involved and cause a huge conflict in the region resulting in huge amounts of deaths and suffering?
I know this feels very simple to you but I really don’t think you’ve considered reality or really thought about any of this. Rocket science looks pretty simple, it’s just a load of fire spraying out a tube, how hard can it be, right?
And just a note when you say things like ‘fucking pathetic I have to explain this’ it doesn’t make you look like the tough guy genius you think it does, you look like a petulant child that got in a tizzy because your simplistic worldview doesn’t fit to reality.
I like this idea in principle, but the last time there was an international led UN mission to keep the peace, there was a fuckload of Zionist terrorism against the British (colonial) peacekeepers.
Israel does not accept ANY oversight or restriction on their needs for ‘self defense’, look at the language Netanyahu is using today in response to outside pressure for a ceasefire and peace plan.
When repeatedly asked to respect the UN ceasefire in Lebanon since 1978, they instead respond by threatening to bomb peacekeepers. Diplomatic exchanges followed, but when the Israeli Air Force did mock bombing runs of UN peacekeepers, the IAF planes were very nearly shot down in self defense.
Both China and Russia have also called for cease fire. Stop justifying us spending ungodly amounts of money to bomb children. The US is actively engaging in arming a genocide despite the majority of its population supporting a cease fire. It's not complicated, it's clearly Biden supporting the industrial military complex over his own constituents. This horrific act is all for some rich assholes to become slightly more rich. It's unjustifiable.
You think China who has been vocal for a cease fire from the start would just flip flop for absolutely no reason than what? Being contrarian or something? What exactly would they gain? And Russia… Sure Russia has a complicated relationship with Israel, but they have been critical of their actions since the 1967 war, and are currently aligned with Syria who is at odds, to say the least, with Israel since the illegal annexation of the Golan Heights.
This is one of the absolute dumbest take I’ve read all year.
I think that many other things would be much worse if Trump were in power. This is a “both sides” logical fallacy, and the argument really shouldn’t even be thought about given the consequences of Trump being put into power a second time
i think you can point out how “the better party” is horrible, manipulative, and lying without saying the they are equal to the worse party or endorsing that worse party.
Yeah, I'd never vote for the Republican party but holy shit I'm going to pressure the DNC to give us a non geriatric candidate every moment I can. I will criticize the failures of the Democratic party so loudly and publicly because that's the only (non violent) way to get them to change. We need a better candidate, a better party, and a better country. I'd encourage everyone to send a message by telling polls they're uncommitted.
Not only this (but also this), but Biden is literally the sitting president. We’re supposed to be able to criticize and pressure the sitting president into doing better, and it would sure be nice if we could do so without status quo defending establishment Democrats hand waving our concerns away.
Trump would be openly supporting the complete removal of the Palestinian people from Gaza. There likely wouldn’t have been any ceasefires, and there would be no voices from the US behind the scenes pushing Israel to moderate what they’re doing. Without a doubt, the situation in Gaza would be worse right now if Trump were president.
I’d argue the situation in Gaza would be exactly the same. The only thing that would be different is the political language around it all. Asking Israel nicely to maybe genocide less people, vs not doing that at all is going to lead to the same outcome, which is Israel continuing to do whatever they want while we send them money.
There are core imperialist efforts that neither party will ever push back on because it’s political suicide. Israel and this genocide are one of them.
As a democratic voter, I’m frankly pretty exhausted of the both sides defense by democrats. Any critical examination, any fair criticism, is met with “that’s both-sidesism”. Is it really both-sidesism if both sides genuinely suck ass? Oh, excuse me, I didn’t realize you can’t criticize democrats for being corporatist pro-genocide fuck ups because the republicans are actual Nazis. I guess we won’t be able to criticize the democrats for becoming Nazis when the republicans become the party of skynet-worshipping nuclear extinction cultists, because at least the democrats don’t plan on killing everyone.
It’s not a republican plot to expect better policies and leadership from your party of choice. It’s not both-sidesism to be able to be critical of shit decisions from your team. It’s being a thinking human participating in a society instead of a brain dead vote machine. I understand the republicans can’t win or else, but that’s been the excuse for why we can’t ask for better policies since 2012 at least, probably longer. How long are we going to play this dumb fuck game of getting dragged further right on the Overton window while kicking the dirt and saying “well, at least they’re not the republicans”? This is a losing game, and if we keep it up, we’re going to be arguing about how soon we should be closing the death camps for the homeless while Florida goes underwater and the Gulf stream shuts down. I already know I’m not going to vote for the Nazis, but I’d like to vote for some policies I actually want.
If you were to listen to the critics on lemmy, they’ll argue that this is empowering Trump.
However, the actual effect of VBNMW has been that we’ve ended up with weak Democrats making indefensible policy choices, a time where candidates need to show how they are different than the other side (but largely can’t). The effect of a lack of criticism on Democrats, by offering your vote with no constraints, is that they do not respond to your policy positions.
The recent Michigan upset, which should be an extraordinary shot across the bow for Democrats nationally, is exactly how voting should work. Ro Khanna and Michigan Dems are completely right to have organized this protest vote, and now Biden needs to come to them on policy.
Thinking you can brow-beat voters, or guilt, or shame, or demand voters into supporting your party “or else something worse” is basically what Hillary did in 2016. And it doesn’t matter that she won the popular vote because she lost it where it counts. You can’t abuse your voting base into liking someone or something that they don’t. But you’ll see people here defending that action out of national Democrats constantly.
Its Bidens job to get voters excited about voting for him. Its how you win an election. You identify voting blocks, and you give them incentive and create common cause by voting for you. Trump is doing it on the stump daily. Terrible incentives. Disgusting causes being promoted. But he’s out there earning voters and Biden is not. Biden is losing support. If ~10% of likely Democrat Michiganders don’t vote for Biden because he is supporting the genocide of the Palestinian people (and he currently is), I can’t blame them. Its not their fault Biden has taken this policy position that is orthogonal to the position of the people who would vote for him.
If this is about winning the election as the VBNMW crowd would claim, the strategy of not expecting Biden to respond to voter criticism is one that will deliver us Trump in 2024. IF you want a higher probability for success, you need to hold Biden to a higher standard or find a better candidate. You will not get there abusing the voting base.
I guess we won’t be able to criticize the democrats for becoming Nazis when the republicans become the party of skynet-worshipping nuclear extinction cultists, because at least the democrats don’t plan on killing everyone.
Add comment