Wow that’s hilarious that this is exactly the result of voting third party and not participating in primaries.
So when the DNC ratfucked Bernie twice despite me voting for him and Clinton and Biden, what am I meant to take from it? Just shut up they know what's best at losing to Trump?
Bernie himself never said he was ratfucked. Bernie himself immediately worked with the dem party to enact legislation that benefited their shared constituency.
What did you take from Bernie’s own actions? What are you saying in spite of Bernie’s collaboration with the very folks you paint as enemies?
Why do you pretend to know better than Bernie while talking shit on the very collaboration that passed Bernie’s priorities?
Your words, you are ratfucking more than Bernie or anything Bernie has had to deal with…
So I can't complain and vote for them the same time? No criticism of the party failing to stop Trump?
Pretty sure they were addressing protest non-voters and third party voters.
Oh that’s right, the dnc argued in court that they ratfucked Bernie because they don’t owe their voters anything.
Yeah I'm somehow ratfucking by using my memory and words asking for better from the "less evil" party, not the party that rigged it's primaries 3 times in a row.
Bernie never said centrist / corporate Dems are asshats either, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true lol.
Exactly. He probably did in private because he's the only tolerable person in the Senate.
Bernie saying it doesn't make it true, anyone with a functioning brain knows better
If you voted for the democrats and participated in the primaries then why are you responding to something about not doing those things? This clearly isn’t directed at you.
Except the issue is that they were participating, and the ratchet effect happened anyway.
From my experiences working third-party and leftist campaigns over the years, this is a really common story. A lot of people have burned out on voting and activism because they have done it and seen it not accomplish anything in the U.S.
Democracy isn't something one person on their own can influence.
But it is something that one can influence by reaching out to others and making sure others vote
If you care about something, least you can do is convince your friends and family on what's the right side to vote for, and then making sure they actually vote as well.
The long-term effects of not voting at all, is exactly the same, just with fewer steps.
Saying that the lesser evil is less evil has nothing to do with liberalism or any other ideology, it's a tautology, it simply must be true by definition but doesn't actually add any new meaning. The trouble in the scenario presented isn't a voter's attempt to take the least bad option (since taking the other would just get you to the same place but faster), it's having a system that creates only two viable options in the first place, such that "not evil" either isn't even on the ballot or may as well not be.
Is this not just an illustration of the concept of the Overton Window?
I think it's basically talking about the ratchet effect. The comic shows the Overton window narrowing and moving right. The ratchet effect is about how democrats and republicans push the Overton window to the right. During GOP controlled governments, they move things to the right. Democrat controlled governments maintain the status quo. The effect is a rightward shifting Overton window.
Huh, I'd noticed the ratchet effect before in a few different subjects, but I hadn't heard of it specifically. I think you hit the nail on the head, thanks for helping me learn something today.
Before finding that article, I thought it was mainly a political term. But the article doesn't even mention it's application to politics. That's the only context I've heard it in.
To me, it seems like a possible manifestation of the sunk cost fallacy. I've personally seen it in IT security audits and policy rollouts. As you try to make a domain more secure via more aggressive group policy rules, more authoritarian approaches become more acceptable than when you started. Part of it is a sunk cost of "well, if we don't take this more aggressive stance, all of our previous work could be undone." mixed with a sentiment of "We are already blocking users from accessing x service, why not also block y service". Blocking y service would have been unpopular before service x was blocked, but now there's something more acceptable that you can point at as justification. This process just repeats further and further until you're essentially blocking everything and selectively allowing services.
I'm sure I've noticed it elsewhere, but that's one example that I have encountered quite a few times.
What’s the alternative for a voter? Vote for the worse of the two evils directly?
Vote in primaries and local elections so that the lesser of two evils actually consists of people deserving your vote on their own merit. I'm willing to bet 90% of the ones who voted Trump or Stein to "TeAcH dEmS a LeSsOn" did not do anything to shape the party beforehand.
People seem to care a lot about presidential general elections, but ignore primaries, locals, midterms, councils. Democracy means more than getting off your ass once every four years.
Change comes from pressure from the streets. Vote for the lesser even and then protest against them.
The only protest that works is one followed by threats of violence if their demands aren't met. Nobody in government gives a flying fuck if their livelihoods aren't threatened. MLK wouldn't have been successful without Malcolm X.
Strikes, especially general strikes, and sabotage can also do the trick but I'm not against violence either
This is the way.
the lesser evil is captured opposition; have you not been paying attention?
I think your question is intended to silently include "what's the alternative for a voter [in a given election]?" - if I'm wrong about that, my bad.
But the issue to me is not about choices in individual elections. The issue is that these vocally "lesser of two evils" voters do their thing, then smugly pat themselves on the back and self-righteously condemn the sad state of affairs, every time...
And then continue to take the idiot bait that anything left of present Democrats is scary bad socialism/communism, no further-left candidate can have a shot with real Americans, and wouldn't our energy be better spent trying to find things we agree on and can get done together?
They don't learn anything about how the rest of the world works politically, they don't know dick about any candidates or ideas that don't appear ready-made and polished on a television screen, and yet they think they're the ones helping, and if only we all just did like them, this place would turn right around. They want to do nothing, to sound wise, and to feel morally superior all at the same time. This is the core of the vocally "lesser of two evils" voters.
I know because I used to be one of these insufferable people I'm describing.
OP wants to burn it all to a crisp and start over from scratch. Auferstanden aus Ruinen I suppose.
Voting has no power compared to direct action. Until the 2 parties are done away with a long with everything that they both stand for and represent, we should be taking better steps than walking in the streets with signs and checking boxes.
You are not taking primaries into account. That is the proper method to prevent the left candidate from shifting right in our current system.
100%. As long as they don't spout left leaning rhetoric and then shift towards the center later. But that would never happen.
Hey, it's me! I made that comment! And I stand by it.
Not a lib though.
I mean... not really? This presumes the right never wins.
Instead you should have one line somewhere in there where they don't vote for the lesser evil well enough and the right side skyrockets five memes down the road, except the lesser evil next time is the same amount to the left of THAT mark now.
I mean, you're living it, I'm not sure why I have to explain it.
This presumes the right never wins.
this presumes the right always wins. which is what happens when you have the illusion of choice and two parties that share ideology.
Cool.
So this presumes the rightmost party never wins.
Instead you should have one line somewhere in there where they don't vote for the lesser evil well enough and the right side skyrockets five memes down the road, except the lesser evil next time is the same amount to the left of THAT mark now.
I mean, you're living it, I'm not sure why I have to explain it.
Could have saved us both some time if you hadn't decided the disingenuous out of context response was worth going around the loop.
Sorry, there is no good faith argument in any of this. Wasted a minute of my life on this.
and you just wasted another minute reading this.
in honor of my good friend, @smiletolerantly@awful.systems. they passed away today.
Ah crap I'm dead. Should have known. Arguing with you felt like purgatory after all.
They commented 53 minutes ago.
Edit: OIC shitposting.
@smiletolerantly@awful.systems was one of the people of all time issthtt
Of course there is a lot of theoretical analysis of this phenomenon.
I would say that the obvious missing thing is values. If Democrat politicians lack basic human values, they will easily fall into what some have called "triangulation".
I had a guy on this website tell me once it sometimes you have to vote for the lesser of two Nazis. That wasn't hyperbole, that was the conversation. He thought I guess that Nazis have levels and sometimes you got to vote for one of them. Weird guy.
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