this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
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[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 12 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (2 children)

Allowing the Democratic Party to keep fielding right-of-center neoliberals who've consistently and repeatedly made concessions to the far right over the last four decades without ever demanding anything back, and allowed them to shift the Overton Window way over to Nazi territory, is NOT harm reduction. If you hadn't been such cowards the last three elections, there could have been a credible opposition party by now, but no, you're just going to keep chickening out every single "most important election in history" (aka every election ever).

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 9 points 17 hours ago (4 children)

You change the party in the primaries. You choose which party wins in the general.

When your choice is between a shit sandwich and fascism, you eat the fucking sandwich.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 7 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

The Democratic Party has literally gone to court and won rulings arguing that they don't have to follow their own rules or primary processes. They're a private club, and they are free to put their thumb on the scale whenever and however they please. Those doing the most to change the Democratic Party are completely bypassing the party and organizing through external organizations. The Democratic Party will demand that you spend decades canvassing and working in the trenches before making any meaningful contribution. And they will only allow the most craven and corrupt to have any real seat at the table. You only get to climb the Democratic party structure if you tow the party line.

[–] okmko@lemmy.world 4 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Honestly I've come around more and more to bypassing the Democrat party.

Every time after we get ice cream hasn't changed the fact that our choice will always be between ice cream and driving off cliff until we eventually drive off the cliff. Either we drive off the cliff now or later, so maybe we should probably try to stop getting ice cream.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

The primary voters in New York City just selected a leftist. The establishment is passed, but he's their nominee.

You know why Bernie didn't get nominated? Because he lost the primaries. It wasn't swung by superdelegates. They didn't fix the vote. Yeah, they clearly preferred the corporate dems, but all the "interefering" they did was getting the party establishment (that had been selected through primaries) to push for their preferred candidate.

Trump wasn't an establishment Republican until he won the primaries, and then the establishment who opposed him was primaried. He transformed the party in just a few years by getting his base to show up and vote in primaries.

The left needs to learn from that.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 4 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

You're addressing a non sequitur and glossing over how the DNC actually manipulated the 2016 and 2020 elections, and their actions after the campaign.

The DNC put their thumb on the scale in 2016 before the election even started. Yes, the super delegate votes didn't directly give Hillary tie breaking votes, but that was never the real impact. Do you remember 2016? I do. I remember every media outlet running with stories about how Hillary already had the nomination in the bag before the first vote was cast. The superdelegates all made big public endorsements for her, and the media showered her with hundreds of delegates in her column even before the Iowa caucus. This put her at a massive unfair advantage before the voting even began.

In 2020, they ratfucked Bernie again, again in a way that you completely ignored. There were several candidates running, both centrist and liberal. At a crucial moment, when Bernie looked like he actually could win the nomination, the DNC coordinated with all the centrist candidates. They arranged to have all the centrists except Biden drop out, while there were still several progressive candidates in the race dividing the progressive vote. The DNC arranged a unified centrist push behind Biden and thus handed the nomination to him.

You completely ignored the ways the DNC actually ratfucked Bernie and just focused on a non-sequitur.

And the court cases I'm referring to mostly came after the 2016 election. Bernie was leading a movement, and a movement of his delegates tried to gain influence in the party. They ran for party committee seats in many states. Repeatedly the DNC ignored their own rules to prevent these Bernie delegates from taking power within the party. They massively screwed over Bernie's movement, completely ignoring the will of the voters.

Yes, in theory, people can take over the Democratic party. But it has proven much, much more resilient to this kind of takeover than the Republican party. People have been trying for decades, but the DNC has been working to prevent just this kind of progressive takeover since the 1960s. Ultimately both parties are very pro-corporate. Insurgent candidates within the Republican party don't want to resist corporate power, so they're not really rocking the boat that much. Insurgent candidates in the Democratic party actually want to go directly against the core interests of the party leadership, thus they face much stiffer opposition.

History is the guide here. Abolitionist forces tried for many decades to take over the Whig party and to get it to adopt a firm Abolitionist stance. For years they tried everything, but it never worked, the existing powerful leaders were just too well entrenched. The Whigs always told the abolitionists the same things Democrats tell progressives today - focus on the current election, we're the lesser of two evils, at least we're not trying to expand slavery. In the end, change only happened when the Republican party was founded and drove the Whigs to extinction. We're going to have to do the same to the Democratic party. Some corruption just becomes too entrenched to be fixed. The abolitionists then accepted that they had to abandon the Whigs and let the party die - even if that meant losing an election cycle or two. We've so far refused to do this, and the Democrats know that they can abuse their base however they want, and they will never face any real consequences for it.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Believe it or not, we're not living in the 1850s. There is no path to victory for a third party in our system. Not in 2026, and not in 10478. We live in a 2-party system.

New York just nominated a true progressive that pissed off the corporate Dems. If they can do it, so can the rest of us. We should be riding that momentum instead of working hard to get Republicans re-elected by telling people not to vote Democrat.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 hours ago

We live in a two party system. Or, more precisely...we play politics as a game whose rules with great pressure encourage the formation of two parties. This is true. But those two parties are not eternal. if one or the other is weakened enough, they can be toppled from their throwns. A three party system is not stable long term. But the parties themselves are not eternal.

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 1 points 14 hours ago

You don’t change the party in the primaries.

I’ve been trying to do that for decades and it doesn’t work.

That or this is what most of the party actually wants.

Either way we’re screwed.

[–] myrrh@ttrpg.network 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

...if the primaries represent a legitimate coalition, sure; if not, f*ck 'em: they can go down with the ship, too...

[–] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 1 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

Yes and now we're driving off a fucking cliff and there won't be any chances to elect a progressive candidate

[–] thejoker954@lemmy.world 6 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

There never was a chance to elect a progressive candidate.

Actually progressive candidates dont have the funds to compete on the scale necessary to fight back against a corrupt 2 party system that has had decades to secure its stranglehold.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Not really. Historically, whenever there is an authoritarian takeover like this, it is never the centrist left party that actually stands up to them and kicks them out of power. You have to let that corrupt party burn completely. Only then is there free space in the landscape to allow the formation of a party that actually has any desire to stand up to authoritarianism. Democrats don't fight fascism; they build moats and walls around fascism to protect it.

[–] Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I could use some history learning to give me hope for a more progressive future. Do you have some examples of corrupt parties burning out I could research?

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 3 points 12 hours ago

For the closest example, just look to the US's south. Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico. Morena, her party, was a new left wing coalition that formed by bypassing the old Mexican centrist leftist parties. To get real change in Mexico required bypassing the old parties entirely. They had their own useless centrists that needed to be ignored and left by the side of the road.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morena_(political_party)

This is what liberals miss when they shout like drunken parrots "vote blue no matter who!" What they miss is that this game does not end after this election. There is always somewhere lower to fall. As bad as things are now, they can always get worse. The choice is never "vote this way or we all die." These are words used by manipulative centrists to guilt people into voting against real progress. Notice, vote blue no matter who only goes one way. Leftists are expected to circle the wagons and support the centrist stooge, but no centrist will ever be thrown out of the party for refusing to endorse a leftist candidate. "Vote blue no matter who" is a scam.

By voting for the useless centrist for president today, you guarantee that no candidate who will actually improve things will have the Democratic nomination for at least the next 8 years. By voting for the useless centrist today, you prevent a purge of useless centrists from the party as whole, thus ensuring its continual decay. Votes that are wasted on the useless centrist could instead be used to build up a viable third party, and that process takes several election cycles. "Vote blue no matter who" is a myopic, short-term policy only meant to make real change impossible. It's terroristic hostage-taking.

[–] myrrh@ttrpg.network 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

...the car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel, and the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides, and a dark wind blows: the government is corrupt and we're on so many drugs with the radio on and the curtains drawn...we're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine and the machine is bleeding to death...

...the sun has fallen down, and the billboards are all leering, and the flags are all dead at the top of their poles...