this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
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I would put the Democrats as more of a moderate reform party. There is an attempt to make mild change, a lot of which gets undone when Republicans take power.
Half of Lemmy hates democrats more than they hate republicans. I suspects that’s why you are getting all of these downvotes for that opinion. Though I might change “moderate reform” to “extremely mild reform.”
I know that's the reason why I'm getting downvotes. Luckily, because this is Lemmy, downvotes don't really mean much.
It is just funny that you see this back and forth between how people here will never vote for Democrats yet they'll make these grand statements on how Democrats, without their support, should act.
You don't vote for a political party in the hopes that you might be able to push them to represent your interests, you vote for a party who WILL represent your interests.
What kind of fucking power do you have to influence a political party when you tell them that "I will vote for you no matter what you do, but please pretty please be nice to me"?
I swear liberals sound like they're in an abusive relationship with the Democratic party. "They promised it would be better if I go back to them this time. I'm sure it's going to be completely different now!"
It's the Democrats fucking JOB to convince people up vote for them. Don't blame the people if the party can't convince them.
In a true democracy, yes. That is what you would do.
In a false democracy, like Russia, you would ignore the rigged elections entirely and focus on agitating for the implementation of democracy.
But in a flawed democracy, you have a system where the elections are not exactly rigged, but where you do not have truly proportional representation.
In such a system, your primary focus should be on fixing the system. The closer to a true democracy this is, the easier it will be to accomplish via reform, although one should not discount direct action. However, when an opportunity to vote arises, you should take it. You can't afford to spend all your effort on elections, but ignoring your opportunity to do some harm reduction would be ineffective.
If you're talking about the USA, there isn't really a way forwards within the system. It's effectively rigged. The only way to gain useful power in that system is to work out of it. A vote is free, use it, but in a system that broken, that vote is almost worthless and cannot solve the problem.
It may be a flawed democracy on paper, but when you account for the surrounding conditions, the people don't have the power to choose their leaders. It's as false as Russia's.
If you aren't voting for a party that represents your interests because it isn't in that ballot, you should vote for the closest one to get what you can get.
Unless you are going to say Trump is just as bad as Democrats.
In a two party system that just means no political party will ever represent your interests. You're giving up any power that you have to influence politics so that the "lesser of two evils" can slowly drag your country to hell.
Is the progressive change to the Democratic party in the room with us right now, post–2024 presidential election? It seems many believe the lesson is "drop social issues" when that wasn't even mentioned at the DNC. They're also adapting a harder stance towards immigration while not bulging on economic issues.
So don't vote and let the greater of two evils drag your country to hell faster?
So don't vote and let the greater of two evils drag your country to hell faster?
Don't vote and force the party who gives lip service to representing your interests to actually step up and put their money where their mouth is! Any party who can only run on "we're not as bad as the other guys" doesn't deserve to exist.
How has that been working?
I don't know, nobody has ever had the stones to do it for long enough to matter. How has blithely accepting neo-liberalism's theft of the 99%'s economic future been going?
I voted based on Bernie Sanders's recommendations given he is a politician actually trying to implement change.
I have yet to see any case where not voting has ever led to a system where people get what they want.
Oh no? Have you looked for any?
Yes.