Vote Democrats if there is no progressive alternative. But always primary progressives in Democratic primaries.

Not in near as great a volume as during the presidential years, but there's the usual drum beat of 'Dems bad so don't bother cause it's all useless' type posts. Might be that I see less though having defederated the triad when I switched from Lemmy to Piefed.

A lot of DSA/progressives won the primaries because taking AIPAC money is now generally considered toxic. Also, there's not currently a national election contest featuring blue-flavored genocide enablers. It's almost like people learned something from the experience last election. Just running as "not as evil" isn't really an effective electoral strategy or something.

I live in a state with partially open primaries that goes red 90% of the time. In order to maximize the effectiveness of my vote and thereby maximize my voice, I registered as an independent and generally request a Republican primary ballot.

I then have to sift through each list of candidates looking for someone who doesn't mention Trump and has a stated policy goal that isn't evil. There's usually one candidate who mentions their focus as being healthcare or education. This is a fairly laborious process and there are plenty of races where the least-worst option is still a horrible person. However, given the winner of the Republican primary has a 90% chance of winning the general AND voter turnout for the primary is generally under 10%, I know that this is effective.

Anyway, doing all this because it is the most logical course of action where I live and then seeing people cry about only agreeing with 87% of one candidate's policy goals always annoys the hell out of me.

Isn't it always pre-election? Every two years and all.

Meanwhile, the reason that the claim is so prevalent is because it is so true.

bOtH sIdEs are anti-union, anti-labor, pro-corporate, and pro-billionaire.

US workers have lost income and standard of living for over FIFTY YEARS. You will hear this for the rest of your life, because it's an indisputable fact.

The USA needs a labor party, the Democrats are no labor party.

I've heard so called "liberal" media discuss and condemn Hassan Piker more than I've seen them discuss and condemn Trump and all his lackeys combined.

They're the definition of controlled opposition.

I've also noticed a significant increase in "the right did something awful and the left's response wasn't good enough, how could the left do that, the left is terrible, I'm not going to support them" type posts and replies.

Purity tests are bullshit, especially when the things that precipitated the "insufficient" response is literally fascism

This is such an annoying discussion at this point. The "let's keep doing what we've always done because obviously that's working" folks never really engage with any arguments. They just ignore what people say and keep attacking the same strawmen over and over.

"Both metallica and the strokes have a guitar player"

"Oh so you're saying that metallica and the strokes are the same? That's so ridiculous, they don't even have the same number of members, you idiot."

It's so tiresome and pointless. And quite upsetting as well, because in attacking some of the strawmen, the "stay the course, this is going well" folks sometimes say some really heinous thing, bordering on full on genocide denial, or even worse, acknowledging the genocide but essentially saying "not my problem". It's really upsetting to read such things.

I guess that's at the core of it actually. It's one group of people that look at the millions of people that American imperialism has killed, and the way both parties have toed the exact same line on imperialism specifically, and consider this absolutely unacceptable. And on the other side you have people looking at this and thinking "yeah but what about my problems, the parties are different there". It's a fundamental difference in values, and there's no amount of convincing that either side can do to bridge that gap.

Anyway, here's my favorite Hannah Arendt quote, because I refuse to accept that we cannot somehow learn, eventually, from the holocaust:

In their moral justification, the argument of the lesser evil has played a prominent role. If you are confronted with two evils, the argument runs, it is your duty to opt for the lesser one, whereas it is irresponsible to refuse to choose altogether. Its weakness has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget quickly that they chose evil.

Yes, I've noticed. The electoralists have started their screeching as they do very two years. They're like cicadas.

I like these threads because they make it easy to see who to block.

Its almost as if these posts are put up to be divisive, and to keep any opposition to the current right wing neoliberal order divided. Huh.

Yes, even on Lemmy, seems to be a lot more of that.

Until there's someone that accurately represents GenX and lower, people are just gambling by voting for the next geriatric senior that's gonna go fucking senile, shitting themselves and having agendas that don't benefit anyone of the current age of the actual workforce. We'll keep getting someone who's focused on social security and wars rather than the housing crisis and the AI workforce replacements that are pushing out people who dedicated time and effort and went into crippling debt becoming proficient at a six figure or top five figure earning positions, only to consider switching trades.

How about we get a president for the people, under 50 and doesn't fucking hate us.

Not as much once I started ignoring a bunch of .ml instances.

Lemmy in my experience has been like this.

"Hey Republican did evil thing"

Well DID YOU KNOOOOOW DEMOCRAT ALSO BAD??!

For anyone who needs to hear it, that's not an excuse to not criticize whatever your side is.

BlueMAGA, now as into conspiracy theories as their red bretheren, and for the same reasons.

I'm sorry you're worried that the Democrats strategy of doing nothing might not pay off, and that endorsing genocide still is such a loser issue. But that doesn't mean the people refusing to share your party loyalty over any common sense are part of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic.