I don’t disagree on principle, but that “if” is doing industrial machinery level heavy lifting. I’d love to live in that world, I really truly would. Unfortunately, I have to live in this one. I’m over here trying to make lemonade comrade, and you’re trying to make strawberry shortcake with strawberries we don’t have.

Yeah, “That lib Vladimir Lenin” being accepted as plausible is concerning, to say the least. Not blaming you, it’s a reflection of the discourse, but Christ what a discourse.

Yeah I was trying to lampoon the lemmings who sincerely believe that participating in elections is fundamentally anti-left. I figured it would be obvious, but to be fair I have seen some particularly counterproductive tankies.

Satire is truly dead.

I completely agree with you. I thought calling Lenin a lib would negate the need for the /s

You kind of need to work with the system you have until you can change it.

Wow, what a lib take. You sound just like this lib:

Whilst you lack the strength to do away with bourgeois parliaments and every other type of reactionary institution, you must work within them because it is there that you will still find workers who are duped by the priests and stultified by the conditions of rural life; otherwise you risk turning into nothing but windbags.

-Vladimir Lenin

I’m not sure how that would make Republicans stop winning they have quite the devoted voting base.

Sure, but Democratic voters are not democratic leadership. If you have a problem with Democratic leadership, tell it to them. Voters don’t benefit from Democrats losing to Republicans.

Maybe, but then they would’ve been buried by AIPAC money, as we’ve repeatedly seen. They’ve done plenty of positive things at home, or at least tried to, but all that gets ignored. Sure, I’d love to see a positive change, but we have to acknowledge the reality of the political landscape, and opposing Israel is political suicide with current campaign finance influences.

Doesn’t really match the tone, it’s probably the name of the apartment complex

What energy wasted?

Sure you could push for it, like people have pushed for it for generations. Pushing for something alone doesn’t accomplish it.

I think you missed my point.

Because it still worked? I didn’t say anything about permissible, I’m talking about successful. You’re allowed to do whatever, you just can’t be surprised when certain actions are ineffective. You’re allowed to build a shrine in your closet and try to voodoo progressives into office, but that’s not going to accomplish much.

Maybe the accelerationists are right, but then maybe they aren’t and that’s a whole lot of suffering and collateral damage for nothing.

Oh I’m not arguing that, I’m just asking how that would have kept us out of this mess.

He won the primary (in a Democratic stronghold). Awesome, let’s keep that up where we can. Vote in your primaries.

But if your district’s Mamdani is a long shot third party, maybe make sure the shitlib beats the fascist until that long shot has widespread support.

Then vote in the primaries, absolutely do that and encourage everyone you know to do the same. And if a shitlib wins the primary, vote damage reduction.

How so?

Uh, if 95% of the voters are voting fascism one way or the other, it’s a start. I think you wildly underestimate electoral inertia. Don’t get me wrong, I wish you were right, but the evidence seems to suggest otherwise. Unless you’ve got an actionable plan to sway, like, 70 million people, maybe start with nudging the scales from fascism full-flavor to fascism lite and go from there.

Does it matter? Most voters have no attention span. They aren’t revolutionaries. They aren’t going to take to the streets no matter how bad things get. Stop trying to change people who aren’t going to change when you lack the influence to change them in the first place, and focus on trying to leverage what you’ve got as productively as you can.

Build your cadres, make the change you can, and make lemonade from the lemons you’ve got.