this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
1348 points (97.9% liked)

News

23353 readers
3596 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Ferrous@lemmy.dbzer0.com -2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

"because you need to pressure and criticize Biden without actually making him lose"

"We need to be toothless about our criticism of Biden" FTFY

The threat of making your candidate lose is the only power you have to shift them.

Next time you're negotiating for a car, see how much the seller budges after you preceed negotiations with "Now, I am fully committed and happy paying sticker price, but how much can you lower the price?"

Edit: at least have the intellectual honesty to say out loud that Biden could do anything, and you'd still vote for him

[–] daltotron@lemmy.world 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The threat of making your candidate lose is the only power you have to shift them.

I mean this is also not really a threat, though. I think realistically biden and trump are both closer to each other than either of them are to this like, eclectic amalgamation of positions that is the "youth vote". Him not winning isn't like, still a victory, in that circumstance, but it's not like, a loss to them in the same way that it would be if they actually had to do all the stuff the "youth vote" wanted. Basically I'm just saying that they, the DNC broadly I suppose, would rather give as little as they absolutely can, while still maintaining a delicate balance of power where they're the only ones that can maintain the status quo rather than a backslide into total fascism. Going with all the "youth vote" positions, to them, would be as big if not a bigger loss than a slide into total fascism.

Which is to say, I think they're willing to lose as long as it means they don't have to really do anything major.

[–] go_go_gadget@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago

Which is to say, I think they’re willing to lose as long as it means they don’t have to really do anything major.

100% agree. This is something liberal and moderate voters are completely blind to.

[–] LibertyLizard 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I’m fully committed to lesser evil voting since it’s the only viable electoral strategy. So as long as Biden is better than Trump I would vote for him. I have a hard time understanding why people don’t see that this is the most rational way to vote. If you don’t like it, and I don’t either, then you need to pursue strategies to change it, particularly outside the electoral system. Since these strategies do not conflict with voting I think it’s rational to pursue both actions.

And no I don’t think we need to be toothless. But a lot of people don’t seem to be smart enough to walk the line of threatening to withhold support without actually doing so. I’m not going to go right up to Biden and tell him that’s what I’m doing. He doesn’t know what my strategy is, so it can still be effective.

[–] daltotron@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

I mean so lesser evil voting is generally a good strategy for damage control, but it's not necessarily a great strategy in terms of like, blanket things you can just effect to the whole. If you take a voter in a non-swing state, say, california, a state that votes very consistently, them defecting their vote to a third party which represents them more accurately, is going to be of much lesser weight in totality than if someone in a swing state had done so. They are probably much safer in their estimation of walking up towards the line without crossing it. This is probably also true of states who get their votes tallied up later on, and also of states where projections are already in favor of certain candidates, since those projections affect elections.

This also kind of discounts "not voting" as an electoral strategy because that doesn't send a super clear signal, but it's probably not the worst thing in the world, since we could kind of file them away under like, either the average non-voter's position in their state, or just the average non-voter's position at large, which is probably going to be more radical of an average position than most would think.

But yeah, all of this still tracks with what you're saying so far. I think the biggest determining factor for me, though, is that electoralism as a strategy at all hinges on the assumption that democrats would rather move left than lose to republicans. And I dunno, that's kind of a tenuous assumption, and I think is the major disagreement on people who are willing to engage in electoralism vs those who aren't, is that most people who aren't, assume that the democrats would rather lose to republicans and ensure a status quo/backslide into fascism rather than move to the left.