I’ve said it before elsewhere but it needs to be heard…
It’s just wild to me continually seeing posts not understanding how this all works, and how it would play out. It’s like the people who thought China paid the tariffs…
The house is almost tied. That’s who passes bills, handles impeachments, some of the most powerful committees are, and who impeaches Presidents…
218 Republicans, 213 Democrats.
Let’s see, take New York for example.
26 representatives total, 19 Democrat and 7 Republican.
5 of those were within 2 points last time their seat was up.
People who think that New York is blue, their vote doesn’t matter, skips the votes for the House and Senate and end up losing a Blue house seat but later complain that nothing changes are literally the fucking problem.
Every. Fucking. State. Is. Like. This.
Apathetic morons who don’t realize that the president is only held accountable by the other branch of government then wave their hands around when they did jack shit to help put people in place to, are the fucking problem.
District 3 of California was lost by 24,000 votes.
District 22 was lost by 3,000.
Those two seats in the house, along with the close ones in New York, Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, Washington, hell every state… Are what makes the House of Representatives or breaks it.
So, if you think that your vote for president doesn’t matter, so you skip voting and let these other seats slip, yes, you’re a fucking moron who can’t grasp basic concepts of government that are taught in 4th grade.
And don’t get me started on the State House/Senates, how they define voting laws and voting zones and engage in gerrymandering.
Every fucking vote counts.
And until the country realizes it, and starts acting on it, we’ll keep getting the shit we deserve.
Can we at least agree that the US’s flawed first-past-the-post voting system is THE root cause of people having to vote for the lesser of two evils in the first place?
When one of the flaws is that it’s designed to only function as advertised if there’s full participation, participating harder can make things less bad, and participating less can make things worse.
Either way, it’s much easier to convince people to go out and vote than it is to convince them to take up arms in a revolution, kill their opponents, and risk being killed or imprisoned as a consequence. If your revolutionary faction can’t gather enough people to win an election, then it doesn’t have enough support to win a civil war without getting the police and military on its side, and that’s not going to happen in the US.
it’s designed to only function as advertised if there’s full participation
Uh, what? Are you forgetting that suffrage was originally limited to land-owning men?
It was never designed for full participation - universal suffrage has been repeatedly rejected in favor of ‘compromised’ exclusions since our founding.
Our system has been quite literally designed to prevent full participation, idk where this idea comes from that full participation is somehow the true spirit of american democracy.
Either way, it’s much easier to convince people to go out and vote than it is to convince them to take up arms in a revolution, kill their opponents, and risk being killed or imprisoned as a consequence
It’s not an exaggeration to say that basically every bit of progress for labor and democratic rights in the US has been won by violent struggle, and it’s never been by a ‘majority’ of voters.
The US’ democracy is advertised as giving the population what they want, but it’s designed so that it doesn’t give the population what they want unless everyone votes and does so in their best interests, and it’s also designed so that lots of people don’t vote and if they do, they vote against their interests. That way, there’s the illusion of giving people what they want so they don’t revolt, but powerful people have their interests prioritised.
Because the system has to have an illusion of working in normal people’s interests, it’s got a failure mode where it starts approximating working in people’s interests when more people vote and more people engage enough to know which options on the ballot are closest to being in their interests.
I’m not saying that magically getting everyone to know who they should vote for and then show up to the polls is feasible, just that refusing to participate because the system’s ‘broken’ is what the system wants and how it makes sure it keeps doing the things it does.
I’m not saying that magically getting everyone to know who they should vote for and then show up to the polls is feasible, just that refusing to participate because the system’s ‘broken’ is what the system wants and how it makes sure it keeps doing the things it does
Making it difficult to vote is a reason it’s designed to fail, but it’s very possibly the least impactful.
Even if everyone participates, there are still dozens of ways in which capital restricts the options/neuters governance against the interests of the working class. Historically, it has almost never been turnout that drives progress, but dedicated, persistent, and quite often violent action by a relatively small number of actors. Nearly all of our basic labor rights came not from the working-class voter turnout but by armed protest and seizure of capital and infrastructure. Even when representation overwhelmingly ‘supports’ reform, the pressures of capital dis-incentivize regulation if they can avoid it (else they catch the blowback from unhappy capitalists, who quite literally control the nation’s productive capacity and resources) - it isn’t until the working class shows their willingness to disrupt the flow of profit that true progress is made.
I understood your whole comment, but my point isn’t event just that our system is designed to prevent participation, it’s also designed to prevent populist movements from making progress to begin with. “The system doesn’t want you to participate” is only a very small part of the story - it also does not need to listen to the popular will unless it’s backed by an implicit threat of violence.
I’m not even telling you not to vote, just that voting alone will never be enough, not even with total participation - especially when we have already reached the point in capitalist decay where fascism has taken control of governance. You cannot vote your way out of fascism, and the sooner people realize this the sooner people will stop being content with merely voting.
Apathetic morons who don’t realize that the president is only held accountable by the other branch of government
Maybe this was a typo, but there are actually 3 branches of government, and we’re already in a constitutional crisis between the first and third
For retaking a chamber of congress to be significant in the fight against fascism it has to actually be functioning. If they were to impeach and convict (60 votes in the Senate and they currently only have 47), Trump could just say ‘no’ like he did to the SC. Even if they convicted and Trump didn’t just say ‘I ain’t fucking leavin’, a third of the country is still rabidly supportive of him. That’ll impact who even can win seats in congress, and they would probably burn the national mall down this time
Libs need to get past their inability to see how the system has completely fallen apart.
History never ended, we should stop pretending like it did.
I’ve said it before elsewhere but it needs to be heard…
It’s just wild to me continually seeing posts not understanding how this all works, and how it would play out. It’s like the people who thought China paid the tariffs…
The house is almost tied. That’s who passes bills, handles impeachments, some of the most powerful committees are, and who impeaches Presidents…
218 Republicans, 213 Democrats.
Let’s see, take New York for example.
26 representatives total, 19 Democrat and 7 Republican.
5 of those were within 2 points last time their seat was up.
People who think that New York is blue, their vote doesn’t matter, skips the votes for the House and Senate and end up losing a Blue house seat but later complain that nothing changes are literally the fucking problem.
Every. Fucking. State. Is. Like. This.
Apathetic morons who don’t realize that the president is only held accountable by the other branch of government then wave their hands around when they did jack shit to help put people in place to, are the fucking problem.
District 3 of California was lost by 24,000 votes. District 22 was lost by 3,000.
Those two seats in the house, along with the close ones in New York, Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, Washington, hell every state… Are what makes the House of Representatives or breaks it.
So, if you think that your vote for president doesn’t matter, so you skip voting and let these other seats slip, yes, you’re a fucking moron who can’t grasp basic concepts of government that are taught in 4th grade.
And don’t get me started on the State House/Senates, how they define voting laws and voting zones and engage in gerrymandering.
Every fucking vote counts.
And until the country realizes it, and starts acting on it, we’ll keep getting the shit we deserve.
Thank you for taking the time to type this out. I wish the people who needed to read and turn it over in their head were willing and able.
It’s time for reapportionment.
Can we at least agree that the US’s flawed first-past-the-post voting system is THE root cause of people having to vote for the lesser of two evils in the first place?
Surely the way to fix this broken system is to participate in it harder
When one of the flaws is that it’s designed to only function as advertised if there’s full participation, participating harder can make things less bad, and participating less can make things worse.
Either way, it’s much easier to convince people to go out and vote than it is to convince them to take up arms in a revolution, kill their opponents, and risk being killed or imprisoned as a consequence. If your revolutionary faction can’t gather enough people to win an election, then it doesn’t have enough support to win a civil war without getting the police and military on its side, and that’s not going to happen in the US.
Uh, what? Are you forgetting that suffrage was originally limited to land-owning men?
It was never designed for full participation - universal suffrage has been repeatedly rejected in favor of ‘compromised’ exclusions since our founding.
Our system has been quite literally designed to prevent full participation, idk where this idea comes from that full participation is somehow the true spirit of american democracy.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that basically every bit of progress for labor and democratic rights in the US has been won by violent struggle, and it’s never been by a ‘majority’ of voters.
I think you’ve misunderstood a lot of my comment.
The US’ democracy is advertised as giving the population what they want, but it’s designed so that it doesn’t give the population what they want unless everyone votes and does so in their best interests, and it’s also designed so that lots of people don’t vote and if they do, they vote against their interests. That way, there’s the illusion of giving people what they want so they don’t revolt, but powerful people have their interests prioritised.
Because the system has to have an illusion of working in normal people’s interests, it’s got a failure mode where it starts approximating working in people’s interests when more people vote and more people engage enough to know which options on the ballot are closest to being in their interests.
I’m not saying that magically getting everyone to know who they should vote for and then show up to the polls is feasible, just that refusing to participate because the system’s ‘broken’ is what the system wants and how it makes sure it keeps doing the things it does.
Making it difficult to vote is a reason it’s designed to fail, but it’s very possibly the least impactful.
Even if everyone participates, there are still dozens of ways in which capital restricts the options/neuters governance against the interests of the working class. Historically, it has almost never been turnout that drives progress, but dedicated, persistent, and quite often violent action by a relatively small number of actors. Nearly all of our basic labor rights came not from the working-class voter turnout but by armed protest and seizure of capital and infrastructure. Even when representation overwhelmingly ‘supports’ reform, the pressures of capital dis-incentivize regulation if they can avoid it (else they catch the blowback from unhappy capitalists, who quite literally control the nation’s productive capacity and resources) - it isn’t until the working class shows their willingness to disrupt the flow of profit that true progress is made.
I understood your whole comment, but my point isn’t event just that our system is designed to prevent participation, it’s also designed to prevent populist movements from making progress to begin with. “The system doesn’t want you to participate” is only a very small part of the story - it also does not need to listen to the popular will unless it’s backed by an implicit threat of violence.
I’m not even telling you not to vote, just that voting alone will never be enough, not even with total participation - especially when we have already reached the point in capitalist decay where fascism has taken control of governance. You cannot vote your way out of fascism, and the sooner people realize this the sooner people will stop being content with merely voting.
Maybe this was a typo, but there are actually 3 branches of government, and we’re already in a constitutional crisis between the first and third
For retaking a chamber of congress to be significant in the fight against fascism it has to actually be functioning. If they were to impeach and convict (60 votes in the Senate and they currently only have 47), Trump could just say ‘no’ like he did to the SC. Even if they convicted and Trump didn’t just say ‘I ain’t fucking leavin’, a third of the country is still rabidly supportive of him. That’ll impact who even can win seats in congress, and they would probably burn the national mall down this time
Libs need to get past their inability to see how the system has completely fallen apart.
History never ended, we should stop pretending like it did.