#because they're all running as democrats

[rhapsodomancer]

my usps daily digest has told me that my ballot for the primaries has come!!

[navree]

Incorrect, the fact that Biden has dropped out and a candidate with history of supporting medicare for all and being more receptive to a ceasefire in the I/P conflict has made me go from "I cannot morally support the Democratic nominee" to "I am voting for the Democratic nominee despite the fact she isn't perfect in every respect." I'm really happy this played out. The Dems for the most part abandoned the old Obama platform and it feels like its possible an actual progressive agenda could come to pass in my lifetime.

Kamala 2024!

If you weren't going to vote Democratic in this election before Biden dropped out you're a dorkass loser who does not care about any of the issues you're yammering about here and also a fundamentally bad person, and I hope you get run over by a bus.

But you got one thing right in all of this gibberish, Kamala 2024.

[traegorn]

while i completely agree with your assessment of realistically what a trump vs harris presidency will look like, i think the issue me and a lot of other leftists have is that there is no need to tell people (and effectively tell harris) that oh ofc we are gna vote for her despite these issues because trump is THAT bad and if you say you don't want to vote for her because her party is pro-war, pro-genocide, then you are condemning americans to a trump presidency. we know trump is worse! i don't want him to win AT ALL, but why would harris even consider even changing the language she is using (i'm looking at the absolutely stupid speech she was giving in michigan, given the large arab & muslim-american population there and given its a battleground state) if she thinks she is going to win on a not-trump basis? i know who i'm voting for on nov 5th if it comes down to it, but we need the democrats to THINK they are going to lose until the very last minute, we need them to feel like they can't just rely on being the lesser of two evils if we want any chance of a shift on palestine. because they very well might lose, for this exact reason (and i'm speaking again more to the votes of the arab & muslim-american population which is far more demographically meaningful than the votes of leftists) and if that happens, they have no one to blame but themselves.

So I'm going to tell you something important: You don't have the leverage you think you have.

Political campaigns are a machine that's been operating the same way for a long time on the Democratic side. The Republicans may have abandoned a lot of the old ways of doing things, but the Democratic party hasn't. And you've got people running these campaigns who are steeped in the "wisdom" of how you win.

And when a block of voters says they're not going to vote for their candidate, they tend to believe them. So they decide to go court the people who they think will vote for them. That's why you've seen the Harris campaign trying to court moderate Republicans who might be iffy on voting for Trump a third time.

Right now one of the reasons Netanyahu is refusing to commit to a cease fire is because he thinks Trump can win. If Trump wins, he has no reason to ever agree to one. One of the reasons he thinks Trump can win is because the polling is so close.

If you want to know why they've gone to the right recently, it's because they think they've lost the left. And since a lot of those leftists are claiming there's a line in the sand that they don't have the power to appease (because -- again -- they can't get Netanyahu to do shit right now), they're going to go for the centrist Republicans.

Also, there seems to be this weird notion that the only way to move the Democrats is during the election. That's not how you move people. You keep pressuring them during their term and it works. Like Biden is continuing to work on forgiving student debt even though he doesn't have an election ahead of him. Because they know that what he does reflects on the future of the party. Voting doesn't end this game, it's the start of it.

But none of it will matter if Trump wins.

[alex51324]

Useful article from CNN on election-night misinformation.

Key takeaway is that pretty much whatever happens, Trump will claim it's evidence that the election is being rigged against him.

Some additional things to keep in mind--particularly if you haven't been through many of these before:

The winner may or may not be projected on election night. How long it takes depends on a bunch of factors, having to do with the logistics of ballot-counting and how the statistical analysis comes along. Getting a projected winner by midnight and the count taking several days are both well within the range of normal, and neither one suggests that anything nefarious is happening.

Counting of votes always continues for several days after the election, until every vote has been counted. This happens regardless of whether or not the media have "called" a winner, or a candidate has conceded.

Media outlets project election winners based on the data that has come in and their statistical models--they do not "declare" or "decide" who won. The major outlets are very motivated to avoid an incorrect projection*, so if they make a call, it's because they're really sure they have enough information to accurately predict the outcome of the final count.

Usually, when this happens, all of the major media outlets are making the same projection around the same time--within the same hour, at least, and often in the same 10 minutes or so. If there's an outlier, there's a good chance they're either guessing or propagandizing.

Candidates do not get to call the race in their own favor. There's a decent chance Trump will try, but also it's also normal and expected for both campaigns to talk like they're expecting to win; e.g. introducing their candidate as "the next President of the United States" when appearing before supporters at events. (My guess is that if he does try, the mainstream media outlets will simply sanewash it as typical election-night bravado, which is actually fine.)

The only thing that means anything, coming from a candidate/campaign, is a concession. This will often happen after the media has called the race for the other candidate; it usually isn't a surprise. A normal campaign will often go quiet--stop sending people to talk on TV, etc.--when they're getting ready to concede. (Trump arguably** still hasn't conceded 2020, so no one is particularly expecting him to concede any time this coming week.)

It's normal for the numbers to change a lot. There are always some surprises, but there are also standard patterns: results from the southeast usually come in a clump, and put a lot of electoral votes into the Republican column, early in the night. Democrats usually pick up the west coast states, which of course are the last to close their polls and start reporting results***. For the swing states, where we'll probably see a lot of reporting on very incomplete vote totals, results will start coming in first from the rural areas, which lean red; cities take longer to count their votes--because there are more of them--and lean blue.

The more uncertainty there is about the outcome, the more you'll hear about the evolving numbers--news networks have airtime to fill, and there's only so many ways you can say, "Still too close to call." Try not to obsess over these numbers; the news networks have people specially trained to analyze this exact kind of data, and if they can't say how it's going to turn out, you're not going to know, either.

If it ends up being too close to call for several days, there will probably be reporting on small, county-by-county vote dumps. It's important to realize that this is all still the original count of the votes, not a recount or "finding new votes." We only hear about it when the election is so close that these relatively small numbers of ballots are likely to affect the outcome, but it happens every single election. In 2020, Trump repeatedly claimed that ongoing counts were some how irregular, and sometimes demanded that counts be stopped when the current total showed him in the lead. This is, to be clear, nuts; the full & complete count of the votes always takes more than just the one day, and it's a bedrock principle of democracy that every valid ballot is counted.

(* Back in 2000, the Bush-Gore election with the whole Florida debacle, several major news outlets did project winners too soon, and then had to walk back their projections.

This definitely contributed to the chaos that night, and may have also contributed to the widespread perception that Bush was the "real" winner and Gore was dragging the country through multiple recounts, in those first few days when the initial count of wasn't even complete in some states.

As a result, responsible media outlets are much more cautious these days about election-night projections.)

(**On January 7, 2021 he made a statement that was taken as indicating his understanding that Biden had won, or at least that he knew he wouldn't be staying in office, but he never stopped saying he won.)

(***This often looks like the Republican being miles ahead, and then suddenly California reports in and they aren't anymore. Expect Trump to pretend that this is somehow shocking, even though the last time a Republican won California was 1988.

Similarly, he will also pretend to be surprised when, for instance, Philadelphia turns in their first big batch of results, and Harris's numbers jump up.)

[schoolhater]

while i am very scared for my american friends, especially my trans, immigrant, and muslim friends, i can't help but remember that the genocide in gaza is still happening. they are already facing the worst case scenario that we will only get a short glimpse of while trump is in office. and he promises to do worse, hard to fathom as it is.

i never had any faith in the democratic party but with the federal government now entirely run by republicans i hope we can all wake up to the fact that we cannot trust it to help anyone. we have to care for each other ourselves.

which is why i'm asking you guys to donate to palestinian, lebanese, sudanese, and congolese fundraisers whenever possible. this post will center on my friend @ahmedpalestine. he's a close childhood friend of hazem khalil, who i also posted for in the past, but his campaign isn't receiving even a fraction of the support. he's vetted by @bilal-salah0 and gaza-evacuation-funds and he's a diaspora palestinian who immigrated to europe for college.

ahmed's cousin was martyred in september. they're stuck in al-maghazi camp on the coast of gaza, where there is a tank invasion and intense bombing. he told me he is now struggling to focus on school because every waking moment is spent worrying about his family. franky it's insulting that has to continuously beg online. he has no time for this. we have to do it for him

donate here.

his instagram

[heritageposts]

Harris has been a staunch supporter of Israel for years. In 2017 she addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) annual conference and reminded attendees that the first resolution she co-sponsored as a senator was aimed at combating “anti-Israel bias” at the United Nations. “Let me be clear about what I believe. I stand with Israel because of our shared values, which are so fundamental to the founding of both our nations,” she told the crowd. In 2018 she gave an off-the-record speech to the organization, but eventually released her comments. In that speech she claimed that she raised money for the Jewish National Fund as a Girl Scout. “Having grown up in the Bay area, I fondly remember those Jewish National Fund boxes that we would use to collect donations to plant trees for Israel,” she told the audience. “Years later, when I visited Israel for the first time, I saw the fruits of that effort and the Israeli ingenuity that has truly made a desert bloom.”

For those unfamiliar with the Jewish National Fund (JNF), they're a Zionist organization that has been instrumental in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

See Stop the JNF for more information on their history, the way they operate, and their decades-long campaign of greenwashing (i.e. destroying native plants, crops, and agriculture under the banner of 'making the desert bloom').

Continuing, the Mondoweiss article goes:

“The vast majority of people understand the importance of the State of Israel,” she added later. “Both in terms of its history and its present in terms of being a source of inspiration on so many issues, which I hope we will talk about, and also what it means in terms of the values of the United States and those values that are shared values with Israel, and the importance of fighting to make sure that we protect and respect a friend, one of the best friends we could possibly have.” While running for President in 2019, Harris was praised by the lobbying group Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) for running to the right of Obama on the Iran deal. On the campaign trail Harris told Kat Wellman, a voter affiliated with DMFI, that she would reenter the agreement but “strengthen it” by “extending the sunset provisions, including ballistic missile testing, and also increasing oversight.” “I was very impressed with her. I thought she gave an excellent speech, she gave a very detailed, responsive answer to my question,” Wellman told a local paper after the exchange. “I’m pro-Israel, so I was I was very concerned and all about making sure we limit nuclear missiles in any country that could possibly destroy us all. I thought her answer was very good.” Harris has condemned the BDS movement and claimed that is “based on the mistaken assumption that Israel is solely to blame for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” However, she voted against an anti-BDS bill in 2019 citing First Amendment concerns.

For the full article, which includes Kamala's response to Israel post Al-Aqsa Flood, see Mondoweiss (July 22, 2024)

[txttletale]

Sorry for anon, I'm shy. I think I'm one of the liberals you're complaining about and I don't want to be. If (and only if) you have the time/energy, could you elaborate more on where the Harris campaign went wrong? I promise I don't mean this in a sealioning way - I genuinely want to understand and move towards a better perspective, but I don't even know what to Google to start.

it is extremely conventional political wisdom that running as the incumbent party during an unpopular administration is a gruelling uphill battle--harris was in this position, and i think going all-in on her continuity with biden, who is extremely disliked (for many reasons, ranging from his fervent passion for genocide to a vague sense that He Made The Ecnomy Bad And Woke) was a catastrophic error that any dickhead with a political science degree would have told her to avoid. unfortunatley she surrounded herself with biden's people who in the run-up to him stepping down had already proven themselves to be completely self-deluding and isolated from reality.

the absolute worst thing you can do in the electoral situation harris was in is go on television and say "i would do absolutely nothing differently to the current (unpopular) administration" and she did literally exactly that.

other facts are that the constituency her campaign decided to go all-in on, of, like, sensible moderate center-right republicans who value bipartisanship, basically hasn't existed since tea party birtherism became ascnedant in the republican party if it ever did at all. the idea that there was an election-winning segment of voeters who would vote for harris if she proved that she wasn't "too liberal" through serious policy commitments to right-wing positions was just not founded in reality--like it was a strategy that failed to grapple with the basic reality that the modern republican position on democrat politicians is that they're adrenochrome-chugging child rapists.

in a similar vein her hard pivot to border fascism was morally deplorable but also a total waste of time because donald "build the wall" trump has made his personal brand synonymous with anti-immigration politics and so she was simply never ever going to win anyone over from him on that ground. & finally of course there was the campaign;'s wholehearted and total contempt for her own potential voters, which manifseted most obviously and evilly in their treatment of anti-genocide protestors and their flying bill clinton out ot michigan to lecture arabs about how they deserved to be bombed but also seems responsible for their total lack of consideration of (again) conventional elecvtoral tactics 101 like "energizing the base" or "getting out the vote"

so tldr it was just a disastrous campaign that prioritized the egos of biden campaign staff and biden himself over winning or facing basic reality

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Google antitrust remedy should extinguish surveillance, not democratize it

I'm coming to DEFCON! On FRIDAY (Aug 9), I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On SATURDAY (Aug 10), I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

If you are even slightly plugged into the doings and goings on in this tired old world of ours, then you have heard that Google has lost its antitrust case against the DOJ Antitrust Division, and is now an official, no-foolin', convicted monopolist.

This is huge. Epochal. The DOJ, under the leadership of the fire-breathing trustbuster Jonathan Kanter, has done something that was inconceivable four years ago when he was appointed. On Kanter's first day on the job as head of the Antitrust Division, he addressed his gathered prosecutors and asked them to raise their hands if they'd never lost a case.

It was a canny trap. As the proud, victorious DOJ lawyers thrust their arms into the air, Kanter quoted James Comey, who did the same thing on his first day on the job as DA for the Southern District of New York: "You people are the chickenshit club." A federal prosecutor who never loses a case is a prosecutor who only goes after easy targets, and leave the worst offenders (who can mount a serious defense) unscathed.

Under Kanter, the Antitrust Division has been anything but a Chickenshit Club. They've gone after the biggest game, the hardest targets, and with Google, they bagged the hardest target of all.

Again: this is huge:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/boom-judge-rules-google-is-a-monopolist

But also: this is just the start.

Now that Google is convicted, the court needs to decide what to do about it. Courts have lots of leeway when it comes to addressing a finding of lawbreaking. They can impose "conduct remedies" ("don't do that anymore"). These are generally considered weaksauce, because they're hard to administer. When you tell a company like Google to stop doing something, you need to expend a lot of energy to make sure they're following orders. Conduct remedies are as much a punishment for the government (which has to spend millions closely observing the company to ensure compliance) as they are for the firms involved.

But the court could also order Google to stop doing certain things. For example, since the ruling finds that Google illegally maintained its monopoly by paying other entities – Apple, Mozilla, Samsung, AT&T, etc – to be the default search, the court could order them to stop doing that. At the very least, that's a lot easier to monitor.

The big guns, though are the structural remedies. The court could order Google to sell off parts of its business, like its ad-tech stack, through which it represents both buyers and sellers in a marketplace it owns, and with whom it competes as a buyer and a seller. There's already proposed, bipartisan legislation to do this (how bipartisan? Its two main co-sponsors are Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren!):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/25/structural-separation/#america-act

All of these things, and more, are on the table:

https://www.wired.com/story/google-search-monopoly-judge-amit-mehta-options/

We'll get a better sense of what the judge is likely to order in the fall, but the case could drag out for quite some time, as Google appeals the verdict, then tries for the Supreme Court, then appeals the remedy, and so on and so on. Dragging things out in the hopes of running out the clock is a time-honored tradition in tech antitrust. IBM dragged out its antitrust appeals for 12 years, from 1970 to 1982 (they called it "Antitrust's Vietnam"). This is an expensive gambit: IBM outspent the entire DOJ Antitrust Division for 12 consecutive years, hiring more lawyers to fight the DOJ than the DOJ employed to run all of its antitrust enforcement, nationwide. But it worked. IBM hung in there until Reagan got elected and ordered his AG to drop the case.

This is the same trick Microsoft pulled in the nineties. The case went to trial in 1998, and Microsoft lost in 1999. They appealed, and dragged out the proceedings until GW Bush stole the presidency in 2000 and dropped the case in 2001.

I am 100% certain that there are lawyers at Google thinking about this: "OK, say we put a few hundred million behind Trump-affiliated PACs, wait until he's president, have a little meeting with Attorney General Andrew Tate, and convince him to drop the case. Worked for IBM, worked for Microsoft, it'll work for us. And it'll be a bargain."

That's one way things could go wrong, but it's hardly the only way. In his ruling, Judge Mehta rejected the DOJ's argument that in illegally creating and maintaining its monopoly, Google harmed its users' privacy by foreclosing on the possibility of a rival that didn't rely on commercial surveillance.

The judge repeats some of the most cherished and absurd canards of the marketing industry, like the idea that people actually like advertisements, provided that they're relevant, so spying on people is actually doing them a favor by making it easier to target the right ads to them.

First of all, this is just obvious self-serving rubbish that the advertising industry has been repeating since the days when it was waging a massive campaign against the TV remote on the grounds that people would "steal" TV by changing the channel when the ads came on. If "relevant" advertising was so great, then no one would reach for the remote – or better still, they'd change the channel when the show came back on, looking for more ads. People don't like advertising. And they hate "relevant" advertising that targets their private behaviors and views. They find it creepy.

Remember when Apple offered users a one-click opt-out from Facebook spying, the most sophisticated commercial surveillance system in human history, whose entire purpose was to deliver "relevant" advertising? More than 96% of Apple's customers opted out of surveillance. Even the most Hayek-pilled economist has to admit that this is a a hell of a "revealed preference." People don't want "relevant" advertising. Period.

The judge's credulous repetition of this obvious nonsense is doubly disturbing in light of the nature of the monopoly charge against Google – that the company had monopolized the advertising market.

Don't get me wrong: Google has monopolized the advertising market. They operate a "full stack" ad-tech shop. By controlling the tools that sellers and buyers use, and the marketplace where they use them, Google steals billions from advertisers and publishers. And that's before you factor in Jedi Blue, the illegal collusive arrangement the company has with Facebook, by which they carved up the market to increase their profits, gouge advertisers, starve publishers, and keep out smaller rivals:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

One effect of Google's monopoly power is a global privacy crisis. In regions with strong privacy laws (like the EU), Google uses flags of convenience (looking at you, Ireland) to break the law with impunity:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

In the rest of the world, Google works with other members of the surveillance cartel to prevent the passage of privacy laws. That's why the USA hasn't had a new federal privacy law since 1988, when Congress acted to ban video-store clerks from telling newspaper reporters about the VHS cassettes you took home:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

The lack of privacy law and privacy enforcement means that Google can inflict untold privacy harms on billions of people around the world. Everything we do, everywhere we go online and offline, every relationship we have, everything we buy and say and do – it's all collected and stored and mined and used against us. The immediate harm here is the haunting sense that you are always under observation, a violation of your fundamental human rights that prevents you from ever being your authentic self:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2013/jun/14/nsa-prism

The harms of surveillance aren't merely spiritual and psychological – they're material and immediate. The commercial surveillance industry provides the raw feedstock for a parade of horribles, from stalkers and bounty hunters turning up on their targets' front doors to cops rounding up demonstrators with location data from their phones to identity thieves tricking their marks by using leaked or purchased private information as convincers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

The problem with Google's monopolization of the surveillance business model is that they're spying on us. But for a certain kind of competition wonk, the problem is that Google is monopolizing the violation of our human rights, and we need to use competition law to "democratize" commercial surveillance.

This is deeply perverse, but it represents a central split in competition theory. Some trustbusters fetishize competition for its own sake, on the theory that it makes companies better and more efficient. But there are some things we don't want companies to be better at, like violating our human rights. We want to ban human rights violations, not improve them.

For other trustbusters – like me – the point of competition enforcement isn't merely to make companies offer better products, it's to make companies small enough to hold account through the enforcement of democratic laws. I want to break – and break up – Google because I want to end its ability to bigfoot privacy law so that we can finally root out the cancer of commercial surveillance. I don't want to make Google smaller so that other surveillance companies can get in on the game.

There is a real danger that this could emerge from this decision, and that's a danger we need to guard against. Last month, Google shocked the technical world by announcing that it would not follow through on its years-long promise to kill third-party cookies, one of the most pernicious and dangerous tools of commercial surveillance. The reason for this volte-face appears to be concern that the EU would view killing third-party cookies as anticompetitive, since Google intended to maintain commercial surveillance using its Orwellian "Privacy Sandbox" technology in Chrome, with the effect that everyone except Google would find it harder to spy on us as we used the internet:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/googles-trail-of-crumbs

It's true! This is anticompetitive. But the answer isn't to preserve the universal power of tech companies large and small to violate our human rights – it's to ban everyone, especially Google, from spying on us!

This current in competition law is still on the fringe, but the Google case – which finds the company illegally dominating surveillance advertising, but rejects the idea that surveillance is itself a harm – offers an opportunity for this bad idea to go from the fringe to the center.

If that happens, look out.

Take "attribution," an obscure bit of ad-tech jargon disguising a jaw-droppingly terrible practice. "Attribution" is when an ad-tech company shows you an ad, and then follows you everywhere you go, monitoring everything you do, to determine whether the ad convinced you to buy something. I mean that literally: they're combining location data generated by your phone and captured by Bluetooth and wifi receivers with data from your credit card to follow you everywhere and log everything, so that they can prove to a merchant that you bought something.

This is unspeakably grotesque. It should be illegal. In many parts of the world, it is illegal, but it is so lucrative that monopolists like Google can buy off the enforcers and get away with it. What's more, only the very largest corporations have the resources to surveil you so closely and invasively that they can perform this "service."

But again, some competition wonks look at this situation and say, "Well, that's not right, we need to make sure that everyone can do attribution." This was a (completely mad) premise in the (otherwise very good) 2020 Competition and Markets Authority market-study on "Online platforms and digital advertising":

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5fa557668fa8f5788db46efc/Final_report_Digital_ALT_TEXT.pdf

This (again, otherwise sensible) document veers completely off the rails whenever the subject of attribution comes up. At one point, the authors propose that the law should allow corporations to spy on people who opt out of commercial surveillance, provided that this spying is undertaken for the sole purpose of attribution.

But it gets even worse: by the end of the document, the authors propose a "user ID intervention" to give every Briton a permanent, government-issued advertising identifier to make it easier for smaller companies to do attribution.

Look, I understand why advertisers like attribution and are willing to preferentially take their business to companies that can perform it. But the fact that merchants want to be able to peer into every corner of our lives to figure out how well their ads are performing is no basis for permitting them to do so – much less intervening in the market to make it even easier so more commercial snoops can get their noses in our business!

This is an idea that keeps popping up, like in this editorial by a UK lawyer, where he proposes fixing "Google's dominance of online advertising" by making it possible for everyone to track us using the commercial surveillance identifiers created and monopolized by the ad-tech duopoly and the mobile tech duopoly:

https://www.thesling.org/what-to-do-about-googles-dominance-of-online-advertising/

Those companies are doing something rotten. In dominating ads, they have stolen billions from publishers and advertisers. Then they used those billions to capture our democratic process and ensure that our human rights weren't being defended as they plundered our private data and put us in harm's way.

Advertising will adapt. The marketing bros know this is coming. They're already discussing how to live in a world where you can't measure clicks and you can't attribute actions (e.g. the world from the first advertisements up until the early 2000s):

https://sparktoro.com/blog/attribution-is-dying-clicks-are-dying-marketing-is-going-back-to-the-20th-century/

An equitable solution to Google's monopoly will not run though our right to privacy. We don't solve the Google monopoly by creating competition in surveillance. The reason to get rid of Google's monopoly is to make it easier to end surveillance.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[elumish]

Part 1/? of How to Deal With the Next Four(ish) Years

Learn how to tell the difference between "their policies/rhetoric actively target me/a marginalized group" and "they have not been as successful as I hoped in protecting me/a marginalized group." I saw the rhetoric a fair amount pre-election that the Democratic Party and its policies were transphobic, that Biden failed queer people, etc. as a reason not to vote for Harris or for Democrats, and the reality is that the Democratic Party and Joe Biden have actually been pretty steadily implementing laws and policies to support and protect queer (including trans) people, and Republicans want queer/trans people to die.

If you want to protect marginalized groups, whether they're ones you're part of or not, you really need to start actively working on distinguishing between the two. And if you keep hearing that the Democrats are just as bad about a marginalized group in the US as the Republicans, actually look into that. What is the evidence? What laws have been introduced or passed by one party versus the other? What rhetoric do they use? What policies and regulations are being put in place?

And is the problem that the Democratic Party is "just as bad" or that they have not managed to stop Republican laws in red states?

None of this is to say that the Democratic Party is perfect, but in most cases only one party is actively working to harm or kill marginalized people, and it's not the Dems.

Understand the government structure that directly impacts you. Not every state or locality operates the same way, and you may have more or fewer layers of government over you with different levels of power. Do you have a town/city government and a county government, or just one or the other? How many officials are elected in your state versus appointed?

Part of that is also understanding what is controlled at the local, state, and federal level. If you're mad about a law or policy and want it to change, whose law or policy is it? Chances are, if it's about how things work for you, it's a state or local law rather than a federal one. Once you understand that, you can target any organizing efforts in the right direction.

Pick your battles. This is not to say that you shouldn't care about a lot of things, but trying to personally organize around everything will probably just make you ineffective and burn you out. Is it Palestine? Ukraine? Sudan? Environmental justice? Climate change? Immigration? Abortion? Queer rights and protections? Education? Native American rights? Criminal justice reform?

Understanding your own priorities can also help you determine what candidates you support and where you draw your red lines. I care a lot about public schools, but support for charter schools is not a red line for me in a politician. Being pro-life is.

But I'm also pragmatic--if my choice is a pro-life person who also wants all queer people to die and a pro-life person who wants to protect queer people, I will hold my nose vote for the latter rather than risk the former winning.

Start identifying what protections you and your loved ones might need that you can access now. Is it an IUD, a tubal ligation, or a vasectomy? Is it getting your legal name changed now? Is it establishing other legal protections such as power of attorney even if you're married?

Vote in every election. If you are an eligible voter, you should be a registered voter, and you should vote every single time. I think the only election I've missed in the last 5 years is the 2024 Democratic primary, and that's 50% because it was basically an uncontested race and 50% because I forgot when it was.

Primaries are where you get to have a say in who your candidate is--at all levels. Look at the policies of who is running and vote for who you want to win--whether because of policy, temperment, or any other reason.

But state and local elections are incredibly important, because they have a huge impact on your actual quality of life. Show up and vote. Vote on off years. Vote when it's just local. Vote for Board of Education, for water commissioner, for sheriff, for judges.

Voting is cheap, it's easy, and it does make a difference.

[qqueenofhades]

i registered to vote for the first time ( i feel old) now that im an adult but my state has closed primary elections which i was wondering if you have an opinion about. my initial thought was that its bad because i had to register democrat (rather than my states green party which represents my beliefs more) just so i could vote between democrat candidates, which feels like being pressured into supporting the weird pseudo two party system we have. but then i looked it up and apparently a reason for this is so that people from opposing parties wont purposefully mess up the votes just so that their preferred candidates have an easier time winning, and i think that makes sense too. but is that actually the reason theyve closed it or is it just to force us dem/republican?? cause it feels strange

Okay, look. I respect the fact that you're a young person, and I appreciate that you have not only registered to vote, but plan to vote in the primaries, so I don't want to lecture you too much. That said: I am taking you out for coffee, I am sitting you down, I am looking into your eyes, and I am urgently telling you the following:

The Green Party is a scam. It is a scam. It has existed for decades in American politics as an empty shell corporation weaponizing the good intentions of young people like yourself, because all it theoretically stands for "it's good to save the planet maybe." Which is not something that any non-insane person seriously disagrees with, but there is no world in which that cause is actually furthered by registering/voting Green (you mentioned that you did vote for Democrats, which -- good, but listen to me here, youngun, okay?) It ran Jill Stein in 2016 to siphon more votes from HRC, and this election it plans to run Cornel West, a pro-Russian tankie who positively equated Bernie and Trump, as another spoiler candidate. It does not stand for "protecting the planet" or America in any real way. It has never elected a single senator or congressman, let alone a president. It stands for empty performance/grievance political theater by those people who feel too morally superior to vote for/affiliate with Democrats, often because the internet has told them that it's not Cool or Hip or Progressive enough.

If your main priority is climate/the environment, you're doing the right thing by registering as a Democrat and voting for Democrats. (Also: the adjectival form is Democratic. It is the Democratic party and Democratic candidates, otherwise you sound like the Fox News host who wrote a book literally entitled "The Democrat Party Hates America.") They are the only major party who has in fact passed major climate legislation and have made environmental justice a central tenet of their platform. As opposed to the Republicans, whose Project 2025, along with the rest of its nightmare fascist prescriptions, openly pledges to completely wreck existing climate protections and forbid any new ones, just because we weren't all dying fast enough under their death-cult rule already. That's the main logical fallacy I don't get among both the Online Leftists and the American electorate in general: "the Democrats aren't doing quite enough as I'd like, so I'll enable the active wrecking ball insane lunatics to get in power and ruin even the progress we HAVE managed to make!" Like. How does that even make sense?

On a federal level, the Greens have contributed nothing whatsoever of tangible value to American or international climate policy/legislation, environmental justice, or anything else, because as noted, they don't have any elected candidates and mostly focus on drawing voters away from Democrats. There might be plenty of good candidates on the local or city level, which -- great! Vote away for Greens if they're available, or the only other option is a Republican! But on the federal/primary level, please understand: once again, they are a scam. There is no point in affiliating yourself with them. You're welcome to register Green and vote Democratic, if that makes you feel better or if you prefer having another label next to your name, but once again, I'm telling you in my position as a salty Tumblr elder that they have done nothing but harm to the causes they claim to care about, because "environment" is such a nebulous priority and has demonstrably been hijacked to stop the American government entity, i.e. the Democrats, that is actually working to improve on it.

As for your question: nobody is "forcing" or "pressuring" you to vote in primaries. By your own admission, you made a conscious choice to register as a Democrat in order to vote for Democratic candidates. If you were just a regular registered voter of whatever party affiliation, you would vote in the general election for whatever candidate the primary process produced. But if you are sufficiently vested and committed to that process that you would like to have a say in who is running under that party label, it is not unreasonable that you would register as a member of that party. Nobody has twisted your arm behind your back and made you do so; you are taking a considerable level of initiative on your own. Likewise, open primaries can be both a good and bad thing. This falls under the "the political system we have is flawed, but we can't magically pretend it doesn't exist and act according to our own fantasyland versions of reality" thing that I keep saying over and over. So yes, if you want a role in shaping the Democratic candidates who emerge from a Democratic primary process, you will usually register as a Democrat, and nobody has forced you to do that. It's that simple.

Likewise as a general programming note: I'm trying to cut back on politics a bit right now, because I don't have the spoons/bandwidth/mental health to deal with it. I apologize. So if you've sent me a politics-related ask recently and haven't received a response, I'm not deliberately or maliciously ignoring you; I just am not able to handle it as much as usual and will have to put it on pause. However, I feel as if this is important enough to be worth saying, so, yeah.

[anarcho-catboyism]

I know y'all will want to run out and blame leftists and minorities for this election but just because you're involved in an echo chamber of leftist thought online doesn't mean that's the reality of the average American voter.

Leftisim is not a large enough group in the US to have won this election. They can certainly influence elections, they can influence voter count. We had an absolutely huge turnout of voters, huge lines at polls, tens of thousands of mail in ballots, and we still ended up with a red state majority.

Did it ever occur to you that the reason Kamala was advertising more right wing views on immigration and trans rights was because she was following a voter block?

Thats what you do as a good politician you find the voter block and you try to appeal to them. She wasn't saying these ideas out of the blue, she is targeting the ideas of the current democratic voter block.

The truth is the current, majority voter block of America is right wing to a degree, and one issue voters. They're privileged enough to not care about issues like Abortion, but working class enough to complain about the gas prices, and American enough to be weirded out by a woman in office.

A majority of america leans right wing, and whether we like it or not, more people than we wanted decided that Trump appealed to them in some bullshit way. Progressive Democrats in America are further right wing that previous, and it's coming to further bite us all in the ass.

Does this mean voting was useless? No.

Does this mean it was our faults? No, the fault lies squarely in Republican propaganda pushing the public further right wing. Just because tumblr and other socials were doing a great job with pushing information about Project 2025 and such doesn't mean that the average person, even the average conservative, knew what that was or any other politic ideas past surface critiques.

The most we can do now is to keep going and to help each other out, and have each other's backs. If you want another candidate to have a chance, start campaigning now, not a few months before the election. If you can help people escape, do it now. If you can set up support, do it now. The time is now for doing what we can to mitigate damage.

Stop blaming people for what is the unfortunate and scary truth that America is a right wing country, and start helping the people we can help.

[genderqueerpositivity]

I absolutely cannot wait for this election cycle to be over because genuinely what the fuck. I keep drawing parallels to the 2016 election because there are just so many similarities, but what I haven't said much about yet are the ways in which things are worse.

Having the majority of people I know or randomly encounter be Trump supporting Republicans is absolutely wild now, because sometimes they will just drop the most unhinged comments you could possibly imagine into casual conversation as if they're simply commenting that the grass is green or the weather is nice today, and every time it gives me this bizarre sensation like I am somehow the one living in a different plane of reality.

The Democrats are intentionally bringing undocumented people into the country and giving them drivers licenses so they can vote in the upcoming November election, and unless Donald Trump wins and is allowed to carry out his mass deportation plan the United States will never again have a Republican Christian president.

Joe Biden has been using the US military to release chemicals into the atmosphere for the past four years which have the ability to affect the weather in order to trick the American public into believing that climate change is real.

The attack on Donald Trump at his rally was rally a plot enacted by The Deep State, a secret group of powerful liberals who are running the country behind the scenes, and they don't want Trump to win in November because he is too powerful for them to control.

Joe Biden was replaced by a secret identical body double when he allegedly had Covid several weeks ago, and the double is the one who really dropped out of the election, gives all of his speeches, and does all of his interviews now for him.

Those are just the ones I heard last week.

And the reactions I get when contradicting these wild takes range from rage to mocking to a bizarre persecution complex. In 2016 and even in 2020 I was able to have a lot of productive conversations with many people who disagreed with me greatly on major issues, and that is largely not happening this time. If I dare to disagree, they turn to anger, attack me personally, or cry immediately that I'm denying their right to free speech. When bringing up my actual lived experiences with certain issues, I've been dismissed immediately as emotional and brainwashed. There is no room for discourse or discussion anymore, it has broken down.

I know that we've been going out of our way to call them weird, but we're not really talking about fringe weirdo conspiracy theorists anymore, we're talking about your neighbors and my coworkers and your aunt and the guy behind me in line at Aldi. These people are everywhere, they're 100% serious about believing in this shit, and they're voting Republican in November come hell or high water, truth be goddamed.

You know, the lives of millions and millions of women, LGBTQ+ people, undocumented people, and other marginalized peoples are at stake in this election but it feels increasingly like reality is at stake too.

"Alternative facts" sounded outrageous seven years ago...now they've made it a way of life. Unless we can correct course, and rapidly, it isn't going to get better.

[psychotrenny]

Lancer is a funny because of how much it insists that Union is this flawed but ultimately benevolent institution that's well on the path to improvement, a "utopia in progress" as they love to say, when like they casually reveal so many things about it that show Union as rotten to the fucking core. Like as much as Lancer fans like to go on and on about how it's an imperfect society that needs to make compromises, there's so much awful shit about Union that just seems pointless or easily avoidable.

And like part of this is the creator's politics; they're social democrats so it's not surprising that Space Sweden is their idea of a society that, if not the best we could possibly achieve, is at least the best we can do for the foreseeable future. As a Marxist-Leninist it's only natural that I'd have a condemnatory view of such a society just as I do for real Social Democracies; my idea of an achievably "good" society is just fundamentally different from that of the creators But like Lancer is also full of little details that just seem fucked up and awful even from the values and viewpoint of Social Democracy. Like stuff that's just as bad, if not worse, than a lot of sci-fi Dystopias. Like why the fuck does Union have a CIA that's run by a group of super-computers with the actual elected legislature having an advisory role but no actual jurisdiction and this fact being kept secret from the vast majority of the populace? Not much of a democracy if one of the most powerful institutions in the entire political body is free from any kind of democratic or even fucking human oversight while most people aren't even allowed to have an opinion on this because they aren't allowed to know about it. Or what about the caste of Janissary diplomats (like was it really necessary to take children and train them like they're the jedi of interplanetary relations) who come with customised computer slaves. Like yeah don't forget about the fucking SCP computer slavery thing, which is completely fine (except for the times it isn't I guess). Like it's basically the weirdest and most uncomfortable part of Star War's setting imported near whole-cloth only like the regular mindwipes are justified because otherwise they'll full Durandal and you don't want that do you? Look how happy and content they are being forced to think like humans while acting as loyal servants. Btw Union is somehow even less denazified than West Germany. Significantly so. They literally gave Hitler Corp. (a fucking weapons manufacturer so powerful they call it a "corpro-state"!) a seat at the UN. While allowing their Blue Helmets to keep using those Nazi-made weapons. And like Third Comm is repeatedly described as doing basically the same shit that Second Comm did but with more "Care" or whatever so don't worry it's fine now.

Like I can just keep going on and on like I'm not making this up this isn't some like weird expansion this is all from the core rulebook. I get that there has to be conflict and tension but like why did they need to make their ostensible good guys so fucking awful like these are the people you're meant to feel good about fighting for why did you need to fill them with the sort of details you'd see in some cautionary dystopia? And like why do actual people keep defending these guys? Like once you get down to it Union manages to be less Space Sweden and more* "The Ottoman Empire with Pronouns"

*to borrow a phrase coined by a mate while we were talking about this

[mythica-ithaca]

the fact that I see some of y'all posting more about how important it is to vote for Biden than you ever have about Palestine just shows that you fucking "vote blue no matter who" people genuinely don't give a fuck about anyone but yourselves.

you only choose to speak up when YOUR hypothetical rights are threatened. you love to fear monger about how much hypothetically worse it would be under trump than acknowledge the actual atrocities that Biden is committing and condoning every single day. how exactly is he the "lesser" of two evils for?

do any of you actually look at the images coming out of gaza, or are you too fucking ~triggered~ to fully acknowledge other peoples suffering rather than your own. have you seen the video that came out recently of the little boy whose brain is exposed, about to be laid next to his dead family members, only to twitch and seize in his fathers arms as he screams and runs in horror to find a doctor, because his son is alive. his brain is literally falling out of his skull but he is still alive. that is one brief example of the most horrific shit you've ever seen in your life coming out daily for almost a year. how on this earth can you watch that and possibly claim that Biden is in any way shape or form "less" evil.

instead of demanding that the dnc force a different candidate, you're trying to guilt trip people who have actually seen the mutilated bodies of children on their timelines every single day and watched the press briefings of bidens administration denying genocide and defending Israel at the expense of literally everything else for the last 8 months, into voting for a man who supports it 100% and has not and will not be convinced otherwise.

this is where allowing them to push widely unpopular and centrist candidates has gotten us. it didn't work with Hillary in 2016. it BARELY worked in 2020. and hate to break it to you, but its probably not going to work again. so congrats. your "vote blue no matter who" rhetoric has got them thinking that they can push the most right leaning liberals on us and think that we'll vote for them just because they're in a blue tie instead of a red one.

if you care about democracy like you say you do, then the Democrats should be fucking TERRIFIED that you won't vote for them if they don't deliver. not constantly reassured that they can commit literal fucking genocide and still get your votes if they dangle abortion rights over your heads. you realize they see those posts too right? the ones that say "Yes! protest vote in the primary but make sure to actually vote for the guy in the general!!" like. you are literally telling them how performative your activism is.

if every election at this point is the one where democracy is on the line then we are already fucked. if they don't get it through their heads now that we will not support this shit, then every election to come will be between a fascist and a fascist who cares slightly less about whether gay people get married or not. but that's all you care about right? as long as your domestic policy is in your favor then the rest of the world can suffer at your tax dollars.

this isn't about morality voting. this is about recognizing that there is not actually a "lesser" of two evils in this situation, just because you think that the causes that you personally care about will be less affected one way or the other. because what if it was abortion rights? what catholic Joe Biden was firmly against abortion and was threatening to ban it completely and throw anyone getting or giving one in prison for murder. what if it was videos of lgbt people being slaughtered coming out every single day for a year. genuinely fucking ask yourself if you'd still be saying "vote blue no matter who" and that he's the "lesser" of two evils.

vote for whoever the fuck you want. and I do genuinely urge you to vote for the most progressive candidate you can for the house and senate and your local elections. but for the love of god, stop trying to convince people that there is, in any sense of the word, a "Lesser" evil in this situation. stop trying to absolve yourselves of the fact that you are CHOOSING evil. it's genuinely sick.

[boreal-sea]

Who is Tim Walz?

Kamala Harris has apparently picked Tim Walz as her running mate. He seems good, based on his record. He's also responsible for the widely spreading "Republicans are weird" meme I've seen quite a lot of.

He has a good record. Just like I did for Kamala Harris in a post that has become quite popular, I will do a simple review of things I like from Tim Walz' political history. Again, as with Harris, this is just from his Wikipedia page. Let's go!

House of Representatives

Opposed increasing troop numbers in Iraq

Co-sponsored a bill to raise Minnesota's minimum wage

Voted for stem cell research

Voted to allow Medicare to negotiate pharmaceutical prices

Voted against the act to Prohibit Federally Funded Abortion Services

Voted to advance the ACA

Has received a 100% rating from many progressive organizations like Planned Parenthood and the ACLU

Was a member of several caucuses, including the LGBT Equality Caucus

Governor of Minnesota

Signed into law police reforms after the murder of George Floyd

Had Minnesota join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, meaning that all of the state's electors will vote for whichever candidate wins the popular vote nation-wide.

Under his governance, Minnesota passed laws for requiring paid leave, banning non-compete agreements, cannabis legalization, abortion rights, universal free school meals,

Political stances

Pro cannabis

Against bailout bills that loan taxpayer money to large banks and auto manufacturers

Was a former teacher for many years, and is very pro-education and supporting public schools. He is against merit pay for teachers (this is a good thing), and supports lowering tuition costs

Used to be pro-gun, but after Parkland he changed his mind, and as Governor he signed a bill mandating universal background checks

Pro-LGBT - has voted for LGBT rights many times, including as Governor, where he signed bills banning conversion therapy and protecting gender-affirming care

Supports veterans rights and support

Supports abortion rights and women's rights

I am going to copy-paste the entire section for his views on the Israel-Hamas war, because I don't want people claiming I am taking anything out of context. Overall, he has views that echo my own in many ways:

Walz condemned Hamas's October 7 attacks in Israel and ordered flags to be lowered to half mast in the following days. After the 2024 Minnesota Democratic presidential primary, in which 19% of voters cast "uncommitted" ballots, Walz took a sympathetic view toward those doing so to protest President Biden's handling of the war in Gaza, calling them "civically engaged". Of the protests against U.S. funding of the war in Gaza, Walz said: "This issue is a humanitarian crisis. They have every right to be heard... These folks are asking for a change in course, they're asking for more pressure to be put on… You can hold competing things: that Israel has the right to defend itself, and the atrocities of October 7 are unacceptable, but Palestinian civilians being caught in this… has got to end." Walz also said he supports a ceasefire in Gaza.[100]

[curioscurio]

Genuine question, if you are voting for Biden why not just vote independent? Biden is not going to win regardless. Why not just skip the vote for genocide and vote for someone that actually cares about Palestinians

Because I live in Florida, which is a powerful swing state. Giving my vote to anyone other than the person who has the best chance at beating Trump is throwing it away. If Trump dies, I'll vote someone else. If Biden dies, I'll vote someone else. If it seems like everyone in the world has finally agreed on a unanimous third party vote by november, I'll vote someone else. Anything can happen before then, and my vote isn't set in stone.

Until then, the majority of undecided voters are going to vote Biden. There's a lot more people in Florida who are tired of the Trump train than you think. They're seeing his trials, his lies, and they're tired. There are a lot of students in Florida who are now eligible to vote. 4 years worth of 18 year olds who all have tik tok and are very much against all the bullshit in the world. And they all understand how the electoral college works. They know their votes could turn Florida blue.

America does not run on Popular vote, it runs on the electoral college. This means that every US state gets a certain number of votes out of 538 total. Some states, like Wyoming, get 3 votes. That means that my state, Florida, effectively gets 30 votes out of the 270 needed to win the presidency. But, here's the catch, ALL of those votes can only go to ONE candidate. (There are exceptions in 2 states, Nebraska and Maine.) If Trump gets more votes than any other single candidate in Florida, all 30 votes go to Trump.

It's called a swing state for a reason, because it can swing the race heavily in one candidates favor. Only Texas and Califorina get more votes at 40 and 54, respectively.

If all the Republicans in Florida vote for Trump, but all the Democrats and Independents are voting for people other than the person on the ballot, Trump will still get 30 votes. Even if some Republicans vote Biden, if everyone else is writing different candidates in, when everything is tallied, Trump could still win.

Imagine you have 270 red delicious apples, 200 Green apples, 38 yellow apples, and 30 macintosh apples. There are still more Red Delicious apples than any other kind, so Red Delicious gets the Presidency. Luckily, people in Florida who liked Red Delicious apples last year are getting tired and might pick Green apples instead this time. They are almost guaranteed to not pick a golden or macintosh apple, though.

This is what happened in 2016 that allowed Trump to win when he LOST to Hillary Clinton for the popular vote. More electoral college votes went to Trump than they did to any other person. From person to person, more Americans as a whole voted for Hillary. It's all about where you live physically.

This is the reason why I'm voting for Biden at the moment. If things change, I'll happily change too!

And Obviously I don't support Genocide. My point is that realistically speaking, Trump has flat out said to just "finish them" already, so it's not out there to assume he will push to accelerate this genocide using nuclear retaliation. I'm not trying to fear monger, I'm saying this system is broken, and they're lying to you about how it works in order to take advantage of your ignorance. Whoever gets the most votes win? Not exactly, but if you don't bother to look any closer, you'll never know you were playing a rigged game from the start.

Vote however you need to for your state. But understand where your vote is going. One vote is the difference between 30 and 3 electoral votes.