Baron Von J

if we all wait around for the Dems to save us. If the Democrats want my vote, they need to put AOC on the ticket. If they want to run actual progressives,

This right here is what I’m saying. Anybody who meets the requirements can declare their candidacy in the party primary. We don’t need the party to turn around and say “oh hey here’s a bunch of candidates for you to pick from.” Was AOC given to us by the party? NO! She just up and ran against an incumbent because she saw Bernie do it. And the voters in the district showed up and voted for her. Fuck what “the party” wants and use their process to get what we want! It’s not up to the party to put someone on the ticket, it’s up to that someone to register to be on the primary ballot and the god damn primary voters to show up and vote!

The DNC playing favorites in 2016.

They did, but it didn’t matter, because more people showed to the primaries to vote for Clinton than did for Bernie. She had more pledged delegates, elected by the primary voters, going into the convention and the superdelegates didn’t even need to vote for her to win the nomination. The party even changed the convention rules starting in 2018 so that the superdelegatees don’t even vote unless the pledged delegates (the ones elected by the primary voters) can’t elect a candidate in the first vote.

More likely I won’t be able to vote by then because I’m trans.

Stay safe and know that you are still valued and welcome by millions of people.

Edit, I didn’t it down votes you by the way that was somebody else. We can disagree without a petty down vote war

Agree on that. Cheers!

I don’t think they’ve participated in them consistently enough and in a large enough scale for it. Either that or there simply aren’t enough progressive voters to defeat the centrists and neoliberals. In which case splintering into a third party essentially means permanent Republican majority. Everybody wants to cite Bernie as proof that a progressive isn’t allowed to win when the reality is simply that more people voted for Hillary in 2016 (not a single superdelegate vote was needed to give her the win at the convention, and the DNC changed the rules in 2018 onwards so that superdelegates don’t even vote in the convention unless the pledged delegates can’t elect a nominee in the first round) and the same is true of Biden in 2020.

Indeed I agree. Which is why I’m advocating for progressive candidates to run in the Democratic party primaries, and for the progressive voters to actually support them in those primaries.

Second, only 19% of respondents said they supported displacing the people of Gaza to other countries, including 32% of Republicans and 12% of Democrats, while 34% opposed the move, including 28% of Republicans and 39% of Democrats.

1 in 5 isn’t a very fine-grained metric. 19% of US Americans is a lot of people. I’m glad it’s not bigger, but still wish it was a lot smaller.

I call bullshit on the vote splitting.

So you’re either voting a right-leaning candidate or a left-leaning candidate. If there are multiple candidates from one of those two halves of the spectrum on the ballot where the recipient of the most votes wins, the vote for that half is split and lowers the threshold for the most popular candidate from the other half.

And so far, the Democrats have been fucking useless. So what we vote for a useless Democrat, or a fascist, or split the ticket and maybe someone worth a shit will win.

So don’t vote for them. Get a progressive to run in the next primary and then go vote in the primary to replace the useless person. When I advocate for voting in the Democratic primaries, it’s not to support incumbents like Pelosi and Schumer. They can fuck all the way off for failing so badly. It’s to utilize the infrastructure and ballot access that the Democratic party has that no third party can come remotely close to competing with. After decades of existence neither the Green party nor the Libertarian party were on the ballot in all 50 states in 2024. By all means, go 3rd party in local, even county, races when they have a chance in the polls.

The primaries are open to any candidate who meets the requirements (ie filing deadline and signatures from the district, etc). Don’t rely on a party to provide you a candidate. Fucking go participate in the process to select better candidates (but they also have to actually fucking run in those primaries, too).

In 2016, folks voted against Hillary. Get that, many folks saw Hillary as the greater of two evils and voted for Trump.

90% of Bernie voters stayed with Democratic party and voted for Hilary

https://www.npr.org/2017/08/24/545812242/1-in-10-sanders-primary-voters-ended-up-supporting-trump-survey-finds

If Bernie had been on the ticket he could have pulled votes from both of them and then maybe Hillary would have won Trump would have won or Bernie would have won. We don’t know.

But he wasn’t, because progressive voters didn’t show up enough in the primaries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdelegate#2016_election

Sanders initially said that the candidate with the majority of pledged delegates should be the nominee; in May 2016, after falling behind in the elected delegate count, he shifted, pushed for a contested convention and arguing that, “The responsibility that superdelegates have is to decide what is best for this country and what is best for the Democratic Party.”[46][54] Ultimately, Clinton won the nomination without relying on the votes of superdelegates; she led Sanders by a substantial number of elected delegates (from primary and caucus votes), as well by a substantial margin in the popular vote.

More people voted for Hillary, so she was the nominee. And that’s my point. You can overcome

It’s time progressives break ranks with the duo poly. And if that means splitting the ticket then so be it.

It doesn’t fucking have to mean splitting the vote. Just fucking vote for progressives in the god damn primaries!

I will say this, I won’t get off the couch to vote for Newsome. As he has already proven that he is perfectly willing to throw me under the bus for power.

If the alternative is measurably worse, then you are just making easier for them to win by reducing the number of votes they need to receive in order to win.

Progressives will be trying to build an alternative to the corporatist zionist dems.

But how? There are already multiple parties beyond the big two. Minor parties who have existed for decades. But only 3 of them were on the ballot in more than 10 states in 2024. There’s just no way, in voting math, that a new party can just drop in and take place. Local and county seats (your link about SF LatinX group), sure. But state and federal 3rd parties are a pipe dream.

If there are enough progressives to beat a Democratic candidate (not even win the general but just beat the Democratic candidate), then there enough to win the Democratic primary. And then there will be a chance to beat the Republican rather than splitting the vote. And if there aren’t, then splitting the vote just means more MAGA.

If that means progressives finally surging to run and vote in the Democratic primaries then great. Reminder that the Tea Party movement wasn’t ever a 3rd party, and a significant contributor to its success was the billionaire Koch brothers pouring money into state legislatures first, and US Congress second. A new minor party won’t succeed much beyond county level without nationwide electoral reform (ranked choice), and only 26 states have voter-led ballot initiatives (the rest require the legislature to approve direct ballot propositions).

Nobody wants Trump as their findom.

It’s not really that powerful, nor is it likely what billionaires are peddling to the politicians. Where would the billionaires go with lower taxes and yet the same secure standard of living? What’s to stop the politicians from raising taxes to 0.1% lower than these mythical low-tax countries with the stability and infrastructure to support their companies? That’s just the bullshit story that is fed to the public.

In reality it’s just what Elon is doing, but historically has been done more privately. “Prop up my business with low taxes, lax regulations, and tasty government contracts or I’ll spend $100M supporting a primary opponent.” And the politicians say “Ok give my wife spouse a board position or something and we can deal.”

I’m going to just assume that an online retailer in another state will see the shipping address and ask for ID, not caring that your browser connection is “in” some other location.

I just tried searching for @pics@lemmy.world on pixelfed.social and it was not found. However I can find myself when I search for @baronvonj@lemmy.world on pixelfed.social. So seems like you can’t.

Clinton won the 2016 primary on the strength of her popular vote lead, without needing any superdelegates to ratfuck the vote at the convention. Same with Biden in 2020 (and the DNC changed the rules starting in 2018 such that the vote at the convention doesn’t even include superdelegates unless it’s contested and needs a second vote).

The problem is simply one of turnout. Progressive voters just haven’t turned up enough to sustain what Bernie started in 2016. If Bernie and AOC can keep it up, and get more of the Squad and people like Waltz stumping around the country for state and local races, and get progressives to both run and vote in the primaries, we can do it.

Missed opportunity headline. Supply chains crack under yolk of <cause(s)>.

Nationwide, over 99% of the legislative offices (state and federal) are held be either a Democratic or Republican. Only the two major parties have nationwide ballot access. Only three minor parties have ballot access in more than 10. A third party won’t be viable nationally until we have ranked choice voting everywhere. They won’t even be viable at the state level without it in that state. Not all states have direct ballot initiatives. That will only happen through ballot initiatives or the major party in control of the state adopting it. Only 26 states have ballot initiatives.

Put that effort into ballot initiatives in the states that have them, and into the Democratic primaries nationwide, until we have ranked choice. Then we can have more than two parties.

Don’t forget the literal rape.

https://www.nsvrc.org/blogs/conversion-therapy-sexual-violence

Ver-sales. And they will adamantly “correct” you if you say it right.

Versailles, Kentucky is probably the dumbest one I can think of

Considering the Democratic Party has done this 3 times in a row and that they refuse to primary wildly unpopular members of their own party.

The primaries are open to anybody who meets the requirements. We don’t have to wait for “the party” to provide us with better candidates. The better candidates just have to follow the process to declare themselves a candidate. And then we just have to show up and vote for them.

Bernie Sanders got screwed over by the super delegates who all went for unpopular Hillary Clinton.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdelegate#2016_election

Sanders initially said that the candidate with the majority of pledged delegates should be the nominee; in May 2016, after falling behind in the elected delegate count, he shifted, pushed for a contested convention and arguing that, “The responsibility that superdelegates have is to decide what is best for this country and what is best for the Democratic Party.”[46][54] Ultimately, Clinton won the nomination without relying on the votes of superdelegates; she led Sanders by a substantial number of elected delegates (from primary and caucus votes), as well by a substantial margin in the popular vote.

Also at the top of that page:

In 2018, the Democratic National Committee reduced the influence of superdelegates by barring them from voting on the first ballot at the Democratic National Convention, allowing them to vote only in a contested convention.

Imagine how wildly different things would be if he was the Democratic nominee in 2016?

It’s sad to think about how much better things could have been, and also if we had had Gore in 2000. But we shouldn’t forget that Clinton won the primaries popular vote by enough that the superdelegates’ votes didn’t matter.

The majority of voters supported a Nazi.

Factually wrong. A plurality of voters supported a Nazi. The majority, 50.2%, voted for other candidates. Pedantic, yes, but meaningful nonetheless.

Ballotpedia makes it even more bleak than I thought: “Three minor parties were recognized in more than 10 states as of January 2025”

https://ballotpedia.org/List_of_political_parties_in_the_United_States

I thought the Libertarians were on the ballot in all 50 states. Just crazy when you consider Perot had just shy of 20% of the popular vote in 1992 (and still received zero electoral votes).

3rd party for anything beyond county level just isn’t happening without ranked choice.