One poll means very little in a larger context. You have to look at the average of all Iowa polls and draw trends. Writing articles about single polls is just mindless sensationalism.

It’s these bad faith arguments that caused the thread to turn against you. Gender isn’t a cat, and it certainly isn’t anything at all. You claim you wanted earnest conversation, but you undermined that with snide comments you knew would result in negative reaction.

They are both former gamers, this isn’t Hillary pretending she is hip.

I’d rather pay for security updates than invite more AI and Microsoft sponsored spyware onto my computer…

More like the third lever is a lever that does absolutely nothing but comfort the person pulling with a dumb sign that says, “your moral purity is still intact”, 5 people still die. Spoiler, your moral purity is not intact, you just lie to yourself that it is.

I think you’re mis-characterizing what I’m saying. That isn’t the only two options, the far left could be a little more honest about how one gets to a majority and start working with the only party with power that somewhat aligns. It’s what I’ve done much of my adult life, I’ve swam in party politics, there is a lot more room for socialists, democratic socialists, progressives, etc in the party than people seem to realize. You just have to be willing to compromise for incremental progress instead of letting perfect be the enemy of good. Policy shifts move slowly, but they do move.

The left has a clear path forward to move the Overton window back, but it needs the far left to be willing to do something other than constantly masturbate our/their moral self righteousness. But parties don’t really shift the Overton window that much alone, society does, activism does, education does. Parties don’t give a great speech and everyone changes their mind. That kind of of leadership is a simplistic fantasy we sell ourselves, but really parties and leaders meet the moment, they don’t make the moment. Citizens need to get involved, the far left needs to stop standing on the outside looking in. They need to be committed long term to joining, and then shifting, the party for real.

It’s not a “strategy”, it’s literally how democracy works. You need 50% + 1 or all the moral purity in the universe means nothing. If the far left continues to never work as a coalition then the left is forced to move to the middle. Don’t get me wrong, most of my views are pretty far left, I just understand how democracy works…

Morally pure ideologues that refuse to work with others enjoy all the benefits of knowing they are right while making none of the decisions. Democracies involve consensus and coalition building.

Yeah I generally agree, but I suspect that every politician that attends national security meetings is constantly being told that Israel is a necessary partner. Combine that with a strong Christian and Jewish Israel lobby and even a good person may recognize that they can’t gain power to do all the things they want and also oppose funding Israel at the same time.

It’s the paradox of political power, it’s why if I went back into politics I would do activism instead of elected office, with activism you have the freedom to put your energy where you want without compromise. In politics compromise is fundamental, even necessary, even when dealing with unquestionably immoral things. Personally I think being afraid to spend your political capital means you have failed, but id also probably lose if I ran for office.

Have you met voters? Pretending like voters are any better would be pretty hilarious if it wasn’t so sad.

How they gonna nominate someone that has only ever said they will never run for president. Dumbest take I have ever seen on lemmy. Michelle would never be president, she doesn’t want it.

It’s impossible to appeal to everyone. 6 in 10 Americans believe Israel has a right to continue it’s fight with Hamas. 6 in 10 Americans are also sympathetic to both sides of the conflict. The Dems are attempting to thread that needle. And while I don’t agree with the unconditional support of Israel. The US is heavily invested in partnership with Israel and foreign policy has always shifted painfully slow. Despite all the death in the world, the US is involved in the least death it has been involved in since the WWII. We’ve been constantly at war since WWII. And shifting from the US being constantly at war to only arming our allies is at least some improvement.

One things certain, if Trump wins authoritarians will be emboldened worldwide and the amount of death will increase much much more, including here.

When he was in front of the Senate confirmation hearing he was absolutely embarrassed. He knew everyone was watching while he was accused of sexual harassment. He basically stopped interacting with the media because he was so furious with how he was portrayed publicly. Dude hates being publicly shamed. Doesn’t mean he’s wise enough to stop doing shitty things.

The only thing Thomas likes more than money is respect. He would never take Oliver money because it would publicly embarrass him. He hates embarrassment more than anything.

I tried… I’ve both worked and volunteered in the party for thousands of hours. Most of the people working in the party want progressive policy, but we don’t live in a country that gets enough votes from progressives, so politicians predictably play it safe. You can’t wave a magic wand and poof, you have all the votes you need for progressive policy. Politicians are paid to represent their constituents. If even 5 percent of Dems won in a conservative district, or a district where only conservatives show up, then those districts wants and needs will not pass the most progressive policy. So people in the party work to pass what they can pass, that makes them practical, not anti-progressive. People with brains do what they can with what they have.

The more Dems we can get into office the more opportunities we have to move the needle left. You don’t move the needle left with constant infighting within the left. You move the needle left, by the left wing uniting and gaining a clear mandate. We haven’t had a real left wing mandate in my lifetime and people act like Dems should magically pass progressive policy without the votes, then they whine and stay home because the party without enough power to accomplish anything, predictably didn’t accomplish anything. It’s and endless self fulfilling prophecy and it’s incredibly moronic. I’m just so tired of seeing your endless doomsaying all overy lemmy, fucking do something instead of bringing everyone down with your lies and toxicity.

Politics is a zero sum game, they saw the money better spent on winning. Your framing of it is dishonest. Again, I don’t agree with doing that, but it’s pretty easy to understand why they did it, it worked.

That would be convincing if they hadn’t spent money buying ads for maga candidates during that same election cycle.

I agree, that was an awful strategy. Even if it helps in the short term, it boosts fascism in the long term. It did mostly gain us seats though… https://www.npr.org/2022/11/11/1135878576/the-democrats-strategy-of-boosting-far-right-candidates-seems-to-have-worked

So your answer is no then? Representatives don’t get as much contact as you think. Apply pressure wherever and whenever you can, even if that legislator does nothing in the years to come, every person applying pressure moves the needle. Doing nothing does nothing. Legislators like to keep their jobs and will suddenly have a change of heart if they feel their job is threatened. That takes hundreds of people in each district making their dissatisfaction known. Be the change you wish to see.

Parties pull funding when it’s clear there is no path to victory, so they can ensure victory elsewhere. That’s not them “rather have a maga chud” that’s strategic. You would be just as angry if they wasted money on a loss. I’ve seen your views all over lemmy, whatever narrative says the party did wrong, that’s the narrative you’ll take. Volunteer for the next candidate that runs, prove to the party that they have support and maybe funding will actually stick around. You’re an open book, no action, all anger.

I think you’re making a values judgement instead of a logical one. No one was claiming the USA wasn’t a democracy when only male white land owners could vote. It was just a flawed society, but still a democracy.

By definition, can you really be a democracy if you are an apartheid regime where two thirds of your “residents” have low to no rights in gotingnor determining their future?

The population of the Palestinian territories is, closer to 1/3 of the whole of Israel/Palestine. But the answer is yes either way. The people of Israel have a fully functioning democracy, and have had for some time. If they use that democracy to create a brutal militarily controlled territory, Israel is still a democracy, even if their territories are not or even if their territories have limited self determination. Democracy is just a form of government, that form of government exists for the people living in Israel proper whether or not it exists for their territories.