Mastodawn

@benroyce Hopefully the Democrats have learned a lesson from 2024 and stop running lite republicans. They're entitled morons if they expect people who don't like genocide to vote blue no matter who. #uspol

we show up in the primaries and get the left candidate in

this is the lesson of mamdani: the people just bucked the establishment, and made it happen

corporatist dems will not magically decide to become leftists, and anyone who thinks they will must be joking

*we* have to show up and replace them

anyone who doesn't show up in the primaries, then complains the dem candidates suck, needs to shut up: they are the reason why the candidates suck

@benroyce Ok so what if leftists do come out to vote in the primaries, but their vote gets split because whoops there happen to be one too many leftish candidates running and then the pro-genocide candidate gets the nomination?

ᴮᵉⁿ ᴿᵒʸᶜᵉVOTE IN THE PRIMARIES

i don't understand your complaint

"what if something bad happens"?

of course. there's numerous other scenarios where something can go wrong

or the centrist dem can straight up beat the leftist dem in the primary

and?

the simple point is:

if you vote, you may lose. if you don't vote, you *will* lose

nevermind that if leftists show the fuck up, their concerns will be addressed rather than ignored

no elected official cares about people who don't #vote

you *make them* care

@benroyce I'm just trying to get clarification on who you think is an entitled moron and under what circumstances. If leftists keep voting blue no matter who, the message that sends is that the Democrats can ignore leftists. We should not encourage that sort of entitlement on behalf of the party.

1. i'm talking about the primaries, where you outright choose a leftist

2. if you think "i'm not voting and i'm sending a message to centrist dems":

it doesn't send anyone any message

they just ignore you

and it means you don't care about trans rights, women's rights, voting rights, immigrants, what is going on in iran right now, etc

to pout and sit things out and risk all of that and more "to send a message" is entitled as fuck

nobody cares about people who don't vote

@benroyce Okay, so when a pro-genocide candidate gets nominated, it's best for leftists to vote third-party or write-in in the general. Got it.

if you vote 3rd party you are voting MAGA

in our stupid FPTP voting system you are dividing the left vote and helping MAGA win

and if you stand against harris, for example, due to gaza (ignoring trump?!), then not voting/ 3rd party voting: congratulations, you helped what trump is doing in iran happen

you're talking about feeling pure, for yourself

you don't care what happens in reality

that's entitled

your rationale only helps fascism

a vote is strategy, not a romance

@benroyce No, that is shill logic. Votes must be earned. No candidate, especially from a party that is barely a party, is entitled to anyone's vote.

There *is* something entitled to your vote:

Your society

You're not trans or an immigrant etc so Trump's malice doesn't threaten you

So you are privileged to play silly games like "teach dems a lesson" and allow your society to go to shit. Because it doesn't affect you (or you're too stupid to realize it affects you)

Centrist dems aren't listening to your "lesson." Not voting means you don't care

You have to show up and *replace* centrist dems in the primaries

#vote

@benroyce @fathermcgruder Agree completely with Ben. Leftists didn’t like Hubert Humphrey in 1968 because he was too connected to Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam War, so we got 8 years of Nixon, more escalation, more body bags, Cointelpro, murdered Black Panthers etc. Leftists didn’t like Al Gore in 2000, so we got 8 years of GWB, two devastating wars, a broken economy, John Roberts and Sam Alito, inaction on climate change…1/

@benroyce @fathermcgruder Leftists didn’t like Hillary in 2016 or Kamala in 2024…see the pattern? These were all close elections. If we had won even 1 of them, everyone’s lives would have been better, and leftists would have had more space to push for change. Now we are fighting to survive. And millions of people all over the globe are dead who would still be alive.

Voting is harm reduction at worst, transformative at best. There’s nothing evil about reducing harm.2/

@benroyce @fathermcgruder After 50 years of activism and all of these disappointments, I have stopped looking to electoral politics as the main focus for transformative change. That comes from organizing in communities. Forcing elected officials to do the right thing. If you vote for the right people, they’re more likely to give in to the demands of communities, or do the least to block them. So I vote for the best possible available candidate and keep organizing. 3/

@benroyce @fathermcgruder One more comment: when the US was founded only white male property owners could vote. Women had to fight for the right to vote. Even though Black American men were guaranteed the right to vote by the 15th amendment and Black women by the 19th amendment, civil rights activists had to fight for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. People have died for the right to vote. Who are any of us to throw away that right? It’s disrespectful. 4/

@jbluespruce @fathermcgruder

And entitled

@benroyce @fathermcgruder Ben, thank you for consistently, persistently, and bluntly addressing this issue in your posts.

@jbluespruce @fathermcgruder

no, thank you

your whole comment chain was banger

we are on the same page

we'll just keep announcing the reality of the situation and get people to realize

@benroyce @fathermcgruder Thank you! I appreciate you - your posts give me heart to be loud about this. I made this argument many times in the run-up to 2024. 2024 reminded me so much of 1968. Which was a horrible year for many reasons. I could not get people to listen. And Trump is so much worse than Nixon was, a sentence I thought I would never have to say. But even when people make terrible mistakes re voting, we can’t give up on democracy. That’s the work.

@jbluespruce @fathermcgruder

💪 😤

we're back-to-back June. before us is a horde of toxic idealists and trollfarm

all we have to do is just keep announcing the reality

@benroyce @fathermcgruder ❤️

Just a trash panda 🦝Mar 13

@jbluespruce @benroyce @fathermcgruder

"If voting changed anything they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman

People sometimes quote this at me. And I find it best always to point out what you just did. Voting was illegal and people fought like hell for the franchise.

A_Minion Mar 13

@jbluespruce @benroyce @fathermcgruder We hear this often about those nasty evil white men.

What has always amazed me because of the attitude then (and now for that matter) regarding women's rights is that IIRC no where in the constitution is the right of women to vote denied.

It would have been so simple for the bad old Men who wrote the constitution & bill of rights to state in writing for all to see that women are not allowed to vote,

but they didn't.

https://www.carnegie.org/our-work/article/voting-rights-timeline/

@A_Minion @benroyce @fathermcgruder Nowhere in the US Constitution, you mean. The Constitution left determination of voting qualifications to the states, which almost universally banned women from voting. It wasn’t until the 19th amendment that women all over the country had the right to vote. And yes, it was white men in power who did this. Thanks for pointing that out.

Mastodon Migration Mar 13

@jbluespruce @benroyce @fathermcgruder

Yup. Great observation. The right keeps running the same playbook to divide the left, and it works almost every time.

@mastodonmigration @benroyce @fathermcgruder The right and our foreign adversaries absolutely take advantage of our divisions, but they wouldn’t be able to if we didn’t create them in the first place. I would’ve hoped we would’ve learned our lesson by now. Maybe it took Trump 2 to do it, I don’t know.

@mastodonmigration @benroyce @fathermcgruder

Sheldon Mar 13

@jbluespruce that's my only ray of optimism from this completely horrid stretch of our history... that the result is so bad that it makes the Republican brand toxic for a 20 year span, making it possible to create real progress toward that more perfect union.

@jbluespruce @benroyce @fathermcgruder It's too bad the party does not consider the left worth courting, and that they'd rather lose general elections than nominate candidates even marginally further to the left.

@reflex @jbluespruce @fathermcgruder

they never will

it's our job to mob the primaries and replace centrist dems

if instead the left doesn't vote, then the left can't complain, because the left made this by not voting

@benroyce @jbluespruce @fathermcgruder Of course I'll vote. I'm just not voting for centrists. Voting for centrists directly damages the chances of leftists taking over. If no leftist is on the ballot I'll think of someone to write in.

@reflex @jbluespruce @fathermcgruder

and if trump wins, you believe leftists have a better chance to take over?

😂

@benroyce @reflex @fathermcgruder See my comments above. Leftists refusing to vote for centrists in the general election and thereby enabling Republicans to win has never, in my experience over the past 6 decades, made things better for leftists. Or anyone else! Esp those most vulnerable. E.g., BIPOC, LGBTQ+, poor/low income, Palestinians, Ukrainians. Al Gore was as centrist as they come. If he had won in 2000, the world would be very different now.

@jbluespruce @benroyce @fathermcgruder If you believe that I hope you work very, very hard to nominate leftists.

We've spent 35 years voting blue no matter who and the result is the USA is the closest to full fascism it's been since the 1850s.

@reflex @jbluespruce @fathermcgruder

because of people not voting

the effect you cite happens due to people *not* voting, not because of those who chose to show up

you cite a cause and an effect, but you have the wrong cause

@benroyce @reflex @fathermcgruder Exactly. If you hadn’t voted blue in those elections, how do you think the outcome would’ve been different? It’s fucking discouraging, I know. I have 55 years of voting. We are up against entrenched authoritarian forces. Voting is one of our tools. Not the only one but essential. Progressives not voting is what authoritarians want. It’s what they aim their disinfo/voter suppression campaigns at. Why help them?

@jbluespruce @benroyce @reflex @fathermcgruder

Pino Carafa Mar 13

"Voting is never going to be enough"

Correct

"So I won't bother to vote"

No. Voting is not enough. So you don't JUST vote. You vote AND you do everything else you need to do. Vote in primaries. Help progressive candidates reach the audience they need to reach. Work in your local community. Etc, etc et-cete-RAHR

@benroyce Dude you don't know anything about me or how or why I vote. That you assume I see voting or not-voting as a means stick it to someone or something reveals your own faulty understanding or disregard of material reality. If Democrats want leftists to vote for them, they just have to run candidates that clear some very low bars. These votes are much easier to get than those from conservatives.

@benroyce Of course, losing campaigns still pay very well, as demonstrated by Kamala's. It's questionable that they really want to win sometimes.

so we show up in the primaries and replace them

"i'm going to show i don't care very hard by not voting and thus magically turn a centrist into a leftist" is moronic beyond belief

@benroyce No argument from me about voting in primary elections. However, counting on left leaning people to vote blue no matter who in general elections is a moronic mistake. It simply does matter who.

i completely understand the existence of morons who won't vote strategically, and hew to an idiotic conception of purity as their standard. and thus allow the country to fall to fascism since that is the only real world effect of their nonvote, no matter their motivations

trolls understand that too. that's why you see so much high holy indignation based on perfectionism

the only value of these useless lumps you think are making valid choices is helping MAGA

liferstate Mar 13

@benroyce @fathermcgruder I'm old enough to remember when the progressive watchword was "Listen to Black women." But when Black women said "I'm voting for Harris and you should too" suddenly that wasn't important anymore.

In 2024, 92% of Black women voted for Harris. It wasn't because they didn't care about Palestine. It's because Black voters know very well that every candidate is flawed and all votes are strategic. White people still refuse to take that lesson.

@liferstate @benroyce Listening does not mean agreeing. Come on now.

@fathermcgruder @liferstate

centrist dems aren't listening at all

we simply have to show up in the primaries and replace them

so any rationale that says "it is correct people should not vote until magic perfect candidate appears" is an inversion of reality and is only an approach that makes sure we drift further right

the simple reality is people need to show the fuck up in a giant mob and register the left candidate as their choice in their primaries

that is only way

#vote

@benroyce @fathermcgruder @liferstate Yes to the primaries. No to centrist Dems regardless of the election. If Dems nominate a centrist they lose my vote. I'm a former party leader who has been in the backroom meetings, if they do not fear losing the general the party absolutely will undermine leftist candidates at the primary stage. The leftist only gets supported when it's clear they lose without them.

There is always another election. If we keep giving in the left can literally never win.

@reflex @fathermcgruder @liferstate

so you're a moron

you always choose the less worse candidate, even if they suck, to at least hold the line

"There is always another election"

yeah, about that...

it must be nice being so entitled David. that you can unleash so much suffering with a MAGA presidency and it doesn't affect you, or you believe it won't affect you. "teaching centrists a lesson" is more important to you than trans rights, immigrants, etc. entitled

you're a fake

@benroyce @fathermcgruder @liferstate Nope, I'm a realist who spent 15 years inside the Dem party including as vice chair of one of the largest orgs in the country.

I have sat in meetings with billionaire funders listening to them dismantle mildly left efforts inside the party. You will literally never win until you start withholding votes. It's short term pain for long term gain.

@reflex @fathermcgruder @liferstate

so you show up in the primaries to get real left candidates. we're together on that

then you show up in the general and hold the line against MAGA if the left candidate does not prevail in the primaries

rinse, repeat. gradually move left

if you let MAGA win you just don't care who you harm, and you're making the effort to move left that much harder

@benroyce @fathermcgruder @liferstate Yes, I will vote for a leftist in the general. Not a centrist.

Again, if we do not demonstrate we will withhold votes in the general, leftist efforts in the primaries will get undermined. That's why we are where we are today, we did not hold the line starting with Bill Clinton.

The longer this goes on the worse it will get.

Btw, as someone who was specifically targeted under the first Trump admin, do not f'ing tell me what I'm risking. I know.

@reflex @fathermcgruder @liferstate

you understand working to replace centrists in the primaries

but you don't understand holding the line in the general

you think "teaching the centrists a lesson" means something

it doesn't mean anything. who cares about centrists. red herring

you hold the line against maga by voting dem in the general

then you go back to the primaries and replace the centrists

it seems to me you don't understand strategy, and you're only harming the left because of that

@fathermcgruder @liferstate @benroyce

Sean Hurley Mar 13

So opposing genocide is demanding "purity" now? The regime committing the genocide is a fascist regime. It is founded on exclusivity and ethno-supremacism. How does one support that and still oppose fascism?

@SeanJH @fathermcgruder @liferstate

who are you responding to

Cassandrich Mar 13

@SeanJH @fathermcgruder @liferstate @benroyce It's not "opposing genocide" to refuse to vote in an election where "cut off support for the country doing genocide or don't cut it off?" is not a question on the ballot.

@SeanJH @liferstate @benroyce

@dalias voting for any pro-genocide candidate sends the wrong feedback signal. We know now that the Democrats got the message: https://www.axios.com/2026/02/22/dnc-2024-autopsy-harris-gaza
Hopefully, they will take heed on future campaigns.

Scoop: Dems working on secret report found Gaza cost Harris votes

The DNC's research on what went wrong in 2024 has been under lock and key since party leaders decided to hide it from the public.

Axios

@fathermcgruder @dalias @SeanJH @liferstate

just, you know, fuck all the trans people, immigrants, women, {insert 1,000 other examples of death and damage domestically and internationally here, including in the middle east which you *say* you care about}, to make your point

which i don't even think was made. you allude to an article, and so what. some airhead centrist is going "well let's appeal to MAGA" about now

do i understand your entitlement obsession and callousness correctly?

liferstate Mar 13

@benroyce @fathermcgruder @dalias @SeanJH Trans people who have the means to do so are fleeing the country right now. Not a metaphor. I'm in a pretty safe area and even I have an exit plan.

@liferstate @fathermcgruder @dalias @SeanJH

that's what nonvoters gave us

@dalias @SeanJH @liferstate

@benroyce My point is that supporting genocide is a losing position for Democrats (as it should be). Yet, you keep trying to convince people to just let it slide. That's messed up.

@fathermcgruder @dalias @SeanJH @liferstate

and yet not voting and letting trump win makes genocide worse

so what we're dealing with is morons who don't live in reality, and think they are taking a "brave stand" when all that is happening is they are stupid toxic idealists being manipulated by a troll psyop to get trump elected

Cassandrich Mar 13

@fathermcgruder @SeanJH @liferstate @benroyce There was only one "pro-genocide candidate" and one candidate who was painted by racist pieces of shit as "pro-genocide" for lacking the ability to change the entire US political establishment position on Israel with the power of thought.

Mastodon Migration Mar 13

@dalias @fathermcgruder @SeanJH @liferstate @benroyce

A very important distinction, and one that we will continue to run into. These two things are not the same, and there is some very powerful information warfare targeted at blurring these differences.

@SeanJH @liferstate @benroyce

@dalias All she had to do was call it a genocide. She wouldn't do that bare minimum, so it was clear that she wasn't credible on anything else. Instead she told victims' families to be quiet and mocked them by sending pro-genocide figures to their districts. Denial is pro-genocide because it supports the genociders. Calling it a genocide would also have triggered policies that restrict material support.