Sure, but one side is currently on a zealous charge trying to extend it far harder than the other.

They’re the same side. You could do with improving your reading comprehension.

Would be a fine idea if

Handwaving bullshit excuses. Not the time. Most important election of our lifetimes. Unique threat. Blah blah blah Already addressed elsewhere.

By the time the Dems had reorganised and rebuilt there would be little left for them to govern.

No one here is advocating for reforming the Democrats. Again, zero reading comprehension, zero understanding.

hese are all good methods for getting noticed, yes. The question is,

Ahistorical nonesense. Change has almost never been made by electoral majority but by the threat of the alternative being less palatable to the ruling class / party than changing their position. As stated elsewhere there are countless examples throughout history both recent and ancient. Go and read something, anything really. You haven’t provided a single example of success for your proposed method dispite me asking numerous times for some. Because you’re full of shit.

I think I’ve been unclear somewhere, as withholding votes is what I’ve been saying everywhere, but do it in a coordinated and widespread way, not ad-hoc as people seem to be suggesting here.

No, your original premise was that you cannot withhold your vote for Biden because Trump would be worse. You’ve moved the goalposts when people have taken apart that circular logic. Now you say you can withhold your vote, but only if you’re guarunteed a certain victory within a set of arbitrary paramaters set by you that make it impossible, while hand-waving away or outright opposing and even supportive non-electoral strategy - just like you did with the point above. Almost as if you’re totally full of shit.

The vast majority here think electoralism is worthless and have made this point to you. You’ve then proposed and even more limited and worthless version of it. Plus showing almost total ignorance of the very basics of how it even works.

And then you copy and paste, repeat, copy and paste, repeat… we’re done here, I’m bored now.

The elected president is typically the head of one of the parties, yes, although I haven’t seen anything saying they must be (please let me know if there is a rule about that). However, they are separate to the party, being the executive rather than legislative branch.

You literally have no fucking idea what you’re talking about. The president, senators, congresspeople, and all the way down are all the party dipshit. Go and learn the absolute basics. No investigation, no right to speak.

The way I see it, this year’s election is uniquely evil, in that on the one hand you have Biden and on the other hand you have trump, who has stated his desire to be a dictator,

I know how you see it, because you’re copy and pasting the same ignorant vibes-based nonesense I’ve already addressed elsewhere but you couldn’t reply to or defend. Next.

Yes, that’s what I am saying.

No, it’s not, because you advocate against even threatening to withhold voting for a candidate. That is the original premise of your entire arguement you came here to make.

(Also, don’t think I didn’t notice you cut the rest of my quote to make it only about electoralism again and not other pressures)

However unless it is large enough the removal of votes will either achieve nothing or be counter productive by letting a worse option in.

It’s not complicated, just tough to get enough people to agree with you.

Anything but assured victory is unacceptable and should not be risked. Also you must limit yourself to only a very narrow set of activities, during a tiny time window, that make that kind of organising impossible, while strengthing your opponent. This is definitely a good faith arguement.

You’re repeating your contradictory circular logic again here because you can’t engage with me addressing this point elsewhere. Are you not bored yet?

Deciding to withhold your vote at a late stage, without explaining to the candidates exactly why will achieve nothing.

Straw man bullshit because you can’t and won’t address the actual points people, including me have made elsewhere in the thread. No one is advocating for this. You’re arguing against a position that you made up because your orginal premise is, was, and has been shown to be bullshit concern trolling throughout this thread.

the one that minimises the damage over the next term

Your original premise, that you’ve repeated, is that not doing this is unacceptable. You also never addressed why you draw the line there when I asked elsewhere.

It certainly doesn’t make organising or growing numbers impossible, just difficult

Then why would one do something that you acknowledge makes the task much more difficult? And then add all the other myriad restrictions you’ve dictated (and haven’t address when I’ve pointed them out)? Unless of course, you’re full of shit and are doing piss-weak concern trolling.

no one is making a clear and compelling case for a different approach

Literally hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of people throughout history have done this to great success, as I have pointed out elsewhere. Once again, you don’t engage on those points. I wonder why.

People in this thread have articulated everything from broad marxist philosphies on developing proletarian power, to specific use of strikes, to even electoral strategies that fit within your deliberately impossibly narrow ‘acceptable’ electoral frame. You’ve ignored or handwaved all of them away.

If you don’t engage in good faith, you don’t get further effort and discussion. And you haven’t, even when you’ve been offered it.

But if you really want to look deeper into the issue I’d suggest starting here.

Agreed. But he’s not. Even driving a car in shades he just talked about how cool his dad was when he drove a car in shades.

Man, my dad was so good at spraying the supreme court with Tommy Gun fire. That was the generation that knew how to get things done, am I right jack?

I’ve stated these, noting their historical successes and failures, elesewhere in response to you, before you made this comment. You didn’t engage, because you’re not looking for an answer or to discuss anything tangible. Just to repeat your tired, concern-troll imaginary hypotheticals again and again and again…

This is very silly. It’s just another list of contradictions and wishful thinking without any demonstratable evidence.

The presidential elections, along with the other positions elected then, are the highest stakes

Elsewhere you say that movements should be grassroots first. Elsewhere in the thread you then state that down-ticket races won’t have much effect. Elsewhere still you argue that presidents taking executive action and pressuring them to do so is largely worthless because they don’t control the other houses. All of these points seem strangely contradicatory, almost as if you’re full of shit

starting in December and going for the next 3.5 years or so

But that will affect down-ballot races! School boards! Run-offs! Blah blah blah…

Also, if you think a presidential election cycle as defined by the parties is only six months long then you haven’t been paying attention.

including his stated desire to be a dictator

Dictators famously require being voted in and run on that ambition.

They also famously do that, succeed, and then insist four years later that in order to do it, they’ll need a second term.

If you think Trump is a unique threat then you haven’t read basically any American history whatsoever.

Nor do you understand how political power in the US works.

And if you believe he is a unique threat why don’t you support any and all options to ensure he never again occupies the presidency?

What’s the margin between the first and second place parties? You probably need to convince around that number of the leading parties voters. It’s a straight numbers matter. Figure out how many are needed to swing the election, and that’s how many you need to convince.

Without threatening to withold votes, within an incredibly narrow electoral only parameter, in a tiny time frame where anything less than total guarunteed success means its not worth doing. This is what you’ve asserted here and throughout this thread.

Also, as I’ve asked multiple times elsewhere (funny how you don’t respond to those) please provide some examples of the Democrats making an about face on policy within one election cycle, based purely on electoralism. Bonus points if you can provide some examples of that without even threatening to withhold votes.

As to time frame, it needs to be all the time, not just for a few weeks.

Except during the build up to elections for that party, which, in America, is essentially all of the time. See below and keep in mind it doesn’t include any kind of local elections for councillers, governers, state positions etc:

And if you don’t achieve that magic number in that tiny window, then you have to vote for a party that will make it even harder to do next time and start again by your logic.

They’d have to respond if they wanted to win the next election.

But you assert that if they refuse to change their position, you have to vote for them anyway. So there is no threat of them losing an election, because you advocating for voting for them no matter what, and having not using any leverage you might have. (This is another key point you never address whenever it’s put to you) So why would they change their position? Do you see your circular logic yet?

Ultimately politicians need to keep wining to stay in their job. Imperil that and they have to listen or lose their job.

They don’t care about losing their job. They care about not going against the wants of donors who will provide them their next job. They’ll become lobbyists, or sit on boards, or even just be given cushy party positions that aren’t voted on in exchange for their loyalty to the donor class.

And the donor class and party sure as shit don’t care about candidates losing their positions. They can just drop another one in, usually at less cost than the previous one since they’re not established and have no leverage of their own.

In fact, the people who run the party machinary often stand to benefit from their candidates losing elections, as it increases donations which give them power, keep them employed, increase their salaries and comissions etc.

For your assertion to be true you’d have to believe that the only political apparatus is the candidate themselves, independent of the party structure or donors, and that each of them is a purely motivated being of pure civic duty with no other options or oppurtunities.

Again, you know that’s not the case so your arguement is either disingenuous bullshit or you don’t have literally any understand of the electoral process that you profess to be so confident in your opinions of how its the only option.

Believe me, a website full of marxist are well aware of the power of numbers.

My point, again, is that you advocate that the only acceptable action is one that makes organising, growing those numbers, and using that power impossible.

Your arguement is bullshit, full of impossibilities, internal contradictions, and circular logic. And we both know fine well what you’re doing here. But like an insomniac cat with a ball of string, it can be fun to bat it around for a while, especially if others might stumble in here and see how it unravels.

I’m not saying you must vote for the party, we were originially just talking about the presidential election

Yes, you are. And the elected president is the head of the party. Again, for someone so hung up on it, you don’t actually seem to know anything about how elections or electoral politics work.

However, individuals choosing not to vote for the party does tend to give the benefit to the opponent, which may not be a good choice in the current political climate.

Here you are saying it again, as you have dozens of times throughout this thread, as you well know.

To be effective it has to be a large enough movement, making it’s requirements known clearly, for there to be a measurable effect.

Plenty of movements throughout history have done this. Polling data shows this. It has no effect without the threat of combined removal of votes and (at least the implicit threat of) violent opposition.

You assert this repeatedly but never offer what those requirements are or how to achieve them. Only methods that directly limit the ability to do that. So please quantify your assertion and your strategy.

Get enough people demanding better than FPTP voting and you’ll find a candidate that supports it. Find enough candidates across the nation who support it and it can be made to happen. Fix that and other changes become easier to achieve.

But I can’t vote for those candidates because I have to vote for the supposedly ‘lesser evil’ of the two parties that oppose it, right? That’s your original premise here.

Also, FPTP has been used in the UK since the middle ages despite the fact that it’s always faced opposition from voters. So what’s your timeline for this reform via narrow electoralism?

(that would be what giving the republicans power would do)

Nope. Both parties are the same power structure. Try again.

Organise in opposition, using any and all methods to produce results including but not limited to; protest, strike action, lawfare, self-governance, direct action, sabotage, and armed resistance.

The outcomes will be what they have always been, some losses and some victories, but history has proven these tactics and struggles to have produced great leaps forward and historic gains that have been very difficult to roll back. Including almost all of successes for the global working class, minority populations, and social progress for hundreds of years.

This is historical fact.

Now please provide some examples of historic postive change brought about purely by electoralism. And you can have extra points if you can name some brought about purely by electoralism that did not include either withholding or threatening to withold votes, since that’s the hill you’ve decided to die on.

Nope. You’ve retreated into you endless loop of electoral hypothetical again, where only two things are ever possible and you have to do one of them anyway. Without addressing the contradication at the core of it, which is why I asked you how you rationalised it.

The president is a bit of a special case, in that there’s one of them, and of the two candidates

No it’s not. There’s more than two presidential candidates. And all elected positions are filled only by one eventual winner from the crop of candidates, just like literally every election. For someone preaching that the only possibility is electoralism in the narrowest term, you don’t seem very knowledgable on, you know, actual elections, including the specific ones you’re referencing.

anything that increases the risk of trump getting in, especially with a republican majority in one or both houses, is surely a bad idea.

And you can (and in some cases do) argue that anything short of voting for, capmapigning for, donating to, and never ever showing any disatisfaction with the Democrats qualifies as this. Why stop at withholding your vote? Or campaigning for change ‘at the wrong time’? Have you been door knocking and phone banking for Biden? If not, why not? If you have, why aren’t you doing it now, and in every spare moment, or quitting your job to do it full time? Have you donated every cent you own to the Democratic party? What about selling any property or other assets you have? Aren’t you part of the problem?

(And that’s just within your myopic electoral view, never mind non-electoral strategies from the common to the extreme)

Ah yes, retreat to a jokey cartoon straw man instead of addressing the point.

In reality there are myriad options that do not include waving a fucking banner supporting detonating a nuke. The only way you can begin to rationalise your arguement is by creating a hypothetical thought experiment in which there are only two possibilities and you can actually only pick one of them. And even within those completely silly parameters it’s still contradictory, with no mechanism to change the hypothetical, hence ‘the endless cyclical logic of the electoral hypothetical.’

in the hope that next time around enough (as in an electorally significant number of) people are angry enough that they actually push the Dems

You are demonstrating that you do not understand the most basic point of the analogy.

next time around enough (as in an electorally significant number of) people are angry enough that they actually push the Dems for what they want at the beginning of the term, not right at the end.

This is your thesis throughout this thread so please give examples of when the Democratic party have done inverted their position on a policy they didn’t support at the election, on the basis that people lobbied for the change only immediately after the election.

Whilst it’s an amusing thought, I really don’t think that advocating assassinating your judicial opponents is a good idea. Remember that once it starts, it wont stop, so even if you get someone who aligns with your views, they’ll likely be eliminated in short order.

The US omniparty already murders its political opponents. It murdered sitting politicians, it murdered political candidates, it murders the leaders of political parties, it murders non-electoral political pressure groups, it murders loose-knit groups of single-issue activists, it murders outspoken critics of its policies, it murders union leaders, it murders union members, it murders foreign heads of state, it murders foreign political figures, it murders members of NGOs that counter its interests.

This is the factual, repeated, and continued to this day, history of the United States of America.

And, admittedly depending on what you believe, its possibly murdered a sitting president.

I did say ‘claims’.

So your arguement is that to change an undemocratic system you must only work within the boundries of the facade of that system (electorialism), whilst also not doing that (you must still vote for the party).

And we should do this by strengthing the very power structures that destroy the movement, control the narrative against it, and continue to vote for those doing both those and the genocide at the same time? Does that sound like a winning strategy to you?

Yes, but I haven’t seen much in the way of wide spread and coordinated campaigns to put issues that matter in front of him and other Dems until fairly recently.

The uncommitted campaign was in April.

People have been protesting, organising, and in some cases taking legal action for ten months now since October 7th.

There’s been an international protest, legal, and lobbying effort for Palestinian rights since the late 1940s.

That’s the issue, without a group of voters, large enough to change the outcome of elections

But who swear infinite loyalty that they never actually will refuse to vote for said party, no matter what.

How do you force a party to do something it’s diametrically opposed to while insisting you and everyone will always support them and obliterating even the mildest possible leverage you have?

Yes, but I haven’t seen much in the way of wide spread and coordinated campaigns to put issues that matter in front of him and other Dems until fairly recently.

So what’s the window between presidential, state, and local elections, plus run-offs, school districts, sherriff, and all the others that ‘is the time’?

And how many do you need to convince?

Half the voters for an entire party in a matter of weeks, every four years? Does this seem realistic to you?

And why would the party actually respond to those demands if you could organise the magic number of people in the exact right window of time?

I’m genuinely curious…

First of all, almost every single poll in history, across most of the planet, has had a majority favouring at least some policy that the bourgeois parties can not and will not accept.

Honest question… how do you possibly rationalise this circular logic to yourself that you absolutely have to vote for a particular party no matter what, whilst also saying that political parties have to chase votes and you can make them change their policies by ‘showing them’ you want something different (but not withdrawing you vote)? You do realise how totally contradictory and incompatible those two things are right?

Ah, here we go… the endless cyclical logic of the electoral hypothetical…

Don’t make me tap the sign again: