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How can I vote for Kamala Harris if she supports Israel’s war? Here is my answer | Bernie Sanders
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
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politics
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This is persuasion done correctly. "I understand how you are feeling. Israel's crimes and US support of them should be important to all of us. You aren't wrong to have your reservations, and I agree change is needed. That being said, please let me tell you why it's important to participate." No insults, readily apparent empathy, and a sound argument.
People have been doing exactly that since back when we were trying to somehow get Biden to win.
The message isn't the thing. It is the speaker. Because even the tankiest of tankies are going to be wary of insulting Sanders in front of their audience. And this is why celebrity endorsements matter.
Edit: I'm changing my stance on how common this is after a few hours looking at top election posts and comments across boards. The abuse definitely exists, but in most places it WASN'T at the top. While "vote bullying" happens, I was wrong about how much support it gets. I'm happy to be wrong and glad to see that people usually are pretty decent about presenting their arguments. I still think OP's article shows how people should be convinced.
I get what you are saying and half-agree. ~~Where I respectfully disagree is that people have always been this reasonable.~~ By writing "this is how it's done correctly, with respect and logic" I'm juxtaposing Sen. Sander's approach vs. "vote with us or else you're -insert insult here-" posts, comments, and memes. I've seen ~~tons of~~ some attempts to dehumanize or discredit critics of Biden/Harris/Dems on Lemmy and other platforms. You are right that ~~some~~ most have always tried to be empathetic and civil.
I also agree high-profile endorsements matter. That bugs me a little bit because I think arguments should succeed or fail on their own merits and not reputation. But I know I'm a consciously "have no heroes" person because I believe everyone is fallible. I definitely have people I respect a lot, but no one that I'll agree with all the time.
Eh. It started respectful, but dealing with the same tired "never genocide" canvassing of every single election thread gets old. And the people making those arguments know exactly what they're doing.
Do you expect the opposition to fall over themselves to be respectful and accommodating while the other is not playing by the same rules?
Does that remind you of something the Dems were very heavily criticized for doing in the recent past?
I expect libs to be respectful and accommodating to the left... And come out swinging against the right... What irritates me is when the libs take the left for granted and continuously move right on issues to try and scrape more shit off Trump's boots
I do not respect the self identified "leftists" that do nothing but make demands and then move the goalposts.
You expect libs to be respectful, yet give no respect yourself.
Check you privilege. Your single issue voting is throwing minorities and women under the bus.
I do not respect that.
Demanding that Dems represent us if they want our vote is not disrespectful... Demanding that the left support you while spitting in their faces is disrespectful
The same canvassing from the same accounts, no less.
Does anybody miss Linkerbaan?
Me either.
I had honestly forgotten Linkerbaan existed. But now that you mention it, it's been quite noticeably less toxic on Lemmy for some time. Linkerbaan's participation was just complete bad faith. UniversalMonk, too.
There are plenty of other personalities on here who are more than willing to accuse everyone else of being "genocide-loving centrists." So the community has lost nothing.
Did they finally get banned or just quit? I never see them post shit anymore. Absolutely a propagandist and I'm surprised more people didn't see it months ago
Banned around a month ago.
I'd forgotten about that poster. At some point I realized every post was about Israel or Gaza, commented as much, and was faced with a technical denial. Like, ok there may have been 1% that wasn't on that topic, but I didn't stumble across it leafing back through a few pages of the profile.
Generally speaking, people AREN'T saying "vote with us or else you're a piece of shit" to anyone who is (good faith) complaining about Biden's horrendous record on genocide and Kamala being unlikely to be much better. We almost always point out "Yeah... it sucks. But do you think trump will be any better? and get responses along the lines of "WELL I WON'T VOTE FOR GENOCIDE!! THAT IS MY LINE!!!"
It has nothing to do with the way the message was said and pretending otherwise is an active insult to everyone who gives a shit.
The only reason this MIGHT make a dent is because it is Bernie Sanders. The guy who opened a lot of people's minds to the reality that there is something better than late stage capitalism and beltway liberals.
Lemmy is doing precisely this, in this very thread, and has been doing this in literally every thread where this comes up since 2023. The issue that needs to be addressed is whether or not "Trump worse" is working as a strategy. What Bernie is saying here isn't new, and maybe he's saying it better, or its better coming from him than other surrogates. ymmv. I would argue you've already captured all the votes you can get using this approach. Now what about the votes you aren't getting with the argument "Trump worse"?
I think without a pivot on this Harris is leaving the easiest 1-3% of voters to get on the table. And they've been there since the last day of the convention, where Harris conveniently showed Arab-americans the exit rather than the podium. Its a small group, but its more than sufficient to be a deal breaker in this election. You can't force them to go for Harris, and no amount of telling them they have to has changed their minds.
Going forwards, how do you get these voters to vote for Harris?
I am an AAPI. I already know no candidate gives a shit about me. Hell, it says something when frigging Yang seemed palatable for like... five minutes. And with the way geopolitics is shaking up? If you thought the anti-asian hate was bad during the lockdown parts of COVID, just wait until we are in a cold war gone lukewarm against china like we are with russia.
And that is why a lot of AAPI folk kind of go right wing. They, like their parents, decide it is easier to try to ingratiate themselves wit hteh white supremacists than to show solidarity. But the rest of us? We rapidly learn that there IS no solidarity with us because we are "model minorities" and get told to shut the fuck up when more important minorities are being discriminated against.
But also? That isn't the only issue. There are AAPI women and AAPI lgbtq+ folk and so forth. And thus, you actually look at the issues and vote in your interests even if neither party really gives a shit. Because you have more than one issue (and, even that, one party is still a lot less shitty)
So if "Well... neither is great but one is a whole lot worse in these very concrete ways" isn't working?
You get a celebrity influencer to say it. Like Sanders.
Edit: I'm adjusting my stance because while I can find abuse in many threads most of the time it WASN'T in the top comments. Seeing what actually makes it to the top proves I was wrong and I won't cherry-pick comments further down to argue I'm "right". "Vote bullying" exists so I'm not deleting, but when I looked for other examples I found that most of the time upvotes are for reasonable folks.
I'll give one high-ish profile example that illustrates what I'm talking about: /c/politicalmemes has nearly 6k users, which is fairly big for Lemmy. In the last 6 months, the #3 top post with 1.91k upvotes is about how not voting because you feel there's no good choice means Republicans win and not seeing that means "you have a problem". The top comment in that post is about how people saying Biden isn't doing enough are propagandists. The #3 top comment literally tells dissenters to "do a lot more shutting the fuck up".
As I've said from the beginning: it's not universal, but it shows up regularly enough to make me appreciate Bernie's approach.
The meme sub. Where people intentionally try to make jokes and antagonize each other?
Edit: While I stand by what I say below about the sentiments being genuine, when actually reading top comments across boards - in most threads the top comments are pretty civil and reasonable. I was wrong.
I believe the meme and comments actually reflect the views of the people posting them. Perhaps I'm wrong, but the sentiments come across as very genuine and so I don't think it's accurate to dismiss them as "just joking". I also picked it because I remembered it and so it was faster than trawling through other threads for examples.
Good call. When your "role model" (for lack of a better term) takes a position on something, it tends to give it more credence to the target audience.
I have a great deal of respect for Bernie Sanders, so his words carry some weight with me. He is being a voice of reason.
I’ve seen threads from only hours ago where lemmygrad denizens were shitting on Sanders as far too conservative. Like… honestly, at this point, I think many people in that crowd are just leaning into being agitprop trolls for t3h lulz, or something like that. It’s deeply stupid imo, but they seem to not care.
The tankies on Lemmy are not the progressives that Sanders is speaking to.
Those progressives feel disenfranchised by Democrats and will rightly drop support for the “moderate” candidate next time there’s an election where the alternative is not a mask-off fascist. Some of them might do it this year, unfortunately. Maybe this is their first time voting, and they’re struggling with settling for the lesser evil. Maybe they’ve been doing it all their life and they’re tired of it. They’re the ones Sanders is trying to persuade.
Tankies, on the other hand, don’t actually give a fuck about their own moral arguments. They would be in Gaza murdering Palestinians with their own hands if they thought it would accelerate the collapse of the US and the rest of the western world. But why get your hands dirty when Trump can drop MOABs because of “the power” or whatever dumb shit he’s going to do. They hope Trump wins so that China and Russia will need to rescue the world from a fascist dictator in the US. They’re hoping for a new world order - like what the allies did after they defeated nazi germany.
It’s easy to confuse them around here because there are so many tankies among the well-meaning progressives getting swept up by tankie opportunism.
This is where I'm at. I've been open that I'm voting for Kamala, but people are literally posting that she has "no scandals" unironically, and will call you a Russian bot or a Trump supporter for disputing that. It's absolutely unhinged, and does nothing for her election.
Lots of bandying about the term “BlueMAGA” too, which is just… so, so dumb. That’s not what this is. That’s not what anyone is saying. The only point I’ve been trying to make to those people is that if you don’t want to have a fascist takeover in the US, your one and only one option is to vote for Harris. I hate that our system works that way, but it does, and it’s not changing in a week. Pretending we’re not subject to the constraints of the electoral system we exist in is a recipe for defeat - and again, a fascist takeover.
There are many shades of tankies.
The hardcore Hasan fans (and, probably Hasan himself) are generally good folk with strong leftist ideals who drink a bit too much of the kool-aid and have a tendency to be useful idiots who spew blatant pro-russian propaganda (remember the first few days of the war in Ukraine? I sure do). But when someone they know/"know" cares about them is saying something? They listen.
Hexbear and lemmygrad are full of the kind of tankies who manipulate THOSE tankies. The ones who are gleeful to spew pro-russian propaganda because it proves they are REALLY leftist... or because they are literally paid to do so.
Nah it's just america's center being extremely right-wing.
Sanders is a SINO according to the tankies, and plenty of commenters have trashed him here the other times this argument has been posted.
Sanders In Name Only?
Socialist. There are left wingers who have no shame adopting the right wing playbook.
Can't wait to see this post and comments screenshotted on hexbear 🍿
No. Centrists have been screaming that anyone who has the slightest misgivings about their genocide is a trumpist russian shill bot child. There has been no understanding whatsoever because centrists cannot fathom disliking genocide.
Pfft.
Just had someone tell me that Bernie is too old and can't think any more.
They just want an excuse to get noticed and pretend to be badass.
I really wish the USA was just seeing the end of a double-term Bernie presidency. I'm not dumb enough to pretend that it would have all been roses and prosperity (especially with the pandemic), but missing the setbacks of that 1st Trump presidency alone would have been pretty great. I -think- I'd prefer a younger president, but if an older president had to be chosen then Bernie seems articulate and compassionate.
Someone downvoted you for wanting to have seen a Bernie Presidency.
I don't have words for these people.